User talk:Jmcgnh/Archives/2019/11

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello Jmcgnh/Archives/2019,

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

Getting the queue to 0

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

Coordinator

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

This month's refresher course

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

Tools

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

Reviewer Feedback

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

Second set of eyes

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

Arbitration Committee

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

Community Wish list

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

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

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar

Hi Jim, I know I am new at creating an article and appreciate your advice. The part about conflict of interest has me flummoxed because if: “Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as an encyclopedia, a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge.” And: “Definition noun is 1. The act of defining, or of making something definite, distinct, or clear: We need a better definition of her responsibilities. 2. The formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc., as found in dictionaries.” Then as long as a word or piece of knowledge falls into the category of definition it can’t be considered conflict of interest. If the words in the article point to a specific business then yes that is a conflict of interest. The references and citations that you need serve as further 'proof' that the word or concept is in fact truthful. I bet that the original information used in most if not all of the breeds listed and defined by Wikipedia, whether horse, dog, or cat came either from a breeder, a registry (as in AKC) or someone with vested interest in the breed. I will find more references for Moriesians and resubmit. Thank you so much for your input. Regards Moriesian (talk) 12:22, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Moriesian: I'll admit that some of the ideas on Wikipedia seem a bit counter-intuitive, especially in places where it chooses to use words in a way that is different from their most common English usage. We have the notion of a single purpose account that recognizes that such people can make good and valid contributions to the encyclopedia but there's always a bit of suspicion that their loyalties are split between the good of the encyclopedia and the subject they are writing about. And sometimes, a conflict of interest is no more than that. But some editors have nearly exhausted their store of good faith by confronting trolls, vandals, promoters and spammers on a daily basis.

All you need to do to satisfy these concerns is to add a sentence or two to your user page (which you haven't created yet) that explains your interest and that you are or are not benefiting (such as being paid or gaining traffic to your website) from your editing on Wikipedia.

One special word usage that I think you are missing is notability. Yes, we ask for references to demonstrate that a subject exists and is accurately described, but for there to be an article at all, we are looking for more than simple existence. There has to be a body of independent writing about the subject that an encyclopedia article can draw on. If an editor is pulling an article together from primary sources, not relying on independent secondary sources, that is seen as original research. We try to explain and insist that Wikipedia is not the place to publish new, original work. There is also a sense that the notability of a subject has to rise above being well known to a small circle of aficionados and have received some recognition in the wider public sphere.

Yes, this limits the content that can appear on Wikipedia. You'll note that there are lots of other sites on the web that have less restrictive content rules. Wikia, now Fandom, for instance arose as one such venue. Everipedia and EverybodyWiki are other sites that will take Wikipedia-like articles without subjecting them to these same content-limiting rules. Maybe Wikipedia, to survive, will have to change these rules. What I've observed, though, is that the content rules and review processes have been getting stricter, not looser. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 17:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Institute of Communications Research page

Hi Jmcgnh. What I really wanted to know was how do I go about making the page? I have access to all the founding documents of the Institute as it resides in my University's archives. They have not all been digitized yet but I can figure that part out I guess. My question is: will wikipedia allow me to keep a page with contributions entirely from primary sources? Thanks for the help! Bhetki (talk) 04:57, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Bhetki: You can't create a Wikipedia page based only on primary sources. You are welcome to use those primary documents to write up a history of the institute, but it can't be published on Wikipedia - please see the prohibition on original research at WP:NOR. In order for there to be an article on the institute, you must be able to find independent reporting about the institute that covers it in considerable depth and has been published in what Wikipedia considered reliable sources - books, magazines, newspapers, journals for the most part. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 05:02, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Jmcgnh: I looked at the link you suggested. There are a number of other reliable secondary sources that I can pull from (Peer-reviewed journals, Books published by university presses, University-level textbooks, Magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses, Mainstream newspapers). I just wasn't sure if all these had to be digitized and made publicly available on Wikimedia Commons (or some such) before I could cross-reference them on the Wikipedia page. Your thoughts? Bhetki (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Bhetki, I think you're misunderstanding several things. References are to published sources - that is they are books, magazines, journals, etc with enough circulation that an interested reader can expect to find it at a library. They do not have to be accessible on the web, though web references are always much easier to check. You cite them by providing sufficient bibliographical detail so that the interested reader, perhaps with the assistance of a librarian, can locate the material. There is no need whatsoever to digitize such material - uploading it to Wikimedia Commons would almost always be a copyright violation.— jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 03:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Jmcgnh, OK, thanks for explaining. It's clearer to me now. Bhetki (talk) 18:33, 28 November 2019 (UTC)