User:Discott/talk archive 4

Video tutorial regarding Wikipedia referencing with VisualEditor

Hi, I have received a grant from WMF to support production of a video tutorial regarding creating references with VisualEditor. I anticipate that the video will be published in March 2019. If this tutorial is well received then I may produce additional tutorials in the future for English Wikipedia and possibly other projects such as Commons and Spanish Wikipedia. If you would like to receive notifications on your talk page when drafts and finished products from this project are ready for review, then please sign up for the project newsletter.
Regards, --Pine^✉ 00:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

L293D, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with ten good articles on submarines for a total of 357 points.
Adam Cuerden, a WikiCup veteran, came next with 274 points, mostly from eight featured pictures, restorations of artwork.
MPJ-DK, a wrestling enthusiast, was in third place with 263 points, garnered from a featured list, five good articles, two DYKs and four GARs.
Usernameunique came next at 243, with a featured article and a good article, both on ancient helmets.
Squeamish Ossifrage was in joint fifth place with 224 points, mostly garnered from bringing the 1937 Fox vault fire to featured article status.
Ed! was also on 224, with an amazing number of good article reviews (56 actually).

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk).

Orphaned non-free image File:Dodo Pizza logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Dodo Pizza logo.png. 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. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:54, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:VBS Mutual Bank.jpg

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Thanks for uploading File:VBS Mutual Bank.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. --B-bot (talk) 02:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Request for more election poster pictures

Greetings, Discott. How are you? I have noticed on the 2019 South African general election article that you have uploaded a few images of the election posters situated in Cape Town. Can you perhaps take more photos of the election posters? I reside in Paarl, more specifically the quite-predominant Afrikaans part of Paarl, so it is basically Freedom Front Plus or Democratic Alliance or nothing. I was in Cape Town yesterday, and I saw a lot of ACDP/DA/EFF/ANC posters that we don't have here in Paarl. I tried to take a few pictures, but, unfortunately, the pictures came out all blurry. You take the best, most high-quality pictures. Do you maybe see an opportunity to go out your way and go take some pictures? it would be of great help! Thanks in advance. Lefcentreright (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Lefcentreright

: I have also been thinking about this especially given the disproportionate number of DA posters relative to other parties. Unfortunately there are not many EFF posters around Cape Town. I was in Johannesburg a few weeks ago where I saw many EFF and other party posters but I was there for such a short period of time that I was unable to get any pictures of them. However I have managed to take a generic EFF poster recently and a picture of a GOOD campaign bus.--Discott (talk) 20:11, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Discott: Thanks for the posters! I appreciate it a lot! Lefcentreright (talk) 20:32, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 May newsletter

The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:

Cas Liber (1210), our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three DYKs. He also made good use of the bonus points available, more than doubling his score by choosing appropriate articles to work on.
Kosack (750), last year's runner up, with an FA, a GA, two FLs, and five DYKs.
Adam Cuerden (480), a WikiCup veteran, with 16 featured pictures, mostly restorations.
Zwerg Nase (461), a seasoned competitor, with a FA, a GA and an ITN item.

Other notable performances were put in by Barkeep49 with six GAs, Ceranthor, Lee Vilenski, and Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.

So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks, Discott! I really do appreciate the award. Lefcentreright (talk) 16:08, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Minor typo

Hey, in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZAR-USD_exchange_rate_1974-2014.png, in the legend to the right, 'percentage' is spelled with an extra h. If you ever wanted to update it, it might be good to address that as well. Thanks for your time! LRataplan (talk) 12:34, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

meetup on Sunday

Hey Douglas

I'm keen on popping into the meetup on Sunday - this is my first time joining, other than my laptop, is there anything else I should bring with or know about?

Thanks Jennifer Nefiger (talk) 13:29, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Nefiger, that's great! No need to bring anything else. Will be great to have you and see you there. Discott (talk) 16:28, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi again - please accept my apologies, unfortunately I will no longer be able to make the meetup today. Will keep an eye out for any updates on future meetings. Hope to see you soon. 209.203.28.15 (talk) 08:38, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

No worries Nefiger, see you next time on the 7th July then?--Discott (talk) 10:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

About the "2007-2019 South African energy crisis" article

Hi, there - how are you? I propose that the name of the article be just "South African energy crisis" because there is no confirmation that the blackouts have completely stopped for good. There is still speculation that load-shedding will be implemented later in the year, because of the ongoing woes at Eskom. Have a great week. Lefcentreright (talk) 15:33, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I support that name change.--Discott (talk) 20:01, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 July newsletter

The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with 500 points derived mainly from a featured article and two GAs on natural history topics
Adam Cuerden, with 480 points, a tally built on 16 featured pictures, the result of meticulous restoration work
SounderBruce, a finalist in the last two years, with 306 points from a variety of submissions, mostly related to sport or the State of Washington
Usernameunique, with 305 points derived from a featured article and two GAs on archaeology and related topics

Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:African Rainbow Minerals (logo).gif

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Thanks for uploading File:African Rainbow Minerals (logo).gif. 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. --B-bot (talk) 17:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

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Did you know?

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

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

Section editing
- The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
- The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
Loading overlay
- The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.

Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲Try Edit Cards.
Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.

Looking ahead

Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.

Learning more

The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 24

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Wynberg Boys' High School, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page John Macnaughton (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) 09:17, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Vida e Caffe logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Vida e Caffe logo.png. 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. --B-bot (talk) 17:55, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:IPPR logo.png

The file File:IPPR logo.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unused, low-res, no obvious use

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Olivia Jackson for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Olivia Jackson 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/Olivia Jackson 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. JDDJS (talk to me • see what I've done) 21:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions to fix South African Wikipedia

Hi, Discott. How are you? I recently discovered that you were the Chair of Wikimedia ZA, though it might be belated, but congratulations on obtaining such a senior role in South African Wikipedia. Your contributions are valued and appreciated. I have been contemplating for a while about notifying you and the others about this big, troublesome issue: The quality and standard of Wikipedia articles regarding South Africa is declining, and fast. Articles are littered with "outdated", "clean up", "orphan", "stub", "citation needed", "content explanation needed" and many more other templates regarding the condition.

One of the initial reasons why I started editing Wikipedia was to improve the quality and notability of these articles. I was frankly gatvol of opening an article and seeing that it is part of the infamous "one-liner and one source" (stub) articles. I was also tired of seeing vandalism and just plain nonsense on the articles, so I have attempted to improve the readability and content. We here in South Africa have so much to show and tell the world, but our Wikipedia articles do not reflect it. If we as a collective group of editors put our skills and knowledge together, we can fill the DYK, Good Article and Featured Article and List sections quite easily.

Now for the queries:

South African Politics (My editing-turf) is struggling a bit. I looked at the Executive Council (South Africa) article and see that it is filled with a sea of red links. All of the Western Cape MECs have Wikipedia articles. Why can't the rest have? Also, the provincial departments (Only Western Cape departments have three articles!) and national departments either have no articles at all or are just outdated and lacking newer information. We need to create more MEC profile articles (for instance, Limpopo MEC for Finance and many more MEC positions should have articles). The national ministerial articles are stubs. Those articles should be expanded more since the positions are vital and whoever holds them, have immense power. All the MPLs should have articles too. I want to nominate Alan Winde to obtain Good Article status. It is currently being peer-reviewed (no one has responded yet). Can you maybe just check the quality and be the "peer reviewer"? It would be appreciated. I also want to nominate List of members of the 6th KwaZulu-Natal Legislature (Currently in progress) for Featured List status. Can you maybe give advice on how the article should look for it to get the prestigious title?
Towns and cities. Almost all the same reasons as above. Many articles don't have many references and are consequently tagged with "additional sources needed" tags. It should not be like this. Plenty of the old Karoo towns have the potential of becoming a Good Articles or DYKs.
Personalities. Most articles in this section are outdated and lack references. Leon Schuster and many others' Wikipedia articles need some work.

Thank you for your time. Ping as many people as possible. Maybe make an announcement on WikiProject South Africa? Let's get as many people as possible involved in this project.

Thank you. Dankie. Enkosi.

LefcentrerightTalk 15:56, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Lefcentreright, that's very nice of you. You are right about the quanitity and quality of South African articles which is why it is a focus of Wikimedia ZA to try and get more people working on them. You should join us for the Wikipedia meetup we are having on the 5th October in Cape Town. We talk about this sort of stuff there and it is a great place to make a plan for them.--Discott (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

AfroCine: Join the Months of African Cinema this October!

Greetings!

After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.

The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which have been dedicated to creating and improving content that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. Join us in this global edit-a-thon, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section.

On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:

Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
Diversity winner
Gender-gap fillers

For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for today. I was very nice to finally be among fellow Wikipedians. If you still want to write the co-nomination for Greenman, you can do so here: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Greenman. Thanks again. LefcentrerightTalk (plz ping) 13:45, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Lefcentreright, it was great to have you join us yesterday and I hope you can join us next time too. Thanks for the link to Greenman's nomination. I will look at it now.--Discott (talk) 14:24, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019

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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk Pages

The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor

The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards

On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
- One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
- New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
- Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

2019 US Banknote Contest

US Banknote Contest

November-December 2019

There are an estimated 30,000 different varieties of United States banknotes, yet only a fraction of these are represented on Wikimedia Commons in the form of 2D scans. Additionally, Colonial America, the Confederate States, the Republic of Texas, multiple states and territories, communities, and private companies have issued banknotes that are in the public domain today but are absent from Commons.

In the months of November and December, WikiProject Numismatics will be running a cross-wiki upload-a-thon, the 2019 US Banknote Contest. The goal of the contest is to increase the number of US banknote images available to content creators on all Wikimedia projects. Participants will claim points for uploading and importing 2D scans of US banknotes, and at the end of the contest all will receive awards. Whether you want to claim the Gold Wiki or you just want to have fun, all are invited to participate.

If you do not want to receive invitations to future US Banknote Contests, follow the instructions here

Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

WikiCup 2019 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:

Adam Cuerden (submissions) with 964 points
Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 899 points
Casliber (submissions) with 817 points
Kosack (submissions) with 691 points
SounderBruce (submissions) with 388 points
Enwebb (submissions) with 146 points
Usernameunique (submissions) with 145 points
HaEr48 (submissions) with 74 points

All those who reached the final will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Casliber (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 7 FAs during the course of the competition.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 14 GAs in round 5.
Yashthepunisher (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 4 FLs overall.
Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 91 FPs overall.
MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 7 articles in good topics in round 2.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 14 did you know articles in round 5.
Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 7 in the news articles in round 1.
Ed! (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 56 good article reviews in round 1.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2020 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you for your edit in the big tent article

Friendlyhistorian (talk) 14:17, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Friendlyhistorian, that is very kind of you. :-)

Invitation to revise declined entry Draft:Anton Smit (sculptor) , South African

Hi User:Discott, Given your interest in South African culture, may I invite you to revise entry Draft:Anton Smit (sculptor) and perhaps join the ongoing debate? In my view, the artist´s work meets the requisite of being a "significant monument/part of a significant exhibition" as required by the submission´s decliner. Your help with this will be greatly appreciated.Neuralia (talk) 14:29, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

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Photos of politicians and my proposals

Hi, Discott. I see that you lot discussed the subject on how to get photos of politicians at the 22nd Meetup. This has been an issue that has been troubling me for some time now. I unsuccessfully tried to work with GCIS on getting photos of the South African premiers. They were not helpful and incredibly unenlightened to put it nicely.

Now, I had an incident on Natasha Mazzone's article where a user kept on changing the image on her infobox to a newer one. The problem was that the image had an inadequate license. We eventually had a discussion on my talk page (Now archived. See here User talk:Lefcentreright/Archive 4#Natasha Mazzone image). To my shock, it turned out to be her husband, Kevin Mileham. Mileham is also an MP. He gave his cellphone number (083 463 8858). This isn't the end of the story. Mazzone DM'ed me on Instagram and I ended up being invited to Parliament for a day. I met a lot of MPs. If you look on my user page, I even got a photo with the COPE President.

When I was there at Parliament, I realised that most MPs do, in fact, want articles and they want their articles to look nice with images, quotes, excerpts of their work, etc. Most MPs do not have articles and it has actually reached that point in which MPs create their own articles, e.g. Kevin Mileham and Dean Macpherson. I believe an edit-a-thon is needed. Also, I believe we could do what they did at the EU Parliament a few years ago and also hold an outreach to Parliament and also to the provincial legislatures. Kind regards. LefcentrerightTalk (plz ping) 15:23, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:University of Stellenbosch crest-no background.png

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Thanks for uploading File:University of Stellenbosch crest-no background.png. 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. --B-bot (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Category:People diagnosed with dyslexia has been nominated for discussion

Category:People diagnosed with dyslexia, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Vaporgaze (talk) 19:24, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2020 WikiCup!

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders and improvers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. We are relaxing the rule that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2020 will count; now to be eligible for points in the competition, you must have completed significant work on the content at some time! Any questions on the rules or on anything else connected to the Cup should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Copyright image from Robben Island Museum?

Dear Discott,

Can you help me with a copyright question about an image from the Robben Island Museum (RIM)?

w:c:User:Vigneron said i might ask you about this discussion for undeletion.

I am a volunteer at the w:Afrika-Studiecentrum Leiden as a Wikipedian in Residence (w:nl:Wikipedia:GLAM/Afrika-Studiecentrum webpage in Dutch, resembles Afrikaans closely, so you might understand, otherwise Google translate got better). Aart Rietveld, an historian who taught in Nigeria, donated lots of photographs of Africa to the ASC, such as the w:c:Category:Robben_Island_2015_(Rietveld_Collection). There was a picture i liked, see

Google robben island museum canvas logo

https://www.google.com/search?q=robben+island+museum+canvas+logo&client=firefox-b-e&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=UPfqVqQxAckeWM%253A%252Cc6tL8mOIHftHKM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTOZsABBuV02BSL_riGtw1fitOe5A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxv8LZ1oDnAhVML1AKHWzpDuYQ9QEwA3oECAcQDw#imgrc=UPfqVqQxAckeWM:

where it surprisingly is still visible in cache (? from nl.m.wikipedia.org) of a Dutch wikipedia page, although the image was deleted on Commons where the filename was (is?) ASC_Leiden_-_Rietveld_Collection_-_28_-_Yellow_canvas_with_four_silhouettes_and_text_%22Robben_Island%22_-_2015_(cropped).jpg,

w:c:User_talk:VIGNERON#Commons:Deletion_requests/File:ASC_Leiden_-_Rietveld_Collection_-_28_-_Yellow_canvas_with_four_silhouettes_and_text_"Robben_Island"_-_2015_(cropped).jpg

for the cropped image, there was also a larger image. Vigneron suggested PD-South-Africa-exempt as you can see from his discussion mentioned above.

What is your judgement? Can we undelete and show this image on Commons with the license "PD-South-Africa-exempt" (or something else)?

Thanks a lot, baie dankie, Hansmuller (talk) 13:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Hansmuller, I am not so sure what it was a picture of as I can not see it which makes it more challenging to give good feed back on this. Too bad it was taken down before I could see it. I am assuming it is an image of the Robbin Island Museum logo? If it is then I would upload it under a fair use argument on Wikipedia its self and not on commons. Such as I did with the tiger brands logo here. It is far more technical (legally or disclaimer wise) than a normal upload on commons of an image that you own the copyright of but for logos of organisations it is the best approach generally. Downside is that it only will work for English langauge Wikipedia and you will need to repeat the process on each other language version of Wikipedia you want to use the logo in. If it is not a logo than it might be a very different problem and solution. Hope that helps? --Discott (talk) 15:42, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Discott, Thank you for looking into this. Apparently, the above Google query does not show the image? (It might be only in my cache?) It is the same design as the Robben Island Museum logo eith the same text and font, but with not a white but a yellow background instead (the blue background patch is the same). It was (is still?) on a wall in the museum on high on a rectangular piece of yellow textile (canvas?), with in black the text "Robben Island" below and above it four thick black vertical stripes which from left to right evolve into a schematic human figure with outstretched arms. I think it is an impression of the logo (derived from the logo). Lots of tourists must have photographed it, is it public domain in SA? (I opt for a general solution, not the fair use one which does not apply in my frog country :=) the Netherlands.) Thanks! Hansmuller (talk) 12:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thats a tough one Hansmuller. On one hand technically ~~you do~~ the author of the photograph technically owns the picture and the rights to it as the photograph's original author. On the other hand the logo is covered by Brand Law which restricts the rights one has to recreate that logo. That overrides the other right when sharing the image on Commons for a bunch of reasons I dont want to go into here. The one exception is if the logo is incidental to the picture and not the subject of the picture which I dont think is the case here. Generally speaking Wikipedia/Commons takes the strictest possible interpretation of Copyright law so as to protect us from any possible accidental violations. This is clearly the type of issue that is in a great area. For Wikipedia when/if arguing Fair Use you can add the photograph if you are doing so for the sake of commentary such as talking about the design of the flag and what it means. Personally I would default to the 'lets keep it on Commons' side of the argument but I can certainly see why others would be concerned about it violating copyright. I am going to ask for a more professional and informed opinion on this and try to get back to you.--Discott (talk) 15:12, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

That is very kind of you, thank you. I see the image as PD-South-Africa-exempt, as the logo is used in official documents of and on the website of the South African government (Robben Island Museum). So it is not related to a commercial brand, as you suggest ("Brand law"). Thanks again, goedenavond, Hansmuller (talk) 18:39, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Tiger Brands Logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Tiger Brands Logo.png. 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. --B-bot (talk) 18:57, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included L293D, Kingsif, Enwebb, Lee Vilenski and CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

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Speedy deletion nomination of Category:2020 crimes in South Africa

A tag has been placed on Category:2020 crimes in South Africa requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Greenmarket pics

Kudos on those! They really capture the scary reality. Rob van vee 14:18, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

You are welcome Robvanvee, thank you for the thanks. :-) --Discott (talk) 15:09, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use File:Yiwu Int Trade.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Yiwu Int Trade.jpg. I noticed that this file is being used under a claim of fair use. However, I think that the way it is being used fails the first non-free content criterion. This criterion states that files used under claims of fair use may have no free equivalent; in other words, if the file could be adequately covered by a freely-licensed file or by text alone, then it may not be used on Wikipedia. If you believe this file is not replaceable, please:

Go to the file description page and add the text {{Di-replaceable fair use disputed|<your reason>}} below the original replaceable fair use template, replacing <your reason> with a short explanation of why the file is not replaceable.
On the file discussion page, write a full explanation of why you believe the file is not replaceable.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. 廣九直通車 (talk) 09:29, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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Screenshot showing what the Reply tool looks like — This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

Reply tool improved with edit tool buttons — In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
- an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
- a rich-text visual editing option, and
- other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Africa Sources List

Hi Discott, thank you for contributing to the Africa Sources List. I created a shortcut (WP:AFSL) for the list, and added the list to WP:RSP § See also where it can hopefully be found by a wider audience. You might also be interested in Rosguill's initiative to survey the reliability of sources from regions underrepresented on Wikipedia, including African countries. A discussion on Ghana was started in February, and advertised on WikiProject Africa at WT:Africa § Notice: NPP source guide discussion about Ghanaian sources is underway. — Newslinger talk 10:24, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Thats awesome! Thanks Newslinger! :-) --Discott (talk) 14:45, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Cape Town Central City Improvement District logo.png

The file File:Cape Town Central City Improvement District logo.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unused, low-res, no obvious use

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

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This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter

The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Hog Farm with 801, Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Busisiwe Mkhwebane/ Pravin Gordhan (Sars rogue unit)

Hi, Discott, I see that you contributed significantly to the Pravin Gordhan section in the article on Busisiwe Mkhwebane. Thought I would share this with you for consideration. I am a under pressure with other things, otherwise would do it, but I trust you will look into it. Thanking you. https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mkhwebane-loses-concourt-bid-to-overturn-sars-rogue-unit-judgment-48668907 Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 15:22, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Discott Ghana-South Africa Realations Map

Hi

I hope you are doing well, I came across one of your images which were uploaded onto Wikipedia. Please see link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana-South_Africa_relations

I think it is a fantastic way for people to understand the spatial distribution between the two countries. I was hoping do you perhaps have any other images like this readily available?

1) South Africa - Burkina Faso 2) South Africa - Tanzania 3) South Africa - Kenya 4) South Africa - Uganda 5) South Africa - Botswana 6) etc

Basically all countries within Africa relative to South Africa.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.229.3.5 (talk) 09:06, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello and thanks for reaching out. Basically I used Inkscape (which is totally free to use) to open and modify a version of this file with only Africa in it. These days I would rather suggest using this file of the globe in it as it is a better format for illustrating country locations on the globe. But the process of using Inkscape to edit the svg files to colour countries will remain the same. Good luck! --Discott (talk) 11:48, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

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Mockup of the new reply feature, showing new editing tools — The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter

The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
The Rambling Man , with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:

The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Meetup

Hello! When is the next online meetup? Regards, LefcentrerightDiscuss 14:38, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Lefcentreright, great question. Greenman is generally the one that takes the lead on the online meetups but there no reason why we cant be bold and initiate the next one our selves. When you would you like the next one to take place? This weekend is a bit soon and I have other commitments but any other weekend works for me.--Discott (talk) 15:27, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Saturday, 18 July would suit me the best. Regards, LefcentrerightDiscuss 15:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Lefcentreright, same format as last time? How does 11h00 to 13h00 sound? 3h seemed a bit long for the last two, and we can always go overtime.Greenman (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Greenman Sounds good to me. Best, LefcentrerightDiscuss 20:11, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok, it has been created at Wikipedia:Meetup/South Africa/South Africa 3. Thanks, LefcentrerightDiscuss 09:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Barloworld Logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Barloworld Logo.png. 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. --B-bot (talk) 17:24, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Allegations

Hello @Discott:. I am planning on reverting/amending this edit because according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons If the subject has denied such allegations, their denial(s) should also be reported.

"A number of ANC and government officials implicated in allegations of COVID-19 related corruption include Ace Magashule,^[1] the wife of Bandile Masuku,^[2] and the husband of presidential spokesperson Khusela Diko.^[3]^[4]"

@Bobbyshabangu: @Netha Hussain: @5 albert square: @DNdubane (WMF): @Doc James: Ear-phone (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Ear-phone:, I am okay with that and thank you for following up on this with me. I would perfer if their denials be added when they can be found. I dont know if all of them have denied the allegations in the media (which is widely covered in South Africa) yet. Due to the wide coverage of the Diko affair in particular in the media here I feel there is a good justification for keeping that one in particular in the article. I would argue the article would be incomplete without some mention of it. I was worried that the wording might be a bit strong in that sentence so I am happy to let you take a crack at reworking it. Especially if the neutrality of the sentence can be improved.--Discott (talk) 14:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe it is better to just delete the sentence. I am not sure and happy to leave it up to you or others to decide.--Discott (talk) 14:19, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Discott: I found these denials ^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] Ear-phone (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

That's fantastic, thank you for looking into this! I should have done the extra leg work and looked into finding any accusation denials. I assume you will be amending the problematic sections then?--Discott (talk) 14:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Discott: if I have enough time during the weekend/week. Ear-phone (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

In the article you cited, "Ace Magashule told Scorpio that he was not aware that his sons’ companies had bid for, or won, the contracts. He also strongly denied that he had influenced the procurement process." ^[10] Ear-phone (talk) 14:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I have added the Diko and Masuku denials. I will add the Magashule denial now. I would still like it if you (and others) could take a look at this section of text to see if it can be made more neutral or better written (or if it just should be removed). More people editing it the better. I have removed any reference to the ANC in an effort to make it more neutral but I am not so sure if that is a help or a hindrance when improving this article.--Discott (talk) 14:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Ear-phone: I just saw this conversation. Can someone maybe read Bandile Masuku#COVID-19 and tell me if it needs to be better written/more neutral? Best, LefcentrerightDiscuss 15:06, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Lefcentreright: @Discott: I have run out of time. I will try and have a look during the weekend/week. Ear-phone (talk) 15:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

References

^ Myburgh, Pieter-Louis (2020-07-31). "SCORPIO: Ace Magashule's sons each bag a Free State Covid-19 contract". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ Schatz, Riaan Grobler and Chanté. "PODCAST | THE STORY: Dodgy PPE tender procurements land government officials in hot water". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ Felix, Jason. "Gauteng govt tight-lipped on latest PPE tender corruption claims". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ Cite error: The named reference :02 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ "Masuku denies involvement in COVID-19 PPE tender corruption". SABC News - Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa's news leader. 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ Grobler, Riaan. "Gauteng Health MEC denies involvement in PPE procurement corruption". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ "Gauteng Health MEC denies involvement in PPE procurement corruption".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ "Dikos release statement denying tender corruption". eNCA. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ "Gauteng Health MEC denies ties to controversial R125 million PPE tender". The South African. 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
^ Myburgh, Pieter-Louis (2020-07-31). "SCORPIO: Ace Magashule's sons each bag a Free State Covid-19 contract". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

New message from Nathan2055

Hello, Discott. You have new messages at Draft talk:The Impact of COVID-19 in Tembisa(South Africa).
Message added 22:39, 30 August 2020 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:39, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Mr Price logo.png

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Thanks for uploading File:Mr Price logo.png. 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. --B-bot (talk) 17:38, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Join the Months of African Cinema Global Contest!

Greetings!

The AfroCine Project invites you to join us again this October and November, the two months which are dedicated to improving content about the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora.

Join us in this exciting venture, by helping to create or expand contents in Wikimedia projects which are connected to this scope. Kindly list your username under the participants section to indicate your interest in participating in this contest.

We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap fillers - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

We would be adding additional categories as the contest progresses, along with local prizes from affiliates in your countries. For further information about the contest, the prizes and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. Looking forward to your participation.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 19:22, 22nd September 2020 (UTC)

Ýou can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter

The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by Gog the Mild (submissions). In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Hog Farm (submissions), HaEr48 (submissions), Harrias (submissions) and Bloom6132 (submissions). The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
Bloom6132 (submissions) win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
Rhododendrites (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2021 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November!

Greetings,

Thank you very much for participating in the Months of African Cinema global contest/edit-a-thon, and thank you for your contributions so far.

It is already the middle of the contest and a lot have been achieved already! We have been able to get over 1,500 articles created in over fifteen (15) languages! This would not have been possible without your support and we want to thank you. If you have not yet listed your name as a participant in the contest page please do so.

Please make sure to list the articles you have created or improved in the article achievements' section of the contest page, so that they can be easily tracked. To be able to claim prizes, please also ensure to list your articles on the users by articles page. We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap filler - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

We are very excited about what has been achieved so far, but your contributions are still needed to further exceed all expectations! Let’s create more articles before the end of this contest, which is this November!!!

Thank you once again for being part of this global event! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 10:30, 06 November 2020 (UTC)

You can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

Incomplete DYK nomination

Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Battle of Salt River at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot (talk) 10:09, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. 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 2020 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) 01:31, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Battle of Salt River

On 27 November 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Battle of Salt River, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the ǃUriǁʼaekua used their cattle to defeat the Portuguese Empire decisively at the Battle of Salt River? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Battle of Salt River. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Battle of Salt River), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:10, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.

The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[2]
The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[3] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
A large A/B test will start soon.[4] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[5] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Help on Wikiproject Climate change project

Hi,

any chance you want to help out on increasing coverage and info on this ? Carbon sink upscaling additional info on carbon sink upscaling (missing info) --Genetics4good (talk) 16:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

AfroCine: 2020 Months of African Cinema Contest Winners

Greetings!

Thank you very much for participating in The 2020 Months of African Cinema Global Contest which was concluded on 30 November 2020. The contest was able exceed all expectations, with the creation of over 3,200 articles written in 19 languages. This places the contest firmly as one of the most successful article writing contest on Wikipedia.

A big thank you to you and every single person who created articles during the period of the contest for making this happen!

Please note that we have now concluded the review of all submitted articles, and winners have now been listed on the relevant page. We'd still be contacting everyone who has won something separately to send over their prizes. Thank you very much once again! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 23:45, 03 April 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs.
Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews.
Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews.
Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews.
Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations.
Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items.

Please remember that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of Round 2 but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in Round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:27, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

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Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion Tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Another source for the Copyright Amendment Bill

Good evening Discott

You might want to add PEN Afrikaans to the list of naysayers.

They posted their grievances on July the 3rd, 2017 (also in English).

I'm sure the reasons (or misconceptions?) aren't new to you, but at least you can count it as yet another statistic.

Have a nice evening.

And thank you for collecting such an extensive database of articles. Suidpunt (talk) 19:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Suidpunt, I will add them now to the list. The list is very incomplete. I still need to add a lot of the organisations that support the bill for example but that is on me. So a suggested addition to the list with a reference is very helpful to making the list more complete.--Discott (talk) 11:08, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were:

The Rambling Man, with 1825 points from 3 featured articles, 44 featured article reviews, 14 good articles, 30 good article reviews and 10 DYKs. In addition, he completed a 34-article good topic on the EFL Championship play-offs.
Epicgenius, a New York specialist, with 1083 points from 2 featured article reviews, 18 good articles, 30 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
Bloom6132, with 869 points from 11 DYKs, all with bonus points, and 54 "In the news" items, mostly covering people who had recently died.
Gog the Mild, with 817 points from 3 featured articles on historic battles in Europe, 5 featured article reviews and 3 good articles.
Hog Farm, with 659 points from 2 featured articles and 2 good articles on American Civil War battles, 18 featured article reviews, 2 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 4 DYKs.
BennyOnTheLoose, a snooker specialist and new to the Cup, with 647 points from a featured article, 2 featured article reviews, 6 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 3 DYKs.

In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedian in Residence

Hey!

This is Abel from DRC. We did meet in the last Affiliate meeting on Sunday, July 25. I'm writing to get to know a bit more about the WiR role you've created. I did already apply but not yet get any feedback from you. Is there something going wrong on my side?

Best,

--Support Wikipedia, support free sharing of knowledge 11:33, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi BamLifa, I am afraid I am the wrong person to ask about this. As I mentioned during the Affiliates meeting I did not create that role or played any part in selecting candidates for it. I merely gave preliminary advice to the program organisers in the early stages of its creation. I suggest you reach out to the project organisers for information about the status of your application. Good luck, --Discott (talk) 11:55, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Discott, thank you so much for your quick reply. Should you point out to the program organisers contacts? --BamLifa (talk) 12:13, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi BamLifa, unfortunately I don't have permission from them to do that. I don't want to violate their trust. :-( --Discott (talk) 13:12, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:December 2021 events in South Africa

A tag has been placed on Category:December 2021 events in South Africa indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:08, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I created that page in error when creating the Category:December 2020 events in South Africa. Might as well remove it for now until December 2021 rolls around. Thanks, --Discott (talk) 15:19, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Meetups in South Africa

Hi Discott, this message is in relation to Wikipedia:Meetup/South Africa. I would like to propose moving the platform of these events from “Zulip and Zoom” to Discord. Discord offers both text, voice and video options and hosts South African servers. This change should be able to attract higher attendance and be a better move for the future. Wikipedia talk:Meetup/South Africa#Move To Discord Platform. TapticInfo (talk) 11:23, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi TapticInfo, that's a good suggestion. We have also been considering giving gather town a try as well (where we have a meetup room already established). I have already created a Zulip room for the next meetup. Perhaps we can discuss this then? By the way, are you attending this year's Wikimania? It is happening now from 14 to the 17th August.--Discott (talk) 12:12, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

That’s great, we will discuss it at the next meeting in 2 weeks time. Unfortunately I didn’t register for Wikimania as I completely forgot. TapticInfo (talk) 12:26, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Great, I will see you then and there. No worries about Wikimania. Although you might not be able to 'attend' you can still attend by watching the events live on YouTube. The links should be on the Wikimania program.--Discott (talk) 13:25, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I’ll watch it there TapticInfo (talk) 16:49, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Discott:, Hi again, do you you think maybe I could experiment and run a Beta program for the South African Wikipedia Discord. It will include all the necessary bots for pre public access including anti vandalism bots, Official Wiki bots, etc. Just a Closed access program? TapticInfo (talk) 17:09, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Sure, feel free to be bold and give it a go. --Discott (talk) 18:45, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, Lee Vilenski, BennyOnTheLoose, Amakuru and Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:01, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Passcode? for zoom meeting Wikimedia ZA AGM

Hi Douglas, do you perhaps have the passcode for zoom meeting tomorrow (Wikimedia ZA AGM)? Thanks, --Aliwal2012 (talk) 20:54, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Aliwal2012, I have messaged Shupai to see what the password is or even if there is a password. My understanding is that there is no password and all you need to do is register for it and then you will be able to enter the meeting when it starts at 10AM tomorrow. I did not set this Zoom meeting up but we did test it in the past and it worked then and I have been assured it will work tomorrow. Either way I will let you know as soon as I hear back from Shupai about the whole password situation. In the meantime, have you registered to join the event yet?--Discott (talk) 21:32, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Discott: I see there's a registration link on Twitter/Facebook going to a Google doc registration page, but the registration link in the email goes to a zoom link (which just seems to join the call, password is included in the link). Twitter/Facebook didn't have a link to Zoom. Greenman (talk) 22:06, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Greenman, sounds like we need to clarify the Twitter/Facebook links. Shupai tells me that there is no Zoom code for the event. She will however double check tomorrow and let me know. I suspect it is giving some sort of responce similar to a "please give password" response as the meeting has not started yet and Shupai needs to be around to let people into the Zoom call.--Discott (talk) 22:10, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thanks guys, but I'm still prompted for a "personal ID" or meeting passcode? --Aliwal2012 (talk) 07:57, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Aliwal2012: that is strange. Have you registered for the event yet?--Discott (talk) 07:59, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Aliwal2012:, just want to make sure you have the correct link for the meeting. Here is the link incase you have the wrong link. Link to join the Zoom call/Register for the event --Discott (talk) 08:12, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

WMZA Discord Server

Hi @Discott:, The Discord server is online, still setting up everything, Here’s the Link https://discord.gg/HwBwHWWurr
TapticInfo (talk) 19:03, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@TapticInfo:, thank you very much. I have joined the Discord.--Discott (talk) 12:44, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Discott:, That’s Great, Currently setting up the necessary bots, should be kinda done with in the next week. TapticInfo (talk) 18:50, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to the Months of African Cinema Global Contest!

Greetings!

The AfroCine Project core team is happy to inform you that the Months of African Cinema Contest is happening again this year in October and November. We invite Wikipedians all over the world to join in improving content related to African cinema on Wikipedia!

Please list your username under the participants’ section of the contest page to indicate your interest in participating in this contest. The term "African" in the context of this contest, includes people of African descent from all over the world, which includes the diaspora and the Caribbean.

The following prizes would be recognized at the end of the contest:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap fillers - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

Also look out for local prizes from affiliates in your countries or communities! For further information about the contest, the prizes and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. We look forward to your participation.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 23:20, 30th September 2021 (UTC)

Ýou can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

The Discord Server might be done

Hi @Discott:, so basically the Discord Server for South Africa is done, so Here’s some things to note

1. This is the page on Wikipedia to access the discord Wikipedia:Meetup/South Africa/Discord

2. I would like to ask for user input on ways to improve the server, so maybe we can start inviting people to the server, I created a template to place on talk pages WP:Meetup/South Africa/Invite Discord

Interested in joining the South African Wikipedia Discord?

If you are interested in a joining, please visit Wikipedia:Meetup/South Africa/Discord for more Infomation or click the button below

Everyone in Southern Africa is Welcome, for any technical issues or questions about Discord, Please ask User:TapticInfo on his talk page

Join Server

Insert your message. Your Talk message

You can probably even send the link to the WhatsApp group or something like that

3. I am working on a Guide to the Wikimedia South Africa Discord Server. This will be a page which will instruct and teach people on how to join and use the server. I’m going to reach out to people in other Wikis starting with Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa for assistance in translating the guide.

So That’s basically it, maybe if you can check out the server and Wikipedia:Meetup/South Africa/Discord page and give me any feedback if you can. TapticInfo (talk) 16:44, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi TapticInfo, thanks for this! This is great! I think I will encourage everyone to use this Discord server for our next community meetup on 30 October. I will still be on Zulip so as to ease people over and as a backup for those that might struggle with a new platform like (for them) Discord. I have also just shared the discord with everyone on the board and will send an email out shortly to let everyone know on our mailing list. Thanks again! --Discott (talk) 11:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Discott: Ye, Cool, last thing, there are User page boxes that you can add to your User Page, like this

{{Discord/Userbox/SouthAfrica|account=Taptic}}

#

This user chats on the South African Discord server as Taptic.

{{Discord/Userbox/SouthAfrica}}

#

This user chats on the South African Discord server.

TapticInfo (talk) 17:19, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you. I will use them.--Discott (talk) 18:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is The Rambling Man (submissions), who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were:

The Rambling Man (submissions) with 5072 points
Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 3276 points
Amakuru (submissions) with 3197 points
Epicgenius (submissions) with 1611 points
Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1571 points
BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 1420 points
Hog Farm (submissions) with 1043 points
Bloom6132 (submissions) with 528 points

All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.

The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5.
Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5.
The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5.
Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall.
Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2022 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November!

Greetings,

It is already past the middle of the contest and we are really excited about the Months of African Contest 2021 achievements so far! We want to extend our sincere gratitude for the time and energy you have invested. If you have not yet participated in the contest, it is not too late to do it. Please list your username as a participant on the contest’s main page.

Please remember to list the articles you have improved or created on the article achievements' section of the contest page so they can be tracked. In order to win prizes, be sure to also list your article in the users by articles. Please note that your articles must be present in both the article achievement section on the main contest page, as well as on the Users By Articles page for you to qualify for a prize.

We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap filler - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

Thank you once again for your valued participation! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

You can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

Category:People with dyslexia has been nominated for deletion

Category:People with dyslexia has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. User:Namiba 18:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. 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 2021 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) 00:11, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Sound Logo project

The Wikimedia Sound Logo project

Hello, the Wikimedia sound logo project is in an early development phase -- this stage is for asking all kinds of questions, developing and fielding ideas, finding themes and shaping the direction of the project. Here is a link to the meta page for the project: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Sound_Logo

Your input is welcome. Thank you.

VGrigas (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks VGrigas! I will have a look at it. It certainly looks very interesting. Hope you are well. Best regards, Discott (talk)

Nomination of List of COVID-19 deaths in South Africa for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of COVID-19 deaths in South Africa 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/List of COVID-19 deaths in South Africa 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.

Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 02:20, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Bain & Company Additional FT source to consider for the Bain page

Hi Discott. My name is Robb Rosell and I work for Bain & Company. You recently added a "Zondo Commission Findings" sub-section to the page about Bain cited mostly to The Daily Maverick regarding criticisms of the firm's work for the South African government. The Daily Maverick does not mention Bain's point-of-view, though other sources like the Financial Times do. The Financial Times source said:

Bain & Co said it was disappointed that the report “mischaracterises” its role at South Africa’s revenue service (SARS) but that it would continue to co-operate fully with authorities. “While we made mistakes in our work with SARS, we remain confident that we did not in any way wilfully or knowingly support state capture at SARS or elsewhere,” it said. “There are no new facts considered in this report; the report relies heavily on the affidavit and testimony of one witness who admitted to having ‘no first-hand knowledge’ of Bain’s work at SARS.” The consultancy said the report appeared not to have factored in two affidavits it had submitted to the inquiry.

I wanted to see if you felt the page would be improved by adding a sentence with the firm's defenses to the accusation, in order to summarize multiple points of view. Something like "Bain & Company said the report mischaracterized its actions and that it was cooperating with authorities.^[1]"

Robbrosell (talk) 18:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Robbrosell, I will look into this. The Financial Times is a good source and I am sure that their reporting of Bain & Co's opinion on the finding is accurate, its a pity that it is hidden behind a paywall which limits its use as a source. In order to resolve the single source issue you mentioned I have added citations from additional sources so as to strengthen the reliability of the section; thank you for highlighting that. I have also decided to move this discussion to the Bain & Co Wikipedia article talk page as discussions such as these should rather live on the talk page of the article in question so as to improve transparency. I have also sought to some add additional points of view on these findings. I do want to add that I am not very happy about large companies accused of serious corruption and undermining the basic functions of a country making requests for changes to be made to Wikipedia pages. It reminds me of the time that representatives of the Gupta Family made requests to have their Wikipedia page amended to include their point of view.--Discott (talk) 09:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Upon reflection I feel that the reason for the unhappiness in my previous message was unclear. I want to clarify that what I took umbrage at is the request (especially a request from a large corporate involved in significant controversy) contacting me directly on my personal talk page without leaving a request on the article talk page. It is problematic as it comes across as not fully transparent. It was this pattern of request making that reminded me of the Gupta Family incidence. Everyone has the right to make requests for changes to articles. In this case the requested change to include Bain & Co's response to the commission findings is reasonable, fair and likely improves NPOV. However the most correct course of action would have been to have left that request on the talk page of the Bain & Co Wikipedia article and then, if you wanted people to look into it quickly, contact individual editors (such as myself for example) to notify us of the change request on the article's talk page. From now on I will continue this conversation on the Bain & Co talk page.--Discott (talk) 12:04, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

References

^ "Zuma presided over rampant corruption, says South Africa inquiry". Financial Times. January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.

Daar kom die Alibama

OK, that's just wierd. :)Naraht (talk) 21:44, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It is isn't it; but it seems like it should be classified along with other US Civil War related songs given the common understanding of the song's origin.--Discott (talk) 22:23, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Note, I didn't revert. Now all we need is World War I related songs coming out of Honduras. :)Naraht (talk) 01:18, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I noticed, thank you :-) It is one of those strange things that when looked into starts to make a bit more sense. The people that would become Afrikaners had sympathy for the Confederate cause for two reasons. One was their own desire for independence; first from the corrupt Dutch East India Company and then from the, to them, foreign British Empire. The second was that emancipation was a hot political issue in the Cape Colony as the emancipation of Cape slaves in 1834 was unpopular with most Afrikaners and was a key trigger for the Great Trek. I suspect that Briton's ambiguous, if not somewhat friendly, posture towards the Confederate States also made such sympathy a bit more politically acceptable at the time as well. What is surprising is how popular the song is with the Cape Coloured community who suffered terribly during slavery at the Cape and so had no reason to be supportive of the Confederate cause. I suspect that fact lends some support to the idea that the origin, or at least the alternative meaning, of the song comes from the name of a local transport steamer instead of the CS Alabama.--Discott (talk) 10:21, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Phase Out Zulip

Hi Discott, I wanted to talk to you about Phasing out Zulip in favor of Discord. As proven in the recent meetups, is it time to stop text based platform Zulip and transition fully to Discord.

What I think should occur is as follows:

1. Fully promote the Discord Platform and completely stop using Zulip.

2. Discuss weather we should move all meetings to Discord, including Yearly AGMs. I remember at the last AGM you spoke about keeping Zoom when discussing the budget due to it being an expense. Discord is Free for use and is equivalent or possibly better than Zoom, so that could be a saving for the Organisation. TapticInfo (talk) 18:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Discott:, wondering if you have considered yet? TapticInfo (talk) 12:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Discott:, sorry for not replying sooner. I have been thinking about your suggestion. I am not so sure about completely stopping the use of Zulip but I do like the idea of committing more to the Discord platform. The reason why is that there are community members who have become familiar with Zulip and also advocate for us to use that for many chapter functions so moving away from it will require some consultation and introspection. However fully committing to using Discord for the community meetups will be much easier and now is most likely the best time for that. Lets talk about this more at the next community meeting? --Discott (talk) 09:53, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Discott: and @TapticInfo:. In case you're referring to me, as the person that originally introduced Zulip, I don't have any strong feelings about its removal. Though I don't think Zulip has ever been used properly, and it's certainly not just text only. It has integrated video, audio call, screenshare facilities, so if voice meetings were preferred, that could have been easily doable. You could quite easily have private calls between a couple of people, a main voice/video channel for all, etc. I think it's a great tool for collaboration, and use it daily in work, and it also fits into the Wikimedia Foundation's principles of preferring open source software, but for a tool to be useful it needs to be used. When I was on the board, Coenraad started to use it, but beyond that I'd say it was mostly empty and probably wouldn't be missed. So from my side, feel free to move to something else. It makes little difference which tool is chosen, as long as it serves its purpose of being able to facilitate meetups. How have they been going on Discord?
The main issue is really publicising the meetups. The announcements I've seen have been ambiguous, and I've seen lonely messages from people on Zulip wondering where everyone else is. It doesn't make sense with such a small attendance to suggest two different places to meet. I suggest sticking to one or the other for a meetup. They haven't been announced on Meetup for ages, which always seemed to attract more users than the wiki or the mailing list. I haven't been to one for a while; some I couldn't make, but others I didn't know about, or forgot about. Properly communicating the event on Meetup, Twitter, Facebook as well as everything else increases the chances of people attending. Greenman (talk) 14:18, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Greenman: and @Discott:, So far I Think Discord has been working great, we have so far hosted 4 meet ups, they were much more interactive as everyone was able to chat in the voice channel. I think the problem with Zulip, specifically how it is not very mobile friendly and not as easy and convenient as the discord platform. Discord is also more widespread among the entire Wikipedia community and Youth of South Africa. We should discuss all of this at the next meet up on the 26th of February. Also I would like to discuss using the Discord platform for future AGMs

TapticInfo (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Douglas Thank you for creating the upcoming meet-upSchnabel Mchuchu (WMZA) (talk) 10:55, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

WMZA meetup

Hi Douglas, I could not attend today’s meeting due to eye surgery we will chat soon about Discord at the next meeting TapticInfo (talk) 08:32, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I also could not attend yesterday's event due to a family commitment so dont worry about it. We will host another one next month on the last Saturday.--Discott (talk) 07:56, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 22

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited South African pound, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Decimal system.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:08, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 May newsletter

The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.

The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Editing newsletter 2022 – #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for the multilingual newsletter • Local subscription list

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at most WMF-hosted wikis. You can join the discussion about this tool for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling the New Topic Tool by default. You will be able to turn it off in the tool or at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

The Editing team plans to change the appearance of talk pages. These are separate from the changes made by the mw:Desktop improvements project and will appear in both Vector 2010 and Vector 2022. The goal is to add some information and make discussions look visibly different from encyclopedia articles. You can see some ideas at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Prototype Ready for Feedback.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

[1] Myburgh, Pieter-Louis (2020-07-31). "SCORPIO: Ace Magashule's sons each bag a Free State Covid-19 contract". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[2] Schatz, Riaan Grobler and Chanté. "PODCAST | THE STORY: Dodgy PPE tender procurements land government officials in hot water". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[3] Felix, Jason. "Gauteng govt tight-lipped on latest PPE tender corruption claims". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[:02-4] Cite error: The named reference :02 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[5] "Masuku denies involvement in COVID-19 PPE tender corruption". SABC News - Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa's news leader. 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[6] Grobler, Riaan. "Gauteng Health MEC denies involvement in PPE procurement corruption". News24. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[7] "Gauteng Health MEC denies involvement in PPE procurement corruption".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[8] "Dikos release statement denying tender corruption". eNCA. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[9] "Gauteng Health MEC denies ties to controversial R125 million PPE tender". The South African. 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[10] Myburgh, Pieter-Louis (2020-07-31). "SCORPIO: Ace Magashule's sons each bag a Free State Covid-19 contract". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

[Financial_Times_2022-11] "Zuma presided over rampant corruption, says South Africa inquiry". Financial Times. January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.

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