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Welcome!

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Hi Sdkb - the previous decision to redirect (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Student Life) was made because there was a lack of demonstrated notability of the subject. This would have to be shown in the form of in-depth coverage by multiple independent 3rd party sources. Your edits since then have done nothing to address this. Consider that if such coverage does not exist, then no amount of article content can make the topic eligible. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:18, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, Elmidae! I added tons of sources to the article, so that almost all claims are now cited (the few that aren't are marked as "citation needed"). Regarding notability (WP:NOTE), the article now includes two citations (an L.A. Times feature on TSL's sex column and an article by Fox News about TSL's decision to offer a space for minority students) that are full-length feature articles in a national media outlet specifically focusing on TSL itself (as opposed to just its reporting). If that doesn't qualify as "in-depth coverage by multiple independent 3rd party sources," I'm not sure what would. The article at this point is more thoroughly cited/contains more third-party references than that of The Harvard Crimson. — Sdkb (talk) 01:58, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Nice job! I think it would pass muster now if the AfD was repeated (not my place to say, but educated guess :). Thanks for your efforts! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:56, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Claremont McKenna College

When you add a group to a navigation box such as {{Claremont McKenna College}}, make sure that the group numbers alternate correctly between even and odd numbers. --Jax 0677 (talk) 12:58, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I fixed it; thanks! - Sdkb (talk) 19:54, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Ways to improve Claremont Courier

Hi, I'm SkyGazer 512. Sdkb, thanks for creating Claremont Courier!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Thank you for creating this article! Currently the article only sources the Claremont Courier's website. Could you add some reliable, secondary sources to show that this meets our general notability guideline?

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 16:00, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi SkyGazer 512, and thanks for the edits! I don't have the expertise to expand the article much beyond its current state, but hopefully some other editors can. Regarding notability, there should be no question that the Courier qualifies. It meets criteria 1-4 for newspapers at WP:NMEDIA, any one of which would be sufficient to establish notability. I added an external reference to better establish criteria 1 and removed the tag. - Sdkb (talk) 21:52, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much! You are indeed correct. I originally tagged it for notability because the only sources were to the website and therefore primary. WP:NMAG states that even if an article meet any of those 4 criteria, it has to have reliable sources proving that the information is accurate; per WP:Identifying reliable sources, reliable sources should be secondary sources, not usually the subject's website. However, the source you added seems reliable and independent enough to meet the notability guidelines; therefore, you were correct to remove the tag. Thanks again and let me know if you have any questions! Cheers, --SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 00:07, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

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Ways to improve Country Dance and Song Society

Hi, I'm Gab4gab. Sdkb, thanks for creating Country Dance and Song Society!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Current sources, which are not independent, do not show that this organization is notable. Without significant coverage by independent reliable sources the article is likely to be deleted

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

Gab4gab (talk) 23:51, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Your thread has been archived

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GABgab 17:23, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Women in Red

Hi there Sdkb, and welcome to Women in Red. If you are interested in writing new articles about women, you might like to look through our Ten Simple Rules. Please let me know if you run into any difficulties or need assistance. Happy editing!--Ipigott (talk) 08:19, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

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Notability for media. Claremont Courier

Please read WP:NMEDIA criteria which links to Wikipedia:Notability (periodicals). The award has to be national or international. This paper won a state award. I do not believe it meets criteria 1 and the sources do not show it meets the other criteria so I will be replacing the template. Please address the problem before removing the template again. Dom from Paris (talk) 20:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: It does say that periodicals is the main article, but that seems to refer more to academic journals, so I'm not sure it's accurate to say that that is the more relevant guide for notability; it seems better to use the guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (media), which is purposefully inclusive given that the media does not often report on itself. But if you're not sold on criterion 1 (as SkyGazer was above), it's easy to establish criterion 4, since the Courier is frequently cited by the L.A. Times, which is a reliable source. I added a reference to establish that and removed the tag. - Sdkb (talk) 03:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

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New page reviewer granted

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Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi Sdkb! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 07:44, Friday, November 23, 2018 (UTC)

Redirects are cheap

"Redirects are cheap" is a good response to someone arguing that a redirect is unnecessarily using up server resource (pretty much the reason why the essay was created). It is not a good argument to use against someone who is arguing that the substance of the redirect is unhelpful. As if I hadn't seen that essay before and needed it linked in ten years of contributing to AfD. SpinningSpark 14:23, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Still interested in contributing to The Signpost?

We have some content waiting for copyedit now. Just take a look at WP:NEWSROOM#Article status and look for a checkY next to "Ready for copyedit". I'd love to have you onboard! ☆ Bri (talk) 00:33, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

@Bri: Hi Bri! I went through the first week and made some copy edits; I might return for the later weeks if I have more time later and someone else hasn't gotten to it. Overall, I think the section might benefit a bit from some improvements to sentence structure to improve clarity (by fixing run-ons or fragments). - Sdkb (talk) 01:25, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Not a problem. Just so you know, drop-in editing is certainly as welcome as those who hang out at the Newsroom day in and day out. Feel free to make yourself available when it is convenient. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:32, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

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December 2018 at Women in Red

The WiR December editathons provide something for everyone.



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Hi Sdkb.

I recently made an edit to Londonderry NH that you saw and commented on. I have a question/concern about the statement "Londonderry was the second largest town in early colonial times" that is on that page. It is indicated as requiring clarification. I shall be adding additional information concerning the evolution of Londonderry, Derry, Windham etc. but I am unaware of any reference claiming it was the second largest town. In fact I am rather suspicious of that claim as it was initially about 100 square miles. Dunstable (became Nashua) was initially more that 200 square miles so plenty of scope for other towns between those two limits. None the less I'm uncomfortable just deleting that claim as I have no hard evidence.

Can you look over my next addition and make an adjustment as you see fit?

DavidEllis2 (talk) 16:11, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi @DavisEllis2: Given that the statement is already unclear (i.e. second largest town out of what?), I wouldn't be surprised if it was also inaccurate. From your edits, it seems like you know a lot about Londonderry's history, so I deferred to your inclination and took that out. If you run into similar situations in the future, go ahead and make the edits yourself; if you need encouragement, I'd suggest reading WP:BEBOLD. - Sdkb (talk) 00:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Jail movie

Hey sir, I just saw you added templates for not having correct informations in the Jail (upcoming movie), because I didn't finish the article clearly and you have added the templates. So if it's my mistake or any errors in the article could you reply me what it is.Thank you.rupa$$$ (talk) 12:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Rupalavanyan: it looks like others have since fixed the issues I identified, and the page is developing at Jail (upcoming film). Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello Sdkb,

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.


Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.


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Category:Wikipedian professional journalists has been nominated for discussion

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Oran Exposition has been accepted

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December 2018

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Jack Evans (D.C. politician); that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

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 Swarm  {talk}  23:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Swarm:Thanks for the heads up. I'm not sure I would characterize what's happening at that article as edit warring, as I only undid JohnInDC's reversion on the investigation update once and have been actively facilitating the discussion on the talk page on every matter where there is a current lack of consensus. If you're posting this just from glancing at the edit history, you may be conflating the investigation discussion with the parking discussion, which is completely separate — after JohnInDC reverted my edit on the latter, we both immediately moved to the talk page. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 05:49, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

File permission problem with File:G. Gabrielle Starr Portrait.jpg

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@Ronhjones: As I noted when I uploaded the file, it comes from the page on G. Gabrielle Starr's profile at Pomona College's website titled "for the media",[1] so the photo is explicitly being put there so that it can be used on other websites. Given those circumstances, if I made any mistakes in the licensing classification, please feel free to let me know and/or make a correction. If what Pomona has on their website isn't sufficient licensing to be able to use on Wikipedia, please also let me know and I can reach out to Pomona to request they fix the licensing. - Sdkb (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
We are not just Media. Everything we host is for full commercial re-use without payment - there is insufficient permission on that page to host on Wikipedia or Wikimedia - we need to ideally see a Creative Commons license, as all our images are here under irrevocable licenses (CC licenses we allow are CC-zero, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA). Once upon a time we use to have a "For Wikipedia use only", that was curtailed over ten years ago, and all those images were deleted as it was not in keeping with the purpose of the project. I will add that we do have some fair-use images, but not of "Living People". Also (if you can get permission) it's better to upload at commons, as it saves someone having to move the image later - and then you lose the ability to keep track of the image as you are no longer the uploader (although your user name is still on the page in the history section) - login details are the same at commons, and image placement is no different. Uploading here should be restricted to items that are not free in their home country. Ronhjones  (Talk) 20:14, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones: Ah, that makes sense. I was looking for something like a "for Wikipedia use only" category, but if that doesn't exist, it might not be feasible to host the photo until Pomona releases it under a specific license. Thanks for the clarification! - Sdkb (talk) 20:28, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

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Hello, Sdkb,

Welcome to Wikipedia! I edit here too, under the username SportingFlyer and it's nice to meet you :-)

I wanted to let you know that I’ve proposed an article that you started, Photofeeler, for deletion because it meets one of the relevant criterion.The particular issue can be located in the notice, that is now-visible at the top of the article.

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Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

SportingFlyer talk 09:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Sporting Flyer! That's a bit of a belated welcome to Wikipedia, given my 10-year editing history haha. I respectfully disagree with the PROD, for the reasons I noted on the page. Feel free to continue the discussion there if you still have concerns after taking a second look. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 09:42, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
@Sdkb: I think it's a standard boilerplate script template, I certainly didn't write it myself! I'll look at nominating it for deletion soon as it doesn't pass WP:NORG as the sourcing standard we have for organisations is high and the ones that are there don't meet it in my opinion, but if you think more sources exist or you want a chance to improve the article I'm happy to hold off for a bit. Thanks! SportingFlyer talk 09:46, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
@SportingFlyer: Could you clarify what aspects of the three news articles don't meet the WP:NORG standard? I'm not familiar with the standards there specifically, but I'd assume they don't supercede the GNG, and the three articles I provided seemed to pass the GNG, as they're all from independent outlets providing non-incidental coverage. There are about 250 Google News results for the site, so if there are specific things wrong with those sources, I could swap them out for others. - Sdkb (talk) 09:52, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
@Sdkb: WP:NORG is frequently interpreted as a "heightened" standard of WP:GNG. In terms of sources Alexa - not a reliable source for notability, but I don't think you were using it as such; Snapmunk - this one might be okay, but it may also be a sponsored blog post ("according to the company", and the article seems to use marketing materials); Good.is - has a H/T to Photofeeler, meaning this was likely a press release or non-independent coverage, and isn't significant coverage; KTLA - this one also might be okay. Maybe I was wrong to PROD it, but it's definitely borderline - are there any other quality sources out there? SportingFlyer talk 23:31, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
@SportingFlyer: Ah, all that makes sense. For other sources, there's this one. I can't get past the paywall on this one, but it looks like it might qualify. - Sdkb (talk) 00:09, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for the calculation of the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. See User:RonBot for info on how to not get these messages. RonBot (talk) 18:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Template the regulars

I saw your discussion, and have I got a template for you:

Whack!

You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

Ibadibam (talk) 21:18, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Hahaha that's perfect in multiple ways! Thanks! - Sdkb (talk) 21:23, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello Sdkb,

News
Discussions of interest
  • Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
  • {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
  • A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.
Reminders
  • NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
NPP Tools Report
  • Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
  • copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
  • The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
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--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Contra buddies?

Dear Sdkb,

You and I seem to be among the most active editors of the page on Contra dance, and, given the relatively small size of the contra community, I wonder if we know each other. I'm guessing from your other edits that you went to college in California, and, perhaps, still live there. I live in Maryland, and consider Glen Echo and Baltimore to be my home dances. I've gone to Flurry for the last 6 years, so we've probably been in the same line. Shall we dance? Paulmlieberman (talk) 00:47, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@Paulmlieberman: Perhaps we have! I'd love to continue building up the contra dance pages on Wikipedia — they have a lot of good content but also seem very 2008ish and could use an update. - Sdkb (talk) 02:13, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

User serial comma template

Hi,

Your edit to the User serial comma template have resulted in this happening when you invoke it using 'no':

A, B and CThis user prefers not to use the serial comma.


Could you please fix it?

Thanks, Gazamp (talk) 16:23, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Oops, thanks for letting me know; I'll take a look. - Sdkb (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing it so quickly. Gazamp (talk) 17:06, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Don't edit others' Talk page contributions

Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning. ElKevbo (talk) 00:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: I was editing a section heading to accurately depict the conversation taking place therein. In the guideline you link, the list of "examples of appropriately editing others' comments" includes the following: "Section headings: Because threads are shared by multiple editors (regardless how many have posted so far), no one, including the original poster, "owns" a talk page discussion or its heading. It is generally acceptable to change headings when a better heading is appropriate, e.g., one more descriptive of the content of the discussion or the issue discussed, less one-sided, more appropriate for accessibility reasons, etc." As I mentioned in my edit summary, if you have specific objections to the header I wrote, feel free to let me know or propose an alternative. - Sdkb (talk) 00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
The heading that was originally used is perfectly appropriate; if you want to open a different discussion, feel free to do so. ElKevbo (talk) 01:16, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
@ElKevbo: I would disgree, as it cuts out the crucial first part of the clause under discussion, and by so doing gives a misleading impression. - Sdkb (talk) 01:26, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello Sdkb,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

  • Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
  • Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News
Discussions of interest

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250


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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi

Hi. Would you mind enabling 'e-mail this user' please? Or e-mailing me.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Zigzig20s, I prefer not to use the email feature so as to keep Wikipedia as open as possible, but feel free to let me know what's on your mind. - Sdkb (talk) 18:19, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Leo Burnett Tailor Made for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Leo Burnett Tailor Made 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/Leo Burnett Tailor Made 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. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:09, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Thanks for making the article. I want all of your content kept but in the main company article. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:10, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: Thanks for the coffee! To clarify, I created the page as a redirect to the main page; the editor who turned it into an article is User:The Anome. I agree with you that it should be merged. - Sdkb (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Connected contributor tags for Wikipedia-related article talk pages

Hi Sdkb, I noticed that you placed a variant of the {{Connected contributor}} tag on these Wikipedia-related article talk pages:

While all Wikipedia editors are associated with Wikipedia, I don't think that merely being a Wikipedia user is strong enough of a connection to constitute a "general conflict of interest" as described in Template:Connected contributor/doc. This is the same reason that being a user of a social network, an owner of a product, and a citizen of a country don't count as conflicts of interest in the vast majority of cases. Would you consider removing the connected contributor tags from these talk pages? — Newslinger talk 08:38, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Newslinger! I agree with you that it's a bit of a fuzzy line. Per WP:EXTERNALREL, the exact strength of the connection needed for it to be an issue is left up to our judgement, but I wanted to err on the side of including the notice in these cases for a few reasons. (1) I think the connection many editors feel to Wikipedia is a little stronger than, say, your average Facebook user feels to Facebook. (2) Since this is a potential COI that applies so widely, there's greater risk to ignoring it. (3) I think many editors have what could be described as a pro-Wikipedia bias (see, for instance, some of the discussion recently around The North Face), and thus, it's important to have the NPOV policy top of mind, which is linked in the notice I added. (4) I can't really think of any real downside to having it there, even in the case that it's not urgently needed. Sdkb (talk) 21:22, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello Sdkb,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.


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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Rollback granted

Hi Sdkb. After reviewing your request for "rollbacker", I have enabled rollback on your account. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

  • Getting rollback is no more momentous than installing Twinkle.
  • Rollback should be used to revert clear cases of vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
  • Rollback should never be used to edit war.
  • If abused, rollback rights can be revoked.
  • Use common sense.

If you no longer want rollback, contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some more information on how to use rollback, see Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Rollback (even though you're not an admin). I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, but feel free to leave me a message on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of rollback. Thank you for helping to reduce vandalism. Happy editing! ~Swarm~ {sting} 03:32, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Regarding this edit summary, please be civil to editors who don't share your particular style of editing. When editors encounter unsourced content, some may wish to find sources for it, while others might tag or delete it. A consensus of editors have agreed that all three choices are acceptable. Please take a moment to read WP:SUMMARYNO. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:03, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi Magnolia677! The summary I used when reverting your edit reads as pretty lighthearted to me, but since it seems to have come off otherwise to you, I offer my apology. Regarding editing style, could you point me to the consensus for deleting content like you did? It was pretty clearly a constructive edit, and to immediately get rid of it rather than tagging it for a citation bit the newbie and would have prevented other editors from building on the content if I hadn't noticed (see WP:DONOTDEMOLISH). - Sdkb (talk) 16:14, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Please see WP:BURDEN. As for the Pie Day Festival, the IP editor who added it would have re-added it with a source once they noticed it had been deleted. This was the IP editors only edit, so clearly it was important to them. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:22, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Altes Rathaus

Thank you for reviewing the disambig Altes Rathaus I've created! Just a hint: it wasn't necessary to create the talk page, see Template:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Usage. --Cyfal (talk) 22:03, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, that's good to know; thanks! Sdkb (talk) 22:33, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Bar (disambiguation), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Crowbar (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:09, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019

Hello Sdkb,

Backlog

Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Coordinator

A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.

This month's refresher course

Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.

Paid editing

Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
  • Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
  • Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
  • A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools

Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.

Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.

Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.

DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello Sdkb,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 804 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.


To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed 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 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

About VA

Hi, Sdkb. I have been looking on your edits in the past and I noted you very often was invloved in general discussions about improving that project, for example here, [Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies#RFC: Subpage of Vital Article project? here] or recently on the Village Pump. As you know, many users (for example me and perhaps mot from abroad) have been brough to this project thank to meta but now when level 5 exist, apparently many users brought to the project thank to templates on the talk pages. IMO we could finally reach to conensus relevant to discussion about bot on the level 5, to run bot for adding templates to the talk pages and brough more users to VA. If we would make "Requests for bots" while ago, perhaps bot would be already. What do you think? Dawid2009 (talk) 20:46, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Dawid. The lack of bot maintenance certainly troubles me as well, and I just chimed in to support making a bot request. Sdkb (talk) 21:08, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
I asked about that again on the talk page. I even told that I will go ahead with that in next few days but in the end I did not find time for that during christmas season. I am also wondering about adding two new columns to the page on the level 5. These two which you see on my sandbox would be VERY usegfull for us to review which sections were more cared (controlled more in consensual and procedural way) and which sections should be more careful and potentially are haotic. One column also include pageviews from last 20 days. I tried add from last-years/whole-time but it is not possible to uploading on the server. Maybe including parametr with pageviews from last 20 days would be useful but if we engage bot who would be involved in editing that page. Personally I think that it would be something indeed useful because of: 1 New users would not be misleaded that vital articles had long-time consensus and they would feel more free to be opened and innovative in the project 2If bot would edit the page at least one time a week, by the way the bot could also prove to our project editors who patrol recent changes. How you understood that my post on your talk? And what do you think about that idea? Cheers Dawid2009 (talk) 18:43, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder about the bot troubles. I went ahead and put in a bot request; feel free to add on if I missed anything. Your data in the table on VA5 looks interesting; maybe present it to the project page along with any insights you've gained from it and see what people say? Sdkb (talk) 19:29, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days
Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 Rosguill (talk) 47,395 Patrol Page Curation
2 Onel5969 (talk) 41,883 Patrol Page Curation
3 JTtheOG (talk) 11,493 Patrol Page Curation
4 Arthistorian1977 (talk) 5,562 Patrol Page Curation
5 DannyS712 (talk) 4,866 Patrol Page Curation
6 CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) 3,995 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 3,812 Patrol Page Curation
8 Boleyn (talk) 3,655 Patrol Page Curation
9 Ymblanter (talk) 3,553 Patrol Page Curation
10 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 3,522 Patrol Page Curation

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:11, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

question re modern history article

Hi. I saw your message at the WikiProject History talk page, about the status of the article Modern history. what happened with that? feel free to let me know. I am a corrdinator now at that WikiProject. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 20:01, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sm8900; it's nice to hear from you! Since we never (at least that I could tell) heard from any history-focused Wikipedians, we basically ended up vetting the merge ourselves. The rationale offered by the Wikipedian who did the merge appeared reasonable, so we let it stand, but there was some lingering concern that there wasn't more thorough review by more qualified Wikipedians. Here's the discussion to read to get caught up; I'd certainly be interested to know if you have any strong views. Sdkb (talk) 21:36, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi Sdkb. that's terrific. actually, can you drop by the page for Wikipedia:WikiProject History? We can use you there!!! I've been trying to build up editor interest and activity, ever since I became lead coordinator a few weeks ago. i'd like to get you over there, and get your active input and interest. any editors with active interests in these topics are highly welcome there.
if you want, just go there and post an introduction for yourself, in the specific section on our talk page for that. After that, I have a few ways that you can get more involved. I hope you'll at least come by. i really appreciate it. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 21:39, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Sdkb,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources
Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

"Racial conservatism" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Racial conservatism. Since you had some involvement with the Racial conservatism redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Utopes (talk / cont) 23:35, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Help pages

post copied from other page.... hope you don't mind.--Moxy 🍁 02:10, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy: It looks like there was a proposal (that I would've supported) to redirect WP:Tutorial to Help:Introduction in 2018, but it didn't get enough consensus to pass (largely from editors unhappy with the visual editor). You were among the voices opposing it, although not for that reason; have the pages or your views shifted since then? I'm still trying to catch up on all the history, so any context is appreciated. As for the WP:Adventure, I think it does have a place, particularly for younger editors looking for a very visual/interactive tutorial, but it should be secondary; we need to fix whatever mobile issues Help:Introduction has first. Regarding that, any suggestions on where on WP to go to find someone to do it? Sdkb (talk) 00:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

This is hard to answer as it's a 3 part answer. I think most readers will find an article style help page more useful. Because they're more familiar with it and have the ability to navigate it with a TOC and Ctrl F option on a PC (thus allowing them to search all topics on one page). So my opinion would be to drop all the "cool looking" non normal formats. That said after doing this for over a decade I understand that there are many approaches and for some (even if a minority) like different formats to consume information. Because of this Help:Getting started (that lists them all in a list format over the same thing in prose at contributing to Wikipedia page) is what I recommend as the target page for new registered users.
In my view direct all these new user to Contributing to Wikipedia would be more beneficial overall....but again I understand others feel differently. Main problem with "tabs" and "next" styles is usability in mobile view... Help:Introduction has mini text is many places well below the accessibility threshold and stacks the info causing a huge white space....... WP:Tutorial has tabs that make the whole page to side scroll for many or tabs need scrolling to see them all (thus hiding the last 2 or 3 tabs for many). Both have element not compatible with mobile view and are out of the norm for our readers to recognize.--Moxy 🍁 02:10, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
@Moxy: Although I don't think either are optimal, I'd rather see WP:Contributing to Wikipedia used than WP:Getting Started. The latter requires new editors to go through an extra step (not sure what the dropoff rate is) and presents a blizzard of similar-sounding options that may lead to exactly the sort of choice paralysis we're trying to avoid by simplifying the template in the first place. I'm waiting for more editors to comment at the pump to see if consensus starts moving toward using a particular new user intro, but if that continues to be a sticking point, our best approach might be to instead get consensus about the other changes and agree that there should be a single new user intro, and then open a separate RfC about what that intro should be. Does that approach sound alright to you? Sdkb (talk) 19:30, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
@Moxy: By the way, re: abandonment of the help pages, I'm not sure how much of it is editors leaving WP vs. editors just taking the help pages off their watchlist. I've been trying to put out invitations in all the places I can think of to join the discussion at the pump, since we need some more voices (for their ideas/input as much as for their help in reaching consensus). Since you've been in this area longer than I have, if you know of specific editors who used to be very active and think it would be helpful, would you be able to send them an invite (using {{Please see}}) to join us? Sdkb (talk) 23:11, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Feel free to ask anyone to join the ongoing chat....but I will be honest...it is not going to move forward much more. Trying to change to many things at one time any targeting pages that need software updates. Your asking to remove long standing links to our main help pages and our policy overview pages for a help intro that has technical problems.....and your asking for a new button format. Your best bet is to make a new one with your preferred format and links....put it into circulation let people get use to it then ask for a major change. Test the water with the all new format and target pages that we know function properly and have some feed back. Since VE was tried and did so bad many are weary of non standard formats.--Moxy 🍁 03:40, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
@Moxy: I appreciate the thoughts. I mean, I understand the scrutiny, since it's a change that'd have a large impact, and there's certainly room for discussion on the best pages to target. I'd find it harder to understand if it ultimately went nowhere, since, to be blunt, the current welcome is terrible. I do think most editors at the discussion recognize that, whatever kinks remain to be worked out, it's a massive improvement over the status quo — there have been comments about tweaks such as the button colors, but the sentiment among those who have expressed an overall opinion has been that they like it, and no one so far has voiced an explicit preference for the status quo. It shouldn't be impossible to move forward from that. As I said to WereSpielChequers, I'm hesitant to create it as an alternative welcome, since I think that'd lead to it getting lost in the over-proliferated maze of alternative welcome templates. But I may substitute the sandbox version on new user pages I encounter, just to get editors used to seeing it. Sdkb (talk) 04:07, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Welcome template!

Yes, BE BOLD, but put it out for supporters to praise it! Feel free to ask me to test or try it. Those red talk page empties call to me.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 03:57, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8: Yes, I would love to have your help testing/trying it! You can add it using {{subst:Template:Welcome/sandbox}} ~~~~. Please let me know any feedback you get/results you observe! Sdkb (talk) 04:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Very little praise is to be found so far. Worse, I can't figure out how to testing works, and far worse, I read the comments on updating in 2015, but not enough about what you have done. I still want you to do the changes, but I lack understanding.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
@Dthomsen8: For testing, I've just been giving it to various new editors as I come across them by pasting the above code on their talk page. Have you done that? Regarding praise, it's a little hard to tell how it's comparing to using the old welcome, but I have been getting more replies[2][3] than I'm used to saying "thanks for the warm welcome" or some variation of that, which is very encouraging. Sdkb (talk) 21:59, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
So, is this effort dead, or in progress, or what?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 18:52, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
@Dthomsen8: it's going to be enacted shortly, since the proposal at VPP was recently closed. I'm waiting a day or two to see if anyone has any post-closure comments, then I'll turn it into an edit request at the template itself. Thanks for following along! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:20, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

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Aurat March

Thank you for the semi-protect on Aurat March. International Woman's Day is March 8th, with planned observance of Aurat March in Pakistan, so the article is likely to have been subject to vandalism in coming days. David notMD (talk) 11:10, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Of course; no problem! Sdkb (talk) 00:32, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Action button

newbie with COI

Thanks so much for your help! :-) OhSabrina (talk) 12:45, 12 March 2020 (UTC)OhSabrina

Orphaned non-free image File:Hinge wordmark.jpg

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Thanks for uploading File:Hinge wordmark.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Nthep (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

March 2020

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

A community discussion has authorised the use of general sanctions for pages related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The specific details of these sanctions are described here.

Broadly, general sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimise disruption in controversial topic areas. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to these topics that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behaviour, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. An editor can only be sanctioned after he or she has been made aware that general sanctions are in effect. This notification is meant to inform you that sanctions are authorised in these topic areas, which you have been editing. It is only effective if it is logged here. Before continuing to edit pages in these topic areas, please familiarise yourself with the general sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, Cullen328. If you are concerning yourself with applying policy to the pandemic article, I would appreciate it if you might be able to offer a third opinion to help resolve the situation here where (in my view) an editor is refusing to abide by WP:STATUSQUO. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 23:14, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
I will stay in an administrative role rather than getting involved with the content dispute. I highly recommend that you drop the stick and move on. In my view, nothing good will come of this dispute. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
No worries; I anticipate another editor will come along to close/clean up the dispute shortly, and I see no further need to engage with the editor's aggressive replies. Sdkb (talk) 23:43, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
The only "aggressive" replies come from you. You aggressively pursued me and leave a message on my personal page threatening to block me just because I signed my name incorrectly. Keep dremaming, no one is gonna block me for incorrectly signing my name. Cheers, James343e (talk) 01:41, 21 March 2020 (UTC).Refactored to link to message and correct inaccurate timestamp. Sdkb (talk)

Hi Sdkb: Perhaps I don't understand the process of what's being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/4#Remove_Naval_architecture. Could you please explain it to me here?

  • Why are project page editors discussing mergers without that discussion taking place in the Talk pages of the article space. It appears that five votes will result in article elimination or mergers of articles.
  • Who would do that work, if restructuring were appropriate?
  • On what is the project page realignment discussion based—the state and trajectory of the article or on an informed knowledge of the topic? It seems that the latter would be a more appropriate basis.

Perhaps you could also respond to my objections to apparently combining these two articles at the Talk:Vital articles/Level 4 page. What I saw there seemed to carry greater import than implied by the message that you left at the Talk pages of the two articles. It was out of idle curiosity that I checked the link provided on a suggestion to re-think the scopes of the two articles that, to me, made little sense. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 15:44, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@HopsonRoad: The process at VA is discussing which of the two articles should be listed as Level 4 (i.e. one of the 10,000 most vital articles on Wikipedia), versus which should be moved to Level 5 (i.e. one of the 50,000 most vital). My proposal was to move naval architecture to level 5; there is no proposal to merge them, as that's not within the scope of the project. The reason I left talk page messages was that sometimes, as part of our work at VA, we come across articles that are largely duplicates of each other (e.g. recently Freight transport and cargo), or that were turned into redirects when they perhaps should have been left as is (e.g. History of philosophy), or that seem to contain lots of material that would be more suited for another article. When that happens, we notify the article pages so that contributors more knowledgeable in the subject area (i.e. you) can take things from there. When I first came across those two pages, it seemed to me like they were about very similar topics and perhaps might someday be merged, but your explanation (especially the analogy comparing to the difference between an architect and a construction worker) was very helpful and makes it clear that they have separate ideal scopes and that there's room for both. As for what's actually in them currently — well, there may be some room to better clarify what each article is about/not about and to move some material from one to the other. You'll know that much better than I would (thus why I left the talk page messages rather than changing anything myself).
As for vitality, VA requires a lot of tough choices given that the size of the lists is strictly capped, and I'm still not quite persuaded that there's room for both articles at level 4. You can see what other transportation technology pages we list at Level 4 here and Level 5 here. There's still some room left in level 5 if you see any missing articles. For more information on VA, there's an FAQ here. Apologies for the confusion about merging, and best wishes to you. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 16:18, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your very helpful reply, here, Sdkb! I see that I needn't have been alarmed. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Reversion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4

Hi Sdkb, I noticed that you reverted my edit at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4 without an explanation. Perhaps, I don't understand the ground rules for the discussion, but I thought that my edit was pertinent to the question of WP:TOOSOON. I'll look for your reply, here. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 17:09, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@HopsonRoad: Oops, sorry! I must've accidentally hit the button. I've restored it. I thought I had enabled the "double check before rollback" feature, but it looks like it may be broken... Sdkb (talk) 17:18, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

WP:AN/RFC about the improved welcome template

Hello User:Sdkb. I saw your request at WP:AN/RFC for someone to close the discussion about the new welcome template. Before trying to do that formally, I'd like your reaction to this proposal from User:Moxy on 18 March. Also, I noticed a suggestion that your idea might be rolled out to selected new users as an experiment. This could be done without replacing the main welcome template. Would you be open to that? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 18:00, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@EdJohnston: Hi, and thanks for the help! Moxy and I discuss in a few places on that thread the issue of Help:Introduction vs. WP:Contributing to Wikipedia and buttons vs. links. I (and, from my counts, it seems most others there) disagree with them on those issues, and their proposal at the end reflects their preferences. I'm not sure I have much to add on those issues beyond what is discussed higher in the thread, but I am happy to elaborate if you have any questions. Regarding rollout, my main thoughts are here. Since that comment, I've tested the welcome on dozens of new editors and received positive anecdotal feedback (more "thank you" replies than I'm used to with the old standard welcome). Again, I'm happy to elaborate if that'd be helpful for you. Sdkb (talk) 18:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Your post that you just quoted was in response to this comment by User:WereSpielChequers.

We have lots of welcome pages, no objection to another being created. But changing the default this radically should not be done without first testing different welcomes and seeing which has the best result in terms of turning newbies into regulars.

ϢereSpielChequers 08:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)}}
In your initial tryout, can you summarize what the findings were? EdJohnston (talk) 18:29, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: Sure. The replies are the main piece of measurable feedback, so I don't have much to report beyond that, but to expand on what I did: starting in late February, I stopped welcoming new editors I came across with the current standard welcome template, and instead substituted the proposed revision by using {{Welcome/sandbox}}. Since then, I've welcomed about 90 new editors (ctrl+f for "welcome!"). Some of these I came across in the course of normal editing and some I found by looking through the recent changes list. I've been encouraged to see replies such as [4][5] more frequently than I was used to with the old version. The bumps in pageviews to Help:Introduction on the days I did the most welcoming (e.g. Feb. 26-27) seem to indicate that many new editors are clicking through to the tutorial. Overall, my view is that, while formalized research from the WMF would be amazing, insisting on it as a precursor to making any changes to the help space would have the effect of blocking badly needed updates to a neglected area of Wikipedia. Does that speak to your question? Sdkb (talk) 19:22, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Ninety seems like a good number to start with. Would you have the patience to see what happened after the last 90 uses of the regular welcome template? EdJohnston (talk) 20:16, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: The talk pages I welcome go on my watchlist, so prior to the tryout I noticed replies showing up in my feed, yes. One other thought about gathering data: I would not be at all opposed to implementing the new version for a trial period of a month or two, which would generate a much more substantial sample, then checking in with the Teahouse hosts, etc. to see what they notice about new editor behavior. Sdkb (talk) 20:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
If there is no prospect of any more data being collected, that might argue against making the change. Though I haven't checked carefully, my main impression from the VPP thread so far was a lack of sufficient enthusiasm for your change. If you could persuade at least one other frequent welcomer to start using your template, that could have an effect. EdJohnston (talk) 20:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
I'm going to start using Sdkb's welcome template, I'll keep an eye out for any differences I note in responses or new user behavior. (I've done about 70 welcomes in the past few months, not sure if that counts as "frequent" or not) Schazjmd (talk) 20:58, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: I'm obviously a biased party, but my interpretation of the VPP thread is that there is pretty substantial support. As might be expected, those proposing tweaks or expressing concerns have more to say than those just adding on their overall support, but I count seveneight registered editors expressing support, compared to just three stating they don't want implementation without further testing of some sort. Note that concerns that took up a bunch of space early on about the mobile-friendliness of Help:Introduction were rendered largely mute by some excellent work by Evolution and evolvability implementing flexbox divs. Regarding frequent welcomers, the feedback from the WP:Welcoming committee (in green at the top) was some of the most enthusiastic. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 21:27, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Sorry just got the ping....yes there is support....but if you read them most have a concern....some with the action button....some with the choice of links. As has been suggested a few times in a few place....just make a new template and work out all the bugs first. It's clearly a work in progress as seen by all the tect problems that have been worked on. To put it simply it's not ready for our readers.--Moxy 🍁 21:54, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Strong support for this new welcome template.Dthomsen8 (talk) 00:05, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Covid outbreak

Can we figure out some other solution than hiding out my screencaps? I agree they take up a little too much space, what about making them smaller? Zahadan (talk) 03:47, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure; I uncollapsed them and placed them in a gallery view instead of at the side; is that alright? Sdkb (talk) 03:53, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Looks good. Thanks! Zahadan (talk) 04:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Mass removal of templates

Hello, Sdkb,

Please do not do a mass removal of the "current" template on COVID-19 pages. There are hundreds of pages at this point with this template and you can not make a drastic decision like this based on 3 or 4 comments. It requires much more wider approval. Run an RfC if you want to undertake this project. Liz Read! Talk! 03:25, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Liz: I don't plan to remove more of them, since they're gone from the biggest articles at this point and the smaller articles are less frequently updated and thus more in need of the disclaimer {{Current}} provides. My removals were based on the discussion at the COVID-19 WikiProject here, as well as the example set by 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, where not including the template is item 3 on the current consensus list. Sdkb (talk) 03:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Overuse of RFCs

To the best of my knowledge, you now hold the all-time second-place record for having created the most RFCs during any month. (The editor holding the first-place record is currently banned from the English Wikipedia.) Sometimes being an outlier is a highly valuable thing, but more often it is not so positive. I would like to gently encourage you to stop creating RFCs (including suggesting that other people create them) for a while. (Feel free to blank this as soon as you've read it.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I tend not to blank messages for transparency reasons, but for context I do want to link to the discussion that sent you here at WP:COVID-19. Looking through the list, it seems I've added five RfCs in the past month (I'm not counting the one on the countries to include at the pandemic page, where I started a discussion but another editor added the RfC tag). Two of them, on turning old welcome pages into redirects, are RfCs not since they're controversial but rather since they're big changes that require non-localized community input, which to my understanding is a proper use of RfCs. I can't honestly say that I feel especially guilty about "requesting a lot of attention from your fellow editors" for them, since they both look like they will pass. All that said, I do take your point (made on the COVID-19 discussion) about non-RfC processes sometimes being better for building consensus and the limited capacity of the RfC system. Going forward, I'll consider going to the Village Pump instead for large proposals, and waiting longer before turning controversial discussions into RfCs. I appreciate your thoughts and advice. Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 23:05, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
I suggested blanking this (or rapidly archiving it?) because I don't want anyone to use the existence of this message as a way to bolster a complaint about you. People who think they're "losing" will sometimes grasp at any straw against their perceived opponents. ("Passing" isn't proof that requesting outside attention was helpful – especially on medical or other technical subjects, where outside editors may express uninformed views very strongly – and "failing" is often a very valuable contribution.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Re blanking/archiving, that makes sense; I've been resisting setting up archiving on my talk page for as long as I can, but I should probably get to it haha. Sdkb (talk) 00:02, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Editor's Barnstar
For starting the discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal_to_streamline_the_welcome_template yes that is a very helpful resource. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 09:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 Welcome!

 Hi [Username]! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

 As you get started, you may find this short tutorial helpful:

 :Learn more about editing

 You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that covers the same topics.

 If you have any questions, we have a friendly space where experienced editors can help you here:

 :Get help at the Teahouse

If you are not sure where to help out, you can find a task here:

:Volunteer at the Task Center
Thank you, RIT RAJARSHI! I'm honored to have the recognition and look forward to hopefully seeing the welcome in more widespread use soon! Sdkb (talk) 16:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb: I wish I will get a Barnstar some day RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 16:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Keep up good work and there's no doubt you will—it's only a matter of time! Sdkb (talk) 16:35, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Thank you.

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Good Humor
For lightening the mood. Nice one. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:50, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, Gog the Mild! If you're inclined, we'd love to have your participation over at WikiProject Extinct Hawaiian Land Snails! Sdkb (talk) 16:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

TemplateStyles in signature

Please remove the templatestyles invocation in your signature per WP:SIG#NT. Thanks. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: Oops, thanks for the notice! I probably should've realized templatestyles actually invokes some sort of template haha. Fixed! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 18:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

WP Help and importance

Just getting started. Learning project criteria. Came to the project sideways, via cleaning out old WikiProject kruft. —¿philoserf? (talk) 23:11, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@Philoserf: Yep, no worries/no offense taken! If you're interested in getting further involved with the Help Project, we'd love to have additional voices in some of the discussions currently taking place. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:16, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Sdkb, i will take a look —¿philoserf? (talk) 23:18, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Teahouse question formatting

Screenshot of the en-WP Teahouse header bottom, as seen on mobile by Sdkb

Please don't take this the wrong way, but sometime after 04:00 UTC on 2nd April, all Teahouse questioners appear to have had their signatures placed two lines beneath their post. I was just wondering whether you'd been experimenting with something which might have caused this problem. I've not had a chance to investigate the actual cause. Any thoughts?  Nick Moyes (talk) 23:39, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: Yeah, that's likely happening because clicking on the "ask a question" button now goes to a page with one's signature preloaded; see the exchange between Tenryuu and me at the top of this thread. The idea is to address the problem of question askers not signing their posts. I'll make a tweak to the preload template that may help. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. That would be helpful. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes: I found a template to trim the whitespace that you noticed. I implemented it at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Preload and it worked in a test, so all should be good now! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:29, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks - initially that seems to look better. I'd not encountered that template before. I'll monitor a load more questions and see how they appear, as it can be heard to tell if someone has edited stuff out themselves. I hope I've not come over as too grumpy or opinionated on this matter - I really do appreciate your efforts. Personally, I don't think we need the full header and all the lines underneath on all the other button-linked pages, but I'm not going to ask you to change that. It is a definite improvement - and certainly displays fine now on the desktop I'm on. The five active lines below the header box in desktop view do spread out onto eight separate lines on a mobile phone in desktop, and onto a scary twenty separate lines in mobile view, so I might try trimming the odd word out to shorten the lines a bit more (like the 'please' in Please remember....) Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:51, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes: No worries at all — further tweaks/improvements are always good, and since you're the one who is a Teahouse host, I defer to your perspective on a lot of issues. I'm not sure I'm able to replicate what you're seeing with the twenty lines — I added a screenshot at left of how it looks to me, which is not that bad. The way the stuff in that section gets displayed is a little weird — it's made smaller on the source page, and then larger again when used on the header page. That might be what's causing the issue, if you want to dig into fixing it. I think text size changes would be a better solution. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:52, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Extending RfC's

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Sdkb, Why are you extending the Reagan RfC? In the past I've seen RfC's extended in only two cases. 1, the discussion was legitimately active with new people adding comments. That isn't the case here. 2, the person extending the RfC was doing so hoping to change the current outcome of the consensus. In this case it appears there is roughly no consensus for inclusion which is not the result you have argued for. Let's let this one close normally. Springee (talk) 04:27, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I replied to your comment there. Let's keep discussion centralized at the page itself. Copying my reply to you, More input could be useful in making consensus clearer (the most recent !vote was only yesterday, so it clearly hasn't fully died out), and extending won't do any harm. If you really want this closed, feel free to list it at WP:ANRFC. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:36, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Just a note on pings

Just a quick note regarding this edit summary: to create a new notification one has to link to someone's user page and add a new signature using four tildes, and do both of these on a new line of text (i.e. updating a signature, replacing text with a link, etc. doesn't actually notify someone). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 21:03, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Got it; good to know! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Signature

Greetings, I don't think your signature is an improvement. The old signature was much better. Now your signature is very visually outstanding; that is good if I want to find your posts, but not so good if everyone follows the model of gaudy signatures and we see a plethora of colorful gaudy signatures, in which we can no longer find the one outstanding since all are outstanding. It is a bit like people shouting in the room, each hoping that they can outshout the others. Just an input from me, not based on policy. Ultimately, signature is your matter. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:11, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: Hi Dan! I appreciate the feedback. I've used a default signature for almost my entire tenure at Wikipedia, and I recognize there are arguments in favor of retaining the default. I also sympathize that it's a collective action problem in terms of giving editors equal weight, but given that many other editors with similar tenure do seem to use signatures, it's one I felt I could not opt out of, and there have been a few occasions recently where I have wondered whether my use of the default signature was causing me to be taken less seriously than those with gaudy custom signatures. Aside from that, I do find some of the arguments in favor of their use persuasive, and I'm hoping that the signature I chose may induce better pinging behavior toward me. I also wouldn't say my signature is unusually visually outstanding compared to many others, and I made efforts to comply with accessibility guidelines. Ultimately, this is something I'm trying out, and I may go back to the default depending on how it goes. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:30, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the kind response. Wikipedia has a horrible signature culture. Your signature is far from the worst I've seen. I guess I decided to talk to you about it since we worked together recently, I liked what you were doing, and I thought I stood a chance to bring something across without getting into too much trouble. Take care. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:54, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Apparently people also used to be allowed images in their signatures. The Signpost article on it made my eyeballs melt! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 12:17, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Coronavirus, and might you feel comfortable changing the fragment excerpts back?

It might be best if you were the one. And I’m hoping you might agree that you’d be best.

And by the way, I did respond to your post in the section We’re not staying sleek and streamlined with this post:
https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic&diff=prev&oldid=949712790
True, without a ping. But all the same, you could have chosen to go back and checked. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@FriendlyRiverOtter: Yes, I saw and replied to your comment. With the content for that paragraph still identical between coronavirus disease 2019 and 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, and the excerpt at the latter its own paragraph clearly marked with hidden text instructions for anyone wanting to make changes, I don't see rationale for it being removed. If you want to follow up to this with a broader project-wide discussion, that might help establish a clearer consensus on the issue. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:48, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
I mean my post of 02:35, 8 April, which was after your two posts. While my short post does express my views, it’s not particularly earth-shattering. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:43, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Thanks for all you do to Wikipedia especially redesigning the header for the Teahouse and setting up the RFC for redoing the sidebar. Interstellarity (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks so much, Interstellarity! Your feedback and ideas have been very helpful for propelling those initiatives forward! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:45, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Post-expand Include Size on 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic

What is your better solution to the PEIS problem on 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic? As it stands now, the page is not displaying all references. If you don't want to copy the sections instead of transcluding them, the only other options I can see are to remove Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data from the article or change all those {{excerpt}}s to {{main}}s and not include the text in the article at all. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE
) 00:02, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ahecht: I'm looking at that currently; hold on a few minutes, and I'll reply on the pandemic article's talk page. But I think removing the excerpts is a really bad idea, since the articles immediately start to diverge, with updates that should be made at both only being reflected in one or the other. They need to be kept in sync, when they're basically the same content. And the copy-paste introduced errors due to noinclude. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:09, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Could I get you to look again at the wording about templates you added at the above help page? You inserted this line: Editing around them can be complicated, and is generally best avoided until you become more experienced. It's oddly-worded, bit ambiguous, and possibly not needed. It could mean that the act of editing an actual template is itself complicated, or that changing parameters is complicated, or that putting text either side of a template is complicated. Whatever you intention, I've not been able to find a solution at this late hour, other other than to completely remove it. Over to you..! Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:27, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, there was previously no mention of templates at all, so I added a mention of them so that editors who complete the tutorial will at least know what they're looking at when they encounter curly brackets in the wild. But I think the best advice for newcomers is to avoid interacting with templates (either editing templates directly, or editing parameters) until they've become more experienced, thus the line above. Would you agree with that? I'd be fine with it being rephrased if there's other wording you'd prefer. Perhaps They can be complicated to edit, so you will probably want to leave them alone until you've become more experienced.? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:42, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
On further reflection, I really don't think putting anything about templates into the 'links and wikilinks' section is needed, or even actually relevant, if all it's going to do is highlight something that isn't a link and which they're told to stay away from. I think it would be simpler just to leave it as it was, without saying anything. But then maybe add one single line linking to Help:Templates in the summary page at Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/6. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:37, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me in your subsequent edit summary to the above page. Whilst I am still not convinced the bit about templates needs to be in at all, I suggest we leave your readdition in and see if anyone else is bothered. Maybe I'm being too fussy. I know we're both approaching this from the same intention of ensuring the best and simplest learning experience of the new editor. I'm certainly not going to dig my heels in over such a small thing. As an aside, though, does it strike you that the sub-heading of "Lets look at some source code" in Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/1 seems rather odd, considering that the page doesn't actually look at any source code?! TTFN Nick Moyes (talk) 21:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes: The "let's look at some source code" definitely seems odd indeed. I switched it to something more similar to what the first page of the visual editor tutorial uses. It could probably be improved further if you have any ideas for a better tagline. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:07, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Nope - I think you've found a good solution. I couldn't think of anything myself. Thanks. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:17, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

To Sdkb only

Hi I like your ideas hopefully you reply Clayton playz (talk) 05:51, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

sandbox

Now it's at User:Boud/sandbox/2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. I db-g2 requested speedy deletion of the one in article namespace. Boud (talk) 19:12, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good; thanks! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:25, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

April 2020

Warning icon Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to delete or edit legitimate talk page comments, as you did at Talk:Ronald Reagan, you may be blocked from editing. —DIYeditor (talk) 10:22, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@DIYeditor: Your characterization of a good-faith conversation about a close (that involved a single reversion, and was resolved amicably between myself and the closer) as "disruptive" is absurd on its face. Given that your own modification of others' talk page comments in that very same RfC led to an ANI thread where you were reverted for violating WP:TPO, I'd ask that you please take your POINTy behavior elsewhere and let the rest of us focus on building an encyclopedia. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 11:09, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
At times you seem more like a difficult POV-pusher than HERE. —DIYeditor (talk) 11:18, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
To expand, if you had engaged in "good-faith" discussion and negotiation rather than rushing to push through the RFC with your own wording, maybe we could've gotten these topics included in the lede. Then you revert a valid admin closure of the bogus RFC? I don't get it. —DIYeditor (talk) 11:30, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Talk:COVID-19 testing

I have replied to your question at Talk:COVID-19 testing § How to link from main pandemic article lead. — UnladenSwallow (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

2019–20 coronavirus pandemic Xenophobia sentence

Ever since the RfC concluded, there have been a few editors trying to change the xenophobia sentence despite the RfC consensus on this topic. Is this normal? Shouldn't we be following the RfC consensus, especially when the RfC consensus is only 9 days old and the concerns that others have raised (such as discrimination against non-Chinese/non-Asians or Chinese people being xenophobic against foreigners) were already discussed extensively in the RfC?

Now the current lead and the 'Xenophobia and racism' section in the main article is basically giving undue weight to China when the main article should be about the pandemic in general. A lot of that content should be in the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in mainland China article instead.

Sorry for the rant; what's the point of the RfC (especially if all of the concerns have been raised and have been discussed at great lengths) if consensus is just going to get ignored. Some1 (talk) 18:09, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Some1: We should absolutely be following the consensus; I just reverted the most recent edit against it. Ideally, all editors would edit carefully enough to notice either the item on the current consensus list or the hidden text warning, but it's inevitable that some won't or won't care. Just revert them (so long as you're under the WP:3RR), mentioning the RfC in the summary. If you don't, hopefully someone else will. For willful or repeat offenders, consider alerting them about the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions or giving them user talk page warnings. I've noticed that one consequence of there being so many edits to 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is that each edit isn't getting as much scrutiny as would be ideal. Hopefully that's starting to change as the article matures and the edit rate goes down. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 18:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi Sdkb! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 18:43, Sunday, April 19, 2020 (UTC)

Redesigning some of our page

Hello Sdkb,
I would like your input on something. I would like to create an RFC that proposes that we redesign a few of our pages. You mentioned before that you would like to redesign the FAQ for Wikipedia, but I would like to know which pages you think need to be redesigned. Also, can you help me create an RFC for this please? Interstellarity (talk) 16:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Interstellarity! For the FAQ page, the key question to start with, in my view, is what kind of user is coming there, and what are they hoping to find? Most editors with a specific question will search for the relevant help page, so is the FAQ for editors who just want to learn general information, or who might have a question they don't realize they have, or is it an alternative place for Teahouse hosts to point editors rather than help pages? The redesign process should build up from there, adding content and features that fit with its purpose and removing content that don't. A key task is better integrating the FAQ system into the rest of Wikipedia. Right now, the sense I have is that the place both readers and editors tend to go is help pages, which has left the FAQs to deteriorate, which further drives people away and just feeds the cycle. To be successful, a FAQ redesign will need to answer the (currently unanswered) question of how the system will relate to the normal help or WP pages. Perhaps they could be turned into sidebars or sections of help pages rather than standing alone. Another key task is reorganization: there are a lot of duplicate FAQ that need to be merged. Finally, the FAQs need formatting improvements. The table of contents and sections format works well for articles, but for FAQs, I think we'll probably want to switch to a collapsible accordion format, with all sections (questions) collapsed by default and the reader able to click on any question they want to read the answer to.
RfCs are useful for controversial changes, but they make the process harder, not easier, when used in obscure areas. Because of what I mentioned above, the FAQs are not a closely monitored area, so I think you should just go ahead and start boldly making changes (beginning with smaller ones) and see if they stick. For getting assistance, try posting on relevant WikiProjects or asking questions at the Village Pump Idea Lab (or, for technical help, the Village Pump Technical page). I hope all that helps; you have your work cut out! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:21, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
I started off my collapsing some of the FAQ pages. Not sure if this is a good change or not. I didn't finish because I don't have the time to do that yet. I will post at the idea lab to get some input on how we can redesign the FAQ. You didn't answer my second question. Are there any pages besides the FAQ that could be redesigned? Interstellarity (talk) 23:26, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Are you asking if there are FAQ pages other than Wikipedia:FAQ/Main that need to be redesigned? I'd say that what would be needed to reinvigorate the FAQ system would be a more comprehensive overhaul along the lines I described above, which would probably affect elements that appear on every FAQ page. The collapsing you did looks like a definite improvement to me. But again, that's an aesthetic improvement, and those won't be enough to fix the system if the fundamental question of what its purpose is remains unanswered. That question needs to get tackled first, and things like aesthetic improvements can always be added on later in the process. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:07, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
What I was asking is do other Wikipedia help pages such as the WP:Contents or Help:Contents page need to be redesigned? If so, how would we do that? Interstellarity (talk) 00:16, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
@Interstellarity: Ah, got it. I think WP:About is probably most badly in need of improvement. If you go its talk page you'll find me talking into the void a bit with some recent thoughts. Help:Contents looks pretty good to me, but WP:Contents and WP:Featured content both need a lot of work, as is being discussed at the sidebar RfC. A draft/sandbox mockup of what those pages would look like combined into one might help move that conversation forward. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree with you. I feel the about page should be a little shorter than what it is now although I don't know how we can shorten it. I also agree that the latter two pages should be given a makeover although I'm not a good page designer. I am hoping to get some ideas from the idea lab on how we can improve our pages here. Interstellarity (talk) 00:46, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

FYI, the edit to change the case and dash of covid-19 broke URLs in references.

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_drug_development&diff=952351845&oldid=952351307

Whywhenwhohow (talk) 00:56, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Whywhenwhohow: Oops, thanks for catching that. I thought I went through to make sure I didn't change the mentions in URLs, but it looks like I missed a few. Would you mind just fixing those rather than reverting wholesale? The rest of them should be non-breaking. I also brought up the issue earlier at the VPT, since doing the fixes manually isn't a sustainable solution longer-term. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:08, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Updated Whywhenwhohow (talk) 03:09, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks; much appreciated! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 03:50, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

removed covid-19 cases per population

please explain why my edit is too US centric. The opposit is the case: instead of giving the focus of 855,255 cases within the US, compared to 208,389 in spain etc, the comparison by population does show US: 238 vs spain: 428 where the infections are much more severe - and compared to some other relevant countries. Traut (talk) 06:43, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Traut: The text you tried to add needs some workshopping in a few regards before it would be ready to add to the article. You can try proposing it on the talk page to get more feedback. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 06:48, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Feel free to edit the text in order to give it a more neutral aspect - but removing a graph which does show an IMHO much more relevant comparison of the numbers is demotivating contributors. --Traut (talk) 06:53, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
@Traut: Apologies. Please see the "new to contributing" notice at the pandemic talk page, though — it's a hard place to jump in, and there are just so many edits being thrown at that page that those of us maintaining it don't have time to workshop ones that aren't ready for inclusion yet unless they're brought up at the talk page first. For your edit, words like "shockingly" and "should be compared" violate WP:NPOV. You also need to add references. And overall it seems more like analysis than something with a suitably encyclopedic tone; the facts we should be including are covered elsewhere on the page. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 07:08, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Let's clean up the COVID-19 Current Consensus Items!

Hey Sdkb, the new {{Current COVID-19 Project Consensus}} template is now live. Let's ensure the items in the template are in great shape so we don't spread confusion in all pages.

There are a couple of discussions on items of the list that need more editors to reach consensus quickly (they shouldn't be too contentious but we need more votes):

Hope you can express your opinion for those changes!

--Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

P.s. you signature is super helpful! Could you share the code for the small brackets so I can implement something similar in mine? Thanks! --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
@Gtoffoletto: Thanks for the notice! I just requested EC protection of that template and !voted in the discussion I hadn't yet contributed to. A kind of parallel task to this is building out the resources section of WP:COVID-19, which may be linked to from the proposed general edit notice (see VPP). It doesn't currently do a great job helping someone trying to create a new COVID-19 article figure out what the best practices are.
And thanks! The code for my signature is <span style="color:#AAA"><small>{{u|</small><span style="border-radius:9em;padding:0 5px;background:#088">[[User:Sdkb|<span style="color:#FFF">'''Sdkb'''</span>]]</span><small>}}</small></span></code> <sup>[[User talk:Sdkb|'''talk''']]</sup>. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 18:07, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Hmm weird... I tried it and I keep getting SUBST added after the {{... I tried nowiki but nothing --Gtoffoletto (talk) 20:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
@Gtoffoletto: Oh weird. It looks like nowiki isn't fully nowiki-ing. If you try editing this section and then copy the text in the edit window between the nowiki tags, that should work better. The bracket issue is solved by using &#123 with a semicolon at the end, which inserts the { character. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:02, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Shiny! Thanks! Hope you don't mind if I steal from you a little bit? :) --{{u|Gtoffoletto}}talk 21:14, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
@Gtoffoletto: definitely not; I borrowed it myself from others! I can't say I've noticed an increase in pings since I started using it, but it's not hurting. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:22, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Template:Welcome-anon/sandbox

Reverting Template:Welcome-anon/sandbox to a version which differs from the live version is setting the stage for the next editor to fall into the same trap you fell into. Unless it's part of an ongoing set of changes you're actively working on I'd ask you to reconsider. Just my 2¢. Cabayi (talk) 09:18, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Cabayi: It is that, in the sense that I'll be bringing up the undiscussed change at some point if no one reverts it. I'm somewhat disappointed that hasn't already happened yet, given that it pretty clearly went against the guidelines for discussing template changes. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 09:27, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
So long as you're aware of the situation and you've given it some thought - I could ask for no more. Cabayi (talk) 09:48, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm certainly monitoring the page. If anyone tries to make an edit request in the near future and trips up, I'll be on hand to assist. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 09:54, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 vaccine and treatment trackers

Your thoughts on this issue, please, as posted on these talk pages, drug development, vaccines, and Help. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 17:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Zefr: Could we centralize the duplicate posts at the vaccine and drug articles by having one point to the other? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:42, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Was concerned about that but there is segregation of editors participating at those two articles and COVID-19 drug repurposing research. Bondegezou prefers the usual MEDRS sourcing and has responded here. Open to whichever discussion solution best serves the editor community. Zefr (talk) 19:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@Zefr: For future reference, the {{Please see}} template is what I normally use. And regarding the issue itself, I'm notoops, accidental double negative. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:43, 26 April 2020 (UTC) less involved in COVID-19 sourcing discussions than in other aspects of the project, so I'll leave it to others to handle. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:24, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Apart from sourcing issues is the WP:NOW matter of describing content that is evolving rapidly within days or weeks. How to source that content for medical topics like COVID-19 clinical trial progress was the matter that started this discussion with Bondegezou. Zefr (talk) 20:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Removing originals after making moves

Hi Sdkb, thanks for being so active at the Village Pump :)

I saw you tagged me in the edit summary removing the content of the discussion that was moved - is it consensus to do that? If so, the documentation of Template:Moved discussion to needs updating - the usage example there shows a move completing with the discussion being left intact at source as well, which is why I did it that way.

Cheers, all the best, Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:44, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: Yeah, I actually updated the documentation there a few hours ago after I went to check to double check I was giving you the right advice and found that it wasn't clear. My advice was based on what I had observed in practice, but I think in some cases the discussion is just archived at the old location rather than moved. I would consider that acceptable as well — the main idea is just to make it clear that no one should comment further at the old location, and I'm not sure {{Moved}} is bold enough to do that by itself when the discussion remains. I'd welcome further updates to the documentation or discussion about what best practice is if you're inclined to work in that area. And feel free to revert me and change the VPR discussion to archived instead of deleted if you'd prefer. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:59, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks very much :) I've done some thinking and written a new version of that template which would hide the existing content, but keep it at the original page, to make it very clear what's going on - when you have a moment, it'd be great to get you to take a look! More details over at Template talk:Moved discussion to :) Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 09:26, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks for starting the RfC on the sidebar. Its well written and clearly laid out. Hopefully it will make some long needed improvements! Happy editing, Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 23:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@Dreamy Jazz: thank you! I hope so, too! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:22, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Interpret Sources properly

Referring to this edit: [6]

On the article List of epidemics the HIV pandemic everyone knows continues ranges from 1980s to present day 2020. But the given death toll 32 million only accounts upto 2010, and that is the date of the source. It has expand greatly since then as each year over a million dies from the disease. It is covered in the date section that the epidemic is going on from 1981 to present, but the death toll covered is up to 2010, so do not misinterpret source. If you want to extend date find WP:RS and include the additional deaths in the last 10 years. It is clear enough that the epidemic is active as of 2020, but the death toll of 32 million is per a 2010 source and that should be clarified, so please do not violate WP:OR by making it look like it accounts the last 10 years too. Stick according to the source. Thank you. Dilbaggg (talk) 09:15, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

@Dilbaggg: Thank you for catching that. I see that Yadsalohcin has kindly updated to a more recent source. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 09:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
No problem, we should just state up to the year the source covers. Thank you for fixing incorrect date from 1960 to 1981, the disease may have been appearing since early 20th C but it wasn't a pandemic until 1981, you fixed that and deserve praise for that. Chreers. Dilbaggg (talk) 10:02, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

there's been no rfc on dark phoenix issue

please don't undo the rfc that i'm going to start on dark phoenix in a moment. There was no rfc on this issue. There was a rfc in 2019 for an unrelated issue, and unfortuately as this was my first rfc I made mistakes. the first time it put no info with the rfc and then i had a typo. But i wanted until the rfc id cleared each time so as to not screw up the system.

On the topic, so far there has only been talk page discussion which has no resulted in consensus. So that there's no confusion I'm going to remove your entry on the talk page, but only because it doesn't move the discussion forward on the rfc. thanks. ToeFungii (talk) 00:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I replied on the page. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:05, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Do you understand that are has been NO rfc on the topic? The issue is not resolved. Please restart it or i'm going to get an admin involved. ToeFungii (talk) 01:06, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@ToeFungii: Most issues do not require an RfC. But I'm not going to remove the RfC tag again (although other editors may); I just restored my comment per WP:TPO. Let's take this down a notch — there are no major disagreements about what sort of information should be in the article (everyone agrees the film bombed); it's just a matter of finding the right language. Just discuss politely with the other editors at the page, and I'm sure you all will be able to come up with a suitable wording. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Do you not understand there has been no rfc on this topic yet? The discussion above the rfc was confined to the talk page and never done as a rfc. If you read the bottom right about the rfc you'll see that I said I was going to do the rfc because conseneus had not been reached and currently is split. Right now two editors will not allow any language saying it was a failure, bomb, or flop so there is not agreement.
I apologize if removing your comment was inappropriate, but to someone coming to comment your comment will be confusing because they may erronesouly think there was already a rfc when tehre was not and I was trying to stop that. I'd ask that you remove that part rather than the whole thing as the rest of the comment is constructive on the topic at hand although it could use expansion particuarly since wp guidance says to use in-sentence cites for these type of comments. But I will ask again, do you understand there has been no rfc on this topic? ToeFungii (talk) 01:22, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I did read your comment and checked the page edit history. The "please see above rfc for previous discussion" was confusing, but you made yourself clear in your reply. I refactored my comment for good measure to make sure no one else is confused. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:39, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Here is how you can see there was no prior rfc https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py?name=Legobot&page=Talk%3ADark_Phoenix_%28film%29&server=enwiki&max=

I'll tweak the language so no one else finds it confusing. It would still be helpful if you'd remove from your post the language referring to a prior rfc. Also, I'd like it if you'd expand on your option 1 comments as that was taken from the prior talk page discussion where others don't want any wording related to failure, box office bomb, etc becasue it's subjective and wp guidance says to do in sentence cites for such items. thanks. ToeFungii (talk) 01:44, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

It'd be appreciated if you'd do WP:Refactoring #2 "distracting material" for "removal of material from immediate visibility" because all the text regarding a "prior rfc" is immaterial and confusing to the actual topic. Only putting a line through actually serves to add more confusing because it's still there for someone to read.
Can you please tell me the reason why you won't remove the distracting info at least?
ToeFungii (talk) 02:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I crossed out the line, so it will be abundantly clear to anyone else. Removing material from talk pages entirely is best avoided, since it's important to maintain the discussion record. I realize you're new, but please have some faith that everything will work out. Just go back to discussing the issue itself, and seek/accept advice from others when the process gets complicated. We're all here to build an encyclopedia. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 02:28, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Sdkb just curious, the wording you use is "Looks like it was a discussion, not an RfC" which I think falls under WP:WEASEL. Either there was a prior rfc, or there wasn't, and there was not and i've provided proof. You leaving up the wording only serves to be confusing to other users and distracting which may be your purpose, I don't know but i'll see if i can find an admin to weigh in because i'm really curious now based upon your last reply. ToeFungii (talk) 06:19, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:False version

Template:False version has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hello, Sdkb

Thank you for creating Media career of Donald Trump.

User:StraussInTheHouse, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

It's been added under the sidebar, seems like a reasonable fork as we have political and business career, and the media career does not fit thematically with either. Well-sourced, marking as reviewed.

To reply, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|StraussInTheHouse}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

SITH (talk) 12:14, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Source Listing for COVID 19

Hi I am developing a source list here and I am very new to the COVID 19 Sourcing methods. How should a source list be made since you play a role in information? Personisgaming (talk) 03:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Personisgaming: Hi! Our collection of COVID-19 sources is at Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19/Sources and Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19/Reference sources. Those two pages are mostly duplicating each other and should probably be merged. You can talk to John Cummings, the Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO, who recently created the latter one, for more information. Regarding the list you put together, it seems to somewhat duplicate our more generalized list of reliable sources, WP:RSP. For medical articles, we try to discourage use of news outlets when more medical sources are available (see WP:MEDRS), so we probably don't want to add too many outlets. I hope that's helpful! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:21, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi @Sdkb: the pages are not the same, to explain the difference, one is a list of possible sources (more like a research guide) and the other is a list of specific individual sources. Also to note not all Wikiproject:COVID-19 articles are medical related. It may be sensible putting a note at the top of the news section to explain how medical and non medical articles use news sources.
Hi @Personisgaming: I guess those would go in the News section of Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Sources, it seems sensible as you have done to split that by region. Are you planning to add more sources to your list?
Thanks
John Cummings (talk) 10:31, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I am adding news sources dependent on my time, often on Fridays to Weekends. I will simply copy and paste the tables to the Source List. I then looked at the list again and then realized that the source also had a column as to where they were trusted. However I do believe that other actions should be taken. Personisgaming (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Help:Introduction series copy edits

It looks like we are going to decline to copy-edit this long series of pages at the GOCE Requests page, since we focus on pages in the article space.

I believe that I have copy-edited all of the pages except those related to the VisualEditor, which I do not use. I believe that much of the VE content is redundant with the Wiki markup content and should be transcluded rather than duplicated. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:51, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thanks so much for the copy edits — it's much appreciated, even if it's not done under the formal guild banner. Re the VisualEditor, doing some transcluding there is a good idea; I'll work on that. I gave less attention to that area when I was revamping the series recently since hopefully most people will take the plunge and learn source code (and since VE doesn't really need a manual as much to be understandable). {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:55, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Re this partial revert of my copy edit, I have never once seen the primary editor called the "Wiki Markup editor", which is why I changed the text to use terms that are used more widely. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:27, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: yeah, that paragraph is somewhat tricky. I'd like to change it to just say "Source editor", but the logo is for Wiki Markup. I don't think we should introduce more than one term, since new editors won't know that source editor/wiki markup editor/wikitext editor are all the same thing. So I think we're probably stuck with "wiki markup" unless there's another graphic out there or someone remakes File:Markup-logo.svg. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I think that the logo should be changed, at least to "Wiki markup" (sentence case), per the usage in the linked article. I tried to fix the case when I saw the phrase in the help pages, but I may have missed a few. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:04, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Pinging creator @Evolution and evolvability: any chance you could help with this? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:13, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Just catching up on some watchlist backlog and finally got to this. I've updated the icon to be sentence case. I made the original just to have some sort of representative image and just chose between wikitext/wikimarkup/wikicode, so happy to make a "Source editor/ing" replacement if it's useful to switch-over over the terminology (would make sense from the interface naming). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 12:08, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability: if it's not too much trouble, "Source editor" would be my preference — it addresses the concern above, doesn't seem quite as intimidating as "markup", and mirrors "Visual editor". Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
No problem - I've uploaded at File:Source editor logo.svg. I've started to convert the instances in the templates and will look for where the text of the pages themselves needs to be updated. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 08:34, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability: Looks good! And yeah, I think pretty much all references to Wiki markup ought to be replaced with source editor for consistency (except for ones at the first markup/VE editing pages, where it's mentioned as an alternative name). As an aside, I'm not sure whether at some point we may want to move the page titles in the series so that they're all under Help:Introduction/[name], which would make it easier to search for things like the above. It's a tradeoff between that and having perhaps more readable titles. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 09:09, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Transcluding bookshelf at smaller size

Hi there - thanks for getting in touch. There's no simple way to shrink something down that's being transcluded. In this case, the size is hard-coded into a lot of the subpages. To make it maller would mean changing all of them, I'm afraid. Tompw (talk) 20:42, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, oh well. Thanks anyways! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:12, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Another barnstar for the colleciton

The Instructor's Barnstar
This Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have performed stellar work in the area of instruction & help for other editors.
I've loved seeing the energy you've brought to advocating improvements in our onboarding of newcomers, especially your invaluable help with the introductory tutorials. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 12:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks so much, Thomas! In the "teach a man to fish" spirit, this is one I really treasure. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:50, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Just a thought

As a side comment to your point at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Bot expirations?, you should not upload a policy-breaking image simply because you expect someone else will come along and fix it. This is exactly the reason why Listeriabot was blocked for over a week last month; even though there were other bots that "fixed" the issue, the root of the problem was that it was making the bad edits in the first place. I have not (and will not) look into the issue (unless necessary), but from a copyvio-breaking standpoint repeated offences could be misconstrued as a lack of understanding our policies. I know that bots make our lives easier, but as has been discussed elsewhere we cannot rely on them. Primefac (talk) 13:22, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: Thanks for the note; I haven't uploaded any fair use images since January 2019, but next time I do I'll see if I can find a way to reduce the resolution beforehand so that a bot won't have to. I'm not a copyright expert, but I just read the discussion you linked and made my way to WP:IMAGERES. Although there is a tool there for estimating image size, I couldn't find one that actually helps do the reduction; adding such a tool and linking to it from the downsizing notice left on one's talk page might be good, since right now the impression the notice gives is that letting the bot do the downsizing is the standard operating procedure. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:11, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Template editor granted

Your account has been granted the "templateeditor" user permission, allowing you to edit templates and modules that have been protected with template protection. It also allows you to bypass the title blacklist, giving you the ability to create and edit editnotices. Before you use this user right, please read Wikipedia:Template editor and make sure you understand its contents. In particular, you should read the section on wise template editing and the criteria for revocation.

You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.

This user right gives you access to some of Wikipedia's most important templates and modules; it is critical that you edit them wisely and that you only make edits that are backed up by consensus. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password.

If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.

If you were granted the permission on a temporary basis you will need to re-apply for the permission a few days before it expires including in your request a permalink to the discussion where it was granted and a {{ping}} for the administrator who granted the permission. You can find the permalink in your rights log.

Useful links

Happy template editing! Primefac (talk) 14:18, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: Thank you! - {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:11, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Hands four?

Sdkb, we may have danced together, at Glen Echo or at a dance weekend. Are you a regular at GE? I'm one of the men who virtually always wears a colorful skirt. Anyway, now that we're not dancing, I have more time for WP. Would you be open to giving me some advice on various editing issues? Paulmlieberman (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Paulmlieberman: Yeah, I've been editing a bunch more lately too! (You said hi above!) And I'd certainly be happy to offer thoughts on any questions you have, although I'm by no means an expert in everything. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:56, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Right! I forgot! Well, I'll ping you here sometime soon. Paulmlieberman (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Module:Shortcut/further

Module:Shortcut/further has been nominated for merging with Module:Shortcut. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Mass change to tmeplates

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.  Moxy 🍁

Template editor right removed

You have made a large number of undiscussed changes to templates. This is inconsistent with the cautious approach indicated by the temporary grant of that right to a relatively inexperienced editor. I have removed this right for now. You may re-apply as you see fit, but you should note the reason for removal in any such application and indicate what you will do to ensure that similar disruption does not recur. Guy (help!) 14:18, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Before this settles into the archive, I just want to note for the record that the changes were not actually at all undiscussed, the ANI thread largely boomeranged against Moxy for not mentioning the prior discussions, JzG was criticized for actioning the report less than two hours after it was filed (before I had seen it), and the template editor right was later restored. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 03:27, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Your signature

Hello Sdkb,

I wanted to let you know that your signature is illegible to me. For what it's worth, I edit using Android smartphones, am 68 years old and have some minor vision problems. All I can see is the bottom half of the letters which makes it very difficult to determine which letters they are. Please consider making some adjustments. Thank you. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cullen328: Hi Jim! It's nice to see you outside the Teahouse; thanks for reaching out! Happy to work on this since it's a nice break, although just so you're aware, it's been a messy/stressful day for me on WP after hundreds of my template edits in all sorts of areas going back years were mass-reverted earlier. My signature is supposed to display so that the teal background covers the white letters, and it does so for me on desktop and most of the time on my Android smartphone. The only way I've been able to replicate the issue you're experiencing is by using my smartphone but switching to the desktop view on it. Is that the way you edit? Also, would you be able to tell me if the bubble around Wei4Green's signature also only goes half way up? I think there's probably some code issue happening that might lead to a phab ticket if we can figure out what it is. Cheers, Sdkb ({{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC))
Sorry to hear about the other problem you are going through, so please consider my request a low priority one. Yes, I do 99%+ of my editing using the desktop site on Android smartphones, currently a Google Pixel 2XL. I rarely use the mobile site except to occasionally verify that it still does not meet my needs. As for Wei4Green's signature, it is fully legible to me. The "Wei4" appears normally in blue, and the "Green" is fully visible against the bubble shape (which I call a racetrack shape). As you say, yours only goes halfway up in my view. No big deal - take your time, and be well. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 01:50, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning my signature, Sdkb. Also, thank you Cullen328 for giving feedback for my signature. I really appreciate it. I very much support Wikipedia's Manual of Style's web accessibility guidelines (MOS:ACCESS). My signature is complaint with the WCAG 2.0 AA level which is adhered by this guideline (MOS:COLOR). —Wei4Green (talk, contribs) 19:37, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
@Wei4Green: since you seem to be Wikipedia's cool signature guru haha, would you have any idea what's causing the short bubble bug for mine but not for most of yours? (I just checked, and it affects the second signature under the Nixanova heading at User:Wei4Green/signature but no others.) -Sdkb {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:42, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
It used to happen to me too with my past signatures that are not in my signature list. I'm not entirely sure why the mobile browser is cutting off the bubble. I edited User:Wei4Green/signature many times by changing the border radius and padding in the past just to get rid of the bubble bug. I also thought it was weird. I used to transclude the page to my signature, but since my signature now is under the 255-character limit for signatures, I just update it under my preferences. —Wei4Green (talk, contribs) 19:56, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi

If you've got a moment and this is something you're fine with could you email me via User:L235/Email? Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 06:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@L235: Done. Lmk if it didn't go through. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:09, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi Sdkb, I got it; unfortunately it might be a bit because there's a lot going on right now. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 01:26, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
@L235: No worries! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates#RfC on welcome template standardisation. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:04, 9 May 2020 (UTC) Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:04, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

a crowdsurfing photo, Contrastock, Glen Echo

While waiting out the pandemic, I was looking through my photo archive for things that might be appropriate for inclusion in WikiMedia, and I came across a photo of Nils Fredland crowdsurfing at the finale of a Contrastock event I attended. I think it would be a good addition to Glen_Echo_Park,_Maryland, but unfortunately it is not my photo, and I don't recall its source. If you have any suggestions, I'd like to hear them. Thanks.
--Bob K (talk) 14:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The filename of the photo is 426467_10150567133372413_51589149_n.jpg, which means it likely came from Facebook... in case that helps.
--Bob K (talk) 17:19, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bob K: to comply with licensing requirements, we'd have to find the photographer and get them to upload it (or at least freely license it) themselves. You could try searching for it via Tineye or by entering the filename on Facebook, but I'm not fully sure either of those would work. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 18:19, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Civility Barnstar
Thank you for the level-headed and reasonable discussions over at COVID-related articles - it's refreshing. :) Acalycine (talk) 14:22, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
@Acalycine: Thank you! I'm glad our processes function as well as they do on the COVID-19 pages. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 18:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)