User talk:Spurb/Archive 13
 | This is an archive of past discussions about User:Spurb. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 15
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (April 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 15th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
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Miscellaneous
- Wikipedia:User scripts/Most imported scripts now also shows the number of active users for each script. It will now be updated by a bot periodically.
- Twinkle's Morebits library added a new
Morebits.dateclass to replace the moment library. It can handle custom formatting and natural language for dates, as well as section header regexes. If you were usinggetUTCMonthNameorgetUTCMonthNameAbbrevwithDateobjects, those have been deprecated and should be updated. - User:SD0001/find-archived-section was made a gadget. You can enable it from your gadget preferences, in the Browsing section.
Hope everyone stays safe. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
Guideline and policy news
- Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
- Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
- A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
- A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.
Technical news
- The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
- Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.
Miscellaneous
- A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.
This week's article for improvement (week 19, 2020)
 The beach promenade in Kühlungsborn, Germany runs along the coast of the Baltic Sea.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Human body • Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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April 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- April 2020—Issue 013
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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| News at a glance |
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| Tree of Life's growing featured content | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare. Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend: Considerably above average, Above average, Average Below average , Considerably below average, Poor
*subset of natural sciences Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories. |
| April DYKs |
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
A message from Ed6767 about RedWarn
Hello RedWarn tester! I hate to reitterate, but thank you so much for being willing to test RedWarn, I really appreciate it.
In the past few updates, I have added AIV (admin) reporting, a preferences panel, themes, customisation options and made many, many bug fixes and added many features based on your suggestions and feedback.
Unfortunately, recently feedback has run dry.
Even if you do not use RedWarn at the moment, or you do (tysm), I would greatly appreciate feedback of any kind. While I go round Twinkle users, sounding like that broadband salesperson in the mall that nobody ever wants to speak to, I'd like some updated feedback from recent and current users.
Any sort of feedback below would be greately appreciated!
- Your first impressions when you tried RedWarn?
- How have you used RedWarn as time has gone on?
- Would you value customisation features, such as macros or shortcuts, such as adding your own quick revert reasons so the tool can fit your exact editing practices?
- Any suggestions for how I could promote the tool to a wider audience?
- Would you appreciate a more developed and thorough user guide?
- Any theme suggestions?
- Anything you'd like changing?
- Something you've always wanted to see in an anti-vandal tool? (I might add it!)
- RedWarn app?
- A way to introduce Recent Changes patrol to new users to make using RedWarn or other tools less daunting?
- Any bugs, gripes, or things that just really annoy you about RedWarn?
Click the button below to begin a new section on the talk page
My goal is to create the most user friendly moderation tool, and that's why I need your feedback to help make this truely the most favorable anti-vandal tool. While we will never elliminate vandalism on this site, we can get closer to fighting it quickly and easily.
Many thanks for your continued support. Ed6767 (talk) 00:17, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
If you do not wish to get these feedback reminders, let me know on my talk page.
This week's article for improvement (week 20, 2020)
 The original map by John Snow showing the clusters of cholera cases in the London epidemic of 1854, which is a classical case of using human geography.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Coast • Human body Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 May 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 21, 2020)
_(cropped).jpg) Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 2018
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Human geography • Coast Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 May 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 22, 2020)
 Abu Nuwas drawn by Khalil Gibran in 1916
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden • Human geography Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 May 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 23, 2020)
 An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process, and the invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Abu Nuwas • Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 June 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Administrators' newsletter – June 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).
Administrator changes
CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
- The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.
Arbitration
May 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- May 2020—Issue 014
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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| News at a glance |
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| Interview with Jts1882 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves. How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of? As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group. What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation. My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly. What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms? The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page. Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for Neoaves
Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia? As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem. Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{Phylogeny/Squamata}}). A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use. What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia? I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want. Anything else you'd like us to know? My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge. With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so. This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia. |
| May DYKs |
 Slender Scotch burnet moth on a flower  Northern plains gray langur  Male vermilion flycatcher .jpg) Canada lynx _Tswalu_(cropped).jpg) Meerkats  Hilarimorphites burmanica  Sun bear
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Enwebb (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 24, 2020)
 Anna Holmlund in 2015 at the FIS Ski Cross World Cup 2015 Finals
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Invention • Abu Nuwas Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 8 June 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020
- Library Card Platform
- New partnerships
- ProQuest
- Springer Nature
- BioOne
- CEEOL
- IWA Publishing
- ICE Publishing
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 25, 2020)
 The Panama Canal is an example of a ship canal.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Anna Holmlund • Invention Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 15 June 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
Read this in another language • Subscription list
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)
This week's article for improvement (week 26, 2020)
_crop.jpg) William Mariner was an Englishman who lived in Tonga from 29 November 1806 to (probably) 8 November 1810. He later published Tonga Islands, an account of his experiences that is now one of the major sources of information on Tonga before it was significantly influenced by European culture and Christianity. Pictured is Mariner in Tongan attire.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Ship canal • Anna Holmlund Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 27, 2020)
_-_Apelles_painting_Campaspe_-_2.jpg) Apelles painting Campaspe, an artwork by Willem van Haecht, circa 1630, depicting people surrounded by fine art
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: William Mariner (writer) • Ship canal Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 June 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 16
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (May and June 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 16th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
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If anyone else would like to contribute to future issues, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.
Technical news
- Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).
Arbitration
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community. - The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for
all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles
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- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
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) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 28, 2020)
Hello, Spurb.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Fine art • William Mariner (writer) Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 6 July 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 29, 2020)
 The phrase "omakase" is most commonly used when dining at Japanese restaurants where the customer leaves it up to the chef to select and serve seasonal specialties. Pictured is omakase at a restaurant.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences • Fine art Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 13 July 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 30, 2020)
Hello, Spurb.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Omakase • Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 20 July 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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