Jump to content

User talk:Fredlyfish4/Archive 2

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< User talk:Fredlyfish4

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gerda Arendt (talk | contribs) at 07:00, 29 May 2016. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archive 1Archive 2

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Natural Falls State Park, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Chinquapin (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:17, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry!

I didn't mean to rain on your parade over at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of U.S. National Forests/archive1! The list is excellent, and I didn't think a minor grammar quibble about the title would take more than a few seconds to resolve. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Fine job!

I see that List of U.S. National Forests was promoted to Featured List last week and now Sawtooth National Forest has been just promoted to Featured Article. Thank you for leading these articles to the quality they are today. Fine job!--MONGO 17:33, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Rudy Wendelin

Well done! Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:45, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Society of Wetland Scientists, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Springer (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Ramsar and NNL

I saw your message at Template talk:Designation. I'm not an admin but I noticed no one else was replying. What do you think of these colors for {{Designation/colour}}:

Ramsar Wetland or Ramsar Wetland NNL (same as colour2)
#85D58B #8DE3D2 #ACE1AF

The above colors appear to contrast ok with the other global designations for Ramsar and the U.S. national designations for NNL. Cacw (talk) 00:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the NNL choice works well and the blueish color would be good for Ramsar (since I tend to associate blue with water and hence wetlands). Thanks for your help. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 00:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
OK, we can go with those then, the blueish color is actually based on the Ramsar logo, so that should work well. I'll try to put in an edit request to have these added in the next few days. Cacw (talk) 02:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The Barnstar of Diligence

The Barnstar of Diligence
Greetings, User Freddyfish4. I'm new at this giving out Barnstars business, but I just ran into the avalanche of geography-related articles you've created or contributed meaningfully to; it was enough to get me to figure out how to do it. I see you've already received one for Geography, please accept this as an appropriate alternative. Keep up the great work. Wikiuser100 (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


A request

Heyya,

Have submitted a presentation proposal for Wikimania 2013. Found that you too were interested in attending the same.

My submission can be found here. Please sign at the bottom of the page therein as a possible attendee if you feel that the presentation would be worthwhile.

DebashisMTalk 05:35, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. The list of articles awaiting review is located at Special:PendingChanges. A full list of articles that have pending changes protection turned on will be at Special:StablePages.

Being granted reviewer rights neither grants you status nor changes how you can edit articles. If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.

See also:

DYK nomination of Cicindela albissima

Hello! Your submission of Cicindela albissima at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yunshui 雲‍水 09:05, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

DYK for Cicindela albissima

Orlady (talk) 08:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Boise National Forest may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
  • wheatgrass]], [[bitterbrush]], [[Tetradymia canescens|gray horsebrush]], green rabbitbrush]], and others.<ref name=plan/>{{rp|A-26}} In [[riparian]] areas below {{convert|5500|ft|m}}, trees

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 02:15, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Boise National Forest, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Mountain ash and Blue huckleberry (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Population estimate reference

Thanks for updated the references on a number of Texas cities. However, there is a better direct link to QuickFacts data for reference use. Here's the one I just added to Midland, TX: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4848072.html. Selecting a different city or county in the drop down menus gives you a unique direct link to the proper data. Thanks again. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 01:36, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Come celebrate IdeaLab’s (re)Launch!

Idea Lab
Idea Lab
Idea Lab
Idea Lab

We’ve redesigned the Grants:IdeaLab to make awesome collaborators and shiny new ideas easier to find.
You’re invited to the (re)Launch party!

Come visit and create a profile, share or join an idea, and tell us what you think about the updates!

Hope to see you there! Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Boise National Forest, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Black bear (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:59, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Carrière des Nerviens Regional Nature Reserve

Hello, Thank you for your corrections of this article. Christian COGNEAUX (talk) 17:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Dates and botany

I'm not sure it's formally codified in any Wikipedia style guide, but see the examples at Template:Taxobox#Authorities. Zoology uses years, botany doesn't, which I'm pretty sure is standard outside-Wikipedia convention. You could try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants. Choess (talk) 04:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Orangethroat Darter

I appreciate your contributions to this page, however I am doing this for an ichthyology paper and would ask that you please do not make any further corrections until December 20, 2013 so my professor has time to evaluate it. My work is not completed and am working on it over a time period. I am new to wiki and plan on correcting everything to wiki standards before I am through. So please refrain from making corrections until I am finished, Thank you. Cromines (talk) 23:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I am new to wiki and still trying to learn the ropes while completing my management plan for the species. I will try to follow the policies as I go but it is difficult. I will remove the duplicate references as soon as I am finished for the night.
If you would like to ensure I am following all policies with my paper, you are welcome to as I am now finished with my draft. I would appreciate it if you would let me know via email of any issue you may come across (cromines@utk.edu). Sorry for being inconsiderate earlier on, I was just worried my article would be altered in a bad way before I had the chance to print it off. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cromines (talk • contribs) 04:27, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

POTD notification

POTD

Hi Fredly,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Sawtooth Valley ID1.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on April 11, 2014. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2014-04-11. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:04, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

ORCID

Please add {{Authority control|ORCID=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX}} to your user page, replacing XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX with your ORCID identifier. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Endangered Wolf Center, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Interstate 270 (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:51, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited University of Mississippi Field Station, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bullfrog (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Main Page appearance: Sawtooth National Forest

This is a note to let the main editors of Sawtooth National Forest know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on May 29, 2014. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at present, please ask Bencherlite (talk · contribs). You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 29, 2014. If it needs tweaking, or if it needs rewording to match improvements to the article between now and its main page appearance, please edit it, following the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/instructions. The blurb as it stands now is below:

Christ's Indian paintbrush

Sawtooth National Forest is a federally protected area that covers 2,102,461 acres (850,836 ha) in the U.S. states of Idaho (~96 percent) and Utah (~4 percent). A portion of it has been designated as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, which includes the Sawtooth Wilderness. It is named for the Sawtooth Mountains, one of several mountain ranages in the area, and contains a variety of land cover types including sagebrush steppe, spruce-fir forests, and alpine tundra. There are over 1,100 lakes and 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of rivers and streams. Plants and animals that are found only in the Sawtooth National Forest and adjacent lands include Christ's Indian paintbrush (pictured), Davis' springparsley, the South Hills Crossbill, and the Wood River sculpin. The area that is now Sawtooth National Forest was first occupied by people as early as 8,000 BC and more recently by the native Shoshone people after 1700 AD. The first European descendants migrating from the eastern United States arrived in the area around the 1820s and they founded many of the current towns around what later became the forest. Recreation opportunities include skiing, boating, hunting, camping, and walking. (Full article...)

You (and your talk-page stalkers) may also be interested to hear that there have been some changes at the TFA requests page recently. Nominators no longer need to calculate how many "points" an article has, the instructions have been simplified, and there's a new nomination system using templates based on those used for DYK suggestions. Please consider nominating another article, or commenting on an existing nomination, and leaving some feedback on your experience. Thank you. UcuchaBot (talk) 23:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Precious

protected areas
Thank you, professional ecologist and outdoor adventurer, for quality articles on protected areas such as Sawtooth National Forest, and for creating basic ones to help future editors overcoming the hurdle of article creation, for contributing and inserting quality images, for a clear user page and excellent lists such as U.S. National Forests, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

DYK for University of Mississippi Field Station

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:04, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Strange assessment

re this edit: You sure that was a stub? At 12.5K? I'll take C-class or start even (despite the references and the extensive material), and I admit the island's a stub, but not the article. Daniel Case (talk) 04:05, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that. When I'm assessing multiple articles at a time I paste the WikiProject Protected areas stub class low importance assessment since that's what most of the unassessed articles are. Occasionally I forget to change one of the field that needs to be changed, which is what happened here. Thanks for letting me know. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 15:45, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:Wilderness areas of Idaho map

Hi Fredlyfish4. Is Template:Wilderness areas of Idaho map, which you created (but which is currently unused) still required? If not, I will nominate it for deletion (or you can if you prefer). Regards. DH85868993 (talk) 01:20, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I forgot about this template and don't see a need for it, so I've nominated it. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 14:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 23:49, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Holly Springs, Mississippi

Thank you for the amazing photo. I took some liberties with it. If you don't feel they're appropriate feel free to revert. Cheers! Magnolia677 (talk) 01:07, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Not a problem. It looks good as you have it. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 02:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

October 2014

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to List of National Football League officials may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "()"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
  • *[[Barry Brown]]{{dn|date=August 2014}} ({{nfly|1966}}-{{nfly|1971}})) Umpire
  • *[[Pat Turner (American football official|Pat Turner]] ({{nfly|2014}}-present) Head Linesman

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 22:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Texas Tech University coords

Hi, just wondering about this edit. I don't see any difference in the before and after revisions, and I have never known an internal comment, when properly coded, to have any effect on rendering. I ask because the comment is somewhat important to help protect the coords precision, since many editors seem to think six digits of precision is appropriate for all coords. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 20:59, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Before I removed the comment the entire template was displaying in and widening the infobox. The page version oddly doesn't show this, so I'm not sure what's going on. I'll try and restore the comment and see what happens. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 21:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I think that was related to this: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Coordinates_display_appears_to_be_broken. I guess your edit caused it to pick up the corrected version of the template, making it appear that the comment was causing the problem. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 21:27, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Narcissus

Thanks for your help with Narcissus, if I get up the energy to move on to FA I may ask you to expand on your FA comments.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:32, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1

Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:

  • "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
  • "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
  • "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

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 Australia 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 Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, Colorado 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:

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!

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. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email)

Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Research Invitation

Hello Fredlyfish4,

We’d like to invite you to participate in a study that aims to explore how WikiProject members coordinate activities of distributed group members to complete project goals. We are specifically seeking to talk to people who have been active in at least one WikiProject in their time in Wikipedia. Compensation will be provided to each participant in the form of a $10 Amazon gift card.

The purpose of this study is to better understanding the coordination practices of Wikipedians active within WikiProjects, and to explore the potential for tool-mediated coordination to improve those practices. Interviews will be semi-structured, and should last between 45-60 minutes. If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment for the online chat session. During the appointment you will be asked some basic questions about your experience interacting in WikiProjects, how that process has worked for you in the past and what ideas you might have to improve the future.

You must be over 18 years old, speak English, and you must currently be or have been at one time an active member of a WikiProject. The interview can be conducted over an audio chatting channel such as Skype or Google Hangouts, or via an instant messaging client. If you have questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Michael Gilbert at (206) 354-3741 or by email at mdg@uw.edu.

We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email.

Link to Research Page: m:Research:Means_and_methods_of_coordination_in_WikiProjects

Marge6914 (talk) 01:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your help with the Dual Survival article

I just recently got interested in editing Wiki articles and was adding episodes in to the Dual Survival wiki when it seems I broke the display. I kept trying to fix the display but everything looked fine in the edit section. I hated leaving it all messed up but I am very thankful that you fixed it.

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.

Harej (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Happy Easter!

File:Chocolate-Easter-Bunny.jpg
All the best! "Carry me down, carry me down; carry me down into the wiki!" (talk) 05:00, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

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.

Harej (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 May newsletter

C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is a long-period comet discovered on 17 August 2014 by Terry Lovejoy; and is one of several Featured Pictures worked up by India The Herald (submissions) during the second round.

The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was Belarus Cas Liber (submissions) in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus.

Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.

The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) 17:03, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

An image of yours on Commons

See Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Zastava_M85.png and comment if you have info to add that can clarify source/copyright on the image. Thanks for your attention. Cheers, -- Infrogmation (talk) 19:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Precious again

protected areas
Thank you, professional ecologist and outdoor adventurer, for quality articles on protected areas such as Sawtooth National Forest, and for creating basic ones to help future editors overcoming the hurdle of article creation, for contributing and inserting quality images, for a clear user page and excellent lists such as U.S. National Forests, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

A year ago, you were the 870th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Fredlyfish4 (talk) 23:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

reply to commons upload message

Hello Fredlyfish4, I appreciate the concern and time you spent today cleaning up some of my cottontail files. I also understand and respect your message left on my talk page. However, there is a history involved regarding that issue that you are unaware of. Years ago, I had a commons page and was uploading all of my photos there. Over time, many of my files were vandalized. (I didn't like the fact that "anyone" could edit my photos there, with profanity or peoples names placed in the info box, and every type of vandalism we get on wiki). I complained to admins, but to no avail. Then the category silliness started, like my sunsets became "sunsets of California", instead of sunsets.... like there is a difference....lol. Anyway, I started to lose respect for those involved on commons. An admin there last year banned me from commons for 3 months (headwigfromwashington) I think I recall his name being. I was banned because he said I was telling editors, and vandals to "stay out of another man's photo files". Anyway, I closed my commons user page at that time, and decided to upload to en.wikipedia from then on, and hope that the photos never made their way over to commons. You are the first to move one there. I know the photos are licensed through their rules and regs, and I love educating the kids of the world through photos, however, I swore I personally would never upload there again. For whatever reason, no one has ever vandalized any of my photos here. You sound like a terrific guy, so I wanted to explain my situation to you, rather than avoid replying to you. I'll keep your page on my watchlist, should you decided to reply. Thanks again.-Pocketthis (talk) 04:12, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 14 June

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:29, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

  • A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
  • A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
  • New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
  • SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
  • Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.


Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 September newsletter

The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.

In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far Scotland Casliber (submissions) in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was Philadelphia Coemgenus (submissions) at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.

The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:

  1. Belarus Cas Liber (submissions), who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy. A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.
  2. Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points), second place both in Pool B and overall, earned the bulk of his points with FPs, mostly depicting currency.
  3. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions), first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany. Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.
  4. Somerset Harrias (submissions), second in Pool A, took fourth overall. He tends to focus on articles about cricket and military history, specifically the 1640s First English Civil War.
  5. Washington, D.C. West Virginian (submissions), from Pool A, was our highest-scoring wildcard. West Virginia tends to focus on articles about the history of (what for it!) the U.S. state of West Virginia.
  6. Somerset Rodw (submissions), from Pool A, likes to work on articles about British geography and places. Most of his points this round were earned from two impressive accomplishments: a GT about Scheduled monuments in Somerset and a FT about English Heritage properties in Somerset.
  7. United States Rationalobserver (submissions), from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.
  8. England Calvin999 (submissions), also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.

The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.

Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!

Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 11:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Boise National Forest

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Boise National Forest you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Casliber -- Casliber (talk) 03:20, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Boise National Forest has been nominated for Did You Know

Dual Survival season articles

I fully support your merge of the Dual Survival season articles but redirection of the individual season articles to the respective sections in List of Dual Survival episodes is preferable in order to maintain a record of the individual page edit histories. Wikipedia's licensing requirements require that proper attribution be provided (This is explained at WP:CWW) so we need to retain the individual articles for this purpose only. Attribution is normally provided using {{Merged from}} and {{Merged to}}. --AussieLegend (✉) 06:48, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I'll be sure to do this.Fredlyfish4 (talk) 18:07, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Boise National Forest

The article Boise National Forest you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Boise National Forest for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Casliber -- Casliber (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Boise National Forest

Materialscientist (talk) 12:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015: The results

WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.

This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points). All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. Belarus Cas Liber (submissions), a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.

Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to United States Rationalobserver (submissions). Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.

A full list of our award winners are:

We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 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.

Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · logs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · logs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · logs) 18:39, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup Award

Awarded for participating in the 2015 WikiCup. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 19:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 is just around the corner...

Hello everyone, and we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season. As you will probably already know, the 2016 WikiCup begins in the new year; there is still time to sign up. There are some changes we'd like to announce before the competition begins.

After two years of serving as WikiCup judge, User:Miyagawa has stepped down as judge. He deserves great thanks and recognition for his dedication and hard work, and for providing necessary transition for a new group of judges in last year's Cup. Joining Christine (User:Figureskatingfan) and Jason (User:Sturmvogel 66) is Andrew (User:Godot13), a very successful WikiCup competitor and expert in Featured Pictures; he won the two previous competitions. This is a strong judging team, and we anticipate lots of enjoyment and good work coming from our 2016 competitors.

We would also like to announce one change in how this year's WikiCup will be run. In the spirit of sportsmanship, Godot13 and Cwmhiraeth have chosen to limit their participation. See here for the announcement and a complete explanation of why. They and the judges feel that it will make for a more exciting, enjoyable, and productive competition.

The discussions/polls concerning the next competition's rules will be closed soon, and rules changes will be made clear on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring and talk pages. The judges are committed to not repeating the confusion that occurred last year and to ensuring that the new rules are both fair and in the best interests of the competition, which is, first and foremost, about improving Wikipedia.

If you have any questions or concerns, the judges can be reached on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, on their talk pages, or by email. We hope you will all join us in trying to make the 2015 WikiCup the most productive and enjoyable yet. You are receiving this message because you are listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Figureskatingfan (talk), and Godot13 (talk).--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyla_gratiosa_UMFS_2014_2.JPG

I am writing on behalf of Cortina Productions, a media company that specializes in making films and interactives for museums and presidential libraries. We are currently working on an exhibition for an aquarium and are interested in licensing your image of a:

Barking treefrog

Unfortunately, we are unable to work with the image(s) under the specific creative commons license it falls under as we are unable to "share-alike." Still, we would like to use the image(s) so I wanted to contact you for permission to use it in our exhibit with the following terms:

Media: Museum - Educational Territory: One Location Duration: 10 Years

Here is a link to the content I am referring to: Barking treefog https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyla_gratiosa_UMFS_2014_2.JPG You can contact me at dianalizardi@cortinaproductions.com. I am looking forward to hearing from you to discuss the licensing further.

Best, Diana 70.191.151.47 (talk) 21:01, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016: Game On!

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016: Game On!

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

  • Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
  • One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
  • Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter

One of Adam Cuerden’s several quality restorations during round 1

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. Forty-seven competitors move into this round (a bit shy of the expected 64), and we are roughly broken into eight groups of six. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups.

Twenty-two Good Articles were submitted, including three by Connecticut Cyclonebiskit (submissions), and two each by Denmark MPJ-DK (submissions), Zanzibar Hurricanehink (submissions), Florida 12george1 (submissions), and New South Wales Cas Liber (submissions). Twenty-one Featured Pictures were claimed, including 17 by There's always time for skeletons Adam Cuerden (submissions) (the Round 1 high scorer). Thirty-one contestants saw their DYKs appear on the main page, with a commanding lead (28) by Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Twenty-nine participants conducted GA reviews with Lancashire J Milburn (submissions) completing nine.

If you are concerned that your nomination 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. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck to those moving into round 2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 March newsletter (update)

Along with getting the year wrong in the newsletter that went out earlier this week, we did not mention (as the bot did not report) that New South Wales Cas Liber (submissions) claimed the first Featured Article Persoonia terminalis of the 2016 Wikicup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email).--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:06, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Ping...

there's some action at yer FAC nom page....cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon
  • The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
  • The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Fredlyfish4/Archive_2&oldid=722615399"