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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ca$e (talk | contribs) at 20:56, 12 August 2014 (→WMF superblocks it's community). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Welcome! Please leave me a message.

~ talk pages need talk pages! sj

Esteemed visitor : talk may be refactored, excerpted, summarized, archived, or deleted.
Carpe diem! --the Mgmt.     (optimistic thoughts)


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2012

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Noam Cohen

Hi, Sj! I have corresponded with Noam Cohen.

Noam Cohen did say that the Times does have a style guide, and according to that style guide he is supposed to render Japanese names in Western order. In terms of, say, the subject strongly preferring Japanese order, he's not sure how that would be resolved exactly. He said that the NYT would let someone spell the name how he/she would want to (i.e. "My name is Mohammed, not Muhammad") but he is not sure if naming order is affected by that.

I'm still e-mailing him. If you want, I can forward you correspondence and/or get you involved. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Okay - I sent you an e-mail. Please respond to the e-mail so I can obtain your e-mail address. With that I will forward you the correspondence. Thank you very much :)
  • WhisperToMe (talk) 17:15, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • You should now have copies of all three e-mails (my initial e-mail, Noam's reply, and then my reply)
    • Should I also send these e-mails to Aphaia?
    • WhisperToMe (talk) 18:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oh, ok. I will not e-mail Aphaia then.
      • At the moment I don't know of any other sources that refer to Aphaia's viewpoints and opinions so there's nothing else for me to add. From my understanding the sources regarding the logo and the Japanese Wikipedia are the only ones that discuss analysis and viewpoints from Aphaia. However the questions of "is this information worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia" and "how should one's name be presented" are two separate questions to be resolved separately.
      • In regards to following sensitivities, I'm not certain that following a sensitivity is necessarily the best plan, nor should it be the primary goal of writing for Wikipedia. Keeping in mind, as an example Talk:Muhammad/FAQ#Q1 an argument brought up was that including images would infringe upon the sensitivities of followers of a religion. The English Wikipedia community decided that, even though these followers would feel offended, it would be the best policy to include the images.
        • The FAQ itself says "So long as they are relevant to the article and do not violate any of Wikipedia's existing policies, nor the law of the U.S. state of Florida, where most of Wikipedia's servers are hosted, no content or images will be removed from Wikipedia because people find them objectionable or offensive."
      • This is why I'm interested in hearing how a professional organization would deal with this issue. If there is a consensus among the popular media/RS world that one could make an exception like this, then the community could say "the media would, and did accommodate such demands and have Yamada Hanako's name presented in the opposite fashion consistently. Since reliable sources for Yamada Hanako have done this, this should be reflected on Wikipedia"
      • Regarding concerns about Wikilawyering (AFAIK this was brought up on the Commons), I don't think it's wikilawyering if one follows the underlying spirit of a rule/guideline/etc. rather than simply following it to a letter. The English Wikipedia is intended to be a tertiary source, reflecting what other people wrote. Generally guidelines on naming order/etc. are meant to have Wikipedia reflect the practices of published English-language literature. Having Wikipedia's policies on a person's naming order determined by the policies of reliable sources would fulfill the goal of making Wikipedia a tertiary source.
      • WhisperToMe (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Wikipedia:WikiProject Years

Hi, since your name's down on this project, I'm just writing to let you know that there's a discussion going on at the moment on how to format events – and in particular, events that go on for multiple days – on year pages. Your input would be appreciated. — Smjg (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Hello, good sir!

Was that your voice speaking about wikis at the end of Justin Reich's talk today? I was listening to the webcast, and I thought you (or your doppelganger) made some good points. In any case, hello!

~~Brandon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pingswept (talk • contribs) 18:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was me! I found the talk frustrating; I'm not sure that sort of research does much more than generate provocative talk and paper titles. Limited data, limited disaggregation, no data transparency or reproducability... no basis for drawing conclusions of any sort. I hope that before the work is published in a more formal way those issues are addressed, but worry that in some academic regimes provocative titles are an end in their own right. And how are you doing? I thought of you recently, when OpenGlobe started up. I hope all is well. – SJ + 22:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed about data transparency and reproducability. That seems to be slow to take hold in academia, which is sort of weird. I disagree a little about limited data. Or rather, I agree that the data is limited, but I thought Justin did a good job of presenting his conclusions as uncertain, which seems like a reasonable behavior in the face of limited data. But maybe it came across differently in person. Anyway, stuff is good. I'm working on a new device in Artisan's Asylum. You should stop by if you haven't seen the place before-- I think it's the second-largest community hackerspace in the world, and it's right near Union Square in Somerville. Pingswept —Preceding undated comment added 18:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC).[reply]


MSU Interview

Dear Sj,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.


So a few things about the interviews:

  • Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
  • Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
  • All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
  • All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
  • The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.


Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Sam

Thanks, it's nice to be here. I'm still learning to ropes, but hopefully I won't allow the negative aspects of my physics training to hinder me too much! Say hi to Zittrain if you see him. terry (talk) 22:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Talkback

Hello, Sj. You have new messages at Hertz1888's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Comments left at Talk:Jerusalem. Both sections there need your signature! Hertz1888 (talk) 07:11, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ec

Hullo Sj, I believe I may have edit-conflicted with you in trying to introduce copyedits to the Signpost movement roles interview; please accept my apologies and continue revising your answers as you please – I'm looking to publish in about two hours. And thanks again for taking the time to discuss these issues with us, I think it's an important area to explore with the community. Regards, Skomorokh 03:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited! New England Wikimedia General Meeting

 New England Wikimedia General Meeting

The New England Wikimedia General Meeting will be a large-scale meetup of all Wikimedians (and friends) from the New England area in order to discuss regional coordination and possible formalization of our community (i.e., a chapter). Come hang out with other Wikimedians, learn more about ongoing activities, and help plan for the future!
Potential topics:
Sunday, April 22
1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Conference Room C06, Johnson Building,
Boston Public Library—Central Library
700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116
Please sign up here: Wikipedia:Meetup/New England!

Message delivered by Dominic at 08:57, 11 April 2012 (UTC). Note: You can remove your name from this meetup invite list here.[reply]

Museum guidelines

Hi! I first tweaked the Wikipedia:WikiProject Museums/Guideline sequence, which wound up reverted fairly quickly, so now there's an active discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Museums/Guideline about the sequence of sections. You are invited and encouraged to chime in. Please also see the discussion about consolidating several sections which tend to be especially brief. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:12, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ka4roh, I tried to clean up the guideline page a bit myself, based on the discussion so far. It's something I meant to do last year -- thanks for the reminder. – SJ + 00:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

on conference subsidies

Hi, Sj. I enjoyed your recent post on conference scholarships and tried to post this comment there but the comment didn't post, and then when I tried to post it again, I was told it was a duplicate! So here it is.

This is so great. Thank you for writing it. When we run the next big funded hackathon (I'm currently working on sponsorships for the Berlin hackathon in June) I'll keep a lot of this in mind. This year I did a bunch of outreach and specifically reached out to nontraditional attendees (people who work on gadgets, templates, and bots) to ask them to come to the event, and we are spending a big chunk of WMF's volunteer development budget for the current fiscal year to encourage and sponsor such people. Next year, I think it would be good to follow your guidelines, to help avoid turning subsidies for travel to the Berlin hackathon into a default expectation.

Thanks again. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 16:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the comment, Sumana! I don't know what went wrong with my blog, but I added your comment there. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how the upcoming hackathons go. I also appreciate your recent note to internal-l on moving back to public-only mailing lists, and mean to write about how important that is as well. Warmly, – SJ + 01:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Just signed up for adoption

I selected you because of Texas history, I have been commissioned to enter 'Orsch' in the wikipedia from the founder of the alternative education school by the same name in Gunnison, Colorado. I have been an avid user of wiki for years, and have always wanted to contribute something, now I have a purpose for doing so. My user page is the article I wish to enter. I am a dedicated autodydactic. Some things come very easy for me, others I struggle with until I give up. It is my intention to publish this article but now I need help switching it to the real on-line article. I also recieve critique well, and strive for excellence in all I do. I would truly like to be a respected editor/creator for wiki and perhaps you would like to show me some ropes. I instruct well, and tend to like to do things for myself. Would you care to help a fellow Texas history fanatic? ~Orschstaffer, I basically know how to access my user page, should you respond to my request, and my talk page which further defines my intentions. The article is related to alternative education. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orschstaffer (talk • contribs) 20:56, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Boston Wiknic

 Great American Wiknic - Boston

The Second Annual Great American Wiknic will be an opportunity for Wikipedians across the Greater Boston area to meet for an afternoon of Food, Fun, and Fellowship. Come hang out with other Wikimedians, learn more about upcoming activities, and just enjoy a day at the park!
Saturday, June 23
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Boston Common
  • Food
  • Fun
  • Fellowship
Please sign up here: Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Wiknic/2012!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Meetup/Boston at 14:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC).[reply]

The Transit of Venus

Hello Sj,

About the message you have forwarded on the Wikisource mailing list: Good book for Wiki Source. Thanks for Beluru Sudharshana from Mithramadhyama.com for pointing this out in the right time, I have uploaded the English and the French versions to Commons here in English and here in French. Regards, --Zyephyrus (talk) 22:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted these files on Commons because the licence was not accepted there, sorry. Fortunately the link to the source can be found here on WP so people can have access to it directly. --Zyephyrus (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for following up with this! SJ

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cto

Template:Cto has been nominated for deletion. Template:Cto creates a conditional topic overview linkbox for the See also section of an article with links to (1) the topic article, (2) the outline of the topic, (3) the index of topic-related articles, (4) the bibliography of the topic, and (5) the Wikipedia book on the topic. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Cto. Yours aye,  Buaidh  20:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The chessboard

Is it possible for a technologically handicapped person to get that wiki-chessboard and invite others to play? Aditya(talk • contribs) 04:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good question... I think yes :) Worth revisiting. – SJ +

Philip of Castile (archbishop)

Hello. I was on Wikipedia:Translators available and notice that you were on the list for Spanish to English translators and wondered if you could be interested in translating es:Felipe de Castilla to Philip of Castile (archbishop)? There is a lot of interesting information still left untranslated. Thanks.--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimania

Was a real blast to meet you at Wikimania. I hope you had as good of a time as I did. --David Shankbone 01:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise :-) – SJ +

Please comment on Talk:Plasma cosmology

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Plasma cosmology. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 04:15, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia Adventure: Request for feedback on Community Fellowship proposal

Hi! I'm contacting you because you have participated or discussed The Wikipedia Adventure learning tutorial/game idea. I think you should know about a current Community Fellowship proposal to create the game with some Wikimedia Foundation support. Your feedback on the proposal would be very much appreciated. I should note that the feedback is for the proposal, not the proposer, and even if the Fellowship goes forward it might be undertaken by presently not-mentioned editors. Thanks again for your consideration.

Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Adventure

Cheers, User:Ocaasi 16:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update, Ocaasi. I don't have comments specifically on the proposal, but hope it sees future iteration. – SJ + 03:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]


A kitten for you!

I am a new user. You offered some insight to my erred ways. Thanks.. no hard feelings.

Patrick Miller Booth (talk) 02:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Patrick. I love red and kittens. :) – SJ +


Adopt-a-user

Hi Sj. I'm leaving you this message because you have previously been involved as an adopter with Wikipedia's Adopt-a-user program. A clean-up of this program is currently underway, and as part of the process I am trying to find out who is and isn't still interested in remaining an adopter.

If you would prefer not to be part of the adoption program anymore, you need do nothing; when the overhaul of the project is completed your name will be removed from the list of active adopters. However, if you have current adoptees, an active adoption school or an interest in adopting in the near future, then please let us know by signing here.

If you want to remain in the project and can currently take on more adoptees, there is a serious backlog at Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user; it would be enormously helpful if you could take on one or two of the users there. Please do keep an eye on the project for upcoming changes, we could use your opinions and your help! Yunshui 雲‍水 09:19, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Von Portugal translation

Hello. I was on Wikipedia:Translators available and notice that you were on the list for German to English translators and wondered if you could translate and add materials from de:Manuel von Portugal and de:Emilia von Oranien-Nassau to their English articles and create articles for their two children de:Manuel António von Portugal and de:Mauritia Eleonora von Portugal and their spouse de:Johanna von Hanau-Münzenberg and de:Georg Friedrich (Nassau-Siegen). If you can't I will understand. Thank you!--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 23:25, 24 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

the olive branch

interesting! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 05:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC) p.s: time to archive your talk page? :) [yes :) ][reply]

Soliciting Feedback on Educational Assignment

Hello,

My name is Javier Campanini. I'm a student at Cornell University working on a class project for an Online Communities course. Our task is to contribute an article to Wikipedia. There are a total of 3 people on the team and so far, we've started to gather the information and create sections for the article.

The subject of the article is Incentive-Centered Design. The current page (a work in progress) can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jmc242/incentive-centered_design

We would really appreciate any feedback or comments you could provide on our progress so far.

Thank you, Javier Campanini Jmc242 (talk) 22:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup 2012 October newsletter

The 2012 WikiCup has come to a close; congratulations to Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions), our 2012 champion! Cwmhiraeth joins our exclusive club of previous winners: Dreamafter (2007), jj137 (2008), Durova (2009), Sturmvogel 66 (2010) and Hurricanehink (2011). Our final standings were as follows:

  1. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions)
  2. Canada Sasata (submissions)
  3. Conradh na Gaeilge Grapple X (submissions)
  4. Scotland Casliber (submissions)
  5. New York City Muboshgu (submissions)
  6. Wisconsin Miyagawa (submissions)
  7. Minnesota Ruby2010 (submissions)
  8. Michigan Dana Boomer (submissions)

Prizes for first, second, third and fourth will be awarded, as will prizes for all those who reached the final eight. Every participant who scored in the competition will receive a ribbon of participation. In addition to the prizes based on placement, the following special prizes will be awarded based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, the prize is awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round.

Awards will be handed out in the coming days; please bear with us! This year's competition also saw fantastic contributions in all rounds, from newer Wikipedians contributing their first good or featured articles, right up to highly experienced Wikipedians chasing high scores and contributing to topics outside of their usual comfort zones. It would be impossible to name all of the participants who have achieved things to be proud of, but well done to all of you, and thanks! Wikipedia has certainly benefited from the work of this year's WikiCup participants.

Next year's WikiCup will begin in January. Currently, discussions and polls are open, and all contributions are welcome. You can also sign up for next year's competition. There will be no further newsletters this year, although brief notes may be sent out in December to remind everyone about the upcoming competition. It's been a pleasure to work with you all, and we hope to see you all in January! J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Leah McGrath Goodman

nice job on that article. Decora (talk) 00:49, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! – SJ +

Proposed deletion of Jenny Preece

The article Jenny Preece has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

May fail WP:PROF

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. SarahStierch (talk) 02:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Awwwww really? Fixed :) – SJ +

Proposed deletion of Blaise Agüera y Arcas

The article Blaise Agüera y Arcas has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

person not important enough

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. LMB (talk) 10:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting a bit much... the fact that the only "help fix this article" comments I get are people proposing them for deletion as nonnotable or bots suggests our social norms are lacking. B A y A for instance is a remarkably accomplished creator, director, and developer, who has been renowned in the national media for at least two different phases of his life; as a quick search would indicate. Slapping a deletion tag on an article should not be the default way to improve it. – SJ +

Ombudsman commission

Hi, I contact you as you took part in the discussion on Penyulap's talk page concerning the Ombudsman committee matter. I've started some proposals and discussion on meta about how best to reform the OC to fix the issues it currently has and I would be very grateful if you could drop by and voice your opinion at m:Ombudsman commission/reform proposals. Snowolf How can I help? 12:19, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: your request on User talk:Courcelles

Hi, SJ. You asked Courcelles to unblock Penyulap's talkpage access (here; already archived). It is of course customary to make such a request — at least, the first such request — to the admin who blocked the access; in this case, Courcelles. But I don't think the unblocking question should be left up to him, since it was Courcelles whose checkuser action Penyulap complained of to the Ombudsman commission, in an open letter he posted on the page immediately before Courcelles blocked him from further posting. To my mind there is a question whether Penyulap's access needed blocking, as well as a question whether Courcelles was the right person to do it. Please unblock Pen's access yourself, or ask somebody else. I would, except that I have probably by now involved myself too much w r t Penyulap to be the best person to do it.

I agree with you that Pen's access to his talk should be unblocked without further delay, so that he can take part directly in the discussion of his ombudsman complaint that has now, finally, started on his page. Frankly, it seems bad enough that his e-mail to the Ombudsman commission apparently got mislaid at first,[1] and that the reminder which I posted for him a month later[2] attracted no attention until another ten days later. (I'm certainly not complaining of Snowolf, the only person who has been effective in this business, and who has started a related proposal on Meta.) The user doesn't need any more delays and attrition, and the present situation where he has to rely on a third party for public communication isn't very satisfactory for him (not so hot for me either). Bishonen | talk 15:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for the comment, Bish. I agree he should join the discussion directly. The simplest way is to move to Meta. For practical watchlist and discussion-continuity reasons I too would like to see the appropriate part of it continue here (in addition to the more general discussion Snowolf started). But as there's no rush, and P. is sensitive to & responds prolifically to drama, I'd rather move gently to help focus discussion on making the OC functional. Let me check w. Elen before adding to the list of minor tweaks in his log. – SJ + 02:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]


2013

Please comment on Talk:Renewable energy

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Renewable energy. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 07:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Closed-form expression

Hey Sj,

I wanted to learn about Closed-form expression and wanted to read about it in Japanese. From the English page, there was a link to 解析解 in the Chinese Wikipedia (no link to JP WP), from which I got to 微分方程式, which is linked to Differential_equation. I don't know enough about closed-form expression to know what would be an appropriate link from Closed-form expression to JP WP page/section. If you have time, help!

hackfish 16:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

It may not be written yet. See the redlink in this article. Ask a japanese mathematician!
A closed-form expression is a type of Analytic expression (which unfortunately also links to 微分方程式). The idea of being closed here relates to "describable as the combination of a finite number of simple expressions", for a flexible definition of "simple". It's not really related to differential equations, except in the negative sense: most differential equations do not have closed form solutions. (Note that there is a confusingly named closed differential form which is quite different.) – SJ + 18:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Food for thought on "knowledge for ¢hange"

Hi Sj, first, thank you for your compliment regarding the holiday/Xmas greeting (with 2 children on a swing) I left on Rich Farmbrough's User talk page. On a different note, a while ago I left a post on the Wikimedia Foundation's feedback webpage for a suggested fundraising donation system to help WP bring in extra cash (doesn't everyone want a raise?). The idea likely has merit and can probably accomplish its goal of raising significant extra funds for Wikipedia if implemented (or at least, as Homer would say: D'oh! it sounded like a good idea in my mind at the time ;-).

My original post, "Food for thought, knowledge for change" has been archived, but when I saw your contributions to the organization it appears it would be good to discuss the concept to see if you could advocate it to your colleagues on the WM Board, or at least bring it to their attention. The suggestion's only remarks generated so far can be seen on my user Talk page, as shown here, which notes that "...a micropayment system created by MuCash [on] websites such as Cleantechnica, where you can see a Java-linked 'Donate....' button at the bottom of each article". (Cleantechnica no longer appears to use MuCash, but other sites such as Dailygiver.org do, where the blue and orange donate button can be seen near the bottom of this webpage).

As an afterthought to the concept, I would also permit the proposed system to allow Wikipedians the option to (voluntarily) automatically donate any funds they personally receive to Wikimedia. Doing so this way would generate a bit more cash to the organization, and allow the editors to receive some personal credit for such donations. Best: HarryZilber (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


WikiCup 2013 February newsletter

Round 1 is now over. The top 64 scorers have progressed to round 2, where they have been randomly split into eight pools of eight. At the end of April, the top two from each pool, as well as the 16 highest scorers from those remaining, will progress to round 3. Commiserations to those eliminated; if you're interested in still being involved in the WikiCup, able and willing reviewers will always be needed, and if you're interested in getting involved with other collaborative projects, take a look at the WikiWomen's Month discussed below.

Round 1 saw 21 competitors with over 100 points, which is fantastic; that suggests that this year's competition is going to be highly competative. Our lower scores indicate this, too: A score of 19 was required to reach round 2, which was significantly higher than the 11 points required in 2012 and 8 points required in 2011. The score needed to reach round 3 will be higher, and may depend on pool groupings. In 2011, 41 points secured a round 3 place, while in 2012, 65 was needed. Our top three scorers in round 1 were:

  1. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions), primarily for an array of warship GAs.
  2. London Miyagawa (submissions), primarily for an array of did you knows and good articles, some of which were awarded bonus points.
  3. New South Wales Casliber (submissions), due in no small part to Canis Minor, a featured article awarded a total of 340 points. A joint submission with Alaska Keilana (submissions), this is the highest scoring single article yet submitted in this year's competition.

Other contributors of note include:

Featured topics have still played no part in this year's competition, but once again, a curious contribution has been offered by British Empire The C of E (submissions): did you know that there is a Shit Brook in Shropshire? With April Fools' Day during the next round, there will probably be a good chance of more unusual articles...

March sees the WikiWomen's History Month, a series of collaborative efforts to aid the women's history WikiProject to coincide with Women's History Month and International Women's Day. A number of WikiCup participants have already started to take part. The project has a to-do list of articles needing work on the topic of women's history. Those interested in helping out with the project can find articles in need of attention there, or, alternatively, add articles to the list. Those interested in collaborating on articles on women's history are also welcome to use the WikiCup talk page to find others willing to lend a helping hand. Another collaboration currently running is an an effort from WikiCup participants to coordinate a number of Easter-themed did you know articles. Contributions are welcome!

A few final administrative issues. From now on, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. 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) J Milburn (talk) 11:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User:Penyulap talk page access

Hi. On December 20th you re-enabled talk page access for the indef blocked editor Penyulap. However, in looking at their talk page, I see no ongoing discussion about their block for the past several months, and there's been no formal request for an unblock since access was granted. Instead, there's a lot of bitching and complaining about Wikipedia, as well as ordinary discussion, as if the editor wasn't blocked at all. My understanding is that talk page access is given to blocked editors in order to facilitate unblock requests and discussions about being unblocked. Since that is not happening here, and since the editor was blocked indef because they were determined to not be here to improve the encyclopedia, perhaps the talk page access should be terminated? (If you look at their block log, you'll see that the granting of access and the termination of access is a continuing thing. Admins keep giving this editor a chance to request an unblock, and the editor keepa misusing their talk page for their own purposes instead.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(Talk page stalker.) No, access to usertalk isn't exclusively for requesting unblock, you're mistaken about that. Penyulap has posted more and more sparingly on his page, for example once, briefly, in the past 30 days. (On 26 February.) If such modest amounts of "bitching and complaining about Wikipedia" bother you, you might consider unwatching the page. Bishonen | talk 21:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Bish, with all due respect (and I actually mean that sincerely, and not simply as an honorific), Penyulap posted to their talk page 100 times since access was granted, and very little of it was about the block. This editor was indef blocked because he or she apparently doesn't share the community's dedication to improving the encyclopedia, and they're using their talk page to continue to give the community the middle finger. I think that's offensive and an insult to the entire community, so it's not about me and whether I read their talk page or not. I just don't see why we should give this person a free forum to expression their derision. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi BMK, blocked users generally retain talk-page access, and are welcome to correspond with others there, unless there is reason to prevent it. Editors are not the only ones who can pursue their own unblock; if Pesky or others want to develop that idea they may, and the user talk is an appropriate place to document that. Penyulap was blocked for losing control and interacting poorly with others. I think claims of "not wanting to improve the encyclopedia" are handed out a bit too freely - a passion for a better encyclopedia is often what drives editors to lose control. At any rate, that is something this user continues to write about, designing awards for the good work of other editors, musing on new horizons for new recruits, and sharing ideas for quality flagging in place of deletion. Interspersed criticism is not unusual; I see no recent reason to rerestrict access. (And hello stalkzilla.) – SJ + 03:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks for the response, but in my opinion you're much too generous. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Tanzania

Mambo vipi, Sj? Kwangu poa kabisa. And the answer regarding "Kaswahili", no, I do not know him at all. Never heard of him before. But I was intrigued with his effort. Possibly we'll eventually get someone to establish the chapter!--Mwanaharakati(Longa) 14:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

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Bus Routes

Just thought you would like to know that there has been a lot more lists which have been nominated for deletion which can be viewed here. Wilbysuffolk (Talk to me!) 12:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. They should really be transwikied - are there any active WV editors who would like to undertake that? – SJ + 21:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Voting in AfDs

As an admin I think you'd be aware of WP:AADD. Many of your !votes are WP:JUSTAVOTE. LibStar (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to come and say the same thing. The point of an AfD discussion is to determine whether or not an article is notable; simply asserting that it is isn't too helpful when it comes to judging consensus. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 15:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I also came here to mention this. There's no use in just asserting "keep" without any rational behind it. Ducknish (talk) 17:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, thanks for commenting. I will expand a bit on my rationales; feel free to ask about specific articles. Closers are of course welcome to ignore comments they consider too brief or not relevant. – SJ + 21:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution noticeboard

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Lithium burning possible violation

There are users claiming that Lithium burning has copy write issues. More specifically it is claimed that it was copied from this page. The title of the page was Brown dwarfs and is essentially a copy of the wikipedia page of the same name but an older version(I have not yet had the time to find out which), and contains information that also first appeared in wikipedia in 2005 in an edit by you. Could you please tell us more if all the text from Brown dwarf were written originally. And help us potentially resolve this issue. Andrew Luo(too lazy to log in) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.67.62 (talk) 00:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Andrew. I guess login should be made 2 seconds instead of 20 seconds :) You're right, it's not a copyvio; resolved. – SJ + 13:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Rules

Per Wikipedia:Merging#Proposing a merger, you did not perform Step I in the talk sections of the following articles: Common chemicals and List of commonly available chemicals. It's important to create a section specific for the merge discussion, otherwise people won't respond to a merge request. Also, you need to modify the merge template usage to point to the new section that you create. Thanks. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 01:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I see there was already a suggestion to merge a year ago; I'll go ahead and do it. The shorter article has no activity at present. – SJ + 13:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Re: SALT

Happy to be of service. :) LFaraone 05:18, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Personal comments

Your criticism of Doc James and me on the Education Board are insulting. Do you think the most constructive thing to do there was to publicly pick fault with how two editors are expressing their anger? I see nothing from the WMF wrt Joordens comments. I've been called a criminal and a liar. Is that acceptable to the WMF? I guess so. I see you've had the good sense to remove the first you made about James.

I can see why the matter has wound you up. But the level of drama in the discussion doesn't seem to be helping matters, nor making you feel better. Hence my agreement with ToaT. James and I are friends; it is not the first time I have teased him about his energetic interaction with those who frustrate him; but it occurred to me that others reading that page wouldn't have context.

I don't doubt there is "unrealized potential" in the education programme and wrt psychology articles, but that's the one comment you wished to make about this assignment? That somehow you are sad that it hasn't realized its potential?

I'm not sure why you are interested in the education project... I am interested because I think contributing to a repository of human knowledge is a natural part of higher education. So yes, I am sad whenever a teacher, passionate about the same idea, fails to pull it off successfully.
I'm here to help build an encyclopaedia of free original content as part of an online collaborative community. Joordens is here primarily to set an exercise for his megaclass that doesn't require human expert marking (see precedent with peerScholar), and secondarily to perform a huge experiment on Wikipedia that he and his PhD student can write up in the academic journals. If Joordens was giving any time/priority towards the "build an encyclopaedia" or "collaborative community" or "original content" bit, then he'd be going about things quite differently. There are successful classes in the education program. They go about it quite differently to this one.
By his own admission, he thought it was fine to exploit what he saw as a huge resource that would correct his student's mistakes, and this (edit retention) could be used to mark the students. But it turned out the resource wasn't huge and wasn't so keen to be an unpaid classroom assistant. He doesn't realise his assignment is guaranteed to produce plagiarism and his training to prepare these students is woefully inadequate. Part of why he doesn't realise is that his means of assessing the students is fundamentally flawed. Why should he listen to some Wikipedian saying it is fundamentally flawed, when there several scientific papers built upon the concept of edit-retention=quality (see elsewhere on Education Noticeboard for comment on the most recent). These papers are published by those academically involved in the education program.
We pointed this out to him in 2011 but he regards us as amateurs and our data as flawed. You should see the language he used to dismiss us. There's just way too much arrogance there. Combine this with the "oh shit" consequences of facing up to what he's done and how misguided his research metrics are. There are strong motivations on him ignoring us and carrying on. Otherwise, what assignment is he going to give his megaclass next semester? And what is his PhD student going to do with the worthless data they've collected.
I keep asking what anyone is going to do about the 900 articles his class edited this spring? Is anyone going to remove the plagiarism. Or is that just fine. Colin°Talk 10:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "data" Joordens and his PhD are collecting wrt edit quality is utterly worthless. The analogy I've given elsewhere is that it is like someone studying two skin creams for eczema, and measuring how good they are by counting how many patients die of toxic effects. Measuring reverts (or bot tags, even) is no measure of quality at all. But it is sure an easy measure to make if you have a class of 1900 and have never had any intention of actually reviewing the edits yourself or employing someone to do so. Your comments at the education noticeboard make me seriously question the point of continuing to edit here. Colin°Talk 07:49, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know what you mean about those metrics. I suspect there is nothing wrong with their raw data -- data is just data -- it is the analysis that is wanting. You might discuss metrics with him - suggesting better metrics and analysis will have more of an impact than attacking his intentions.
A related aside: why do you say your 2011 report was dismissed by some within the ed. program? – SJ + 10:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well of course data is neutral but still has a worth. They've collected the wrong kind of data. I don't think they want to know that 2-years into their research, it is all to waste. One could do a professional analysis of the student edits made by his classes since 2011 but would it tell you anything different from what we've discovered? Negative results tend not to get published. I doubt very much that "Disasters with an unprepared and unsupervised megaclass" is the sort of paper Joordens wants on his CV.
this. Only now its 1900 students and still WMF aren't interested in doing anything about it. Colin°Talk 10:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The key phrase in that answer is "we couldn't". That doesn't read like a dismissal of your report. – SJ +
Lurker/stalker here. Indeed, and the response of the Education Program was officially to wash their hands of the whole thing. (As indeed the WMF is doing with the US/Canada program in general.) To be fair, it seems that Philippe took the situation seriously, enough to talk to Joordens in person. And that has had some effect, if belatedly. As I've said before, we need people such as Joordens inside pissing out rather than vice versa. For me, that's the only problem with showing your anger: it may contribute to the feeling that the way to do these things is to go "under the radar." But as we know, only worse things happen as a result.
Personally (as I've also been saying, until I feel blue in the face) I think we need also to look at the big picture. There's pressure within academia to use online resources and technological fixes to increase faculty productivity and student revenue while reducing fixed costs and overheads. (More recently, the way in which we're supposed to go is towards MOOCs: Massive Online Open Courses.) Imagine: it's crazy that there even are 1700-student courses at all. No wonder Joordens is trying to get something out of it by a) offloading some small (to be fair, really rather small) part of the course evaluation to Wikipedia; and b) making this the focus of his research by producing articles celebrating his use of Wikipedia in the classroom. So there are structural conditions affecting academia that tend towards a negative impact on Wikipedia. Again, my feeling is that we need to make common cause. Wikipedia and academia are (despite appearances) in this together. Addressing or at least acknowledging the broader pressures on the utopian project of free access to knowledge is vital. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 12:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Jbmurray, nice to see you stalking here. I agree that we need to make common cause. Not only do issues of scale and pressure in academia affect Wikipedia, both communities are experimenting with variations on individual empowerment: including peer writing, review, and teaching. Many courses are taking a similar approach to the development of their class materials. – SJ + 16:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly won't take the blame for him going under the radar. Other people encouraged him and other people negotiated with him and asked him to stop with the megaclass. Other people continue, it seems, to meet and encourage him. His main problem with transparency and openness seems to be that Wikipedians, when they analyse his class's edits, find they are dreadful. If we hadn't done that analysis, would the idea of a megaclass on Wikipedia have spread to other institutions? Perhaps his "add a random factoid to Wikipedia" assignment would have spread also? Or maybe his "first year undergrads can improve Wikipedia with little training and no supervision" idea would be spreading too? This is someone who has a big problem with being told news he doesn't want to hear. His response is one big "fuck you I'm doing it anyway and my way". WMF should have a response to that too. But all I see here is more encouraging "potential and positive energy" lines and not enough "how dare you". Joordens' and academia's problems with class size are their problems. This is an encyclopaedia. Some folk seem to have forgotten that. Colin°Talk 14:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't want to blame you for his going "under the radar," which is a metaphor (and it's Joordens's) that I've always felt is more than a little disconcerting: it does rather suggest that he regards his projects more in terms of invasion than (as he now tells us) immigration. But I do want to ensure that neither he nor anyone else takes that tack again. Nor do I particularly want to encourage "potential and positive energy." I talked of people pissing out rather than in.  :) And in the end, though it would be great if I were wrong, I honestly don't see how a Wikipedia assignment could ever work in a class such as the one he's teaching. But if it is going to work--or if everyone is going to agree that it's impossible--then this will only happen if there's mutual cooperation. (I'd say also it'll only work if it isn't unleashed en masse on the encyclopedia: there's a point to doing things on a small scale. But that's another matter.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I went looking for the person who wrote (wrt the 2011 class) "I think it is great that this class attempted such a project, and that they are planning to repeat it with improvements." And was kinda disappointed to discover who. Better comments came from Mike Christie: "I'm very pessimistic about the chances of success with such a large class. To be honest, I don't think the experiment should be repeated; instead we should focus on classes where there is some expectation of engagement with the professor online, and where the number of students won't overwhelm the limited number of helpers. " It took Joordens till April 2013 to realise the "limited number of helpers" bit.
My biggest issue with your comments at the noticeboard now (and your past comment) is their defensiveness and their "optimism in face of all evidence" stance. The WMF should be angry about this large-scale abuse of Wikipedia and its volunteers, and the fact that around the 22nd March hundreds of our psychology articles got a little bit worse and shortly afterwards one of our most valued experts had to go on wikibreak. Instead, I start my week being told "Calm down, dear". Why not consider why people are angry? People get frustrated when they see nothing being done about a problem, and they get very annoyed when those causing the problem being treated better than those reporting it. Colin°Talk 11:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, from my perspective it's not that you're wrong to be angry, especially after the accusation Woodsnake made against you. It's that your anger and his resistance seem to be feeding each other, and as a result the more you express your anger, the more he defiantly digs down in his trench, shakes his head, and writes off everything we're trying to get through to him because he appears to feel that issues presented angrily don't merit consideration. A bad belief, from my perspective, but we kind of have to work within the constraints we're stuck with. SJ has approached this poorly with you and Doc James, but I suspect what he was trying to get across was basically something I agree with: your current strategy (angry words) isn't working to get you what you want (less disruption from his classes, and/or understanding from Woodsnake), so if you're able, you should try a different strategy, be it more moderated language or just backing away from the conversation for a while. It's too easy for the conversation as it's currently going to be derailed either by us talking about your anger or by Woodsnake writing you off more and more aggressively. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Fluffernutter. You put this much better than I did. And you are right, I did not approach the situation smoothly. I've left thoughts on how to improve understanding and address current disruption on the noticeboard. – SJ + 18:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

File:LogoGutza22Jul2003.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:LogoGutza22Jul2003.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback on Jack of Oz's page

Hello, Sj. You have new messages at JackofOz's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

wik-wik-wikify

I think a tiny old-school piece of me just died when I discovered this. A clear case for our old fogeys league, imho. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:55, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes... ! – SJ + 02:26, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Suicide

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Fixing citation

Hello Sj, on the 25th of February 2005 at 11:34 hours you edited Brown dwarf to add [Kulkarni] as a citation. Can you direct me to the proper work to cite so that I can fix the citation? - Fartherred (talk) 02:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi FR, thanks for catching that. At the time the Kulkarni link was in the "History" section at the end of the article (which didn't have modern-style cites). The author's self-hosted paper has been taken down, but I added a cite to a more appropriate archival copy. – SJ + 04:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. - Fartherred (talk) 04:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Genre sub-cats do not need to be in parent

People in Category:American mystery writers or Category:19th-century American novelists should not be in the parent category Category:American novelsits.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please take a look

  • Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today - A prototype for category intersection, that I tested with Nigerian novelists. It uses the catscan tool. My thought is, we could easily implement this, starting with gendered/ethnic/sexuality/religion cats of bios. Create a cat header template, clean up the output of the tool, make it look a bit more friendly, and then remove all of the gendered/ethnic/etc subcats and just use static cat intersections at the top for any key intersections people want. Best part is, regular editors can do this today, while waiting for wikidata to spin up - and we can maintain most of the existing category tree. Help/support requested. And it would show that we're responsive. Thanks! --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:37, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup 2013 April newsletter

We are a week into Round 3, but it is off to a flying start, with Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions) claiming for the high-importance Portal:Sports and Portal:Geography (which are the first portals ever awarded bonus points in the WikiCup) and Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) claiming for a did you know of sea, the highest scoring individual did you know article ever submitted for the WikiCup. Round 2 saw very impressive scores at close; first place New South Wales Casliber (submissions) and second place Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) both scored over 1000 points; a feat not seen in Round 2 since 2010. This, in part, has been made possible by the change in the bonus points rules, but is also testament to the quality of the competition this year. Pool C and Pool G were most competitive, with three quarters of participants making it to Round 3, while Pool D was the least, with only the top two scorers making it through. The lowest qualifying score was 123, significantly higher than last year's 65, 2011's 41 or even 2010's 100.

The next issue of The Signpost is due to include a brief update on the current WikiCup, comparing it to previous years' competitions. This may be of interest to current WikiCup followers, and may help bring some more new faces into the community. We would also like to note that this round includes an extra competitor to the 32 advertised, who has been added to a random pool. This extra inclusion seems to have been the fairest way to deal with a small mistake made before the beginning of this round, but should not affect the competition in a large way. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact one of the judges.

A rules clarification: content promoted between rounds can be claimed in the round after the break, but not the round before. The case in point is content promoted on 29/30 April, which may be claimed in this round. 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) 16:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Role of JW and BoT on decisions per Wikipedia:PNSD

Hello SJ, nice to see you again. A Chinese version of Wikipedia:PNSD notes that BoT as the owner of Wikipedia and Mr. Wales as the "benevolent dictator" shall force directives regardless of conclusions from questionnaire, voting, or consensus. Is it true ? Shall you delineate more about PNSD ? According to the template on that page, PNSD in Chinese Wikipedia has not reached a consensus for its implementation so it is not a guideline per se. -- Ktsquare (talk) 03:52, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello KT, great to hear from you. :) This is not entirely true. The Board does not own Wikipedia communities, nor does it set policies (except where the Board sets very high-level policies, like the Terms of Use, for all wiki-projects - and that is generally done after building community consensus).
If you are running a discussion whose outcome requires new software, then after the community decision, the community may need to write the necessary code. And code changes that require someone to update MediaWiki core are of course much harder to implement: that requires WMF staff approval. Sometimes WMF staff may take an action required by law, regardless of community consensus - cf. WP:OFFICE. But in those cases neither the BoT nor Jimbo are directly involved. On the English Wikipedia, Jimbo retains additional fiat power, with the trust of the community -- but this does not carry over to all projects.
Warmly, – SJ + 14:48, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, that particular version notes that in same "special examples" the BoT or JW will force directives under "some special circumstances" -- Cybercavalier (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I see that quote. The part about JW should be limited to en:wp. The part about the BoT is not precise (and could be interpreted wrongly). It should say the WMF as maintainer of the sites may enforce directives. (It does say "developers" may enforce them... but this can also happen through the Legal & Community Advocacy department).
While the BoT can approve global policy, and can direct the WMF to implement new policy, there are many other ways the WMF could decide to implement a change. It is the WMF overall, not the BoT (which is part of the WMF), which maintains the sites. – SJ + 18:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC) (updated 05:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]
That particular page was presented in Chinese language so I must guess you understand the language. -- Ktsquare (talk) 04:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just enough to parse 合适的情况下 :) – SJ + 05:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Dodge City, Kansas

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Proposed deletion of Tt30

The article Tt30 has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The Club of Rome exists. This tt30 entity is not referenced by the Club of Rome website. Links to tt30 return error messages or 404 page not found. The article has no sources.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. FeralOink (talk) 13:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Making revision status visible

SJ, thanks for your reply over on Meta. You mentioned "better ways to show how trusted a version of an article is, such as: when the last edit was made, how many different major contributors an article has, whether an article has unreviewed flagged revs, how active the talk page is."

The authors of this piece at literary magazine talkingwriting.com ("What Should We Do About Wikipedia?", by Martha Nichols and Lorraine Berry) expressed a somewhat similar desire, namely that the article history and contributors should not be hidden behind a History link most people won't click. In most cases it's obviously impossible to list the entire history on the article page, but even having just the last five edits visible on the article page could have multiple benefits: readers could see how old the version is they're reading, and figure out whether it is a stable version or whether there is currently an edit war going on. An additional benefit is that the last few edits would get more scrutiny than they do now: you might get the odd reader who takes an interest in what has recently changed in the article, and thus more eyes on the edit.

If you haven't seen it, the talkingwriting piece is a good read, as is the discussion underneath – for once, a civil and cogent discussion in the Comments section of a web article. Regards. Andreas JN466 03:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is a fine piece indeed. This sort of feature is something we need, and that other online texts should have as well. I spent part of an evening in the Boston Globe offices, and it was amazing to see how much their workflow looks like that of a small-group of wiki editors. Scripts parsing through feeds of new changes and new articles, reputation tagging for how likely a change was to be reliable, decisions about when to merge or split articles, citation-needed markers. They had a few tools that we don't, but still lacked a clean way to visualize how active a changing article was or where the recent changes came from. – SJ + 02:17, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. Glad you had the time to take a look. Andreas JN466 13:14, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech news: 2013-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf5) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 29. It will be enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 3, and on all other Wikipedias on June 5. [3]
  • The Tamil Wikipedia shared a Lua module they created to automate their Main Page. [4]
  • There is now a test wiki to test new features in right-to-left languages. [5]
  • The Thanks feature was added to the English Wikipedia; users can now thank others for individual edits. [6]
  • The new interface for account creation and log-in is now the default on 30 wikis, including the English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, and Wikidata. The feature will be added to all wikis after June 5. Users can return to the old look by adding ?useNew=0 to the web address. [7]
  • Videos are now played in pop-up windows if their size on the page is smaller than 200 pixels (800 pixels on the English Wikipedia). [8]
  • Opening your talk page now marks notifications as read, for wikis using the Notifications feature. (bug 47912) [9].
  • All autoconfirmed users can now reset transcoding of video files; previously only administrators could do this. [10]
  • The Nearby feature allows people who use mobile devices to see Wikipedia articles about objects and places around them. [11]
Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW

Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Kumioko (talk) 01:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cocktails needing pictures

Here's the current list. One of the pictures had been taking so I removed the BLT Cocktail, but the rest still need pictures.
User:Faolin42/ReqPhoto11
Faolin42 (talk) 01:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I'm going out to a pub for the OKFN meetup tonight, we'll see if one of the bartenders is interested... – SJ + 16:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hunting for embedded outlines

I'm looking for outlines embedded in articles.

I've run across a number of these over the years. One example is the Outline of fencing, which used to be part of the fencing article.

If you know about or spot any structured general topics lists in articles, please let me know (on my talk page).

Another thing you might find are articles that are comprised mostly of lists (without "Outline of" or "List of" being in the article's title). If you come across any of these, please report them to me on my talk page. I'd sure like to take a look at them.

Happy hunting.

I look forward to "hearing" from you (on my talk page). Sincerely, The Transhumanist 07:40, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Transhumanist! There are definitely some of these gems hidden in articles. I wish there were an easier way to search all articles for "Outline" in a section heading. For instance: Foundationalism. I think this can best be done by running a script across a dump. – SJ +

P.S.: Where do we place votes for WMF?

You can vote via Special:SecurePoll. Warmly, – SJ + 16:30, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Re: mw:Watchlist wishlist

You are welcome, Sj. Where did I link to that? I have been on so many pages and wikis lately. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:14, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I found where we discussed this:
Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-05-27/Foundation elections
I could use a watchlist subsection just for talk pages where someone is directly replying to me. I may not notice replies otherwise to old discussions with multiple participants. But that would require MediaWiki software to figure out who is being replied to. More developers are needed. :)
You linked to a discussion at mw:Talk:Watchlist wishlist. It is good that discussion is going on somewhere about watchlists. The problem is that the discussion is doubly handicapped by being on a wiki that few people regularly follow, and that the wiki uses the much-hated mw:LiquidThreads ("no longer actively maintained"). I think plain old talk pages are much easier to scan. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Please comment on Talk:March Against Monsanto

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:March Against Monsanto. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 19:15, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor talkpage

Hey SJ.

I have (for a second time) reverted your formatting changes to the VisualEditor talkpage. If you read the edit summary behind the first revert, you know that a lot of the posts there come from the feedback button in the VisualEditor proper, which are automatically posted to the feedback page. The key word is "automatically"; they will not respect formatting or level 1 headers, they will go at the bottom of the page. Accordingly attempts to mass-reformat the page are doomed to require constant curation and maintenance to be meaningful, and in the meantime, very much frustrate Maggie and I, whose ability to reply to things via section editing is undermined every time someone rearranges the section numbers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Oliver. You are mistaken: I reverted myself the second time after seeing your earlier comment and counting to ten ;). That feedback page like any high-volume talk page needs refactoring to be useful over time, and we need edit tools that make section clustering and outlining easy. But there is no point arguing over technique when you will have to maintain the page for some time. I see your frustration, and regret that section editing is so sensitive to the order of sections on a page; a long-standing bug. Section edits should be exactly as robust as section links: anchored based on the section title.
I hope that frustration re:refactoring is not becoming commonplace - it would sweet for Flow, for instance, to support curation (if not the old-school style of refactoring!). It will at least do away with this particular bug. – SJ + 12:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, yes; I think we both tried to undo at the same time :). I agree that things need to be more robust, and that factoring should be better; Flow is being built along the principle that sections and threads, rather than page titles, have primacy, which should help. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, interesting: it seems that double-reverts, and also noop edits that only add an edit summary, are being invisibly dropped. I tried to add a summary-only edit with no result and no warning that it didn't go through. Is this a documented feature/bug? – SJ +

2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting

You are invited to the 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, on 20 July 2013 in Boston! We will be talking about the future of the chapter, including GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, and where we want to take our chapter in the future! EdwardsBot (talk) 09:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Observable universe

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Observable universe. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 19:16, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Personal and Moral Rights?

In a discussion with Jimmy Wales on the moral rights of the photographers and the personal rights of the subjects, he said "I think that the commons community has gone down a very sad and disappointing path with respect to ethical matters. My views on this are not new, and are well known. Our project is a grand humanitarian effort. That it has been hijacked by people who do not share our values is something that needs to be fixed."

We further requested him to bring this matter to the attention of WMF and make a resolution or something to force Commons make enough policies to protect our rights as a photographer and our commitments to our subjects. He replied: "I am just one board member on this issue. I will continue to call this to the attention of the board and staff, but I need help from the community to illustrate that this is a problem that concerns many of us."

So we would like to bring that discussion to the attention of every member on board. JKadavoor Jee 11:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, JKJ. I agree that we should take these rights seriously, and second Kat's comments on the matter. As Jimbo says, a clear community position is needed - even if it is a minority position - to articulate the problem and potential solution. – SJ + 04:48, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Samuel Klein, for you valuable reply. Please note a somewhat related discussion at Commons too: Concern about the bureaucrat role of Russavia JKadavoor Jee 06:35, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to let you know that your strong opinion along with others ([15], [16]) influenced the Commons community to initiate a discussion to develop a policy for courtesy deletions. We expect guidance, opinions, and participation in the development of similar policies and guidelines in future too. Thanks. JKadavoor Jee 02:45, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
NB, duped on meta. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:58, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation

As there is a Wikipedia article about you, you are cordially invited to contribute a short audio recoding of your spoken voice, so that our readers may know what you sound like and how you pronounce your name. Details of how to do so, and examples, are at Wikipedia:Voice intro project. You can ask for help or clarification on the project talk page, or my talk page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the invitation. I need to reinstate my podcast setup. – SJ +

Serendipity

Thought of you today when the articles Samuel Beckett and Klein bottle showed up one after the other in my watchlist ;-) Regards 17:50, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

:-) And I love both of those things. – SJ +

Please comment on Talk:Yuilop

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Yuilop. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 20:15, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Article Feedback Tool update

Hey Sj. I'm contacting you because you're involved in the Article Feedback Tool in some way, either as a previous newsletter recipient or as an active user of the system. As you might have heard, a user recently anonymously disabled the feedback tool on 2,000 pages. We were unable to track or prevent this due to the lack of logging feature in AFT5. We're deeply sorry for this, as we know that quite a few users found the software very useful, and were using it on their articles.

We've now re-released the software, with the addition of a logging feature and restrictions on the ability to disable. Obviously, we're not going to automatically re-enable it on each article—we don't want to create a situation where it was enabled by users who have now moved on, and feedback would sit there unattended—but if you're interested in enabling it for your articles, it's pretty simple to do. Just go to the article you want to enable it on, click the "request feedback" link in the toolbox in the sidebar, and AFT5 will be enabled for that article.

Again, we're very sorry about this issue; hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after this :). If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) 21:35, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of Wikimania 2006 for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Wikimania 2006 is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikimania 2006 until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Ypnypn (talk) 21:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whole Earth Catalog wikibook

Phoebe mentioned you had investigated getting The Whole Earth Catalog on-wiki somehow, I found your proposal on wikibooks, interested in following up on it. — Mattsenate (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for getting in touch. I'd love to make this happen now. – SJ +
I still have yellowing, crumbling paper copies of this reference classic, and mourned its disappearance along with its descendant, the Co-Evolution Quarterly. It would be great to have this information online as a Wikibook, both as a historical reference, and for the (relatively) timeless content that is still directly relevant today. Reify-tech (talk) 18:27, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on VisualEditor takedown

Hello. I am writing you because you are an elected community representative on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. I am writing my other two representatives also. At some point in an appropriate venue, would you please comment on the community's decision to take down the VisualEditor? At the Administrator's Noticeboard right now there is a recently closed request for comment on a community-forced removal of the VisualEditor. I think that none of you three participated in that last discussion which resulted in the community changing MediaWiki code to remove the VisualEditor.

It is my wish that at least one of you would say something encouraging to show respect to the Wikimedia Foundation and to the Wikipedia community and their ability to work collaboratively to meet contributor needs. It might be the case that this event would be looked upon by people outside the community and perhaps even remembered in the future. Since you three are elected representatives who relay messages between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community, I would like for any of you to publicly comment on the situation in a succinct and positive way which demonstrates the constructive aspects of the relationships we all have with each other. I hope that this could be done in a venue which people would be likely to find if they started reading about this, but this need not be done in a place which would send people to this issue if they were not already searching for it.

I do not know who might be covering this in the The Signpost, for example, but if it is covered I wish that if you did not give statements in the article space then perhaps you could comment in the comment section if any article on the topic is published and you find this venue to be appropriate enough for your attention. Thank you for maintaining good relations between Wikimedia Foundation staff and community members. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:16, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup 2013 October newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our champion, for the second year running, is Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Our final nine were as follows:

  1. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions)
  2. Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions)
  3. Canada Sasata (submissions)
  4. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions)
  5. New South Wales Casliber (submissions)
  6. Scotland Adam Cuerden (submissions)
  7. London Miyagawa (submissions)
  8. Poland Piotrus (submissions)
  9. Wyoming Ealdgyth (submissions)

All those who reached the final win prizes, and prizes will also be going to the following participants:

  • New South Wales Casliber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for four featured articles in round 4, worth 400 points.
  • Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 20 good articles in round 3, worth 600 points.
  • Portland, Oregon Another Believer (submissions) wins the FL prize, for four featured lists in round 2, worth 180 points.
  • Scotland Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the FP prize, for 23 featured pictures in round 5, worth 805 point.
  • Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions) wins the FPo prize, for 2 featured portals in round 3, worth 70 points.
  • Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) wins the topic prize, for a 23-article featured topic in round 5, worth 230 points.
  • Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 79 did you know articles in round 5, worth 570 points.
  • Ohio ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 23 in the news articles in round 4, worth 270 points.
  • United States Ed! (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 24 good article reviews in round 1, worth 96 points.
  • The judges are awarding the Oddball Barnstar to British Empire The C of E (submissions), for some curious contributions in earlier rounds.
  • Finally, the judges are awarding Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) the Geography Barnstar for her work on sea, now a featured article. This top-importance article was the highest-scoring this year; when it was promoted to FA status, Cwmhiraeth could claim 720 points.

Prizes will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who has been successful in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and a particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition. While it has been an excellent year, errors have opened up the judges' eyes to the need for a third judge, and it is with pleasure that we announce that experienced WikiCup participant Miyagawa will be acting as a judge from now on. We hope you will all join us in welcoming him to the team.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. Brainstorming and discussion remains open for how next year's competition will work, and straw polls will be opened by the judges soon. Those interested in friendly competition may also like to keep an eye on the stub contest, being organised by Casliber. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2014 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! 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) 01:09, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Happy Diwali!"

While Diwali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning behind it is "the awareness of the inner light". It is the belief that there is something beyond the physical body and mind which is pure, infinite, and eternal, called the Atman. The celebration of Diwali as the "victory of good over evil” refers to the light of higher knowledge dispelling all ignorance, the ignorance that masks one's true nature, not as the body, but as the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality. With this awakening come compassion and the awareness of the oneness of all things (higher knowledge). This brings Satcitananda (joy or peace). Just as we celebrate the birth of our physical being, Diwali is the celebration of this Inner Light. While the story behind Diwali and the manner of celebration varies from region to, the essence is the same – to rejoice in the Inner Light! And this year Diwali and All Souls' Day come together to fully defeat the Evil! "Happy Diwali!" – JKadavoor Jee 06:31, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
:) :) (: (: – SJ +

Just a quick heads up

Hi Samuel,

I wanted to bring this to your attention: http://www.suburbanexpress.com/arneklempert/ screenshot — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.78.1 (talk) 19:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. – SJ + 23:14, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion going on about continuing to block the Wikipedia user responsible for the harassment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Arri_at_Suburban_Express - Gulugawa (talk) 19:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reward board discussion

Given it's been kept at MfD, I've reposted a proposal to tighten it. See header. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:46, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up. – SJ + 01:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Aaron Swartz

Working on Aaron Swartz as we speak. The MIT police log is a public record, was published (by MIT), though not archived, and has historical importance, so it should be cool for Wikisource. The other records may or may not have been published. Thoughts? --Dervorguilla (talk) 21:44, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. A TOC or list of the other records would be worth having; even if we can't publish the underlying records. That's worth a section on talk:Aaron Swartz. – SJ + 22:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2013-45

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

New features

  • You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text. [17]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [18]

Future

  • The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [19]
  • MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [20]
  • The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [21]
  • The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [22]
  • You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}. [23]
  • In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [24]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:06, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

ANI Board

Hey Sj, I'm sorry I keep bugging you, and I know this is extraordinarily minor and of little/no interest to you. But, all I ask is that you review my latest post discussion with Drmies. Once again, I'm really sorry to bother you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Suburban_Express 24.15.78.1 (talk) 22:36, 11 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for tagging you. I think my lack of experience on WP got the best of me. I attempted to tag you only when I was threatened with being blocked since you had seen some of what was happening play out. I was surprised by that since I was literally quoting the editor in question, but was being told I was incorrect. I don't want to cause problems, I really am trying to be genuine here. I'm sure you have heard this before, and I don't know how exactly I can demonstrate that. I suppose it does take me removing myself altogether from Wikipedia. I just see admins making dramatic edits despite consistently repeating that everything should be discussed until there is consensus...but then making undiscussed edits, teaming up (which I suppose makes sense), and turning a blind eye to the input.suggestions/proposals of others not in their circle after the fact. Thanks for commenting. You have more experience than most, so in the end, I will take your suggestion(s) to heart. 24.15.78.1 (talk) 02:06, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tagging me is fine - just don't tag people at the end of a paragraph next to your own signature: it makes it look like the person you tagged wrote the text preceding it.
If you assume that a) people are working in good faith to improve the article, b) there's no conspiracy - noone is teaming up, and c) people tend to be narrowly focused on their approach to a problem, and so sometimes make contextual mistakes -- you will be right most of the time :) As I make those assumptions myself, I can see that you're trying to be genuine. The earlier version of the article was however too strongly weighted in one direction; so it's not surprising that the next iteration was shifted strongly in the opposite direction. Over time it will balance out. When you feel emotional about a topic, I find it helps to read what you write twice before posting, try to remove any emotional or accusatory language, and cut out 80% of what you were going to say - so you don't overwhelm people with less time to focus on it.
There's no need for you to leave Wikipedia - you write well! - just take a break from this article for a while. It would help you get a sense of perspective to edit other topics; to see what sorts of back-and-forth is normal. Regards, – SJ + 18:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I really do appreciate the advice as well as your extreme patience with me. I know you are very busy and this is just an unnecessary distraction from your real work here. In the past few weeks, I have learned quite a bit about Wikipedia's culture, etiquette, formalities, and expectations. I had no idea how complex these things can be. I also know there is no conspiracy here and all the admins are trying to get it right in good faith. It's just the real-world situation, as I'm sure you have read in articles and on the SubEx page, is beyond terrible. Thanks again. 24.15.78.1 (talk) 01:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Moody's and "Credit rating agency"

Many thanks for your note, SJ, and I am sorry I did not respond sooner. I have agreed to work on behalf of Moody's over time. Previously I had helped to reorganize and improve entries about the company and its principal entities. This year, I have focused on "Credit rating agency". I do all of my own research and my own writing, following Wikipedia's guidelines to the best of my ability, including on the subject of WP:COI. Moody's is very much a publisher (although primarily its opinions on creditworthiness of bonds) but I have avoided using Moody's materials except where necessary to confirm unexceptional details. Meanwhile, I have just minutes ago posted a comment on the recent edits to the entry, on the discussion page here. You would be most welcome to join the discussion if you have the time and interest. I feel that this topic has not received the attention it deserves. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 00:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Fuzzy locating system

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Fuzzy locating system. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2013-46

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

Problems

  • There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14. [25]

Future

  • MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (calendar).
  • The new Search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added to *.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding &srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21. [26]
  • The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [27]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

WMF Board and paid advocacy

Thanks for contributing to the RfC discussions on paid advocacy. I've heard that you guys on the the WMF Board may be outlining your position sometime soon; do you know when that's coming? I'm thinking yet another RfC may be useful, this time focused on giving Wikipedians guidelines to help them stay out of trouble (if they want to stay out of trouble). If the Board is going to say something soon-ish, it would probably be good to get that information first. - Dank (push to talk) 14:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a place I can find more information about what Dank mentioned: "on the the WMF Board may be outlining your position sometime soon" A couple years back at Wikimania Philippe said WMF was Switzerland on the issue, but I'm happy to see WMF get involved.
I just spent three days at a marketing conference with a lot of lawyers that specialize in legal compliance in marketing activities. Some of them worked with the FTC themselves to develop their guidelines. Could probably connect WMF to some folks that would be ideal to talk with about it.
Sincerely, a frequent marketing contributor. CorporateM (Talk) 17:21, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I just saw the discussion on Jimbo's page where it is mentioned. I'd love to see the "statement" whenever it is made public. I like to think I planted the seed for discussions about FTC's laws, though I imagine WMF will probably only stick to its Terms of Use. It's important to me since I need to make sure I am acting in a compliant manner, though I suppose that will be ambiguous. Eager to see it! CorporateM (Talk) 20:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2013-47

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

New features

  • The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style. [28]
  • Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password. [29]

Problems

Future

  • There will be no major code changes on the week of November 25 because many developers will be on holiday for Thanksgiving.
  • The editing interface of Page: pages on Wikisource (working with the Proofread Page extension) will soon also work without JavaScript. [30]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:48, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Hello, Sj. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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.

The reliability of Wikipedia's medical content

Hi. This may interest you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. That discussion has been archived. As a volunteer representative on the WMF board, I'd be very interested to hear any thoughts you may have about scholarly review of our medical content. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:02, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Swartz

The five documents cited at Aaron Swartz Timeline are scanned copies of the original sources. (The text was converted using ClearScan OCR, so the output files don't open properly in Firefox; but Adobe says they're still "admissible in court".)

The passages below support the proposition that an "unaltered scanned copy" of a government document can in some cases be an appropriate wikisource, even if it's published on a random hacktivist site.

The reputation of the publisher doesn't seem to matter. (Indeed, the publisher's name is supposed to be omitted from the citation.) Rather, "all efforts should be made to cite to the most stable electronic location available." (Rule 18.2.2, Direct Citations to Internet Sources.) Implication: A page that can be accessed in the Internet Archive should be preferred over one that's hidden behind a firewall.

Yes, that is correct. You just need a reason to believe that what you have is indeed an unaltered scanned copy. Are you looking for the right place to add them on wikisource? You might start with pages in your userspace there. – SJ + 17:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

10.3 [Case] Reporters and Other Sources
10.3.1 Parallel Citations and Which Source to Cite
... Cite a [case] reporter, a widely used computer database, a [looseleaf] service, a slip opinion, an Internet source, or a [print] newspaper, in that order of preference.
  [1] ...
  [5] State v. McArthur, [Docket] No. C4-99-502 (Minn. Ct. App. Sept. 28, 1999), http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctapun/9909/502.htm.
  [6] United States v. Palermo, N.Y. Times, Aug. 27, 1957 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 26, 1957).

18.1 Basic Citation Forms
(a) Internet Sources
  [1] authenticated or official documents
  [2] unaltered scanned copies of print source
  [3] documents for which print copy is practically unavailable
  [4] ...

18.2.1 General Internet Citation Principles
(a) Sources that can be cited as if to the original print source. When an authenticated, official, or exact copy of a source is available online, citation can be made as if to the original print source....
(i) Authenticated Documents.... “Authenticated” sources ... use an encryption-based authentication method ... to ensure the accuracy of the online source....
(ii) Official Versions. Some state have designated ... that the online source is the“official” source for a particular legal document....
(iii) Exact Copies. An exact copy is one that is an unaltered copy of the printed source in a widely used format that preserves pagination and other attributes of the printed work (such as Adobe’s portable document format).

The Bluebook (Columbia Law Review Ass'n et al. eds., 19th ed. 2010). --Dervorguilla (talk) 08:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've found scant evidence as to what The Bluebook means by 'unaltered copy.' Rule 5.2 (Alterations and Quotations Within Quotations) does talk about "substitutions," "insert[ions]" [of bracketed letters or words], "omissions" . . . , "mistakes in original," and such. This just suggests that we don’t want to cite to a scanned copy that appears to have been edited, or that adds corrections or annotations or comments or 'helpful' background material, or whatever. --Dervorguilla (talk) 08:47, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of Marvel Comics characters

Hi. I've just reverted your November 28 edits to List of Marvel Comics characters: A for a couple reasons. One is that per WP: Header, section headings should not be wikilinked. The second is to maintain a consistent format across the List of Marvel Comics characters articles. I just recently went through these articles to ensure that they all followed the most popular format; since it's now been five days and you haven't edited any of the articles for the other 25 letters of the alphabet, I'm guessing that you weren't planning on doing so, so I've reverted to keep the articles all in one format. If you still think these articles should follow the format exemplified in your November 28 edits, I recommend trying to build a consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics; that way you won't need to specifically convince me in order to get support for your format.--NukeofEarl (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of reverting, why not start a conversation on the wikiproject about it? A culture of reversion is much slower than alternatives that continually explore possible improvements. – SJ + 00:48, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My first three years on Wikipedia taught me that pretty much anything one says is ignored unless one reverts first. Even Wikipedia policy recommends the WP: Bold, revert, discuss cycle.--NukeofEarl (talk) 15:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose :) BRD's not policy, and does include "consider Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary. It is not the intention of WP:BRD to encourage reverting." But I can see more efficient norms losing out to / being replaced by oppositional ones. That's a community-wide challenge. – SJ +

Tech News: 2013-49

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

This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery.

New features

  • The CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by editing templates used to describe metadata. [31]
  • JavaScript code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally on your computer to load faster. [32]

VisualEditor

  • You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows. [33]
  • You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [34]
  • Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [35]

Problems

  • Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [36]

Future

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Photo

Hi SJ. Meta:Press Corps says you can take photos in US (anywhere) and you have a Category:Wikipedians in New York City category on your user page. Can you take some photos in New York City for an article I'm working on or know of someone who can? Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Photographers does not list anyone in New York. Thanks. -- Jreferee (talk) 03:37, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! There are people in m:Wikimedia NYC who are all over NYC, more often than I am. I would start by asking on that talk page. I am there regularly (later this month), but my high-quality camera currently needs repair. Warlmy, – SJ + 17:49, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great! I'll post there. -- Jreferee (talk) 02:26, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity

Hi Sj, can you please come back to Wikiversity? --Goldenburg111 (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Very kind. I still visit and catch up on news there. I don't have an active project to work on at the moment... – SJ + 02:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2013-50

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

New features

VisualEditor

  • The toolbar is now simpler; all text styles (bold, italics, underline, subscript, etc.) are in the same menu, and the "More" menu is called "Insert". [40]
  • You can now use a basic tool to add special characters to your text. You can add more characters (useful in your language) by editing the MediaWiki interface on translatewiki.net.
  • The tool to add and edit mathematical text is now called "formula". [41]

Problems

  • There was a problem with the "Create a book" tool (Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone. [42]
  • The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week. [43] [44]
  • Because of a bug, this newsletter is delivered to users using the new MediaWiki message delivery, and to community pages using the old EdwardsBot. [45]

Future

  • MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 was added to test wikis on December 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 17 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 19 (calendar).
  • You will soon be able to select the language of SVG images that have translations using a drop-down menu on the image page. (see example) [46]
  • GLAMToolset, a tool to help GLAM groups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17. [47]
  • A Draft namespace will be added to the English Wikipedia to make it easier to create new pages. You will be able to use VisualEditor for drafts if you have enabled it. [48] [49]

Other

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Vought F4U Corsair

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Vought F4U Corsair. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2013-51

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
  • You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [51]
  • There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [52] [53]
  • You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [54]
  • If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code. [55]
  • You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [56] [57]
  • All edits made through Flow, the new discussion system for MediaWiki, are now visible in user's contributions. You can test it on the Flow talk page on MediaWiki.org. [58] [59]
  • You can test a visual tool that shows edits made to an article over time. It only works for English Wikipedia pages for now and is slow on long articles. [60]
  • You can test the first version of the new mobile Wikipedia app for Android and iOS. [61]
  • Translatewiki.net, the site where you can translate the MediaWiki software, now has a new main page for users without an account. [62]

Future software changes

  • There will be no technical changes this week (December 23 to December 29) due to end-of-year holidays.
  • When someone deletes, restores, uploads, or moves a file on Commons, pages on all wikis that use that file will be refreshed. [63] [64]
  • New users will soon have their user and talk pages added to their watchlist as soon as they create an account. [65] [66].
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will not show the text of versions of a page that have been hidden. [67] [68]
  • You will soon be able to see the raw HTML created by some wikitext by using the Special:ExpandTemplates tool. [69] [70]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Should en.Wikipedia medical articles have a prominent disclaimer?

As a WMF board member, you should be aware of this discussion. I'd appreciate an acknowledgment that you have seen this notice. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:46, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The Portuguese and German solutions seem thoughtful, and don't trigger the concerns that most of the opponents mention. – SJ +

2014

New England Wikipedia Day @ MIT: Saturday Jan 18

NE Meetup #4: January 18 at MIT Building 5

Dear Fellow Wikimedian,

You have been invited to the New England Wikimedians 2014 kick-off party and Wikipedia Day Celebration at Building Five on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus on Saturday, January 18th, from 3-5 PM. Afterwards, we will be holding an informal dinner at a local restaurant. If you are curious to join us, please do so, as we are always looking for people to come and give their opinion! Finally, be sure to RSVP here if you're interested.

I hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

MIT room number

I am an MIT alumnus, still visit the campus frequently, and am aware of the details of MIT campus geography. The upcoming Wikipedia Meetup listing ("MIT Media Lab, Room 525") is incomplete, ambiguous, and likely to cause new visitors to waste time in a frustrating search for the correct location. Currently, the MIT Media Lab occupies two adjacent buildings, designated E14 and E15, which both have 5th floors. The floor layout is complex, and it is not always obvious how to get from one place to another within the combined structures.

It is both necessary and sufficient to specify a complete MIT room number, such as "E14-525" or "E15-525". The complete and correct room number allows visitors to search in a web browser or in a mobile app, or to ask somebody onsite and get immediate useful assistance. Without a complete room number, visitors are likely to waste time and become frustrated, ending up waiting in the wrong place or searching for a room number that turns out to be nonexistent. (For more details about the MIT room numbering system, see Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology#Campus organization).

I apologize for belaboring this point; I would once again fix the reference myself, but this time it is so ambiguous that I cannot determine the correct room number. The difficulties I describe are not theoretical; I have attended meetings at the Media Lab where attendees straggled in up to half an hour late (and perhaps some may have abandoned the search altogether) due to exactly the kind of confusion I describe. In my own travels on campus, I often help lost visitors; the most frustrating cases occur when the visitor has an incomplete or garbled room number, requiring online Web searches and persistent puzzle solving to successfully send them on their way.

Looking forward to a fun and productive meeting, Reify-tech (talk) 18:19, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

E14. Thanks kindly for the clarification, it was needed; see you at the celebration. – SJ + 18:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Neighborcity article

User sj, I have a good rating on the real etate information website and app, Neighborcity, so I'm not inclined to edit the article because of my potential tie to the entity. NeighborCity is also in a landmark antitrust lawsuit with the National Association of Realtors and the Multiple Listing Service that realtors post real estate ads to. This subject deserves coverage when people search for the NeighborCity lawsuit because it impacts the one and a half million real estate agents, brokers and commercial agents of which I am one, and then the millions of homebuyers each year who are likely to be impacted if the association ends up with evaluations and ratings of all of its member-brokers and agents.

If there is a problem with the litigation section, or other sections of this page, then why not fix it? If a salaried marketing assistant or intern at the company or a hired person wrote the article in the first place, write over their work like the last 12 months of editors have. I saw the link User Rybec posted, and it doesn't look like the page creator was actually blocked until months after the article was created. I'd like to see increased interest in the Neighborcity lawsuit, not less.~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.182.119.244 (talk) 18:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Attempt to sanction User:Ronreisman

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents has a current attempt to attract an administrator to sanction Ronreisman, relating to edits in Arab-Israeli pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gnuish (talk • contribs) 13:20, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Mass Surveillance

I just want to point you to the on-going about whether WP should participate in the upcoming action along with EFF and Reddit: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#The_Day_We_Fight_Back. Obviously, your opinion on these matters carries a lot of weight. --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:34, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:08, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on Mass surveillance

People are hammering out language for an RFC at Wikipedia talk:Surveillance awareness day/RFC. Your oversight is always welcome. --HectorMoffet (talk) 21:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


WikiCup 2014 January newsletter

The 2014 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with, at time of writing, 138 participants. The is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2010. If you are yet to join the competition, don't worry- the judges have agreed to keep the signups open for a few more days. By a wide margin, our current leader is newcomer Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose set of 14 featured pictures, the first FPs of the competition, was worth 490 points. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:

Featured articles, featured lists, featured topics and featured portals are yet to play a part in the competition. The judges have removed a number of submissions which were deemed ineligible. Typically, we aim to see work on a project, followed by a nomination, followed by promotion, this year. We apologise for any disappointment caused by our strict enforcement this year; we're aiming to keep the competition as fair as possible.

Wikipedians interested in friendly competition may be interested to take part in The Core Contest; unlike the WikiCup, The Core Contest is not about audited content, but, like the WikiCup, it is about article improvement; specifically, The Core Contest is about contribution to some of Wikipedia's most important article. Of course, any work done for The Core Contest, if it leads to a DYK, GA or FA, can earn WikiCup points.

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. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! 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), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 19:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC) ery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors&oldid=7416737 -->[reply]

Please comment on Talk:BeerXML

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:BeerXML. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:03, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for raising the URAA issue on the BoT

Dear SJ,

I just wanted to take a minute and personally thank you for raising the URAA issue with the BoT. I think the Board's response is a good guideline for the community, and I do hope it will allow us to prevent photographs being taken down unnecessarily. Overall, a good outcome!

Kudos :), Ido AKA NLIGuy (talk) 05:17, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And thank you for your note! We need to do more to address questions of the rule of the shorter term, in a positive sense that allows the commons to include those half-PD materials as well, and not just a reactive / defensive response to URAA. But not actively deleting work that has already been contributed is an important first step. – SJ + 06:03, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment to Terms - highlighting a suggestion from the Talk page

Thanks for posting the link to the amendment to the Terms! For what it is worth, I want to highlight this suggestion which I think is super important to implementing the amendment, should it be passed by the Board. We need to standardize how disclosure in a given note is made, so that the disclosure and editor is findable and auditable. A checkbox is perfect. Sorry if you are not looking for input this way. Jytdog (talk) 16:08, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March

Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March - You are invited!
New England Wikimedians is excited to announce a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that will be taking place at colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts as part of Wikiwomen's History Month from March 1 - March 31. We encourage you to join in an edit-a-thon near you, or to participate remotely if you are unable to attend in person (for the full list of articles, click here). Events are currently planned for the cities/towns of Boston, Northampton, South Hadley, and Cambridge. Further information on dates and locations can be found on our user group page.
Questions? Contact Girona7 (talk)

Please comment on Talk:Genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 18:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bad perception of a situation

Hi Sj,

I have found this comment that followed a request that I made on WP:RA some months ago. It seems you decided that Gnuish was a valuable contributor who deserved some sympathy or respect and that I was not.

You have of course the freedom to think whatever you want. Nevertheless, before making judgements I think you should make some researches and eventually ask questions. This is even more true given you are now a Trustee meaning that what you may write or say have some weight and is trusted by others.

As far as I am concerned, I edit mainly wp-fr and I am the main author of 6 FA articles (and many others) on the topic of the 1920-1948 period in Mandatory Palestine. I have more than 50 (academic) books at home on the topic that I read and analysed. I am in contact with different historians who are experts on this topic. We, wikipedian contributors who are interested by these periods linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, are harasshed, attacked or outed by people who do not understand what is wikipedia and who see this as a forum or propaganda platform. They don't know anything on the topic and just come to defend their "beloved object" (Israel or Palestinians).

In the current case, I am not happy that no sysops decided to intervene against Ronreissman. He is just one more of these "gusy". And the fact is that Huldra left wikipedia, fed-up of what happens here. Congratulations of the respect of the 4th pillar... The second point is that you gave you "support" to an "obvious sock" as you should have noticed if you had checked his/her history of contributions. Gnuish had not intervened for a month. He landed on WP:AN/I and made lenghty reports on an issue he should have not known anything about. And then disappeared again.

It's up to you (Sysops, Trustees, ...) to build the future of wikipedia but it is certainly that way that you will succeed. Pluto2012 (talk) 06:45, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Pluto, thanks for your note. You may be reading into my comment what was not there. It seemed the author was not familiar with how community discussions and content-based arguments develop here, and spending a long time on one of many side-conversations, whereas a more effective and constructive way to engage with content arguments is to research and edit, and to expand the circle of editors interested in writing neutrally. You are just as sympathetic, but a more active and experienced contributor than gnuish, so you did not need such advice.
I have myself spent a bit of time editing PI pages, most recently very delicately updating the lede to Jerusalem, and I know well how difficult it is. I salute all who care about the topic and persevere in updating it. But I also know how easy it is, when one spends too much time editing controversial pages, to start to see everyone as "one of those guys" and not as a well-intentioned contributor. I assume ronreisman is deserving of sympathy, just as you are. And I know gnuish from other free knowledge communities - they are not a sock. I expect they were asked offwiki to review and comment on the situation: as happens sometimes in disputes or deletion debates. I don't know what the "current case" is, but hope that you will find ways to sustain your recognition of good faith in others: for me I find I have to spend at least 50% of my edits on non-controversial pages to keep that perspective. – SJ + 17:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Sj,
I am sorry but I cannot follow you given you wrote : "All parties involved are high strung (...) Pluto isn't going to inspire admin concern just by creating a thread there." You attacked my good faith, by principle, without knowing me, without context, doing exactly the contrary as what you advise.
Another point is that it is not a good way to contribute to wikipedia to answer to calls where "they were asked offwiki to review and comment on the situation:"
That is not a problem to contribute to "controversial pages". NPoV is an easy exercice with practice and good faith. And there is no as much controversies in the IP topic if we just comply to wp:rs sources and report each relevant point of view, without selection.
Good continuation, Pluto2012 (talk) 18:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That is a fair point. I apologize for the judgement implied in that comment, and appreciate your dedicated work. I agree with your view of the ideal world where everyone agrees on what rs sources are and tries to report each relevant view... Bit by bit, even on these very controversial topics, we can get there; if we don't get distracted with flame wars in the meantime. – SJ + 03:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can't do it yet

Hi SJ,

I'm still trying off and on to reproduce this problem, but without success. My new question for you is, do you happen to remember whether what you pasted in contained any URLs? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello WAID, I don't believe there were any URLs. I can't reproduce it either, despite trying, so I'm okay with this being closed for now as 'cannot reproduce'. It is behavior I can certainly reproduce with the old edit bar; nice to see VE is so much more undo-friendly. – SJ + 08:22, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think I have found a culprit here, but it's still elusive.
a) undo a dozen times. b) select a block of text, cut and paste it above where it was c) you'll find this paste doesn't work as expected, it seems to work as multiple actions before pasting; and the undo sequence no longer works as expected. [in one case, it would only undo one step - the cut&paste - and after the undo, the text was not as it had been before the cut. part of the c&p was still in the wrong location.]
I've seen this happen a second time, but wasn't able to reproduce it cleanly thereafter, even on the same page. Sorry that this isn't a better bug report. My effort to record the bug at the time failed miserably. – SJ + 03:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited!

NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square

Dear Fellow Wikimedian,

New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested.

Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

We hope to see you there!

Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

Great, thank you! – SJ + 20:54, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLP and human dignity

Hi. I'm proposing we include something about taking account of human dignity in WP:BLP (here). I'd appreciate it if you could keep an eye on any ensuing discussion in case we misunderstand something about the Foundation's intention in its BLP resolution, and in case you'd like to contribute to any aspect of the discussion. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:44, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since replied on your talk page, thanks for bringing it up in April and again now. – SJ + 03:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right Sector revision history mentioned in Reuters

Reuters analyzes Right Sector revision history: “On Tuesday the page was modified 174 times…” Sabina Zawadzki, Mark Hosenball, and Stephen Grey, “In Ukraine, Nationalists Gain Influence – and Scrutiny”, Reuters, March 18, 2014. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:16, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-17

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

Tech News updates

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [72] [73]
  • Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [74] [75] [76] [77]
  • The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [78]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [79]

VisualEditor news

  • If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [80] [81]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [82] [83]
  • You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [84] [85] [86]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [87]
  • Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [88] [89]
  • The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [90] [91] [92] [93]
  • You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [94] [95]
  • You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [96] [97]
  • It is now proposed to replace Bugzilla, Gerrit and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org. [98]
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [99]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
  • There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [100]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon invite

You're invited to the Peabody Essex Museum Edit-a-thon Spring 2014

On May 3rd, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts will be hosting a Native American and Chinese Art edit-a-thon from 9:00-5:00 pm. You are more than welcome to attend, as there will be free food and drink, and an outing afterwards. If you are interested, please sign up here, as we would love to see you there!

If you have any questions, please leave a message at Ed Rodley's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-18

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
  • You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [101]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [102]
  • VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [103]
  • VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [104]
  • The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [105]
  • CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [106] [107]
  • You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [108]

Problems

  • For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [109] [110]
  • On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [111] [112]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
and 2014-21, a month later

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

Tech News updates

  • Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
  • The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work. [113] [114] [115]
  • MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome. [116] [117]
  • VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [118] [119]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys. [120] [121]
  • VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [122] [123]
  • VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [124] [125]
  • VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [126]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [127] [128]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem. [131]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons

Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England

As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows:

We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time.

If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.


Tech News: 2014-22

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
  • MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them. [132] [133] [134] [135]
  • A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [136] [137]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [138] [139]
  • It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [140]
  • VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [141]

Future software changes

  • Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [142]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [143] [144]
  • Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax [[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]] will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. [145] [146] [147]
  • You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [148] [149]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
And 2014-23

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30. [150]

VisualEditor news

  • Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [151]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [152] [153]
  • VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [154]
  • There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [155]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [162]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:08, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; I wonder if we can't both do this and make it vastly easier to become an admin. – SJ + 03:16, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]


New England Wikimedians summer events!

Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!

After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested:

Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August:

If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Samuel,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

Best regards, — Scott • talk 08:29, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[[This seems like a fine place to transfer the WP:League of Old Codgers... thank you and welcome, Scott :-) – SJ + 22:59, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

Whole Earth
Thank you, Samuel, for ten years of sharing your experience in many languages and capacities, for quality articles such as Whole Earth and Attalus I, for seeking the peaceful resolution of disputes, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (6 July 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is simply lovely. Thank you, Gerda! Wishing you all the best. – SJ + 22:58, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-24

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
  • You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [163] [164]

VisualEditor news

  • You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [165] [166]
  • The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [167] [168] [169]
  • You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [170] [171]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome. [172]
  • You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [173]
  • On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system. [174] [175]
  • You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly. [176] [177]
  • Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [178] [179] [180]
  • You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [181] [182]
  • Hovercards will no longer flicker. [183]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Original research my foot.

You are wrong. The contents of this paper were published by Physics Essays in 2009.[1] This conpletely rewritten Wikipedia version is for more general readership.

I have just spent a whole day splitting it into two parts offline, one is the science and low level maths, and the other entitled "Faulty Assumptionsin Relativity" is not suitable for peer review as a science paper, and anyway would be blocked by the establishment. I hope Wikipedia will be more honest.

Physics Essays is indeed a journal... I don't think that reference alone will be enough to create an article on this topic. New scientific claims that insist that established traditions are Thoroughly Wrong need to be backed up by a highly reliable source, or a number of independent reliable sources, before they are covered here. – SJ + 23:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And this is indeed original research, is it not? This is your own research, which after years you managed to get published in part in Phys. Essays, and which you are now trying to publish on Wikipedia? Studying new things is excellent, it's just not Wikipedia's role to publish the results. This is a tertiary source that only summarizes knowledge that is already accepted. – SJ +

Your edit has blocked my attempts to edit the first. I get a message saying my changes to an old version will not be saved. I could not find a current version until I stumbled on your edit. It did not show on the contributions list. A Talk message would have been better. I will now try to replace your edited version with the first part. Relativityman (talk) 16:57, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, I'll stick to pings from talk pages. When you get an "edit conflict" message you can simply cut and paste your changes (from the bottom textarea) into the top textarea, to overwrite what is there. (checks) I see you got this to work. – SJ + 23:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Message system

Your edit has replaced my article with a copy of your Talk page. Please inform me on how to delete past contributions and the comic results of the message system.

Hello @Relativityman:, I don't see what you saw, looking at the history of the article. It looks normal to me.
You can review every historical revision of an article from its history page.

Most of my edits are temporary, being work in progress rather than review type drafts. Relativityman (talk) 17:20, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Understood. I'm just giving you a heads-up about our original research policies and how they apply to this work. You should not get your hopes up: this article will not be published on Wikipedia. – SJ + 23:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-25

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

Reminder

  • You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 (calendar).
  • You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.

VisualEditor news

  • You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu. [184]
  • When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference. [185] [186]
  • You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the page settings menu. [187] [188] [189] [190]
  • The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct. [191] [192] [193]

Future software changes

  • Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome. [194]
  • You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time. [195]
  • You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis. [196] [197]
  • It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [198] [199]
  • Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17. [200]
  • The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages. [201]
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
  • You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department. [202]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:User pages

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:User pages. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:06, 21 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-26

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates. [203] [204]
  • When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [205] [206]
  • You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it. [207] [208]
  • You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [209] [210]

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [211] [212]
  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week. [213]
  • CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis. [214]
  • You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator. [215] [216]
  • An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [217]

Problems

  • On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
  • Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error. [218]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Ars Electronica

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Ars Electronica requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article or image appears to be a clear copyright infringement. This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://90.146.8.18/en/about/index.asp. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website or image but have permission from that owner, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Epeefleche (talk) 20:36, 23 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-27

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc. [219] [220]
  • A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [221] [222]
  • VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page. [223] [224] [225] [226]
  • Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [227] [228]

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [229] [230]
  • Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
  • CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias. [231]
  • All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it. [232] [233]
  • Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [234]
  • You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block. [235] [236]
  • You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [237]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 June newsletter

After an extremely close race, Round 3 is over. 244 points secured a place in Round 4, which is comparable to previous years- 321 was required in 2013, while 243 points were needed in 2012. Pool C's Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) was the round's highest scorer, mostly due to a 32 featured pictures, including both scans and photographs. Also from Pool C, Scotland Casliber (submissions) finished second overall, claiming three featured articles, including the high-importance Grus (constellation). Third place was Pool B's , whose contributions included featured articles Russian battleship Poltava (1894) and Russian battleship Peresvet. Pool C saw the highest number of participants advance, with six out of eight making it to the next round.

The round saw this year's first featured portal, with Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions) taking Portal:Literature to featured status. The round also saw the first good topic points, thanks to Florida 12george1 (submissions) and the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. This means that all content types have been claimed this year. Other contributions of note this round include a featured topic on Maya Angelou's autobiographies from Idaho Figureskatingfan (submissions), a good article on the noted Czech footballer Tomáš Rosický from Bartošovice v Orlických horách Cloudz679 (submissions) and a now-featured video game screenshot, freely released due to the efforts of Republic of Rose Island Sven Manguard (submissions).

The judges would like to remind participants to update submission pages promptly. This means that content can be checked, and allows those following the competition (including those participating) to keep track of scores effectively. This round has seen discussion about various aspects of the WikiCup's rules and procedures. Those interested in the competition can be assured that formal discussions about how next year's competition will work will be opened shortly, and all are welcome to voice their views then. 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. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! 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 · contribs) The ed17 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 18:48, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cupcake lover?

Uh ... do you wanna explain what just happened over at Dream of the Rarebit Fiend? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 08:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! Hi @Curly Turkey:, thanks for keeping an eye on the article about one of my fave comic strips. I tested a plugin recommended by a friend for dealing with hatemail (as part of a discussion of what it's like to be an outspoken woman online, which regularly involves extra helpings of hatemail...). It uses regexps for words. It's also not very bright: so it works on all webpages all the time. I left this on by mistake and soon switched to reading that article, making it seem as though it was full of quirky mistakes: in particular a sporadic "her <--> him" filter made it seem that the article had McCay's gender wrong. ("say hat?" should read "say what?".)
So I tried to correct that; but the textareas get passed through the same filter. I didn't even notice the repeated "cupcake lover" and "amazing person" or I would have recognized what was happening... the genderswap seemed just barely plausible as a persistent but innocent error by past editors. It took another hour of webbrowsing before I realized lots of webpages had the same problem, felt thoroughly silly, switched off the plugin and corrected myself. – SJ + 09:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-28

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

Tech News updates

  • We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias. [238]
  • It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis. [239] [240]
  • You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias. [241] [242]

VisualEditor news

  • Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [243] [244]
  • You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption. [245] [246] [247]
  • When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus. [248] [249] [250]
  • The reference tool that adds empty <ref></ref> tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like {{Cite web}}. [251]
  • Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [252] [253] [254]

Future software changes

  • Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
  • A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared. [255]
  • If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the <references /> tag (or a template). [256] [257]
  • Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [258] [259]
  • Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions (example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions. [260] [261]

Problems

  • Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [262] [263]
  • For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [264] [265]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-29

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 (calendar).
  • It is now possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis. [266] [267]
  • You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
  • You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news

  • The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [268] [269]
  • The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [270] [271] [272]
  • References will now be shown in the default font size again. [273]

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16. [274]
  • The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example). [275] [276]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files. [277]
  • Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it. [278] [279]
  • Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis. [280] [281]
  • Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory. [282] [283]
  • Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles. [284]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-30

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date. [285] [286] [287]
  • The tool that stores information about languages (CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places. [288]
  • Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions. [289] [290]
  • A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on Tool Labs. [291]

VisualEditor news

  • Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome. [292]
  • All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons. [293]
  • You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [294]
  • Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [295] [296] [297] [298] [299] [300]

Future software changes

Problems

  • Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem. [304]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Sunburn

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Sunburn. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-31

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
  • You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.

VisualEditor news

  • You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor. [305] [306]
  • The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit. [307]
  • If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters. [308] [309]
  • You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [310] [311]

Future software changes

  • You will soon be able to filter Meta-Wiki's user rights log by wiki and user. [312] [313]
  • Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list. [314]
  • It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [315] [316]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-32

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

Tech News updates

  • Tech News will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [317]
  • You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files. [318] [319] [320]
  • You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files. [321]
  • New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file. [322] [323]

VisualEditor news

Future software changes

  • You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits. [335] [336]
  • All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, contact Toolserver administrators before August 31. [337]
  • Pages in the Translations: namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines. [338]

Problems

  • Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem. [339]
  • Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed. [340]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-33

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

Recent software changes

  • Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [341]
  • Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one. [342]

VisualEditor news

  • Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14. [343]

Future software changes

  • Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser! [344] [345] [346]
  • If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning. [347] [348]
  • You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension. [349] [350]
  • An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [351]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

WMF superblocks it's community

Hi,

since Erik doesn't answer, I'm now sending this remark to some other WMF officers and board members. I apologize for using your time.

I'm a crat in german wp. The so-called super-protections that Erik Möller/User:Eloquence and User:JEissfeldt (WMF) have put on our common.js on sunday, acting officially on behalf of WMF, have left some blood on the carpet. Many fellow wikipedians are upset, even those who accept the media viewer (which had been the conflict's origin). Several long-time contributors have left or stopped editing due to this. Journalists picked up the case.

Personally, I strongly protest against the WMF's action, and it's failure to communicate afterwards. Our communities are capable, and willing, to handle problems like this without office-actions.

There have been no official or private comments from WMF in the last days, so I'd like to suggest you have a look and give some response to the criticism.

(apologize again, for my translation errors)

Rfc: https://meta.wikimedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights

Links to ongoing discussions in german language: [352], [353], [354]

Greetings, -MBq (talk) 20:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, i second MBq's request and also e.g. this post by Rich. This issue is not taken lightly especially among german wikipedians. Regards, Ca$e (talk) 20:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ D.V.Connell, "Natural Effects of Applied Energy, Motion and Gravity on Mass", Phys. Essays,22,3,402(2009).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Sj&oldid=620966968"