User talk:Evolution and evolvability/Archive 2018

Catalytic triad of TEV protease

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THOMAS SHAFEE

Evolution and Evolvability

Save changes -> Publish changes

Thanks for making some of the necessary text changes to the Help pages today. There are still a lot of graphics that need updating there, too, and I wondered who is coordinating this work, or whether there's one page/person to which we can report every url page we discover that needs modifying? Should I report these to you, or to Whatamidoing (WMF), for example? I tried to make a few replacement graphics myself, but realised the earlier versions were done by a bot which I'm not familiar with, and thought I might cause more problems than I solve by trying to upload replacements. I've not checked WP:TWA recently, but I suspect there's still quite a few tutorial and help pages and template instructions hidden deep in the system which may still need amending. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi Nick, User:Ocaasi is aware of the need to update TWA, and I'm sure that he'll take care of it.

I don't think that there is a good central page here, unless you wanted to use Wikipedia:WikiProject Help's talk page as a reasonable coordinating point. You could list images (which often get used across multiple wikis)at m:Talk:Editing/Publish, if you'd prefer that. It is okay to over-write images that were created by a bot. Justr scroll down to the "File history" item, and find the link to "Upload a new version of this file". Most bots will just re-over-write the interim updates later, if necessary. On the other hand, if they're made by User:LanguageScreenshotBot, then I just asked a dev to see if he can make the bot run again, so perhaps those will be automagically fixed soon. It would save us a lot of trouble if the bot did that work.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF). Yes, some of the images were definitely made by that bot. If you think it would help, I'm happy to just wander through whatever pages I can still find and collate a list in my sandbox of  stuff that still needs sorting, whether images or templates I can't edit, and then report back as you suggested. I'm not trying to be awkward here, though I do think it's a bit of a shame we couldn't have called on the community more effectively to help coordinate all these little tasks that would need addressing by this simple change. Sadly, my PC has just died today, so I can't work on any more screenshots for a while. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:25, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I think that making a list in your sandbox would be a good idea. If the bot doesn't start working, then I can help update them, too.

I publicly recommended making a list of help pages that would need updating more than a year ago. It's harder at the English Wikipedia than at most other wikis, because we have a lot more documentation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

You're right about all the documentation!. I have made as many template and help page updates as I can find over the last 12 hours. As discussed, I have collated a list of pages, templates or images that still need updating, either because I don't have access permissions or because both text and images need changing at the same time. I'm happy for that page to be edited by anyone. Over to you guys, now. Seasonal best wishes Nick Moyes (talk) 11:12, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Ha, sorry to be late to the party on my own talk page! It seems like you've got things well in hand. I'll hep an eye on your todo list. If User:LanguageScreenshotBot isn't reactivated, I can help out a little with the images. Let me know if there are any additional things you'd like me to help out with. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:35, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I have happy news for you all: the bot finished a major updating run last week, thanks to hashar and ZFilipin. Everything that was automated should be set now. There are (unfortunately, but predictably) a number of non-automated screenshots, but few of those (possibly none) should include this part of the toolbar.   Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

That's great to know. I've now only got a few very minor screenshots left that need (listed here). Do you think it could be worth putting out a call on help desks/admin noticeboard and VPP to say the updates have all now been done and to invite anyone to report anything we've missed? Nick Moyes (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you have a good diea about asking more folks to help, but a quick search for Wikipedia:"click Save page" shows that there is definitely more to be done. (The Teahouse-related pages worry me the most; maybe WT:TEA is a good place to start?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

On the proper use of experts

My apologies for not getting back to you sooner. (A significant crisis has sucked up nearly all of my available time.) The question of how to best utilize the expertise of experts (scientists, "academics", and otherwise) is of great interest for me, and one where I have some small experience. I will be pleased if we can make some progress towards an answer.

In your letter in Science you specifically invited "the scientific community" to help. I think the relationship to be developed with scientists is really no different from the relationship to be developed with experts from any other scholarly or professional field. Wherefore I think we can generalize the question for all experts.

My general sense of the question is that experts should not be invited to edit articles. (By "edit" I mean: to write article text directly.) The way I see it, experts – and especially those with PhDs – are very high quality resources that should not be frittered away on mundane tasks such as cranking out text. Which is not to belittle "cranking out text": to do so well takes no small amount of writing ability, and one has to be familiar with Wikipedia standards, etc. But we have plenty of editors who can handle that. We should have experts contributing at a level not only commensurate with their expertise, but at a level we could not reach with out them.

It might also be noted that even experts of the highest caliber are (generally) still newbies when it comes to the standards and practices of Wikipedia. Now it is fine if an expert wants to write text (some of them have pet topics they want indulge in), provided they understand that as an editor they have to learn and observe the basic standards and practices just like any other editor. But where an expert is willing to contribute at a very high level, why should they work at a level where they are not expert, and not even experienced? It seems to me that would be off-putting, a squandering of their expertise and time. And where an expert, not understanding that, nonetheless flames through Wikipedia like a shooting star only to trip over all kinds of problems tends to lead to a bad experience, which undercuts the relationship we want to develop.

Furthermore, we should consider on what basis an expert might write. Because he or she personally knows something? That would be a form of original research. We are supposed to write on the basis of reliable sources. Note that reliable is not the same as expert. Note further that the "reliable sources" we are supposed to rely on are (at least in the scientific fields) not simply what a supposed expert has said. It is what one or more experts have said on the basis of data they have observed, according to often strict protocols, and subject to thorough vetting by the editors and peer reviewers of a respected publication. What an expert says on a blog might be interesting, insightful, and even absolutely true, but it is not reliable if it has not gone through the proper publication process. If it comes to WP straight from the expert's head then there is no basis for inclusion. Even experts have to cite sources, write neutrally, etc.

For all the forgoing we should not ask, nor encourage, experts to edit articles directly. Indeed, I think we should discourage direct editing. (Especially on topics with contentious elements, lest we have experts dueling on our turf.)

Nonetheless, I think experts can be very useful. One way is to provide critical review. Even the most studious of WP editors (as I like to think I am) are quite unlikely to be as familiar with a field as an expert who has worked in it for many years. An expert can provide a broad view of a topic and the prevailing mainstream consensus, historical perspective, insights on obscure points, and references to useful sources. (And sometimes even the sources themselves.) Critical reviews can also be very important in advising whether an article has a balanced view, or has drifted into error. (And I have been the grateful recipient of such advice.)

Experts more accustomed to dealing with the general public can also be very helpful in the Talk page discussions, in advising the editors and helping to resolve issues, and also in pushing back the WP:Randy in Boise types that show up at some of the more popular articles. All of these are ways I believe experts can help Wikipedia, and I think we should work out how to facilitate that.

~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 03:30, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: Thanks for the response (don't worry about the delay). Very interesting points. I absolutely agree that avoiding original research in Wikipedia will be one of the greater challenges for experts in general who are used to the authority of their writing stemming from both their cited sources, as well as their own expertise (whereas Wikipedia's authority is dependent on just the cited sources).

WikiJournals are just one way of engaging new contributors (in addition to things like editathons, direct editing of Wikipedia, photo/image competitions etc). Typically the articles published in WikiJournals are only integrated into Wikipedia when they avoid OR (example). One thing that expert contributors can provide is a deep knowledge of the appropriate literature and an ability to summarise it. However in some cases a WikiJournal article will contain a mix of both OR and summarising established information. In those cases, the OR is omitted from the Wikipedia version (example in WikiJournal versus in Wikipedia). Obviously, it's onlt one of many ways to productively engage experts. I agree that teaching how and when to use talk pages is also particularly important. A little while ago, I also put together a presentation that covers some of the differences that academics need to be aware of when editing Wikipedia. One of the main aim of the journals is to provide the opportunity for experts to contribute to Wikipedia in a format that can be a bit more familiar, directly rewarding, and flexible. It is also possible that it may act as a 'gateway drug' by getting over the initial activation energy barrier to learning to become a general Wikipedia editor. I've written a bit more about the WikiJournal format in this article. WikiJournals may end up being quite versatile, for example publishing companion explainer articles to pages that are too technical (particularly common with maths articles). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:00, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Wiki journals look interesting, but they are not part of the encyclopedia proper; I don't see that concept as bearing directly on the question of how to get the best use of expertise in particular articles.

"Too technical" is a concept that could use some development. I think it is reasonable to expect some level of reader competence, and I absolutely would not "dumb down" anything. But some articles do seem "too technical" even for an intelligent layman. In such cases I think any explanation needed should be in the article itself, not in a separate explainer article. Though that is an intriguing concept that might warrant some consideration. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:25, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

CellSqueeze and coffee-making...

Your edit to the article appears to be in good faith, yet the reference to a French press coffee maker seems both unwarranted and over the top. The cited article makes no such analogy. Is this original research on your part? I have removed the sentence about the coffee-maker from the CellSqueeze article.--Quisqualis (talk) 21:35, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

@Quisqualis: Ha, well spotted. I'd intended to link to the French_pressure_cell_press, rather than the French_press! Thank you for flagging it on my talkpage so that I could go back and address it. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 00:18, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018 Metadata on the March Extended content From the days of hard-copy liner notes on music albums, metadata have stood outside a piece or file, while adding to understanding of where it comes from, and some of what needs to be appreciated about its content. In the GLAM sector, the accumulation of accurate metadata for objects is key to the mission of an institution, and its presentation in cataloguing. Today Wikipedia turns 17, with worlds still to conquer. Zooming out from the individual GLAM object to the ontology in which it is set, one such world becomes apparent: GLAMs use custom ontologies, and those introduce massive incompatibilities. From a recent article by sadads, we quote the observation that "vocabularies needed for many collections, topics and intellectual spaces defy the expectations of the larger professional communities." A job for the encyclopedist, certainly. But the data-minded Wikimedian has the advantages of Wikidata, starting with its multilingual data, and facility with aliases. The controlled vocabulary — sometimes referred to as a "thesaurus" as term of art — simplifies search: if a "spade" must be called that, rather than "shovel", it is easier to find all spade references. That control comes at a cost. SVG pedestrian crosses road Zebra crossing/crosswalk, Singapore Case studies in that article show what can lie ahead. The schema crosswalk, in jargon, is a potential answer to the GLAM Babel of proliferating and expanding vocabularies. Even if you have no interest in Wikidata as such, simply vocabularies V and W, if both V and W are matched to Wikidata, then a "crosswalk" arises from term v in V to w in W, whenever v and w both match to the same item d in Wikidata. For metadata mobility, match to Wikidata. It's apparently that simple: infrastructure requirements have turned out, so far, to be challenges that can be met. Links 1lib1ref campaign starts today, see m:The Wikipedia Library/1Lib1Ref: also #1lib1ref introductory video by Felix Nartey Funders should mandate open citations, article 9 January 2018 in Nature by David Shotton From snowflake to avalanche: Possibilities of using free citation data in libraries, translation from the German original of Annette Klein, Mannheim University Library outreach:GLAM/Newsletter/December 2017/Contents/WMF GLAM report Why Mickey Mouse’s 1998 copyright extension probably won't happen again: Copyrights from the 1920s will start expiring next year if Congress doesn't act, Timothy B. Lee, 8 January 2018, Arstechnica To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below. Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here. Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery Charles Matthews (talk) 13:53, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Microlissencephaly

Hi! I have submitted my article "Microlissencephaly: a narrative review" to WJM. I would like to thank you for reformatting the article constantly to meet the journal guidelines. However, I wonder why did you remove some newly added information? (see this). Brainist (talk) 20:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Brainist: My apologies, that information was removed in error. I've re-added it back in to correct it. Well done for spotting, and thank you for informing me. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 22:13, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018 m:Grants:Project/ScienceSource is the new ContentMine proposal: please take a look. Wikidata as Hub Extended content One way of looking at Wikidata relates it to the semantic web concept, around for about as long as Wikipedia, and realised in dozens of distributed Web institutions. It sees Wikidata as supplying central, encyclopedic coverage of linked structured data, and looks ahead to greater support for "federated queries" that draw together information from all parts of the emerging network of websites. Another perspective might be likened to a photographic negative of that one: Wikidata as an already-functioning Web hub. Over half of its properties are identifiers on other websites. These are Wikidata's "external links", to use Wikipedia terminology: one type for the DOI of a publication, another for the VIAF page of an author, with thousands more such. Wikidata links out to sites that are not nominally part of the semantic web, effectively drawing them into a larger system. The crosswalk possibilities of the systematic construction of these links was covered in Issue 8. Wikipedia:External links speaks of them as kept "minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article." Here Wikidata finds more of a function. On viaf.org one can type a VIAF author identifier into the search box, and find the author page. The Wikidata Resolver tool, these days including Open Street Map, Scholia etc., allows this kind of lookup. The hub tool by maxlath takes a major step further, allowing both lookup and crosswalk to be encoded in a single URL. Links What galleries, libraries, archives, and museums can teach us about multimedia metadata on Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Foundation blogpost, 29 January 2018, by Jonathan Morgan and Sandra Fauconnier m:The Wikipedia Library/1Lib1Ref/Connect, 2018 institutional participation in the #1lib1ref campaign Newspeak House queries, created at 3 February 2018 event in London led by Magnus Manske Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative, Wikipedia Signpost special report 5 February 2018, by JenOttowa What is the Last Question?, 5 February 2018 To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below. Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here. Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018

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Extended content

Did you know? Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page? Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence. If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit. Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs. In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side. This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor. Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool. Recent changes The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance. The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [1] Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [2] The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki. Let's work together The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting. Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either <references /> or the plain (no parameters) {{reflist}} template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [3] If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you! —User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 10 – 12 March 2018

Facto Post – Issue 10 – 12 March 2018 Milestone for mix'n'match Extended content Around the time in February when Wikidata clicked past item Q50000000, another milestone was reached: the mix'n'match tool uploaded its 1000th dataset. Concisely defined by its author, Magnus Manske, it works "to match entries in external catalogs to Wikidata". The total number of entries is now well into eight figures, and more are constantly being added: a couple of new catalogs each day is normal. Since the end of 2013, mix'n'match has gradually come to play a significant part in adding statements to Wikidata. Particularly in areas with the flavour of digital humanities, but datasets can of course be about practically anything. There is a catalog on skyscrapers, and two on spiders. These days mix'n'match can be used in numerous modes, from the relaxed gamified click through a catalog looking for matches, with prompts, to the fantastically useful and often demanding search across all catalogs. I'll type that again: you can search 1000+ datasets from the simple box at the top right. The drop-down menu top left offers "creation candidates", Magnus's personal favourite. m:Mix'n'match/Manual for more. For the Wikidatan, a key point is that these matches, however carried out, add statements to Wikidata if, and naturally only if, there is a Wikidata property associated with the catalog. For everyone, however, the hands-on experience of deciding of what is a good match is an education, in a scholarly area, biographical catalogs being particularly fraught. Underpinning recent rapid progress is an open infrastructure for scraping and uploading. Congratulations to Magnus, our data Stakhanovite! Links 3D printing Wikipedia goes 3D allowing users to upload .STLs for digital reference, Beau Jackson for 3dprintingindustry.com, February 22 2018 WikiCite report (video) Formal publication and announcement of ISBN citation dataset, see Twitter post, February 23 2018 Plotting the Course Through Charted Waters, workshop on data visualization literacy from Mikhail Popov, Wikimedia Foundation Using Wikidata to build an authority list of Holocaust-era ghettos, Nancy Cooey, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, February 12 2018 Why Should You Learn SPARQL? Wikidata! Mark Longair, blogpost November 29 2017 Back to the future: Does graph database success hang on query language?, George Anadiotis for Big on Data, March 5 2018 To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below. Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here. Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hi Evo. Thanks for your support at the HMB FAC! I really do appreciate it. Anyway, would you be willing to bold the word "support" in your last reply to that page? That's the standard format for a support/oppose !vote (unbolded !votes also aren't counted on the WP:FAC page's support/oppose counter for a nomination). I'd do this myself, but it's generally frowned upon to edit others' comments at FAC. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Seppi333: Done! Thanks for prompting. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 03:20, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Melbourne meetups

Hey, thanks for the invitation to the next meetup. Is there a way to get more notice next time? (I have other plans for this one). Maybe a meetup.com meetup or something? Stevage 02:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Stevage: Good idea. Currently you can add Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne to your watchlist, or join the WMAU facebook group. I'll look into alternative systems. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 03:28, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. The watchlist thing doesn't really help. Even if I actually looked at my watchlist, this change would easily get swamped by everything else. I'll try the FB group. Would prefer Twitter. Stevage 05:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the note about the meetup. Unfortunately I'm out of town for this one, but interested in future (I often need prodding because I either miss hearing about it or forget). The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:09, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Transcriptomics technologies

The article Transcriptomics technologies you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Transcriptomics technologies 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 Stigmatella aurantiaca -- Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 09:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Transcriptomics technologies has been nominated for Did You Know

Hello, Evolution and evolvability. Transcriptomics technologies, an article you either created or to which you significantly contributed,has been nominated to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page as part of Did you know. You can see the hook and the discussion here. You are welcome to participate! Thank you. APersonBot (talk!) 12:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

wow

your talk page is bit intimidating :) - a standard WP:MOS is to not add ext links in see also sections - not sure why there is a need to do so

The heading which you are adding links to has the title other wiki clubs and then adding ext links to things that are not ... JarrahTree 01:45, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Also the facebook page is external to the main points of contact - for most JarrahTree 01:46, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:Ah yes, good point. I feel that there should be some link to getback to WMAU from these sorts of events, since I've found many people were unaware of its existance, even though it'd make sense as a hub. Perhaps an Ext links section, or even some sort of small template? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:53, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Stick to the WP:MOS and what exists - I do not think the facebook page is a wise point of contact, nor do I think adding at the bottom of a page about an event.

If people do not know, it might be better to have an A5 pamphlet format about wmau and items about membership/what it does/etc

If you are interested in creating a template - try formulating one that links either the web page, and even better - run it past the committee - wikiclubs may not necessarily be the best point of contact.

Wiki club west has grappled with the issue during events last year - one small problem with the dispersed nature of the wmau spread, sometimes things arent always centralised for adequate usage by each state/club JarrahTree 02:04, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Certainly a pamphlet at the event is useful, but an example is this: I came across the Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide long before I ever knew about WMAU. I never attended because I was in a different state and couldn't find a Melbourne meetup at the time. It took me two years to hear that WMAU even existed. I'll have a go at mocking up a template though and run it past the WMAU committee. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:18, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

good points - even before the committee you are welcome to simply show it here - for any feedback (if you are interested in sharing in open wiki space) - I for one would be interested to see any ideas...

the absence of conciousness of the wmau at a number of levels has beset the organisation for some years now - part of it is due to the role it has - tricky position of what it is and its scope. JarrahTree 02:31, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

ok - looks good JarrahTree 13:13, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2017 Cure Award

In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 02:59, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

so you updating the invite tags on the various meetup projects then ?

Most local meetup editors leave off project tags and date categories and things, its a slow catchup ... JarrahTree 10:56, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Thanks! Any other ideas for how to improve the template? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion there has to be a direct link between the meta/wp en/wmau website - so as to reinforce ease of information, and no discontinuities that require a notifier to have to make four to five set of entries to establish what is going on - some just put at wmau website only - and dont bother to make links to anything else - personally I would like very definite links with fb wmau and even fb wiki club west - but hey thats me... JarrahTree 11:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide/Invite

Over a hundred pages link to Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide/Invite, and expect it to be the height of a ubx. Your change is about 3 times that height. It completely messes up the layout of my talk page, and probably messes up the format of over a hundred other pages, too. Pdfpdf (talk) 11:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@Pdfpdf: Good point. I'll reduce the height down of {{Wikimedia_Australia_event}}. Any other ideas to improve it? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 11:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding (and being) rude, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Before I can give you a more useful (and polite) response, three questions:

• What is it that you are trying to achieve?
• What is it that you are trying to achieve that the existing/previous box(es) doesn't/didn't already achieve?
• What did the previous boxes look like? Were they all similar, or did they vary widely from location to location?

Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Sunshine, me Adelaide sunshine - most events/state/things dont link very well to get an overall picture for whats up in any given pocket of infestation of wp editors - this is part of trying to be able to link stuff (my version of the story anyways) JarrahTree 11:57, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

(Mutter, mutter. Bloody sandgropers. Mutter, mutter. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:50, 27 April 2018 (UTC)  ;-)

@Pdfpdf: It's definitely valid to ask what the template is aiming to achieve. I'm trying to make it easier for people who find Australian meetup pages to navigate between them and WMAU. It's often very fragmented (e.g. navigating from Brisbane's Qwiki to Wikipedia:Meetup/Perth). I made the template because I came across the Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide long before I ever knew about WMAU. I never attended because I was in a different state and couldn't find a Melbourne meetup at the time. It took me two years to hear that WMAU even existed! The way I am hoping this template will improve on the previous is allowing a unified addition of relevant WMAU links, and be easily usable on edithon, meetup, GLAM etc events. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 12:21, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Mmmm. Interesting. I'm not sure, but I'm wondering if the old template was just doing one thing, and now you're trying to make it do a number of things, and all those things just won't fit into one ubx-sized thingy? (In other words, in the case of the Adelaide example, maybe the "Adelaide Meetup" label at the top of the ubx should point to a page that has the info you're mentioning, rather than to the Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide page?) Pdfpdf (talk) 12:50, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

By-the-way: I'm just one person. Perhaps you should try to drag some other editors into the conversation? Pdfpdf (talk) 12:50, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@Pdfpdf: good idea. I'll put up a few notices and see what people reckon. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 13:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

houston, we have a problem....

[4] - not sure whether there is a negotiable compromise, or whether its a horsemeat issue or not (um...) JarrahTree 12:09, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Actually, a useful example. Currently, only Perth is listed on the Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians'_notice_board because all the different cities use differently formatted templates. I can easily program in the correct behaviour to the {{Wikimedia Australia event}} template. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 12:30, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

thank heavens not a horseflesh issue then - hope it helps in that case JarrahTree 12:32, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

away from the gee gees, closer the bee gees - https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_in_higher_education/2013/University_of_Sydney - and the very weird and wonderful era where links between things like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Zootober_2010 - no need for current links, but the archival sense of things being here, there and everywhere really makes it for a nice stew JarrahTree 14:10, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

So what you did this am re Melbourne meetups - does that make it better for ....? - should all the other state/city meetup pages have that format as well in your opinion? JarrahTree 03:47, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Yea, having the format "WP:Meetup/City/Number" makes the templates easier-to-use and neater. I'll try to make the template able to also handle custom links (e.g. for meetups with non-numeric titles), but this way it should be easy to update and maintain. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 04:50, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Hangon - meetups and events are not necessarily glam - in some cases nothing to do with. The whole category thing which I have ad hoc moved through and made a mess will get very messy further if we equate glam with meetups JarrahTree 13:26, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Without pulling examples of the mess out:

• Wikimedia Australia
• Wikipedia events in Australia
• Wikipedia meetups in Australia
• Wikipedia GLAM in Australia

is what we are dealing with yes? JarrahTree 22:46, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: You're right, the equation was incorrect. Perhaps a better system is for "event" as the higher-level category that includes "Meetup" and "GLAM" categories. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I do not think that GLAM necessarily equates to 'events' at all circumstances - they can be ongoing ventures... JarrahTree 00:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

also even if it is a glam project - talk pages of project pages are always well insured if they have a project tag - but you are using the latrobe glam item as pseudo project pages as well? just interested to see whether project pages for glam in your view is part of a larger project page collection or not JarrahTree 07:04, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

DYK for Transcriptomics technologies

On 4 May 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Transcriptomics technologies, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that it is possible to simultaneously measure which genes are turned on in an organism using transcriptomics technologies? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Transcriptomics technologies. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Transcriptomics technologies), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Gatoclass (talk) 00:02, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

headsup

Just about to nationalise/separate AU and NZ in https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Meetup_Box&action=edit. might need to run it pass you if i get the markup mixed up :). JarrahTree 12:30, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

actually forgotten how to factor in sub groups - you any good at that? JarrahTree 12:32, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Asia needs a cleanup - after Bali ESEAP conference last weekend SEA needs to be identified clearl under the asia part JarrahTree 12:37, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

It would be good to know if you can help - ta JarrahTree 12:42, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

reverted self - need to go back to templates that I was working on some years ago and check - as the whole asia/middle east/oceania structure needs to be rebuilt, sigh JarrahTree 12:47, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: kapow - done!

re Oz and kiwi - great and thank you very much for that - any chance of asia and elsewhere as well :). JarrahTree 13:09, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Do you reckon also merge in the current Malaysia and Philippines subsections in to a SEA section, or keep them separate from 'other SEA'? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 13:28, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

sorry about delayed reply just got distracted by another wiki world (a long lost sheep returned to source after years off) - yes - what I was trying to indicate. was South East Asia need to be in - and Middle east needs to be created for dubai... etc. - as found it was a mess - a good cleanup is needed imho JarrahTree 13:54, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: I've had a go. Please correct if I've screwed up my geography! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:18, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

tah - I am sure youre just as geographicallychalleneged as other melbournians :) - will check later - what got me fussed was the fitting everything in tasmanian template boxes - it seems like too long since I was playing with them JarrahTree

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018 ScienceSource funded Extended content The Wikimedia Foundation announced full funding of the ScienceSource grant proposal from ContentMine on May 18. See the ScienceSource Twitter announcement and 60 second video. A medical canon? The proposal includes downloading 30,000 open access papers, aiming (roughly speaking) to create a baseline for medical referencing on Wikipedia. It leaves open the question of how these are to be chosen. The basic criteria of WP:MEDRS include a concentration on secondary literature. Attention has to be given to the long tail of diseases that receive less current research. The MEDRS guideline supposes that edge cases will have to be handled, and the premature exclusion of publications that would be in those marginal positions would reduce the value of the collection. Prophylaxis misses the point that gate-keeping will be done by an algorithm. Two well-known but rather different areas where such considerations apply are tropical diseases and alternative medicine. There are also a number of potential downloading troubles, and these were mentioned in Issue 11. There is likely to be a gap, even with the guideline, between conditions taken to be necessary but not sufficient, and conditions sufficient but not necessary, for candidate papers to be included. With around 10,000 recognised medical conditions in standard lists, being comprehensive is demanding. With all of these aspects of the task, ScienceSource will seek community help. Links OpenRefine logo, courtesy of Google d:Wikidata:Lexicographical data, Wikidata's multi-lingual dictionary project gets going Ordia tool, a basic search interface for Wikidata lexemes and forms OpenRefine tool 3.0, May update allows wrangling of tabular information into Wikidata d:Wikidata:WikiProject British Politicians pushes ahead with data modelling and imports #1Lib1Ref Returns for a Second Time in 2018, IFLA blogpost 25 May 2018, second chance this year to participate in referencing Wikipedia To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below. Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here. Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM. ScienceSource pages will be announced there, and in this mass message. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks!

		The Original Barnstar
		Thanks so much for getting us all editing at Shut Up and Wiki Fridays! Loztron (talk) 03:15, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Exampledraft

Hello, Evolution and evolvability. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Exampledraft".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. » Shadowowl | talk 16:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Shadowowl: Thanks for the notice, however this is an example page only (used for {{preloaddraft}}). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:12, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

someone didnt tell you?

Some of the people you have been spamming about the meetup are neither melbourne residents no anywhere near it - suprised someone hasnt alerted you to that JarrahTree 04:07, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Was there a discussion somehere I missed? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 04:15, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

john van de b lives in Indonesia, orderinchaos last we heard lives in perth... not a discussion, just local knowledge. so to speak JarrahTree 04:32, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: Ah, I see. Could you remove those you know not to be in Melbourne from the Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne#Participants list and notifying anyone removed? It might also be worth similarly removing those who've not edited Wikipedia in the last 5 years or something. Otherwise, I'll do some tomorrow. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 04:42, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

The idea of checking all oz eds re the same is interesting... 5 years too long - 1 to 1 and a half years more likely

I have one hell of a coughing lurgie, short term issues - will be checking all state projects for known non participants in the next week or so anyways for an end of year audit of self identifying eds... JarrahTree 04:47, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Query

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the academic review process. Currently, I’m preparing the U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve article for an A-Class nomination - so I’ll decline for now. Perhaps I can later, if the opportunity to do so is still at hand.

Pendright (talk) 20:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@Pendright: No problem, the hope is that the WikiJournals will run continuously, so they expect to welcome contributors for the foreseeable future. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:53, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. Respecting MEDRS Extended content Facto Post enters its second year, with a Cambridge Blue (OK, Aquamarine) background, a new logo, but no Cambridge blues. On-topic for the ScienceSource project is a project page here. It contains some case studies on how the WP:MEDRS guideline, for the referencing of articles at all related to human health, is applied in typical discussions. Close to home also, a template, called {{medrs}} for short, is used to express dissatisfaction with particular references. Technology can help with patrolling, and this Petscan query finds over 450 articles where there is at least one use of the template. Of course the template is merely suggesting there is a possible issue with the reliability of a reference. Deciding the truth of the allegation is another matter. This maintenance issue is one example of where ScienceSource aims to help. Where the reference is to a scientific paper, its type of algorithm could give a pass/fail opinion on such references. It could assist patrollers of medical articles, therefore, with the templated references and more generally. There may be more to proper referencing than that, indeed: context, quite what the statement supported by the reference expresses, prominence and weight. For that kind of consideration, case studies can help. But an algorithm might help to clear the backlog. Evidence pyramid leading up to clinical guidelines, from WP:MEDRS Links World Cup scorers bubble chart, by the league in which they play, query run on Wikidata Timeline of discoveries of natural satellites in the solar system, query run on Wikidata 4800 Welsh portraits added to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, National Library of Wales blogpost 27 June 2018, by Jason.nlw The "deaditors" of Wikipedia, Hay Kranen blogpost, 15 June 2018 Six dimensions of open access, polemical tweet, 17 June 2018 If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:19, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

The WikiJournal of Science article on dioxins

Thanks for contacting me and asking a review on dioxins. In principle yes, but I have two questions. What would be timing and what would be the length of the article. I recently finalized a textbook chapter on the same topic of about 10,000 words which probably would be excessive. Writing a short version would probably take a couple of months. Viinamakelainen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viinamakelainen (talk • contribs) 21:06, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

@Viinamakelainen: Hi, article lengths in WikiJournals are very flexible. They've published anywhere between 600 words (example) all the way up to 11,000. For articles that already have information in Wikipedia, the best way is to begin updating the relevant page on Wikipedia. When you feel that the article is ready for external peer review, you can copy it over to the journal's preprint server and submit an authorship declaration form. The journal editors will then contact potential expert peer reviewers to get external feedback on the content. Finally, after the authors have addressed any reviewer comments and criticisms, the article is published as a stable version of record, assigned a DOI and indexed. Any edits are then re-integrated into Wikipedia where the article can continue to evolve in the normal way. As for time-scale, I think that any time in the next 3 months would be ideal, which would give the possibility of getting its peer review organised before the end of 2018. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 04:06, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Genetic Engineering

Hi Thomas. I am working on cleaning up the genetic engineering articles and at the moment focusing on the techniques. There seems to be a spread of articles that essentially cover the same methods. A while ago I, rather poorly, merged Genome editing and Genome engineering. Just recently I redirected Transgenesis to gene delivery. Most of my recent activity has been at Genetic engineering techniques where I am hoping to get that up to a decent standard and then narrow the focus down to the main articles linked there. Anyway I see you pop up on the talk pages now and again and wondered if you knew of any other articles that need work in this area. I have not been involved in science for a number of years so my personal knowledge is a bit out of date and when I was I was almost exclusively involved with plants. I will try and do what I can to make these more presentable though, but will take no offense if someone more knowledgeable changes them. My current conundrum is what to do about Gene targeting. It seems like a nicer out-of-date version of genome editing and I am tempted to merge the two and make it a better organised overview article for CRISPR, TALANS and the other related nucleases. Any thoughts would be appreciated. AIRcorn (talk) 08:05, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@Aircorn: Great work so far! It's been in need of improvement for ages (especially that merger) and I'm glad to see someone tackling it. The relevant section of Homologous_recombination#Technological_applications is similarly in need of an update. I'm inclined to agree that gene targeting mostly refers to the older pre-TALEN/CRISPR methods of genome editing, so could sensibly be merged into the first section of that article. On a related, but separate track, Genetically_modified_organism has a lot of good info but the sections are of pretty inconsistent quality and depth. Absolutely keep up the good work! I might try to make a few relevant diagrams at some point, but that could end up a big job... T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 13:08, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I will just keep boldly doing what I am doing. I am taking a top down approach at the moment and aiming to get the articles somewhere between a B and GA class. Basically it is a lot of merging and filling in gaps. I hadn't thought about homologous recombination so thanks for bringing it to my attention. As for the GMO article, it has been on my radar and I have been building up the motivation to tackle it. I am not sure what scope it should take as we could end up easily repeating much of the information in the Genetic engineering article. I am thinking it would be best to have a few of the same sections about history and mechanism and then be a psuedo list of the different GMOs. It is a problem I have run into before at GM crops vs GM plants where there is a lot of crossover. I see Chiswick Chap has redirected Genetic engineering in science fiction‎ to a much better article, which elagently solved another area in this topic I had dipped my toe into and then decided it was too much work to fix at this time. As always feel free to revert or comment if you feel anything I am doing in this area is dterimental or could be done better. AIRcorn (talk) 11:29, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. Plugging the gaps – Wikimania report Extended content Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources. Hackathon mentoring table wiring Facto Post interviewed Jdforrester, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume. If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online". Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon Links ScienceSource focus list (shortcut WD:SSFL on Wikidata), project to tag a first-pass open access medical bibliography on Wikidata, and also overcome the systematic biases in the medical literature by curation. Wikimedia Foundation and Kiwix partner to grow offline access to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation blogpost 18 July 2018. Wikipedia's upcoming Cape Town conference will tackle the issue of diversity, Jamie Matroos, 2 July 2018. VideoWiki, a video version of Wikipedia. Search Full-Text within 4M+ Books, by MEK, The Open Library Blog, 14 July 2018 More than 5,000 German scientists have published papers in pseudo-scientific journals, NDR, 19 July 2018. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournals

Hi there! I remember seeing your post at Volcanoguy's talk page about the WikiJournal of Science. If we wanted to submit articles we've worked on, how would we go about doing that? I've written a good amount of earthquake and volcano articles (see here), and I was wondering if some of the more well-known articles might be worth editing to fit your submission format. I would also be happy to discuss over email; feel free to shoot me one. Best, ceranthor 13:57, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

@Ceranthor: Hi, I'm happy to talk here. The scope of the journal is pretty broad. Although there has not yet been a submission on a particular location or event, there is no reason why an article on a location or event could not be submitted (though I will check the opinion of the rest of the editors). Did you have a particular article in mind? The way articles are submitted is a little similar to submitting for FA nomination, except that the article needs to be copied over to the journal submission page, and a submission form filled in. The journal would then contact external experts to provide feedback, comments and recommendations (example). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 09:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I was thinking about submitting some of the FA level volcano articles I've written. I'll have to do a bit more reading before I consider submitting, but I appreciate your help! ceranthor 17:00, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Peer review newsletter #1

Introduction

Hello to all! I do not intend to write a regular peer review newsletter but there does occasionally come a time when those interested in contributing to peer review should be contacted, and now is one. I've mailed this out to everyone on the peer review volunteers list, and some editors that have contributed to past discussions. Apologies if I've left you off or contacted you and you didn't want it. Next time there is a newsletter / mass message it will be opt in (here), I'll talk about this below - but first:

• THANK YOU! I want to thank you for your contributions and for volunteering on the list to help out at peer review. Thank you!
• Peer review is useful! It's good to have an active peer review process. This is often the way that we help new or developing editors understand our ways, and improve the quality of their editing - so it fills an important and necessary gap between the teahouse (kindly introduction to our Wikiways) and GA and FA reviews (specific standards uphelp according to a set of quality criteria). And we should try and improve this process where possible (automate, simplify) so it can be used and maintained easily.

Updates

It can get quite lonely tinkering with peer review...

With a bit of effort we can renovate the place to look like this!

Update #1: the peer review volunteers list is changing

The list is here in case you've forgotten: WP:PRV. Kadane has kindly offered to create a bot that will ping editors on the volunteers list with unanswered reviews in their chosen subject areas every so often. You can choose the time interval by changing the "contact" parameter. Options are "never", "monthly", "quarterly", "halfyearly", and "annually". For example:

• {{PRV|JohnSmith|History of engineering|contact=monthly}} - if placed in the "History" section, JohnSmith will receive an automatic update every month about unanswered peer reviews relating to history.
• {{PRV|JaneSmith|Mesopotamian geography, Norwegian fjords|contact=annually}} - if placed in the "Geography" section, JaneSmith will receive an automatic update every yearly about unanswered peer reviews in the geography area.

We can at this stage only use the broad peer review section titles to guide what reviews you'd like, but that's better than nothing! You can also set an interest in multiple separate subject areas that will be updated at different times.

Update #2: a (lean) WikiProject Peer review

I don't think we need a WikiProject with a giant bureaucracy nor all sorts of whiz-bang features. However over the last few years I've found there are times when it would have been useful to have a list of editors that would like to contribute to discussions about the peer review process (e.g. instructions, layout, automation, simplification etc.). Also, it can get kind of lonely on the talk page as I am (correct me if I'm wrong) the only regular contributor, with most editors moving on after 6 - 12 months.

So, I've decided to create "WikiProject Peer review". If you'd like to contribute to the WikiProject, or make yourself available for future newsletters or contact, please add yourself to the list of members.

Update #3: advertising

We plan to do some advertising of peer review, to let editors know about it and how to volunteer to help, at a couple of different venues (Signpost, Village pump, Teahouse etc.) - but have been waiting until we get this bot + WikiProject set up so we have a way to help interested editors make more enduring contributions. So consider yourself forewarned!

And... that's it!

I wish you all well on your Wikivoyages, Tom (LT) (talk) 00:31, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. Neglected diseases Extended content Anti-parasitic drugs being distributed in Côte d'Ivoire What's a Neglected Disease?, ScienceSource video To grasp the nettle, there are rare diseases, there are tropical diseases and then there are "neglected diseases". Evidently a rare enough disease is likely to be neglected, but neglected disease these days means a disease not rare, but tropical, and most often infectious or parasitic. Rare diseases as a group are dominated, in contrast, by genetic diseases. A major aspect of neglect is found in tracking drug discovery. Orphan drugs are those developed to treat rare diseases (rare enough not to have market-driven research), but there is some overlap in practice with the WHO's neglected diseases, where snakebite, a "neglected public health issue", is on the list. From an encyclopedic point of view, lack of research also may mean lack of high-quality references: the core medical literature differs from primary research, since it operates by aggregating trials. This bibliographic deficit clearly hinders Wikipedia's mission. The ScienceSource project is currently addressing this issue, on Wikidata. Its Wikidata focus list at WD:SSFL is trying to ensure that neglect does not turn into bias in its selection of science papers. Links Wikipedia, Wikidata, and citations, a census, August 2 2018, blogpost by Magnus Manske The rise of Wikidata as a linked data source August 6, 2018, by Karen Smith-Yoshimura on OCLC Research blog Where do Mayors Come From: Querying Wikidata with Python and SPARQL, August 1 2018, Parametric Thoughts blog Newspapers On Wikipedia Update: Initial Wikidata Pass 9 August 2018, Mike Caulfield Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: a systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories Alberto Martín-Martín, Enrique Orduna-Malea, Mike Thelwall, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, arxiv.org, submitted on 15 August 2018 If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

PlaMatSu workshop (biomimicry)

I will put your name as one of the people willing to help on the page for the workshop your expressed interest for. Feel free to remove it, if you do not want it!--Flor WMCH (talk) 09:21, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@Flor WMCH: Excellent, thank you! Happy to help out. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 09:36, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Bio-inspiration article

Hello! I worked with User:Chemicus73 and User:HaNeuChae on the article Bio-inspiration. We were a bit in a rush for time, and it needs to be wikified. Can you help on this one? Thanks a lot!--Flor WMCH (talk) 14:03, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't know what your connection is with Bio-inspiration but it's a mess - existing Bioinspiration has been copied and pasted into a sandbox, modified, and then a duplicate article created at variant title (with hyphen). Really bad practice. I've left at note at User talk:Flor WMCH. PamD 16:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@PamD: Thanks for letting me know. I'll sort out the merge and redirect this evening. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 03:42, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 16 – 30 September 2018

Facto Post – Issue 16 – 30 September 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. The science publishing landscape Extended content In an ideal world ... no, bear with your editor for just a minute ... there would be a format for scientific publishing online that was as much a standard as SI units are for the content. Likewise cataloguing publications would not be onerous, because part of the process would be to generate uniform metadata. Without claiming it could be the mythical free lunch, it might be reasonably be argued that sandwiches can be packaged much alike and have barcodes, whatever the fillings. The best on offer, to stretch the metaphor, is the meal kit option, in the form of XML. Where scientific papers are delivered as XML downloads, you get all the ingredients ready to cook. But have to prepare the actual meal of slow food yourself. See Scholarly HTML for a recent pass at heading off XML with HTML, in other words in the native language of the Web. The argument from real life is a traditional mixture of frictional forces, vested interests, and the classic irony of the principle of unripe time. On the other hand, discoverability actually diminishes with the prolific progress of science publishing. No, it really doesn't scale. Wikimedia as movement can do something in such cases. We know from open access, we grok the Web, we have our own horse in the HTML race, we have Wikidata and WikiJournal, and we have the chops to act. Links ImageGrid SPARQL query for the Art+Feminism focus list on Wikidata. Run and then scroll ... The TABernacle tool for Wikidata editing, by Magnus Manske, has been upgraded. Demo with the ScienceSource focus list and main subjects: with a WiDar login you can edit directly in the table cells. Enslaved: People of the Historic Slave Trade, Michigan State University project for a linked open data platform. Quote: "Disambiguating and merging individuals across multiple datasets is nearly impossible given their current, siloed nature." As the Linked Data for Production (LD4P) project finishes its initial two-year cycle and moves into LD4P2, a list of its BIBFRAME and other RDF tools. Machine Learning with and for Semantic Web Knowledge Graphs, detailed slide pack by Heiko Paulheim, University of Mannheim. In Europe, Scientists Need to Share Their Research for Free if They Want Government Funding, Futurism, by Kristin House, 5 September 2018. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:57, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Melanocortin_1_receptor_Asp294His merge proposal

Evolution and evolvability I was going to weigh in that I agreed with your suggestion to merge the SNP page here Melanocortin_1_receptor_Asp294His into here Melanocortin_1_receptor. But I wanted to look at the history on the page first, to try and figure out why it was created in the first place, and why there's effectively no information on it. And now I'm quite confused. Since you actually are a biologist, and might understand his reasoning, could you take a look at this entry on the Talk page of the user who created the page and let me know what you think? User_talk:Fnielsen#SNPs_-_going_too_far?

My inclination is to say, "Pages about genes are not the same thing as pages about individual nucleotides within a gene, unless they are independently notable, so why would anyone want to look up a basically empty page about an individual nucleotide on Wikipedia?" And I did a Google search too, and found no mentions of the peptide in any capacity that would mean it had a reason for its own individual article. But I am, at best, an amateur medical researcher. And it's entirely possible that what he's saying would make more sense to someone who has your level of expertise in both genetics and Wiki-editing. Thanks in advance for any input. CleverTitania (talk) 00:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

@CleverTitania: Thanks for the link to that conversation! I'd not seen it. There was also a discussion around the same time in wikiproject genetics (here). There are certainly some SNPs that are famous enough to warrant their own pages, but my instinct is to merge them into the parent gene article until there is enough info written to warrant a split. E.g. Factor_V_Leiden and Prothrombin_G20210A have separate pages, but most others SNPs are just sections of their parent gene article. Inded, that particular SNP is only one of several mutations that lead to similar phenotypes. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:00, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

References

Facto Post – Issue 17 – 29 October 2018

Facto Post – Issue 17 – 29 October 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. Wikidata imaged Extended content Around 2.7 million Wikidata items have an illustrative image. These files, you might say, are Wikimedia's stock images, and if the number is large, it is still only 5% or so of items that have one. All such images are taken from Wikimedia Commons, which has 50 million media files. One key issue is how to expand the stock. Indeed, there is a tool. WD-FIST exploits the fact that each Wikipedia is differently illustrated, mostly with images from Commons but also with fair use images. An item that has sitelinks but no illustrative image can be tested to see if the linked wikis have a suitable one. This works well for a volunteer who wants to add images at a reasonable scale, and a small amount of SPARQL knowledge goes a long way in producing checklists. Gran Teatro, Cáceres, Spain, at night It should be noted, though, that there are currently 53 Wikidata properties that link to Commons, of which P18 for the basic image is just one. WD-FIST prompts the user to add signatures, plaques, pictures of graves and so on. There are a couple of hundred monograms, mostly of historical figures, and this query allows you to view all of them. commons:Category:Monograms and its subcategories provide rich scope for adding more. And so it is generally. The list of properties linking to Commons does contain a few that concern video and audio files, and rather more for maps. But it contains gems such as P3451 for "nighttime view". Over 1000 of those on Wikidata, but as for so much else, there could be yet more. Go on. Today is Wikidata's birthday. An illustrative image is always an acceptable gift, so why not add one? You can follow these easy steps: (i) log in at https://tools.wmflabs.org/widar/, (ii) paste the Petscan ID 6263583 into https://tools.wmflabs.org/fist/wdfist/ and click run, and (iii) just add cake. Birthday logo Links Now Wikidata is six, Signpost Special Report Find out how @TheContentMine are attempting to mine scientific and medical literature to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia., Wikimedia UK tweet and video ScienceSource and the Semantic Web sciencesource-pmc-licenses tool by Oravrattas to extract Creative Commons license information from PubMed Central pages, created at the Cambridge Wikidata Workshop Whizzy use of SPARQL to map the London Underground system, whizzed past on Twitter. Wikidata birthday events mapped by SPARQL, too d:Wikidata:Sixth Birthday/Message from dev team If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

submission

have filled out the submission form for all 3 articles, and have finished w/ Template:Fig/images in Dyslexia and Hepatitis( will take the rest of day doing images for West African Ebola virus outbreak), thanks (BTW I filled in my email in the authorship declaration form, but left it blank in the article info). --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

"Are there any work/study affiliations for you to add?" (email)...do I need to?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: No it's not a requirement I don't think. Although WikiJMed has put affiliations for all authors previously, WikiJSci has published articles by people with no affiliation before. In my opinion it's useful to include the information if possible (e.g. institutions often gather up the metadata to justify their funding) but I there's no strict guidelines on the topic from the ICMJE or COPE that I can find. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

if its not a requirement Ill forgo it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

• The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
• The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
• The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [5]

Let's work together

• The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
• The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Evolution and evolvability. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Lysine

Hey. Can I ask why, on June 9th, you deleted the Dietary Sources section from Lysine ? The edit even includes a wikilink to the deleted section, if I'm not misreading. https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Lysine&type=revision&diff=845194474&oldid=845194340 jholman (talk) 06:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

@JHolman: Thanks - I don't think I meant to do that! I was intending to add extra information and only replace sections that had clear equivalents in the source article. I've placed it back as a subsection of the 'Nutritional value' heading. Feel free to move it if you think it's more logically placed in a different section. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 06:42, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. It looks great! jholman (talk) 07:22, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Intro to solution

Template:Intro to solution has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 15:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 18 – 30 November 2018

Facto Post – Issue 18 – 30 November 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. WikiCite issue Extended content GLAM ♥ data — what is a gallery, library, archive or museum without a catalogue? It follows that Wikidata must love librarians. Bibliography supports students and researchers in any topic, but open and machine-readable bibliographic data even more so, outside the silo. Cue the WikiCite initiative, which was meeting in conference this week, in the Bay Area of California. Wikidata training for librarians at WikiCite 2018 In fact there is a broad scope: "Open Knowledge Maps via SPARQL" and the "Sum of All Welsh Literature", identification of research outputs, Library.Link Network and Bibframe 2.0, OSCAR and LUCINDA (who they?), OCLC and Scholia, all these co-exist on the agenda. Certainly more library science is coming Wikidata's way. That poses the question about the other direction: is more Wikimedia technology advancing on libraries? Good point. Wikimedians generally are not aware of the tech background that can be assumed, unless they are close to current training for librarians. A baseline definition is useful here: "bash, git and OpenRefine". Compare and contrast with pywikibot, GitHub and mix'n'match. Translation: scripting for automation, version control, data set matching and wrangling in the large, are on the agenda also for contemporary library work. Certainly there is some possible common ground here. Time to understand rather more about the motivations that operate in the library sector. Links Wikidata and Libraries: Facilitating Open Knowledge, book chapter by Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, metadata librarian and Lydia Pintscher, Wikidata Product Manager, from Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge (2018) LD4P and WikiCite: Opportunities for collaboration, WikiCite 2018 program abstract, Christine Fernsebner Eslao of Harvard Library Information and Technical Services and Michelle Futornick, Linked Data for Production Program Manager at Stanford University Shell Lessons for Librarians, Library Carpentry lesson At-risk content on Flickr, blogpost 3 November 2018, Andrew Gray Toward an Abstract Wikipedia, recent white paper by Wikidata founder Denny Vrandečić (Google) Account creation is now open on the ScienceSource wiki, where you can see SPARQL visualisations of text mining. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Merry Xmas

Extended content

Merry Cristmas everybody!!! "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Luke 2:10-11 (King James Version) Ozzie10aaaa (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas. This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove. Spread the cheer by adding {{Subst:Xmas4}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:02, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 19 – 27 December 2018

Facto Post – Issue 19 – 27 December 2018 The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page. To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer. Back numbers are here. Learning from Zotero Extended content Zotero is free software for reference management by the Center for History and New Media: see Wikipedia:Citing sources with Zotero. It is also an active user community, and has broad-based language support. Zotero logo Besides the handiness of Zotero's warehousing of personal citation collections, the Zotero translator underlies the citoid service, at work behind the VisualEditor. Metadata from Wikidata can be imported into Zotero; and in the other direction the zotkat tool from the University of Mannheim allows Zotero bibliographies to be exported to Wikidata, by item creation. With an extra feature to add statements, that route could lead to much development of the focus list (P5008) tagging on Wikidata, by WikiProjects. Zotero demo video There is also a large-scale encyclopedic dimension here. The construction of Zotero translators is one facet of Web scraping that has a strong community and open source basis. In that it resembles the less formal mix'n'match import community, and growing networks around other approaches that can integrate datasets into Wikidata, such as the use of OpenRefine. Looking ahead, the thirtieth birthday of the World Wide Web falls in 2019, and yet the ambition to make webpages routinely readable by machines can still seem an ever-retreating mirage. Wikidata should not only be helping Wikimedia integrate its projects, an ongoing process represented by Structured Data on Commons and lexemes. It should also be acting as a catalyst to bring scraping in from the cold, with institutional strengths as well as resourceful code. Links Zotero Comes to Google Docs, Zotero blogpost by Dan Stillman, 19 October 2018. Category:Wikipedians who use Zotero T115158 Write a Zotero translator and document process for creating new Zotero translator and getting it live in production, long Phabricator thread 2015–17. Zotero Translators, documentation from zotero.org. Home page on GitHub for Zotero translator Javascript Example translator, for Wikisource. m:Structured Data on Commons/Newsletter/2018-12-07 Diversitech, the latest ContentMine grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation, is in its community review stage until January 2. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:08, 27 December 2018 (UTC)