Wise words given to a blocked editor: This absolute adherence to the idea that your interpretation of the rules is paramount and everyone else's input is merely an obstacle to overcome is an accurate summary of how you ended up in this position. Basaliskinspect damage⁄berate 4 August 2013 Well said!Liz Read!Talk!
No matter how cute you are, expect no quarter in the cruel world of Wikipedia.
While Wikipedia's written policies and guidelines should be taken seriously, they can be misused. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies. If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them. Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures. Furthermore, policies and guidelines themselves may be changed to reflect evolving consensus. (WP:NOT)
Hello, Newjerseyliz, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome!
Come here and I'll point the spout at YOU!
Don't call names, you lumpish dog-hearted pignut!
You have been noticed using opprobrious epithets. It's payback time from the Shakespeare Insult Generator! To activate the Insultspout and receive fresh insults, click here. Note that all insults generated by the Spout are guaranteed literary and cultured, unlike the nasty things you said, you clouted fat-kidneyed mammet.
You're welcome, and thank you. It's due to some real-life situations that I hope to see resolved before long, and I plan to request restoration once things are back to normal. Nyttend (talk) 02:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nyttend, while I might not always agree with the actions of particular admins (but then I believe in multiple second chances), I hate to see the trend of admins turning in their bit. I know it's a tough job with more people complaining about what you do that sending you compliments. Yet, it is essential to the smooth running of the project and I hope your real-life situation improves enough that you can return, when you feel ready. Peace, LizRead!Talk!02:43, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I plan to continue editing as things unfold; I'm just afraid of some awkward conflicts of interest that might arise if I have the admin tools at the moment. Nyttend (talk) 02:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WikiCup 2015 March newsletter
One of several of Godot13's quality submissions during round 1
That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader Freikorp (submissions) owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.
In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:
Rodw (submissions) developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
And last but not least, Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) worked up a number of Featured Pictures during round 1, including the 1948 one Deutsche Mark(pictured right), receiving the maximum bonus due to the number of Wikis that the related article appears in.
You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!
Chaged a number of Lua modules (from deprecated function mw.wikibase.getEntity to mw.wikibase.getEntityObject)
Updated the json documentation
Always link to Wikidata on client pages that don’t have any langlinks. This affects users without JavaScript and logged out users, logged in users will still see the link item dialog. gerrit:168632
Fixes for the Wikibase qunit Jenkins job
Made Vagrant git-update also properly update Wikibase and dependencies
Fix for phabricator:T88254 (malformatted Wikidata entries appearing in Watchlist RSS feed in clients)
Final touches on new header design
Investigated how we can provide language fallback also in suggestions when search or adding new statements
More work on allowing additional languages in monolingual text datatype
Added missing backend piece for quantities with units. Now the remaining piece is the user interface.
You are invited to join us at Barnard College for Wikipedia Day NYC 2015, a Wikipedia celebration and mini-conference for the project's 14th birthday. In addition to the party, the event will be a participatory unconference, with plenary panels, lightning talks, and of course open space sessions.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.
Liz, what "opinion(s)" are you referring to? I simply said that I noticed they weren't familiar with the editing process, and said to Dougweller that I was reluctant to revert their edits, so as to not discourage a new user.
I had a long past few wiki days, and am a bit wiki weary, so perhaps I'm just lacking self awareness. I've been known to do that on occasion.
In answer to your question, I was registered with a username back in 2006. There was never any email associated with the account; while I had some significant edits under my belt, I was never very active. I took an extended Wikibreak, and cleverly forgot my password in the meantime. When I decided to come back to project, I had no way to recover or reset my password. And here we are today. :) Quinto Simmaco (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Quinto Simmaco, you said I'm guessing you're likely pretty new, and haven't fully read the relevant policies yet. I'd be happy to help you with understanding anything that's unclear about the editing process.. That's an unusual thing to advise when you are also a new account. That's why I thought you must have more experience than the length of your current account reflects. That recentness of your account and your statements, which sound like the words of a veteran editor, just got my attention. I also started editing years ago with a different account name than the one I currently have so there was no judgment implied in my remarks. LizRead!Talk!02:41, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No judgement perceived. No worries. I was thinking that perhaps I had made a misstep, or at least that my conduct could be construed as something less than friendly, and I wasn't aware. Actually, given your clarification, I can speak to that... I help out regularly on the irc channel, and respond to help requests. That's actually what I spend most of my time doing on here, aside from welcoming new users and the odd vandalism revert. I am still learning, and I am still new. There's no doubt about that. But I think I've hit the ground running to some extent, and gotten a bit of a crash course as per my experiences there. There is still a lot I don't know, but basic editing is not beyond my purview, I would think.
To be perfectly honest, I've found my newfound experiences here a bit of a mixed bag; I don't know about you personally. It was a bit less contentious place back when Wikipedia was newer. Easier to reach consensus. Perhaps it's primarily just the articles I edit though, which are primarily related to religion and cultural anthropology. It's what I know, but I run into a long of strong POVs. Religion and politics, I suppose, as the old saying goes. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 02:54, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That also caught my attention as my graduate work was in religion and sociology although your interests are in the Greco-Roman world and my studies are 18-21st century. One difference you probably will notice from 10 years ago is that most of the articles or major subjects have been written. It's not so much about creating new articles and now about making existing articles stronger. Years ago, yes, there were fewer rules and guidelines and less bureaucracy but, from reading archives, there were a lot more unqualified admins making arbitrary decisions and fewer rules back then also meant that it was easier to get away with crap than it is now. But that is just from my informal observations. It's an ongoing study. ;-) LizRead!Talk!03:21, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AE
Hi Liz. Thanks for your input there, but I don't really have any more to say about it. I'm fine with whatever outcome they come up with. — Ched : ? 03:26, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2
For this month's issue...
Making sense of a lot of data.
Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.
We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.
We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.
Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.
As a couple of asides...
Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.
That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.
Lots of improvements around MixNMatch. It has a new catalog overview page. ~340K IDs have been matched so far with it and it now has an FAQ for institutions wanting to get their identifiers linked in Wikidata
First screenshot of the primary sources tool that'll help with migrating data from Freebase and enriching it with references has been leaked ;-): 1 and 2
I always considered Dr. Strangelove more of a cult classic than a "Classic". It was OK, but not all THAT great. There were a few smiles for me, but no great HA HA moments. It's probably more known for that "no fighting in the war-room" quote than the actual quality of the movie. After the NASCAR race I'll probably watch The Bridges of Madison County rather than look that one up. In other words, you're not missing all that much by not seeing it. (This movie review brought to you by "Ched and Ebert" .. :)) — Ched : ? 22:10, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
LOL. Fair enough. I watched "Top Gun" last night - <grunts>. Actually it showed up in my TV guide, and it was a great movie. I also loved "On Golden Pond", and "The Lakehouse" too. Yes I have that Neanderthal gene that makes me enjoy the action stuff, but I also can appreciate and enjoy things with a real plot too. (surprise!) — Ched : ? 22:35, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It’s a long while since I watched it, but if you like Peter Sellers I think it's a must-see, particularly for his title role (he played several characters). The catchphrase I remember best is “precious bodily fluids”, but the “War Room“ joke is also immediately recognizable to me. Then again, I’m no RS for movie reviews; my all-time favourite, Steppenwolf, rarely gets more than a star or two in the guides I‘ve seen.—Odysseus147923:04, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's ironic, Ched, because I've come to enjoy action films, purely for the escapism. I've never paid to see one in a theater though. Just watch things go BOOM! on TV.
We create grace when we don't allow each other to be treated badly and that grace with time will make WP a better place to work. Thank you for protesting the treatment of another editor today. Littleolive oil (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Olive, that is a lovely sentiment. Most of the conflicts I've had on Wikipedia have nothing to do with the content of my edits but when I've chosen to speak up for other people on talk pages. Whether someone is a new editor or an experienced admin, I don't think people should be treated with disrespect. Especially since one can get across ones argument in a civil manner. Thanks again. LizRead!Talk!22:49, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Liz. We have added you to the list of clerks and subscribed you to the mailing list (info: WP:AC/C#clerks-l). Welcome, and I look forward to working with you! To adjust your subscription options for the mailing list, see the link at mail:clerks-l. The mailing list works in the usual way, and the address to which new mailing list threads can be sent is clerks-llists.wikimedia.org. Useful reading for new clerks is the procedures page, WP:AC/C/P, but you will learn all the basic components of clerking on-the-job.
New clerks begin as a trainee, are listed as such at WP:AC/C#Personnel, and will remain so until they have learned all the aspects of the job. When you've finished training, which usually takes a couple of/a few months, then we'll propose to the Committee that you be made a full clerk. As a clerk, you'll need to check your e-mail regularly, as the mailing list is where the clerks co-ordinate (on-wiki co-ordination page also exists but is not used nearly as much). If you've any questions at any point of your traineeship, simply post to the mailing list.
Lastly, it might be useful if you enter your timezone into WP:AC/C#Personnel (in the same format as the other members have), so that we can estimate when we will have clerks available each day; this is, of course, at your discretion. Again, welcome! Regards, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 22:09, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I expect congratulations are in order here, as well as a bit of sympathy for what you are likely to have to put up with in the new position. John Carter (talk) 22:21, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take them both, John, gratefully. I was a librarian in an earlier life so I really signed up so I could keep things nice and tidy. Luckily, we are just the messengers, not the judge or jury. LizRead!Talk!22:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations. Though we've never really directly worked together on-wiki, you've earned my respect through your diligent contributions. It will be an honor to work with you. Be sure to check your email often --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 23:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, thanks, L235, you're further down the road than I am so I hope you will be patient as I learn the ropes. ;-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liz (talk • contribs)
Forgot to sign your comment? :P Be sure to check the flood of emails you got. If you're up to it, you can close (both of) the currently open ARCAs. (If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the mailing list.) Cheers, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 00:12, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your faith in me but I'd like at least a day to familiarize myself with procedures before any actions. I read through them in January but I need a refresher course. Sorry about the sig, not sure why I left that off. LizRead!Talk!00:17, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in February 2015, covering selected activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and other important events from the Wikimedia movement.
I removed a colon so that all three paragraphs would have the same indentation. It seems like you removed it for some unknown reason or by accident. It was a trivial edit and I considered it a typo on your part. LizRead!Talk!21:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
sent you a couple of emails. (Love your warning when someone wants to open a new section here! i want to copy that!) Jytdog (talk) 13:46, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, Jytdog, I haven't checked that email account for the past few days. I'll look into it later. I forgot who I borrowed the edit notice from (I'm not the original author) but you are free to use it, too! LizRead!Talk!15:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how I am involved! I've tried to read through this dispute but I don't have a deep knowledge regarding this literature. LizRead!Talk!13:19, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A cookie for you!
L235 has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.
To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!
WikiArabia takes place in Monastir, Tunisia, 3-5 April
The GLAM-WIKI 2015 conference in The Hague (10-12 April) features several presentations and tutorials about Wikidata for/with cultural institutions.
The Library world will use Wikidata to link its information to any and all Wikipedias. No longer English only, but every Wikipedia will be exposed in this way.
Went through all the feedback we got for improving watchlist integration on Wikipedia and co and posted our assesment
Put the infrastructure for creating Turtle-Beta dumps in place. All new Wikidata dumps will be in https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/ from Monday on (the old * directory will be kept around and receive new json dumps for backwards compatibility).
Reduced size of entities pages by removing no longer needed data (to make the UI faster).
Fixed bug that sometimes caused dates and other types of values to be cut short when quickly saving. (phabricator:T92831)
Fixed issues with setting focus after clicking edit.
Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, BabbaQ, I don't know much about the show but I added some appropriate categories so the article would be seen with other seasons of the series. Hope that helped! LizRead!Talk!17:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata weekly summary #153
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
We are going to change the way value suggestions are ranked when entering a new statement. This will help with "male" and "female" not showing up among the top suggestions. Previously we ranked by number of sitelinks. We will change this to the maximum of sitelinks and labels. So if an item has labels in many languages but no sitelinks like "male" and "female" it will still show up high in the suggestions. (phabricator:T94404)
Discussed how to move forward with identifiers. Outcome: They should get their own datatype. (phabricator:T95287)
Implemented arbitrary access for the {{#property:…}} parser function. This can be invoked on the wikis that have arbitrary access enabled by using {{#property:P123|from=Q42}}. So far this is only Wikidata itself.
Did further performance work on the client (Wikipedia and co) in preparation for arbitrary access
Improved the performance of wbgetentities significantly when loading a large number of entities
I appreciate your tone and respect and will listen. I know I new but I seemed to have already gotten in trouble. I honestly am going to cool off for a while and try to listen more. But yes if there is a veteran who wants to adopt or be my pledge mom/dad whatever you guys call it, Im down. Cavalierman (talk) 16:37, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall any conversation about mentoring but it wouldn't be a bad idea! I know there is this new Co-op program but I don't know much about it. If you go to the teahouse, I'm sure they can point you in the right direction, Cavalierman.
My general advice to new editors is to try improving articles that you care about and have an interest in but that you aren't passionate about. Having ones edits reverted is very common on Wikipedia...sometimes I go to the article discussion page to talk it out and sometimes, I just accept the reversion. It usually isn't personal. If a very active editor has the article on their Watchlist, they are going to look at every edit made and scrutinize it. Unless I think they are clearly in error, I will defer to their judgment. Assume good faith, and all.
I know that if I edit topics that I have very strong feelings about, my edits might be influenced by my bias and I might snap at editors who hold different points of view. I've seen otherwise brilliant editors go over-the-top on articles involving nationality, ethnicity, politics or gender because they saw their editing as a moral duty. Trying to "set the record straight" can cloud your judgment and cause you dismiss editors who view the situation differently and have valid concerns of their own.
I hope you come back from your cool down eager to contribute on less divisive articles. We always need more thoughtful editors to work on the 4M+ articles on the English Wikipedia. LizRead!Talk!17:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Liz. I will talk to the mentor people (I saw your measage to them) and I was thinking I will maybe edit articles about lacrosse and mma stuff. Cavalierman (talk) 18:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
...on the new trainee position. I don't think we edit too often in the same areas, but I have always found your Talk page comments sensible. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, thanks, Ssilvers. It's actually the kind of work I like to do. I've been told that I'm too understanding towards probable vandals but I like to give people the benefit of a doubt until I see evidence that someone is being intentionally disruptive. When I changed from a casual editor to a regular one two years, I went to the Teahouse several times, irate about some action I thought was unfair and they were incredibly patient and helpful.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our inaugural evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street
Featuring a keynote talk this month on Lady Librarians & Feminist Epistemologies! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
OccultZone, I believe that admins prefer editors simply close and hat conversations that are withdrawn rather than delete them from the page. That said, I'm not going to undo your removal. Thanks for letting me know. LizRead!Talk!16:27, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are many problems yet to be solved. Surely someone will have to take step and I encourage even if one is not allowed by some editors, though clearly allowed by the standards and norms. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 23:04, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't quite understand your statement but I'll assume good faith and hope that you are bringing all of these editors to noticeboards because you think it will improve the encyclopedia and not for other reasons. LizRead!Talk!23:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Gotcha. I'm not really sure that nonadmins should be editing pages regarding sanctions or other admin business, but that's my opinion, I don't know what Future Perfect at Sunrise thinks.
Thanks to you both for helping with the log, and sorry for not finding the time to respond earlier. I have to say I find that new log format the Arbs installed rather confusing; no idea why my entries got misplaced in this way. Fut.Perf.☼17:09, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:
A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.
We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.
Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.
While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.
Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.
We need volunteers!
WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!
As an aside...
Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.
Wikimedia's monthly GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) newsletter now includes a Wikidata report. The draft for the first edition, covering April, may be edited and your contributions will be welcome.
Made label, description and aliases special pages easier to use
Bene* created a new Special:ListProperties special page to list properties by data type
Expanded our set of automated browser tests
Made language fallbacks work in more situations and more consistently. In particular, the entity selector now uses language fallback. This should benefit especially people who want to use Wikidata in a variant such as en-gb.
Continued work on the planned DataModel 3.0 release
Continued discussing and documenting future calendar model support
Continued work on our RDF generator
Continued work on usage tracking for labels on multilingual sites
Addshore worked on various issues regarding redirects
Addshore worked on a special page to turn an item into a redirect
Work on showing entity labels in edit summaries on history pages
Implemented change dispatching based on the new usage tracking mechanism
Fixed issue with page deletions on some Wikipedias not being reported to Wikidata
More work on straightening out date formatting and parsing
Fixed handling of scientific notation for quantity values
Term box: fixed bug causing stale info to be show, and another bug causing babel languages to be ignored sometimes.
Implemented access to other arbitrary items via the #property parser function
Bene* implemented check to make sure two properties can not have the same alias only differing in capitalization
Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week for overlooked housekeeping. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)
I nominate Liz to be Editor of the Week for her willingness to engage in some of the "housekeeping" chores around here and also being a very welcome expert in an area in which we have a lot of problems, social and religious issues. She has roughly 26,000 edits, with about 44% in article space and a lot of often easy to overlook "grunt" edits particularly regarding the categorization of WikiProjects, which is something that it seems many people who create the WikiProjects themselves seem to overlook doing or just don't think to do. She tries to bring the voice of reason to contentious discussions, and assists others in some matters of conduct and in finding some answers. Editors who work behind the scenes and attempt to reach solutions to difficult problems are among the most valuable we can have.
You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:
{{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Recipient user box}}
Thanks again for your efforts! A half dozen additional editors seconded the nomination, including several who suggested Liz would be a strong adminship candidate. For what it's worth, the awarding clerk agrees ! GoPhightins!16:53, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, thank you John and Go Phightins!! To say I'm surprised is an understatement. Most of my edits, like to categories, are not very visible and go unnoticed. This is quite an honor considering the caliber of editors who have received this award in the past. Thanks again! LizRead!Talk!19:25, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You more than earned this. Oh, and I think if you review the nomination page here you might see that, if you so choose, there are at least four people who have already indicated that they would at least support your adminship, and/or maybe nominate you, if you ever want to do that to yourself. ;) John Carter (talk) 19:39, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's very flattering but I'm more of an organizer and wikignome that an article creator. I've seen a few editors who were light on content creation succeed in an RfA but having a few GAs, FAs or DYKs is considered a minimum admin requirement for a lot of editors. But I appreciate the vote of confidence! LizRead!Talk!20:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Could you unclose the thread please? There's still a topic ban discussion ongoing, to deal with what happens to the IP after the block runs out in 2 days time. Bosstopher (talk) 12:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll reverse it, Bosstopher. But if you read the discussion above the topic ban proposal, it's clear that the IP editor is likely to receive an indefinite block for trolling. I don't think a topic ban will be respected since the only editing activity of this editor is trolling Islamic articles. LizRead!Talk!12:16, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A good answer is one that fits in with the Teahouse expectations of proper conduct: polite, patient, simple, relies on explanations not links, and leaves a talkback notification.
Where did he reverted them on their 'own' talk pages? What those cases of AN and AE has to do with this block? AE is not for reporting socks neither AN is, if he did it, then show the proof. Unless the conversation was redirected as such. What "harsh words" did he used? I hope you would rather retract your statements. And please don't talk without the diffs when you are making likely unfounded allegations. Delibzr (talk) 00:39, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's late here but I'll try to dig out the diffs tomorrow. The edits are spread out across a lot of talk pages and noticeboards. And one day after that, the block will be over. LizRead!Talk!01:06, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would withdraw any of my support if you can prove them, or else I would report to an admin if you didn't came up with the evidence for your claims such as "OZ reverted several admins' edits, sometimes on their own talk pages", "filing more cases at AN, AN/I and AE and seemed to seek out confrontation",(were they all related to SPI?) "he had harsh words for them". If you cannot prove them, then I hope that you would rather retract these statements, we are talking about a block review, not that we are trying to right a bad block by calling out dead issues that were also unblockable. Delibzr (talk) 01:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I said I would locate the diffs tomorrow. I don't keep a sandbox and collect them "just in case". Delibzr, if you are really upset and that is not fast enough for you, go ahead and report me to an admin. LizRead!Talk!01:19, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation link notification for April 21
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Raising of the son of the widow of Zarephath, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Zarephath (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Thank you, Cailil, I appreciate you letting me know what was going on. I wasn't aware that the I-Ban was logged to an ARBCOM case. I thought it was a discretionary sanction or a simple editing restriction so I wasn't sure why it wasn't logged in at WP:EDR.
My curiosity arose because of an instance this week where 4 years ago, an admin (now retired) gave an editing restriction to an editor on their talk page but it wasn't logged in at EDR. When I asked about it and another admin looked into it, it was judged to be an invalid topic ban or an expired ban (or both, it wasn't clear). But now I know to look and see if a block or ban is associated with an ARBCOM case and I really appreciate you bringing this to my attention! LizRead!Talk!14:30, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah generally if it's from an AE case or as a result of discretionary sanctions (because they are mandated by Arbcom rulings) they'll be on the RfAr page or at WP:DSLOG (most on the latter but not all)--Caililtalk15:53, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Mellowed Fillmore, that's flattering to ask. I have thought about it but I don't currently have the content creation record to pass an RfA right now and I'd rather not go down in flames! I know of a couple of admins who worked in very specific, technical areas who passed with little content creation but it's very uncommon. If I see that expectations have changed in future RfAs or I manage to put together some decent articles from scratch, I might reconsider. Thanks for asking though! LizRead!Talk!16:12, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
For what little it might be worth, if you wanted to do that to yourself, the various redlinks one the pages at Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles show in at least a lot of cases topics which could have and presumably should have articles that don't exist here yet, and I tend to think that between the various reference books you have available to you by your profession it probably wouldn't be that hard to get at least a few of them up to DYK, GA, and/or FA. John Carter (talk) 16:38, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, John, it's probably wiser to try to improve articles that exist in a poor state than try to find significant subjects that have yet to be covered on Wikipedia. LizRead!Talk!16:40, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, W.carter, what a surprise! I vividly remember my first days editing Wikipedia and how confusing and frustrating it was. I think most errors we see are ones of ignorance and unfamiliarity, not malice or trolling. Thank you though and I hope you are having a great weekend! LizRead!Talk!22:49, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata weekly summary #155
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
There are a number of user boxes you can add to your user page to indicate interests and which wiki projects you belong to.
Development
On Tuesday, we are deploying usage tracking (no arbitrary access yet) to Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikisource, and subscription tracking on Wikidata. There should be no noticeable changes for users. These are necessary steps towards enabling arbitrary access in clients.
Worked on making language fallback work in the suggester (when adding a new statement or searching for an item)
More work on RDF output and the query service
Added Special:RedirectEntity for redirecting items
Investigated and working to fix JS bug on items with “invalid” values (phabricator:92975)
Did work towards having entity ids in revision histories and in diffs linked with their label (like on watchlists or in the recentchanges)
Hey, thanks. I received the email about inactivity and realised that I had forgotten about WP. I'm currently reading the backlog of the signpost to try and catch up. Cheers, James086Talk23:50, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, James086, I took a break from July-November 2014 as I kept getting drawn into squabbles and I got tired of the feuding. Now, a lot of those editors have either left or been blocked. Wikibreaks are healthy, I think, as I came back with renewed energy for the project. LizRead!Talk!00:02, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Tappy fingers
Sorry about the accidental revert. I have a nervous habit of tapping my fingers on the touchpad and moving the mouse pointer around, and occasionally I hit something I shouldn't. In this case, rollback. ―Mandruss☎20:16, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Liz! I have been having some trouble lately on a page about a man named Kent Hovind. The article currently has an introdution paragraph that is lacking a cite to a claim it makes, and has some false statements. I constantly try to improve it but they keep on reverting my edit. (edit is below)
I do not see why the editors of this page keep on deleting this post. They have directed me to a Wiki rules page but I did not see what I had done wrong.
Also throughout the article they only criticize Kent Hovind and show criticism from Evolutionist and Creationists that Hovind has debated; these people are clearly going to be against Kent Hovind. THe page also has some rather unreliable cites that should be reviewed such as one coming from a man named Michael Shermer that only gives his opinion of Dr. Hovind.
Please review this article, almost everyone in the talk page is saying that this article needs to be either corrected or deleted to be corrected because it lacks neutrality and true information. Kent Hovind himself even said to do either correct it or take it down.[2][3]
Liz The thing is, if they delete my edit, they are making their article worse because the original does not have a cite and does not show a neutral point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob A. Henderson (talk • contribs)
Liz For some reason, NeilN keeps on removing my external links from the Kent Hovind page. I am literally just providing links to Kent Hovinds videos and debates and he is deleting my posts giving no explaination why. Please stop him from doing this, he is abusing his power over this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob A. Henderson (talk • contribs) 15:21, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jacob and Liz. I am also one of the people removing the links to the Kent Hovind page. Kent Hovind has never provided scientific evidence for his claims. The only evidence he has ever produced is biblical references and pseudoscience nonsense. Please consult WP:RS for what is and what is not a reliable source. PS: Youtube is not a reliable source. CanadianLinuxUser (talk) 15:30, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As I (and others) said, Jacob, YouTube is not considered a reliable source. And it is not in my power to prevent anyone from doing anything on Wikipedia. If you can't resolve this dispute on the article talk page (which should always be your first option), the only recourse you have is to complain on a noticeboard but there is always the potential for that move to backfire as your own conduct will be scrutinized. As for me getting involved in this, I have really sought to keep out of the pseudoscience area as it only brought me grief. My support for embattled editors was viewed as supporting their point-of-view which was not true.
My advice to you is to listen to those who oppose you and work within the framework of Wikipedia rules regarding this subject area. If you go to battle over this matter, it will end badly for you and it will not help improve the articles you are concerned about. Once your POV is labeled fringe, you become a target and it's best to go work on some uncontroversial articles to show you're a dependable contributor. And if you are just completely exasperated and frustrated, come and vent at the Teahouse where at least you will find a sympathetic ear. It's better than lashing out and finding yourself indefinitely blocked. LizRead!Talk!16:01, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for doing that NeilN but this still doesn't explain why you are deleting my introduction paragraph. I provide what he actually does, and he does not only provide scripture as you claim, but he provides evidence, quotes, science facts, and scripture in order to validate the bible. (Note: I am talking about all of his videos not just his first) Also at least I do not use a biased statement saying that his theories are not scientific and not even explain why. I provide what he actually does, a quote, and what people think of him like Michael Shermer. Please allow my paragraph to be posted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob A. Henderson (talk • contribs) 16:24, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jacob, for the last time, we have explained this to you on the Kent Hovind talk page, on your page and here. The Hovind Theory is entirely rejected in the scientific community, and its plausibility has been criticized by other Young Earth creationists. Therefore, your edit is rejected. CanadianLinuxUser (talk) 16:50, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Need Advice about a recent thread on ANI
Hi, first of all I don't know whether this is the proper place to discuss this, so please feel free to move this or tell me to move this to a more appropriate location. I feel confortable approaching you since I respect your judgement. There is a thread at ANI wp:ANI#User:Drjamesphillips which you closed recently. Since then, I have had some second thoughts about it.
It concluded by someone with checkuser stating that three accounts were socks and all three were blocked. This all looks good so far, but I am concerned because Leminspire states earlier in the thread that he works with Drjamesphillips. Now if they both edit from work, this would give them the same IP, making them look a lot like socks. Furthermore, if for instance, they have the same breaks, or took some Wikipedia time together, or Leminspire was teaching Drjamesphillips, well they might even have spookily similar editing times.
Furthermore, I have interracted briefly on-wiki with both of these accounts and they have very different manners. Leminspire is, well frankly, rude and tends to fly off the handle whereas Drjamesphillips seemed not to be that way. Anyway, I was a little worried by that point so I checked to see if there had been a more formal investigation at SPI. I could not find one. Perhaps it is there and I just can't find it. Maybe you can help me with that.
So basically, my concerns are two-fold. First of all there is the matter that I worry that this association between the three accounts may be a false positive. Secondly, I worry about what looks to me like an unsollicited use of CheckUser. I am very confused on these points and how to proceed and would greatly appreciate advice and guidance.
On another note, there is the comment by you that Drjamesphillips was not acting like a new editor. I have seen comments like this several times as I go around responding to help requests. I really am very confused about this. I seriously considered joining the new pages patrol very early on in my time on Wikipedia, so that never struck me as odd. I feel that there is some unwritten expectation of what a new account should do and I do not know what it is, or how people tell that someone is or is not acting like a new Wikipedian. I feel this situation may be further confused because, if a new Wikipedian begins editing in the physical presence of another Wikipedian who can help them, this may eliminate some of the learning curve.
Anyways, sorry for the long post. It is just that while I agree Wikipedia must be protected from malicious socks etc., I am having serious second thoughts about this particular issue, and the expectations regarding new user behaviour in general. Thank you for any advice or information. Happy Squirrel(Please let me know how to improve!) 02:03, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concern. I've often gone to look for SPI reports regarding an account identified as a sock and not found any. It is my understanding that CUs run checks outside of official sockpuppet investigations if there are suspicions of socking. It troubles me that there is no paper trail or record of these checks but I've been told several times that I need to just trust and assume good faith on the part of checkusers. CUs are known for not disclosing much detail about their checks but I'll @Ponyo: to see if they want to add anything to this conversation. If they don't respond, you might go to their talk page and pose your questions there.
As far as new editor behavior, the account was only two days old when it was blocked. Most new editors start by editing articles either of subjects that interest them or they are just reading an article, see a typo and fix it. It typically takes a few weeks or months before they are even aware of areas like administrative noticeboards or processes like the new pages patrol. WP:NPP is especially sensitive because it involves tagging articles for deletion that are frequently articles by new editors and this requires knowledge of the appropriate criteria for speedy deletion and knowledge of expectations for the quality of articles suitable for Wikipedia. This familiarity can be gained in a few weeks but it's not a task for a one or two day old account and the fact they were able to even locate the new pages patrol page is suspicious. You have been here three months and while you don't have a great number of edits, your participation shows a familiarity with Wikipedia that a two day old account from a new editor wouldn't ordinarily have.
Thanks, that makes sense. I have read through a lot of the documentation at wp:NPP and found no mention that it is not for brand new users. Should there maybe be a mention on there? If so, how would I suggest one. I am also repeating the ping because yours was short an opening curly bracket. @Ponyo:. Happy Squirrel(Please let me know how to improve!) 12:57, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, NeilN, I'm a fan of the show so I knew about the Caskett fans but I never saw anyone react so strongly to deny reality. I guess as long as both actors were single, they could imagine that the pair were an actual couple. LizRead!Talk!10:12, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Headers
Since you are a clerk at [3] don't you think that such headings[4] should be neutral? "Response to accusations" and not "Response to egregious accusations", as long as he hasn't backed such claim even with 1 diff. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 08:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Since I'm a trainee (I just started clerking a month ago), I'll ask about it on the clerks email list to see if altering the headers is something that clerks can or should do. LizRead!Talk!10:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OccultZone, I received a mixed response from the arbitration clerks on the email list but all replies included informing the editors who commented about the heading changes which I have done. LizRead!Talk!14:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Liz. Just saying, I think that was a bad call. Calling accusations "egregious" seems like reasonable language, based on the accusations that OccultZone was making. If the heading was a personal attack, it'd be different, but there's nothing saying that the headings need to be neutral. WormTT(talk) 14:46, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you are fiddling with headers though, do you want to up the level of User:Nick's additional statement, so it's a sub header? Unless he fancies doing it himself WormTT(talk) 14:50, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Worm That Turned, as I said, I received mixed responses on the correctness of removing this one word and I should have waited to hear from more clerks and arbitrators before acting. I see now that there was no urgency about the situation although the vote is pretty close.
I have been corrected and I have apologized to both Bgwhite and Swarm that I neglected to add that they should feel free to revert my deletion if they so choose. I don't have high hopes that it might sway Swarm's recent decision to withdraw from Wikipedia but it was my error and I do hope he returns. LizRead!Talk!18:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry yourself too much, its all a learning curve. Swarm is annoyed with the rest of the case more than anything else I'm sure, I think this was just a straw that broke the camel's back. WormTT(talk) 21:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, even though I got the go ahead to delete that word, some folks were quite upset with me. Maybe this is something I need to get used to as a clerk...you can get in trouble for doing too much or for doing too little. Yes, the case request is lasting longer than I thought it would...probably nerves all around are a little frayed. LizRead!Talk!21:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, FWIW
As I am certain the following comment is almost certain to be deleted immediately from Rationalobserve's talk, I am recopying here:
I am absolutely certain that this comment will be deleted immediately from this talk page, but I must note, for the record, that RO did post at WT:IPNA where I am a member: here. Which is how I wound up at Irataba. Montanabw(talk) 00:52, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
.jpg)
Freikorp (submissions) owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as 
Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, 
Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) took Bumblebee, a level-4 vital article, to Good Article;
AHeneen (submissions) worked-up the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, also to Good Article status;
Rodw (submissions) developed an extremely timely article to Good Article, taking Magna Carta there some 800 years after it was first sealed;
The Wikipedia Library
lists.wikimedia.org. Useful reading for new clerks is the procedures page, WP:AC/C/P, but you will learn all the basic components of clerking on-the-job.
--L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 23:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.
