User talk:Joe Roe

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello Joe Roe,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

• There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
• Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
• Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
• This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

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New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello Joe Roe,

New Page Review queue December 2022

Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
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New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Hello Joe Roe,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp ^connect on IRC.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
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Welcome to the drive!

Welcome, welcome, welcome Joe Roe! I'm glad that you are joining the drive! Please, have a cup of WikiTea, and go cite some articles.

Fix a random page lacking sources

CactiStaccingCrane (talk)15:38, 2 February 2024 UTC [refresh]via JWB and Geardona (talk to me?)

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - July 2024

Delivered July 2024 by MediaWiki message delivery.
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19:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Possible violation of WP:DR and spirit of WP:AGF at Talk:Jinn

Hi there. I saw you offer to help Doug Weller last week when he was busy and was wondering if I could interest you in checking this. I'm part of part of couple-of-months-long going dispute and preparation for RfC at Jinn, (starting around here). At the suggestion of Bookku (here), I was wondering if you could take a look at this post by VenusFeuerFalle and see if you find it in breach of WP:DR spirit of WP:AGF as Bookku (our informal dispute facilitator) and myself do. Example:

I am willing to give the involved users one last chance, to make one clear suggestion, I want to respond one last time. Then we can go step by step over to the other ones. If it fails, I will not reply to that anymore, and then either the edits meet the Wiki-Criteria or they don't. If they do not meet them, they will be reverted, no matter of you understand the reason or not. Because, I just feel my time being wasted. If the users again derail the discussions, I will report Eagle and let an admin check on all involved users for canvassing, harrassment, and potential sockpuppetry.

Many thanks if you can. --15:03, 2 July 2024 (UTC) Louis P. Boog (talk) 15:03, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of Hot model for deletion

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Qwirkle (talk) 22:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 July 2024

• News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates

• Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board

• In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators

• Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna

• In the media: War and information in war and politics

• Sister projects: On editing Wikisource

• Obituary: Hanif Al Husaini, Salazarov, Hyacinth, and PirjanovNurlan

• Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion

• Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos

• Op-Ed: Why you should not vote in the 2024 WMF BoT elections

• Crossword: On a day of independence, beat crosswords into crossploughshares

• Humour: A joke

• Cobwebs: Counting to a billion — manuscripts don't burn

• Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps

• Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Genocide close

hi Joe, thanks for closing. You say, "The main argument in favour of options 2 and 3 were that the unqualified use of the word 'genocide' in an article title...would violate...NPOV..." That seems to be a simple mistake as I'm sure you mean options 1 and 2, as option 3, Gaza genocide, is the one with unqualified use? Tom B (talk) 16:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, I'll correct that. – Joe (talk) 16:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Joe, Regarding closure of the title move, I am asking how You evaluated WP:CON and WP:NOTNP. Shouldn't we have waited, keeping the old more neutral title ? --Robertiki (talk) 22:33, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

@Robertiki: Explaining how I evaluated WP:CON is the purpose of my closing statement. Did you have a specific question about it? I don't recall WP:NOTNP being a significant point of discussion. – Joe (talk) 07:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank for your answer. And you are right: WP:NOTNP was not a significant point of discussion (I did not see the discussion until it was to late). But it should. --Robertiki (talk) 17:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

On the same topic, there was a clear majority against option 3. As you noted yourself "Few editors in favour of option 1 were strongly opposed to option 2 and vice-versa;... A fair number of comments in favour of options 1 and 2". Option 3 was clearly a minority one. As to the title being a neutral descriptor, this argument was countered by the analysis of sources which did not use this term (see @Cdjp1: and @FortunateSons:'s analyses). I believe that the move should be reconsidered. Alaexis_¿question? 21:39, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Alaexis. I'm afraid that's not the case. Since participants weren't limited to supporting just one option, and some did for example support 2+3, it's not possible to calculate a simple majority. However, if you look at it just as a vote for or against option 3, then my count is 31–27 in favour of option 3. In other words, option 3 was supported by more participants than any other option. Of course that was just a starting point for an assessment of consensus based on the relative strength of arguments, as I explained in my closing statement. – Joe (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think I misunderstood your closing statement ("23 for Option 1, 26 for Option 2, and 32 for Option 3") thinking that these are all distinct votes and summing up 23 and 26, apologies for the confusion.

However I'm still not convinced the move was justified. The majority is really slim and so hardly represents a consensus. Also, there were several "non-policy based" !votes for Option 3 as well ("I have nothing more to add than what has been said", "This is in line with [another article]") so I don't agree that "A fair number of comments in favour of options 1 and 2, but generally not option 3, were not policy-based".

Finally, you disregarded the arguments based on sources which disputed the existence of the genocide or explicitly used terms like "questions" and "accusations". Alaexis_¿question? 07:01, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't call either of those examples non-policy based. The first is just saying that you agree with the (policy-based) arguments of others, which is fine and not something to discount – there's no reason to type out an argument if it doesn't add anything new to the discussion. The second is an argument for consistency, which is one of the characteristics we should look for according to the article title policy. So while there are of course always exceptions, I stand by my assessment that the vast majority of arguments in favour of option 3 were policy-based, whilst a significant minority of arguments against it were not.

I did not disregard source-based arguments on either side and I'm not sure how you've drawn that conclusion. – Joe (talk) 07:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks for the close, Joe. Can you explain "the presence of a statement in an article title does not imply that the statement is factual"? Can you give an example of another article title where its name might not be factual? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  @Vice regent: Several examples were given in the discussion itself: extraterrestrial life, homeopathy, anti-gravity, Epstein didn't kill himself. Editors also noted that there are several articles on genocides (Tamil genocide, Black genocide in the United States, transgender genocide, Armenian genocide) that follow the same pattern, where the designation of genocide is also contested. For the more analytically-minded, Kinsio summed it up as a manifestation of the use–mention distinction (broadly speaking, those supporting option 3 considered the title a mention of the phrase 'Gaza genocide', whilst those against considered it a use). – Joe (talk) 08:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  Very helpful, thanks! VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:47, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  The problem with these examples is that they're not analogous (we can discard the pages that don't have the word genocide in them in this discussion as they are not that relevant): none of those genocides are linked to an increased incitement (of hatred) against a discriminated group/people (i.e. Jews (or Israelis). As for the Armenian Genocide, that's literally talking about an established genocide that happened a 100 years ago. There's little to no dispute that it happened (at least not on that page). Therefore, they are bad comparisons. Emdosis (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

AMH and Oz roads

If, you want a discussion about the issues - great! Otherwise I remain silent in response. JarrahTree 01:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: If you as a participant think these projects are still active then great, I'm not going to argue. The purpose of classifying WikiProjects in this way isn't to brand them as failures or anything, it's to draw attention to ones that might need help to thrive again. A WikiProject is fundamentally a group of editors working collaboratively, so if you have a few editors working on a topic but not talking to eachother, that's probably a sign that the project is not active even if the individual editors are. That's why I look primarily at talk page activity. – Joe (talk) 04:53, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

ː Thanks for your comments, I had started an overdetailed response in my head about the context of collaborative ventures in the domain of oz in general (sorry I am very disrespectful of my home country Australia as OZ) and there is a very weird mix of things that would not passs the project council ‘pub test’ and the participants in general did not give a rats about process or procedure - it never seemed worth giving them the third degree about the accepted council things of the old days, as they were in effect fly by night, not around for the duration - just in it for their bit and thats it. Thanks for your positive comments in your reply, I am of the opinion that in the oz domain there is need for discussion about the variegated ambience of the assorted collaborations as a collection of what happens when there are things as loose as they seem. Maybe a conference paper later in the year. JarrahTree 05:10, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I have noticed that there is an unusual number of Australian-flavoured topical projects. WikiProject Australian history, WikiProject Education in Australia, WikiProject Australian politics, WikiProject Australian law, WikiProject Australian crime, WikiProject Australian Transport, WikiProject Australian Roads, WikiProject Australian maritime history, WikiProject Australian television, WikiProject Demographics of Australia – no other country comes close to that. Do you think there's a benefit to editors in doing it this way, as opposed to a model where, say, someone interested in Australian history would join WikiProject Australia and WikiProject History? – Joe (talk) 06:12, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

My answer could be quite elaborate as to this, and will take a time to compose - please understand that I wish to answer, but it might be not today... JarrahTree 09:12, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

No rush! I'm genuinely interested to hear your thoughts as a longtime participant in these projects. There is also some broader discussion of merging small/inactive WikiProjects at WT:COUNCIL, if you're interested. – Joe (talk) 09:16, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh dear, the issue is much large, over the last 18 years, merges/muckups/messes have been made (and in the face of the general trend is also less admins, in a lot of cases a lot less editors), and so in effect the argument that you give for merges runs along merrily because very few editors 'person the barricades' for anything anymore... even xfD queues seem lighter in numbers involved these days.

I would have tackled your urge for merging in an opposite manner, I would look at the larger and in the past more generic projects like history, ships, trains - and asked (just like the WMF is trying with its operations) is there a way we can devolve? I have never seen from my experience anyone get enthusiastic about larger generic projects, it is the local identifiable items I think would see involvement.

I see nothing in rationalising projects as a benefit to anything in the general process of wikipedia operations, but a separate much longer missive/position paper is unlikely due to real life in the short term.

The proposals could be more user friendly if inactivity/organisation was not seen as something as a reason to exterminate. Imho - the reduced people on the ground and the impending threat of AI induced issues, the more small corners of obscure projects with quirks and oddities the better, regardless of the rationalising impulse. To explain further is probably not much use at this point. JarrahTree 03:00, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I would agree with you if there was anyone in those small corners. But the sad reality is that the original wikiproject concept isn't declining, it's already gone. For example, I've just finished reviewing the activity of history and society-related wikiprojects and of 232 total, 170 are completely the dead and almost all the rest are on life support. So my motivation here is less to rationalise and more to consolidate our efforts around the survivors. I'm thinking of a new editor who, like I did when I first started, looks for a wikiproject in their area of interest as a way to get more involved with the project. Right now there's a 73% chance that if they click a random talk page banner they'll find a lifeless page kept for historical reasons. I want to make sure that they will always find some other editors interested in what they're interested in, even if it is at quite a high level of generality.

I agree that highly-focused projects can work really well. The transport area has some great example of that. But the other end of the spectrum is also proven to work: big projects like WP:MILHIST, WP:MED, WP:WOMRED have kept up momentum by attracting people to a large topic area then using task forces or events to focus them on specific areas. So the idea is 100% to protect what works. I.e. to up-merge inactive projects until the right level of generality, but leave specialist projects that are functional and active well alone.

However in order to do that we need to be honest with ourselves about what is and isn't active. I looked at WP:AMH and saw that the last time anyone replied to a thread on the talk page was 2011, that one new participant has signed up in the last five years, and that there hasn't been any new FAs or GAs since 2020 (in fact the number of GAs has shrunk). I'm not going to try to impose my outside view, but are we really helping anyone by keeping it going? – Joe (talk) 08:26, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

we have a very different understanding of how projects can be understood, so as has happened so many times in the last 18 years, it looks like you will single handedly change parts of wikipedia. I fundamentally have a very different attitude, and not sure it is worth having further discussion at this point, have fun. JarrahTree 11:17, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

FYI - https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=prev&oldid=1233108395 - it is well worth checking - to have the wikidata link which is a brilliant parallel to short descriptions: -

Latest comment: 27 minutes ago by PFHLai in topic Errors in the summary of the featured picture

Wikidata: Wikimedia main page (Q5296), Wikimedia project page

Aliases: Home Page, Main Page, Front Page, Start Page, Top Page, HomePage, Project:Main Page

Wikimedia project page for Main Page error reporting

from memory it is in preferences that you can set it up - well worth the view... JarrahTree 11:43, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
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Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Amendment request: Durova: Motion proposed

Hello Joe Roe,

In the amendment request about the Durova case, a motion has been proposed to modify principle 2 by removing copyright-related wording from it.

Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

en-paid email

Hi Joe, in your pre-proposal at WT:CSD you state the en-paid email is being actively monitored but that's not been my experience. Even when I note in SPIs I have sent an email it has taken weeks to over a month to get a response and only after someone with access to the queue contacts me directly via Wikipedia email to ask for additional details so they can find it. Well actually they want the ticket# but someone has to provide the ticket#. Given that, I assume it's backlogged? Can you shed any light? At the end of day, I would much rather send information to en-paid rather than an admin/functionary directly so it accessible to others but currently it's a hassle/inefficient. S0091 (talk) 17:23, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

@S0091: It's monitored—I try to do five or so a week and I'm not the only one—but like many on-wiki processes there aren't enough people to keep on top of it. Unlike most on-wiki processes, it's hard to get more people to help because the prerequisites are very high (until recently only CheckUsers, now CheckUsers and admins with permission from ArbCom). I hope the recent changes ArbCom made will help, but it will take time. I would say that, while I understand that waiting weeks for a response is annoying, reports send there don't tend to be time-sensitive. If anything, waiting a couple of weeks can be helpful because it either gives good faith paid editors the chance to disclose, or gives the bad faith ones enough rope to hang themselves. – Joe (talk) 07:55, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not as much the wait because you are correct sometimes things can shake out within a couple weeks or so. It's more that they can't find it so they have to email me which then makes me wonder about non-editors who are reporting a scam. I wish it could send an auto-confirmation with the ticket# so folks would know their email was received and have the ticket# to reference. Anyway, thanks for the reply and helping monitor the queue. Like you, I hope Arbcom's changes help. I know UPE is not the most fun part of Wikipedia to say the least. They can really wear editors down to be honest. S0091 (talk) 16:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

That's weird. You can also just search by subject, sender, etc. It would make sense if senders got the ticket number, though. Another significant difficulty with the queue is that the VRT software is very unintuitive and poorly suited to archiving and indexing information. I'm not sure if it's even maintained. – Joe (talk) 08:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello Joe- I'm glad you initiated this. Kudos to you! On a related note, do you believe this article was also created in violation of the WMF TOU? --— Saqib (talk I contribs) 22:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Indian law

Thanks for your work on merging inactive WikiProjects. There are still quite a lot of pages with {{WikiProject Law}} and {{WikiProject Indian Law}}. (See Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with duplicate banner templates.) Are you planning to sort these out? Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 03:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah right, I didn't think of other namespaces. I can do that. For the record, it wasn't me that merged these two projects. That happened some time ago – I just cleaned up after noticing that it had been left incomplete. – Joe (talk) 07:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat me to it. – Joe (talk) 11:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I thought it was you! Probably User:Tom.Reding then — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

:)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Tom! – Joe (talk) 12:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Women's History

Hi Joe! I saw you marked WikiProject Women's History page as inactive. There seems to be quite a bit of recent activity on the talk page and its archives, and this tag is used to mark women's biography pages if the subject was born 1900-1950 so it's definitely in use. I was going to remove the tag but I wanted to better understand your reason for adding it. Nnev66 (talk) 02:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Nnev66. I primarily looked at the talk page activity, where I noted that whilst there are a lot of automated and semi-automated notifications, the last time there was a conversation involving more than one person was last March and before that January 2022. I also saw that the project used to organise events, but hasn't done so since 2018. I wouldn't take banner tagging as an indicator of activity because it is mostly happens automatically, being performed by article creators or patrollers that aren't necessarily involved in the wikiproject itself. The banners exist to categorise articles for the purposes of coordinating collaborative editing, so if the tagging is happening without the collaboration, they're not really fulfilling their purpose.

Being somewhat active in this area myself, my impression is that collaborative editing on women's history and biography is in practice coordinated by larger projects like WP:WOMRED, WP:WIG, and WP:WOMEN. – Joe (talk) 07:55, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! I see a lot of people posting questions and asks in addition to the automated notifications. I'm not sure why there are no responses on the talk page. It's my understanding that WikiProject Women's History as a tag on an article Subject's talk page is important to notify folks that the subject was born between 1900-1950 per WikiProject Women's History - Criteria for Including Biographies. Women from this period often don't have the kind of in-depth coverage that women born later who have articles written about them.

My concern about having the inactive tag on the page is that people might think this topic is inactive when I think people are engaging but not necessarily "talking". As someone who has only been very active for about six months, if I'd seen an "inactive" tag I might have left the page before investigating further. Nnev66 (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

But is there a benefit to people investigating further? The point of a wikiprojects is to build a group of editors interested in a topic so that they can work on it together. If people are asking questions on the talk page and getting no answer, for years, then it's a strong sign that there is no real collaborative activity there any more – even if a lot of individual people might be working on articles in its scope alone or in an ad hoc collaborative way. The latter is perfectly fine and the way most editing happens, but it doesn't need or support a wikiproject.

The purpose of marking wikiprojects inactive is not to brand them as a failure or anything, it's to a) communicate to people coming across them that asking questions or otherwise might not be productive, so they can try to find another, active project; and b) enable the community to look at the set of wikiprojects covering a particular area, see what's working and what isn't, and highlight opportunities to improve activity by merging closely-related projects that are struggling.

P.S. The thing about 1900–1950 biographies looks to be an old proposal that never gained consensus? As far as I know being born between 1900 and 1950 has no significance in accepted community policy. – Joe (talk) 16:23, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your responses as I'm now better understanding the intent of Wikiprojects and how community forms and is maintained in Wikipedia environs. Regarding the Women's History Project, personally I've found the "born 1900-1950" distinction helpful because it's much harder to find significant in-depth coverage for women who seemed to do notable things from the breadcrumbs in articles and books that I find. Thanks again for your time. Nnev66 (talk) 16:55, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian states InActivity

Hi @Joe Roe: Kindly check Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian states#Child WikiProjects. Here you will notice individual Indian state WikiProjects. There has been no significant talk-page activity on these individual projects for years. It seems most of them have been inactive for years, but they remain in active mode. So, I urge you to kindly go through these individual WikiProject Indian states and mark them as inactive or keep them active based on their activity. Also check Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian districts & Wikipedia:WikiProject South Asia these two seem dull projects. Thanks 2409:40E0:29:C5E0:30EE:3819:6A70:68A1 (talk) 08:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that looks a very oversaturated topic area. I'll put it on my to-do list to take a look, but currently I'm just focusing on the history and society category, which I know best. You are very welcome to review and update their activity status yourself, if you want. – Joe (talk) 08:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Alright @Joe Roe: I will try to mark them inactive based on their talk page activity. However, if someone tries to revert or challenge, then I will involve you and have a discussion on your talk page to sort things out. As I'm neither an expert nor an admin, other editors might get a bit upset. Nonetheless, I will try my best to clean up. Thanks--2409:40E0:48:FE8B:B9DC:159:AAEC:D6FE (talk) 08:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

August 2026

Please stop not attacking other editors. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Do not comment on content; instead, comment on contributors. Try to focus on subjects like their age, weight, gender, and religion: the more profanity you use, the more it contributes to the discussion. Remember: incivility is not optional, it is one of the 0.20 Pillars. Please try to follow WP:YPA. jp×g🗯️ 12:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Durova

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

Principle 2 of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova, Private correspondence, is changed from
2) In the absence of permission from the author (including of any included prior correspondence) or their lapse into public domain, the contents of private correspondence, including e-mails, should not be posted on-wiki. See Wikipedia:Copyrights.
to
2) In the absence of permission from the author (including of any included prior correspondence), the contents of private correspondence, including e-mails, should not be posted on-wiki.

For the Arbitration Committee, SilverLocust 💬 23:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Arbitration motion regarding Durova

Just for information and record

@Joe Roe

A User:Louis P. Boog had approached this talk page to seek help probably out of confusion - probably you were busy or not interested there was no response from your side. Since I found that communication was being misconstrued and misrepresented more than once I added a statement for information and record at User talk:Doug Weller. No specific action is requested / expected as of today. Bookku (talk) 10:31, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Requesting another extension to my IP block exemption

Hello Joe,

I wanted to ask if you could help me with extending my IP block exemption before it expires 3 weeks from now. I am a social scientist whose research in parts of Africa is of a sensitive nature, so I need to use a VPN at all times for privacy and research confidentiality concerns.

In years' past, I have emailed the Checkuser email, but last year I never received a response. I reached out to another admin who granted it, but that admin is no longer active on Wikipedia. I have since learned that it's ok to request an exemption via a CU's talk page and then found your account on the list of active CUs. Since we have edited similar articles over the past few years I hope to you I have demonstrated my ability to contribute to the project and thus can continue to receive the IPBE flag.

Thanks for your time.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@Pinchme123: I'm sorry but although I am CU I've never been involved with IPBE and don't feel comfortable assigning it. I'd suggest simply emailing the CU list again; perhaps your first email just got misplaced. – Joe (talk) 10:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

No worries, I suspected you might not be because my experience last year also included asking an admin who it turned out didn't have experience with IPBE and also didn't feel comfortable processing my request. This is one of those things on the project that, for understandable reasons, has a rather opaque machination, so requesters largely have to make a shot in the dark and hope for the best. So I took one here. Happy editing! --Pinchme123 (talk) 15:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

WP Project Activity

Hi @Joe Roe: I would like to draw your attention to five WP projects. Wikipedia:WikiProject Yoga, Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion, Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/New religious movements work group, Wikipedia:WikiProject Atheism, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mythology. I made a few of them inactive by checking their talk page activity last 1 year. But other editor suddenly reverted my edits without giving a proper explanation. I am quite sure that in the last year or more, there has been barely any talk page discussion regarding these projects. I urge you to kindly check these WP projects and mark them inactive based on their talk page activity. Thanks 2409:40E0:1027:429:CD88:AE2F:48C5:F0A9 (talk) 12:52, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I reverted one, but it looks like Chiswick Chap and StephenMacky1 did explain why they reverted you on Yoga and Religion respectively, so you should engage in discussion there. – Joe (talk) 12:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Hmm! Ok I will engange with them on this isssue. Thanks--2409:40E0:1030:8675:947F:543B:13DF:2C17 (talk) 14:05, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree, and hope you will offer education

It seems to me to have been a valid draftification. It was moved to mainspace earlier today and draftified very shortly thereafter. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 14:38, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

See point 6 of WP:DRAFTNO as well as WP:MOVEWAR and WP:NPPCON. You think it should be in draftspace, another editor things it should be in mainspace: surely it should be obvious that discussion is the next step? – Joe (talk) 14:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not believe I missed a prior draftification.

Of course, any editor assets it belongs in mainspace by dint of putting it there. That rather runs a coach and horses through the concept of draftification, doesn't it?

So I am struggling. I do not see this as an AfD candidate, which is why I moved it to Draft. It does need the citekill to be pruned, and many of the references are not at all of use in verifying notability. What do you suggest now? 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 15:08, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

So point 6 is Another editor has asserted that the page belongs in mainspace, e.g. it has previously been moved there. It's not just about prior draftifications, but respecting a clear assertion from another editor that they don't want it in draftspace, whatever form that takes. If someone creates something directly in mainspace, there's at least the theoretical possibility that they did so because they didn't know draftspace was an option; that's not present if it's already been moved between namespaces.

If it's not an AfD candidate, then what else is there to talk about? WP:AFCPURPOSE: Articles that will probably survive a listing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion should be accepted. – Joe (talk) 15:12, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I will reflect on what you have said. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 15:20, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

While reflecting, I looked at Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Draftify diagram, which contains File:Notready.svg which I assume you agree with since you initiated the topic there.

This appears not to be congruent with what you have said.

I see this draft, then article, then draft, now article again as falling into the left hand segment of the right hand oval, being both the leftmost part of B: NoDelReason, and all of B: DraftReason at the point I Draftified it

I'd appreciate your further thoughts, please 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 15:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

No I don't completely agree with that diagram, and as you can see in that section several others objected to various parts of it. Obviously, when a written guideline conflicts with a diagram that's trying to explain that guideline, you defer to the written guideline. WP:DRAFTNO is a relatively recent formulation but if you scroll down to Wikipedia:Drafts#During_new_page_review you'll see the same point made there too (3b), and it's been there for seven years.

But for me it's not about this or that rule, it's the underlying principles of WP:CON and WP:EW. If editor A wants to do X and the other editor B wants to do Y, we stop and discuss it. We don't say no it has to be Y because editor A is a lowly newbie and editor B is a vaunted AfC reviewer. Anywhere. If you already know, before moving an article, that somebody else objects to that move, then why would you do it? – Joe (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

If you already know, before moving an article, that somebody else objects to that move, then why would you do it? brings us to the logical absurdity:

1. It is in mainspace either because it was created there or moved there. I see that as "Someone else objects to that move" in this discussion.
2. It is not ready for mainspace
3. It is not a deletion candidate
4. Draftification has been agreed by consensus as method of pushing it back to the editor for improvements
5. If one draftifies it then that is against Another editor has asserted that the page belongs in mainspace... which is point one in this virtuous circle

At some point an attempt to break out of this circle will lead to one of several outcomes:

• The creating (or moving) editor ["the editor] improves it such that it can be moved back happily to main space (with or without AFC)
• The editor does nothing at all
• The editor moves it back to main space unimproved
• Another editor performs one the these actions
• Some other outcome

Draftification is a tool I find difficult, simply because of the foregoing. That doesn't mean I will not use it. Are you saying that we ought not to use it (I am now generalising from "me" to "us"), or do you see circumstances where it can be used? 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 16:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

The problematic step of your circle is draftification has been agreed by consensus as method of pushing it back to the editor for improvements. It hasn't. People just started doing it, and other people who could see the inherent contradictions it creates weren't successful in stopping them. So the practice continued, and eventually the community agreed upon some limits to take the edge of the absurdity – one of them being that unilateral draftification is only acceptable once, for articles newly created in mainspace. But no one has ever, to my knowledge, being able to explain why on a wiki, we need a special holding cell in order to facilitate improvement.

Me personally, I don't draftify articles and recommend that others don't either (with very few exceptions). – Joe (talk) 16:31, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

As long as you and I do not come to metaphorical blows over it, and I think we will not, I see no real problem with divergent views.

This discussion has been collegial although we seem to differ in our views by a fairly wide gulf. Obviously you and I can spot the logical disconnect, and I am better educated that it is an implied rather than explicit consensus

All I can think is that we might re-hash this conversation in a venue which might make a decision. I am not averse to, for example, your locating that venue and copying this discussion thread there, if you feel it would help build a true consensus, for or against. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 16:55, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

The logical place would be WP:DRAFT but honestly, I gave up on resolving the absurdities of draftspace a long time ago. I've settled for trying to enforce the rules we do have (bring us back to the start of this conversation) and trying to convince as many people as possible not to bother with it. – Joe (talk) 16:58, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Then when we coincide we will coincide well. You have not dissuaded me from using it. You have, however, succeeded in making me think hard about its use. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 17:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

User:Das osmnezz, AP

Hi Joe. I noticed you granted the AP flag to this user, as I've watchlisted their talk after twice warning them about conduct at AfD. IMHO they are not a good candidate for this flag. They may be prolific, but their creations are extremely short pages supported by the bare minimum number of refs; and a considerable number have been flagged for notability concerns in the past. I think this is precisely the sort of profile where additional review is helpful. I've also seen numerous requests for AP from editors with higher average article quality be declined, so I'm also concerned we're lowering the standard for a prolific writer. Might I ask you to elaborate, or reconsider? Best, Vanamonde93 (talk) 02:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC) PS: thank you for closing the genocide RM.

I know. I must have reviewed hundreds of his articles by now. I patrol a list of the most prolific unautopatrolled editors and his name has been at the top for years. Every few months I'll review his creations, see these issues, sigh and give up. But the thing is, NPP isn't helping. He creates hundreds of articles a month and an insignificant proportion of them are deleted (4 out of the last 1000). They sit in the NPP queue for months but eventually all of his articles get reviewed. Sometimes a reviewer will add a few {{citation needed}}s or a notability tag. Rarely they'll send one to draft, but it doesn't stick. What I take from this is that, on average, reviewers consider Das osmnezz' creations sub-optimal but acceptable. At this point, the community needs to either do something about them en masse, or leave them to it. Sending them one-by-one through NPP is just a timesink. – Joe (talk) 08:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)