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The Signpost: 18 April 2011

Possibly unfree File:Three Nocturnes, No. 1.ogg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Three Nocturnes, No. 1.ogg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Cambalachero (talk) 17:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

c/f User_talk:Adam_Cuerden#Rachnmaninoff_call_to_arms  Chzz  ►  01:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 22 April 2011



This is the fourth issue of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter, with details about what's going on right now and where help is needed.


Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2011

The Signpost: 2 May 2011

GOCE drive newsletter

The Guild of Copy Editors – May 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive

The Guild of Copy Editors invite you to participate in the May 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive, a month-long effort to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy-editing. The drive began on May 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on May 31 at 23:59 (UTC). The goals of this backlog elimination drive are to eliminate as many articles as possible from the 2009 backlog and to reduce the overall backlog by 15%. ! NEW ! In an effort to encourage the final elimination of all 2009 articles, we will be tracking them on the leaderboard for this drive.

Awards and barnstars
A range of barnstars will be awarded to active participants. Some are exclusive to GOCE drives. More information on awards can be found on the main drive page.

We look forward to meeting you on the drive! Your GOCE coordinators: SMasters, Diannaa, Tea with toast, Chaosdruid, and Torchiest

You are receiving a copy of this newsletter as you are a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, or have participated in one of our drives. If you do not wish to receive future newsletters, please add you name here. Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 09:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 May 2011

The Signpost: 16 May 2011

The Signpost: 23 May 2011

Please take the Wikipedia Ambassador Program survey

Hi Ambassador,

We are at a pivotal point in the development of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program. Your feedback will help shape the program and role of Ambassadors in the future. Please take this 10 minute survey to help inform and improve the Wikipedia Ambassadors.

WMF will de-identify results and make them available to you. According to KwikSurveys' privacy policy: "Data and email addresses will not be sold, rented, leased or disclosed to 3rd parties." This link takes you to the online survey: http://kwiksurveys.com?u=WPAmbassador_talk

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments, Thank You!

Amy Roth (Research Analyst, Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 20:46, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 May 2011

The Signpost: 6 June 2011

The Signpost: 13 June 2011

GOCE Newsletter

GOCE July 2010 backlog elimination drive chart

Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors Backlog Elimination Drive! We have now passed the halfway point, so here's an update.

Progress Report - Progress toward the targets has been good. 751 articles out of the approximately 1,600 we would like to get completed by the end of the month were done by July 15, so we will be very close to meeting the target for volume. However, we would like to clear all of the 2008 articles from the backlog, and there are still 892 left to do. Please consider choosing one of these older articles when looking for something to copy edit. If we focus our firepower we can completely wipe out 2008 from the queue.

Participation Report - 95 people signed up for the July drive. This is a great result compared to May, when we had 36. However, in May only one person that signed up didn't do any copy edits, and in July only 59 of the 95 have posted any copy edits on the big board.

The task may seem insurmountable but please remember that if all 95 participants copy edit just one article a day from now until the end of the month, we will eliminate 1,300 more articles from the backlog. So please consider participating at whatever level you can! All contributions are appreciated.

This newsletter was prepared for the GOCE by Diannaa (Talk), S Masters (talk), and The Raptor Let's talk.

Spotlight September 2010

November copy edit drive

Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors Backlog Elimination Drive!

The Wikipedia Guild of Copy-Editors invites you to participate in the November 2010 Backlog Elimination Drive, a month-long effort to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy-editing. The drive will begin on 1 November at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on 30 November at 23:59 (UTC). The goal for this drive is to reduce the backlog by 10% (approximately 500 articles). We hope to focus our efforts on the oldest three months (January, February, and March 2009) and the newest three months (September, October, and November 2010) of articles in the queue.

Sign-up has already begun at the November drive page, and will be open throughout the drive. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave a message on the drive's talk page.

Before you begin copy-editing, please carefully read the instructions on the main drive page. Please make sure that you know how to copy-edit, and be familiar with the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

Awards and barnstars

A range of barnstars will be awarded to active participants, some of which are exclusive to GOCE drives. More information on awards can be found on the main drive page.

Thank you; we look forward to meeting you on the drive!
— The UtahraptorTalk to me/Contributions, S Masters (talk), and Diannaa (Talk)

Christmas Card

User:DeltaQuad/Christmas2010

The Signpost: 20 June 2011

The Signpost: 27 June 2011

GOCE drive invitation

Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors

The latest GOCE backlog elimination drive is under way! It began on 1 July and so far 18 people have signed up to help us reduce the number of articles in need of copyediting.

This drive will give a 50% bonus for articles edited from the GOCE requests page. Although we have cleared the backlog of 2009 articles there are still 3,935 articles needing copyediting and any help, no matter how small, would be appreciated.

We are appealing to all GOCE members, and any other editors who wish to participate, to come and help us reduce the number of articles needing copyediting, as well as the backlog of requests. If you have not signed up yet, why not take a look at the current signatories and help us by adding your name and copyediting a few articles. Barnstars will be given to anyone who edits more than 4,000 words, with special awards for the top 5 in the categories: "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words".

>>> Sign-up now <<<

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 09:29, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 July 2011

Hi. :) Realizing you haven't been all that active lately, if you should happen by in the next day or two would you mind weighing in on our copyright tools and bots at User talk:Moonriddengirl#Bot on CCI? There's a question there about how our copyright bots work, and with VernoWhitney MIA since the middle of the last month I was hoping you could shed some light. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Hey! It's been a long time since we've spoken. I've responded on your talk. — The Earwig (talk) 19:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Would be interested in your input again - I actually meant that I think the new Yahoo T&Cs are a problem (I was getting my Googles and Yahoos mixed up not having looked at it for about 6 months). Dpmuk (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 July 2011

The Signpost: 18 July 2011

The Signpost: 25 July 2011

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
Thanks for your help with the Subversion thing. I know we didn't get it solved, but you helped to rule out a number of causes, which is certainly more than I was able to figure out. Thanks very much! Hersfold (t/a/c) 01:58, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Ambassador Program: assessment drive

Even though it's been quiet on-wiki, the Wikipedia Ambassador Program has been busy over the last few months getting ready for the next term. We're heading toward over 80 classes in the US, across all disciplines. You'll see courses start popping up here, and this time we want to match one or more Online Ambassadors to each class based on interest or expertise in the subject matter. If you see a class that you're interested, please contact the professor and/or me; the sooner the Ambassadors and professors get in communication, the better things go. Look for more in the coming weeks about next term.

In the meantime, with a little help I've identified all the articles students did significant work on in the last term. Many of the articles have never been assessed, or have ratings that are out of date from before the students improved them. Please help assess them! Pick a class, or just a few articles, and give them a rating (and add a relevant WikiProject banner if there isn't one), and then update the list of articles.

Once we have updated assessments for all these articles, we can get a better idea of how quality varied from course to course, and which approaches to running Wikipedia assignments and managing courses are most effective.

--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

YGM

{{YGM}}

Re bots. Also see here. Rcsprinter (talk) 09:55, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so, a few things:
  • There seems to have been a bit of miscommunication between Demiurge1000 and me – I really can't directly write a bot for you at this time, especially when the tasks involved are kinda ambiguous and open-ended. I'm more than happy to help you write it yourself, if you're interested.
  • It's a bit hard to understand exactly what you want the bot to do. Usually a bot operator who is coding a bot from scratch in a language like Perl or Python (which is my personal favorite) needs to have a very good idea of exactly how the bot will work. Imagine a flowchart illustrating how the bot will handle every page it processes and all the possibilities for the edits it will make – this will help you massively when (or if) you sit down to write the bot's code. Start with a single, simple, and straightforward job to get your feet wet in the bot world, and only when you have that task completed and approved, move on to the next bot job.
  • Things like "correcting grammar" and "disambiguating links" are almost never approved as automated bot tasks, because there are an infinite number of ways to screw up, like accidentally editing a quote – you really need a human for this. Remember that with automated bots, each individual task must go through separate approval, so perhaps you would work better with something like AWB as Worm mentioned, which does not require approval unless you run it without supervision. Most people have Windows and can use it fine, excluding the small minority of us who use OS X or Linux, like me, who can't. What OS are you on?
— The Earwig (talk) 20:52, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Um, thank you. I'm on Windows, so AWB should work, but I made a request at the checkpage and they won't let me. I'm rubbish at writing scripts though, so you will have to help me a lot on that. Thanks for putting that template on the bot's userpage; I hadn't found it. When can we start? Rcsprinter (talk) 15:33, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I will be away on vacation from the 19th to the 25th, and I might have internet access for short periods, but I can't guarantee anything. After the 25th, I'm mostly free for the rest of the summer. But as I've said before, I still think AWB would be better for you. The denied approval request is unfortunate – perhaps after waiting a short period, you should reapply? However, if you'd rather not use AWB at all, that's fine. If so, then let's get started: what would you like your first bot task to do? — The Earwig (talk) 01:33, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Right. Have a good vacation! I suppose the primary task would be to update bus pages. My main interest on WP is documenting lists of bus routes in the UK, so I suppose it could update them and format them (there are an awful lot on this page which need formatting correctly.) It'd also do help with my projects and with adding symbols to UK stations. I'm sure we can add any other tasks later. Shame about AWB, would be easier. Also, once you've written the code, where do you put it to make the bot run? Rcsprinter (talk) 15:05, 19 July 2011 (UTC) Hello? Are you back yet now? Rcsprinter (talk) 14:52, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm back. You seem to be missing my point, which is that you're not giving me enough information to help you write the bot. What does "update them and format them" mean? You must explain exactly what you want it to do, because right now, I'm clueless, having never edited bus articles myself! Running the code is a whole 'nother can of worms that we only have to deal with when we at least have a basic idea of how the bot will function. Thanks for your patience while I was away! — The Earwig (talk) 22:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Right, I'll give you detail of a task then. Task 1:Working through a list of pages that I will provide and putting |symbol= in the infobox to add a symbol too it. Look through my recent contribs to rail and tube stations to get the idea. For more info, look at the project page. OK? Also, once you've written the code, where do you put it to make the bot run? Rcsprinter (talk) 07:54, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Hey, I noticed that you've been already granted AWB access, and you seem to be using it fine. Do you still want a bot, or will AWB be enough for your purposes? — The Earwig (talk) 21:04, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, actually, using AWB has made me reconsider. It is very easy to use, and very fast. I did half my project in two days thanks to this, with repetitive edits. I may be back to ask again later, but for now, I'll drop the idea. Thanks for all your help. Rcsprinter (talk) 21:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Hey there!

Hey, Earwig, it's me RocketmanTan! Just thought I'd drop in to say hi and show you that I finally made an actual wikipedia account! Dr.Whooves (talk) 02:19, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

This is embarrassing. :/ — The Earwig (talk) 02:21, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
:| Dr.Whooves (talk) 02:33, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 August 2011

Talkback

Hello, The Earwig. You have new messages at Assassin's Creed's talk page.
Message added 05:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—Assassin'S Creed (talk) 05:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 August 2011

Hello! I hope you enjoy this yummy treat as a friendly greeting from a fellow Wikipedian, SwisterTwister talk 05:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Thank you very much! *noms* — The Earwig (talk) 05:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 August 2011

Check copyvio on arbitrary article?

I see your tool [1] which can evaluate an arbitrary article for copyvio.

Thanks for bringing this up. One of the reasons I haven't really publicized the tool is that it's sort of... er... broken. I wrote it a couple years ago and made some fundamentally poor decisions about how it works. I need to rewrite it – and I've been working on that for a while now, actually – but it'll be some time before the new version is released. Having a check queue is a good idea; thanks for suggesting it. I'll see how I'll work that into the final product. Thanks! — The Earwig (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for considering it! Other tools, such as Corenbot, have broken due to Yahoo API breakage - same for EarW*? I wonder if making it a downloadable locally executable tool package would satisfy their API TOS, since maybe an individual user might not be able to violate the TOS (if that's the beef). Also, how about using DuckDuckGo or Blekko for the search? My desire is for a tool to walk my refs for me and seek article text matches... so I shall dream. --Lexein (talk) 21:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Aye, EarwigBot does use Yahoo, so that is a problem. I checked out DuckDuckGo and found this, which looks somewhat useful, but I fear their search is more geared toward short keywords or concepts, while copyvio checking involves searching for large chunks of text verbatim. In other words, their search database may be too small. The same appears to be true for Blekko, which helpfully notes, "blekko is a search engine that slashes out spam, content farms, and malware. We do this by having a smaller crawl of 3 billion pages that focuses on quality websites." As far as I can see, Google/Yahoo/Bing are the only search engines that have a large enough database to be useful for copyvio checking. As for a downloadable tool... downloadable tool... hmm... interesting. Sounds painful to write, though. Not sure how I would go about doing that! — The Earwig (talk) 22:19, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello Earwig, is it possible for you to disable the "manual" Earwig tool completely on the toolserver? Haven't really followed the discussion (my fault here), and getting the standard "no results" message from the script, i assumed it was still working. I really appreciate your work with this tool, but it shouldn't stay accessible (for now), if there are ongoing problems. Thank you for all your efforts. GermanJoe (talk) 09:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Yep, makes sense. Done. — The Earwig (talk) 19:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 August 2011

August 2011

Hello The Earwig. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Earwig, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about following the reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

  1. Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
  2. Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
  3. Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
  4. Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Heh. --Σ talkcontribs 00:48, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't even... :/ — The Earwig (talk) 02:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I am heartily amused. --Lexein (talk) 00:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

EarwigBot

{{AFC statistics}} not showing submissions. Not sure why. Has the AfC template been changed or something? sonia♫ 21:17, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Probably something involving the Toolserver. I'm investigating... — The Earwig (talk) 21:33, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Grr, I hate my code. Not sure what's going on. Hopefully the next report (expected around 22:30 UTC) should be okay. — The Earwig (talk) 21:46, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Seems to be fixed now. Thanks for reporting it in the first place. — The Earwig (talk) 23:22, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Its broke again, last update was 3 days ago. Monty845 19:16, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Better now; the bot had logged out for some reason. This is getting really frustrating, but I'm making good progress with the new code so it shouldn't be this unstable for long. — The Earwig (talk) 03:07, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! Seriously though, having the bot some of the time is better than none, and you've done a great job. sonia♫ 21:00, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2011

Thanks

Lexein has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

You're welcome! — The Earwig (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 September 2011

Userdraft Article Queries

Hi,

I have created an userdraft article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shadow7777/Kismat_%281968_film%29

Have some queries wrt the article:

  1. Wanted to know if the article can be made public? If not, what can I do to improve it further?
  2. What if references provided are not accepted by wikipedia? Any other sources to look at other than the major ones?
  3. Someone on IRC wiki suggested that I send my article to AfC for reviewing? But I can't seem to find how to do so?

Also, can you give feedback on the article?

Thanks, Shadow7777 (talk) 20:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


Hi, Can you give any feedback? Because I will be moving it to make it a mainspace article very shortly. Regards, Shadow7777 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC).

Apologies for not being able to offer much advice, but I've been really busy lately. As a whole, the article seems fine. I noticed a few cases where you didn't place an inline citation correctly (the cite goes after the punctuation with no space in between, like "Text text text.[1]". Also note that section headers should be uncapitalized after the first word, so "Home media" over "Home Media" and "Track listing" over "Track Listing". As for sourcing, I think there's probably enough for notability, but be aware that references like this one and this one usually aren't a good idea (they're not reliable sources because they're blogs). Best, — The Earwig (talk) 22:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 September 2011

W. B .Yeates

I am looking for the words of his poem which contain the words "When the days are growing shorter and the nights are getting long .......robin ...sadness ... leaves — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.77.25.177 (talk) 19:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 September 2011

The Signpost: 26 September 2011


The Signpost: 3 October 2011

The Signpost: 10 October 2011

The Signpost: 17 October 2011

No comment?

So you moved an article back from article to article for revision. No reasons were given, but it has 4 sources, an is better cited than many 2 line entries into Wikipedia, so what did you see as being needed to be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DSoup (talk • contribs) 00:15, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

You created the article as a submission and accepted it yourself three minutes afterwards without removing the active AFC submission template ({{AFC submission}}) - I figured it was more likely that you had made a mistake and accidentally accepted it without realizing so afterwards; sorry for misinterpreting you. As for content, references three and four are not reliable sources, the first is a primary source, and the second one doesn't seem to discuss the subject. Generally, it's good to have at least two reliable sources to verify the information and prove that the subject is notable. Best, — The Earwig (talk) 00:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
I thought I had made a mistake cause the link said that this wizard was for people not registered on Wikipedia, and so they had to wait for a registered user to approve it. I'll fix references though, thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by DSoup (talk • contribs) 02:15, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Ok so I was planning on backing it up with books anyways, so I had gotten a bunch from the library, one or two from Google Books and I put them up. The question I have is on using primary sources as supporting evidence. I found archives of all the disciplinary actions taken that outline what people did, so I used one (Comdt letter to DCdts) and used an email directive that showed that as of 2011 there is now a ban on certain dresses. If I'm using them to support the article, but not basing the article on them, is that then acceptable? Thanks
DSoup (talk) 03:00, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Sure, that's fine - as long as you have reliable sources to back up the core article, primary sources for specific facts are usually okay. — The Earwig (talk) 05:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Script

I just wanted to give you a heads up that one of your scripts is broken and causes a massload of other scripts to crash. This diff actually fixes everything back to normal. Just thought I would let you know. -- DQ (t) (e) 05:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

:( Uh, ask MindstormsKid? I have no clue what could be causing this, will probably look into it a bit later. — The Earwig (talk) 05:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not noticing a problem. What does your JS console say? — The Earwig (talk) 05:25, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

my late father

please consider his work and look into adding him to a list of avant garde poets . he is a very special soul — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.53.112.155 (talk • contribs) 22:51, August 8, 2011 UTC

Archived 23:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC) —Earwig


AfC stats

Hi. Snottywong tells me that you may be able to provide some stats for a project we're working on with the WMF. If possible, could you provide us with:

Graphs (perhaps line graphs on just one single chart) that show:

  • Number of articles submitted to AfC over the last 90 days
  • Number of articles accepted by AfC over the last 90 days
  • Number of articles declined by AfC over the last 90 days

and

  • One line graph on one chart of Backlogs over the last 90 days

Many thanks, --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:01, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 October 2011

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation

Hello The Earwig! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you  have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to  know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you.

  • If this invitation  also appears on other accounts you  may  have, please complete the  survey  once only. 
  • If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it.

Please click HERE to take part.
Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback.

You are receiving this invitation because you  have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey. Global message delivery 13:32, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot

Hello, Earwig! Remember me, from [2]? Well, I'm back with exactly the same question. This time, however, as AWB has helped me with the stations project, it doesn't need to do that. So, I have another list of tasks:

  1. General bot work such as dating maintenance tags, signing unsigned comments etc
  2. Reverting test edits (see inactive bots User:SoxBot III and User:AmeliorationBot to get an idea of this)
  3. Disambiguating links

So if you can help me write code for all the above I would be very grateful and then take it to the bot requests for approval page. Please reply soon; yours, Rcsprinter (chat) 19:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi! It's good to hear from you after these months, and I hope everything's been going well. I'd be happy to help you with the bot, but being in the middle of the school year dramatically reduces my free time, so I have fewer opportunities to do serious coding. As for the tasks you mentioned, #2 sounds good (assuming no other bots are doing this – I'm not sure), #3 could work as a manually-assisted bot, because I'm not entirely sure how an automated script could handle that, and #1 is one of those "slightly vague but doable if you outline exactly what you want done" tasks (don't SineBot and Helpful Pixie Bot mostly have those jobs covered, anyway). I'll try to say more about the actual bot-making process on Friday or so when I have more free time. Best, — The Earwig (talk) 01:51, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
OK, thanks for agreeing to help me. Re: Task #2, I had a brief and rather irritable chat with User:X!, former operator of inactive bot SoxBot III on IRC, and he said that he had discontinued the bot because of three reasons. A)He had barely any free time left, but that won't be a problem for me. B)The code was broken, but he didn't specify where, how much or if it could be fixed, which I'm sure it can. On SoxBot III's userpage, there is a link to the source code but when I follow it it is broken. But we can work around this. And finally C), where he said that the need for a bot like this was greatly reduced by the introduction of the abuse filter, but I have looked at this and it doesn't really look like it does anything. You may also wish to have a look at the bot owners' noticeboard where I posted a comment about taking over the running of SoxBot III, an idea I have now dropped as I want it to be a task of RcsprinterBot (currently blocked for username, will be unblocked when the BRFA give me a trial edit run).
Indeed, a small amount of test edits do get reverted by Cluebot NG, but I still find myself manually reverting lots using rollback. This is where a bot with this as one of its specified tasks would come in very helpful. I hope you can help me soon. Best, Rcsprinter (chat) 15:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
The code is right here. You would probably want to clean up a lot of the IRC code which we don't need (perhaps keep some of the statistics commands?) but the source is available. There may be some additional files he's including (I looked over it really really briefly) but I expect them to available in some of his other git repositories. — The Earwig (talk) 22:49, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Great! What should I do with it? Perhaps you could help me take out some IRC stuff and then what? Where do I put it to make the bot run? GitHub? Google Code? Toolserver? And can you give me a rough estimation of when abouts I might be able to make a BRFA? (And could you reply here a bit sooner, if possible?) Rcsprinter (yak) 15:13, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Erm, well, first you need a place to run the bot from – this can be your home computer if you wish, but the Toolserver is designed for this kind of thing, so probably best to think about getting an account there. Applying for BRFA is best done soon, so you can work on getting the bot set up while the discussion is going on (instead of creating the bot and then waiting for a discussion). Regardless of where you are running the bot, you will need to understand some basic things about how bots work in order for this to be possible (namely, how to tell the computer to run a PHP script) – the Toolserver has a Unix command line (bash by default) – this is the only way to do anything meaningful on it – so you will need to learn how that works (i.e. be somewhat familiar with basic Unix commands) before you can run the bot. If you instead choose to run it from your Windows computer, that's perfectly alright (perhaps it would make more sense, too!) but I can't provide any useful help there because I don't use Windows, but the PHP homepage is probably the best place to start. Sorry if it seems like I'm dumping a lot of stuff on you at once, but if you indeed choose to be the bot operator, you will have to learn how to operate a bot from a technical standpoint (not easy!) and your question is a bit broad to provide more specific help! Best, — The Earwig (talk) 23:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, I have now created a Toolserver account and am going to put the code there. I've also been looking into PHP and am planning to make a BRFA soon. If you can help me in anyway, please do. Rcsprinter (shout) 10:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Too many templates in Template:AFC statistics

Template:AFC statistics is currently extremely large, and as a result is using too many templates. Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions is blank as the template include limit has been exceeded. Is there a way to cap the number of templates Earwigbot uses in the statistics template or subst them? Monty845 15:55, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2011

Bot experiment?

Hello The Earwig, I happened to see you are a member of WP:BAG who has been recently active. I'm trying to experiment with the pywikipediabot framework, and deduce that I might be able to try it out at http://test.wikipedia.org. Do you have any idea whether that would work? I only want to work in my own user space, but I don't think that would be legal on the English wikipedia, since anything with 'Bot' in the name would have to be approved first. My plan was to write a program based on archivebot.py that would provide diagnostics to someone whose page was having trouble being archived with MiszaBot. The intention was not to actually run a bot, but just give information. Thanks for any testing advice you might have, EdJohnston (talk) 21:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

It's actually fine to run a bot in your userspace without approval for testing, as long as the edits are relatively low in volume. Feel free to run it, as long as it doesn't touch anything else. — The Earwig (talk) 23:30, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 7 November2011

About your review of wiki article George_Hirst

Hi Earwug,

Thanks for your advise, but I'm still a little bit confuse on which part of my article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/George_Hirst has unreliable source~Could you give me some more specific information on that?

Looking forward for your reply Best LCY — Preceding unsigned comment added by HomoSapienLCY (talk • contribs) 07:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi! The one source you used is reliable, and fine for citing his research, but it is also a primary source written by Hirst himself. To put it simply, articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject – especially in the case of biographies, reliable third-party sources that discuss the subject are very important to show they are notable per the general notability guideline. Best, — The Earwig (talk) 17:21, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 November 2011

Future of the US Education Program and the Ambassador Project

There is a discussion about the future and the growth of the US education program along with the future of the Wikipedia Ambassador Project here. Voceditenore (talk) 08:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 November 2011

The Signpost: 28 November 2011

User talk:Badger Drink

Hi Earwig. I've CSD'd this page as db-attack and blanked it. I'm not sure if this is a recommended procedure, but in view of the comments in the block notice and others, I felt it was the best think to do. It's the first time I've come across anything quite like this, so feel free to revert if you feel it was inappropriate.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, as you probably guessed from the CSD decline, this isn't really the appropriate course of action. We very rarely speedily delete talk pages, especially when the severity of the attack is relatively low, as in this case. It is important to preserve talk page history, especially considering there was a discussion ongoing at the time, and deleting the page would be a setback for everyone involved. — The Earwig (talk) 22:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Need any resources with respect to [3]

We have a class of 1500 psych students that need reviewing [4] and there might be some help from U of T for getting this tool up and running again.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

This is quite the offer, and it would be great to get the tool working again, but I'm not sure what kind of help could be provided. The primary reason the tool is down is that Yahoo shut off their search API, which both Coren and I were using (for CorenSearchBot in his case); I heard some news of attempts to get permission from Google to provide us with a smilar API, but this was a few months ago and I haven't heard anything since. What did you have in mind? Thanks, — The Earwig (talk) 22:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 December 2011

Thought you might like to see this...

Hello Earwig, you might be interested in this. It appears that the Wikimedia Foundation is now paying to use the Yahoo API. Now that we have this, maybe EarwigBot can go back to spotting copyvios. Best, Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 02:50, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Wonderful news; I'll send Coren a message in a "couple days" as recommended; hopefully EarwigBot will be back up very soon. — The Earwig (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
The account is now fully set up and should be able to work. If you need help with the OAuth system or with the BOSS API, just drop me a line. Documentation can be found there; though I expect you're already hard at work coding it in.  :-) — Coren (talk) 00:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and as a note, the only odd requirement in BOSS usage is one of attribution; you need to put something like this on your bot's page. — Coren (talk) 01:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I think I've got everything covered. Thanks for your help, Coren! — The Earwig (talk) 02:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

AFC statistics table

Hi. I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask about this, however unsure where else to go to actually get a response! {{AFC statistics}} can be sorted by "Time" for both submitted time and last modified time. Unfortunately, this orders by *time* only, not datetime. I've had a look at the template but can't ascertain where it is this sorting is even defined, so I'm kind of stuck. Do you have any idea how this could be fixed? Cheers, Nikthestoned 12:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Hiya! You've come to the right place (I designed the template and the bot) – the issue with the time is something I know about, but haven't been able to fix yet. {{AFC statistics/row}} is the template where the change should be made; Help:Sorting#Dates has some resources on the subject, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. I think the main issue is that I'm using an unconventional date format (02:22, 09 Dec 2011 vs. the standard MediaWiki 02:22, 09 December 2011). I switched to the shorter version about a month ago to make the table smaller, and I recall sorting working correctly with the longer, standard format, but don't quote me on that. Either way, there is surely a way to lie to MediaWiki – I suspect with {{hs}}. In fact, I might just create a separate parameter for a date "number" (something like epoch seconds, which would be easy in the bot's code), and stick that in an {{hs}} in the table row before the real date. That might work. Would you happen to have any other ideas before I try to implement this? — The Earwig (talk) 23:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the swift reply! Umm, other than the fact that User talk:Famousdog (for a reason unknown to me!) islisted in the table; no I'd say that's good! Cheers, Nikthestoned 10:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Implemented in the template and code. Sorting appears to be working now! Best, — The Earwig (talk) 07:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 December 2011

Template is now not being included on the AFC - Submissions page

Hi again mate. For some reason the Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions page is now not properly including your stats table. When I amend the page it tells me "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included."... Any chance you could address this? Many thanks, Nikthestoned 11:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Also, EarwigBot's Task 1 states that it'll "mark violating submissions with {{AfC suspected copyvio}}" - I assume (given this is a redlink) that this is not the case! Cheers, Nikthestoned 11:51, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Okay, so. The template issue is due to, as the error message indicates, the template {{AFC statistics}} being too large; there are >500 submissions currently, so that makes sense – we've never seen these numbers before in the project before, and there's realIstically no way to get around it other than clearing the backlog, or making the template more efficient (which I don't know how I'd do). Task 1 is weird because I'm working on it right now, and I haven't designed the template yet. The old version of EB 1 used a param of the AFC Submission template, |H|cv-bot|, back when the "hold" concept still existed, but since we've dropped that, I've decided a dedicated template makes more sense. Stay tuned to see the bot back in action, after almost a year of downtime (see above threads) in the coming weeks. Best, — The Earwig (alternate) (talk) 23:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 December 2011

The Signpost: 26 December 2011

The Signpost: 02 January 2012

Request for Interview Regarding Wikipedia Bots

Greetings-

My name is Randall Livingstone, and I am a graduate student at the University of Oregon, currently collecting data for my dissertation on Wikipedia editors who create and use bots and assisted editing tools, as well as editors involved in the initial and/or ongoing creation of bot policies on Wikipedia. As a member of BAG and the bot community, I would very much like to interview you for the project at a time and in a method that is most convenient for you (Gchat, another IM client, Skype, email, telephone, etc.). I am completely flexible and can work with your schedule. The interview will take approximately 30-45 minutes.

My dissertation project has been approved both by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Oregon, and by the Research Committee at the Wikimedia Foundation. You can find more information on the project on my meta page.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to hearing from you to set up a time to chat. Thank you very much.

Randall Livingstone, School of Journalism & Communication, University of Oregon

UOJComm (talk) 00:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

the ancestry of batyra family from bychawa,poland

i have family from bychawa,poland (this is the psrish) but the town is Kosarzew where several Batyras came from and migrated to USA--i have a grandfather,Albert (Wojchiech) who came to americaa in the early 1900s--there are still people-desendants of his living in bychawa -Halina Batyra, Jozef Batyra and Karolina Batyra that i wish to have contact me for information on the batyra family ancestry--my name is AMy and i can be reached at azeches@triad.rr.com(my personal email)--I thank you in advance for your help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.106.186.121 (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Tool revival?

I just became aware of WP:CPAA, which contains a link to your tool. I'm not sure whether you are aware that CSBot has been resuscitated. I don't know enough about your tool to know whether the solution for Coren works for you, but I thought I'd bring it up, just in case.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Hiya. Yes, I'm aware of Coren's solution and it indeed works for me, but I've been really busy lately and haven't had a chance to finish implementing it yet. It's partially done, and on my todo-list; it will get finished, but unfortunately not right this moment. — The Earwig (talk) 21:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I can sympathize with being busy :) No rush, but just wanted to make sure you knew.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 January 2012

Articles for Creation Appeal

Articles for Creation urgently needs your help!

Articles for Creation is desperately short of reviewers! We are looking for urgent help, from experienced editors, in reviewing submissions in the pending submissions queue. Currently there are 1115 submissions waiting to be reviewed.

Do you have what it takes?
  1. Are you familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines?
  2. Do you know what Wikipedia is and is not?
  3. Do you have a working knowledge of the Manual of Style, particularly article naming conventions?
  4. Are you autoconfirmed?
  5. Can you review submissions based on their individual merits?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then please read the reviewing instructions and donate a little of your time to helping tackle the backlog.

Sent on behalf of WikiProject Articles for creation using AWB on 20:23, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 January 2012

Hello from the new guy. I am doing my best to spin up fast. I am wanting to put up a page on a topic called GENSO Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations. It was originally declined because of no references. I thought I put those up after the page when online. My bad. I have now added references and believe I have done what is needed to get his baby resubmitted. Please help me if you know how. Thank you. Kiefc (talk) 16:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)kiefc

The Signpost: 23 January 2012

AFC/S

Hi Earwig,

Hey I was just thinking(I do a lot), when you have nothing to do, it might be good to have the last updated time for submissions at the top somewhere, not the very bottom. This would be helpful when things get slow or crazy, like last week.

Thanks, :- ) DCS 02:39, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 January 2012

Review comment reg.

Dear Sir/Madam,

There are articles with a list of names without references (e.g.: "Nattukkottai Nagarathars"). People concerned with such lists of names can verify them. It is not practical to provide references for names in big lists. Is it not that they are credible if they are not deleted or significantly edited by other users?

Please advise what exactly needs to be done for my article to be accepted given my point above.

Ponni13 (talk) 01:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello! Actually, it is necessary to provide references for all content in an article. Remember that the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is not whether a subject is true, but whether it can be verified with reliable sources. Of course, that doesn't mean every name needs its own individual source, but ideally there should sources to cover everything mentioned, becuase otherwise people could add names they've made up and there is no way of knowing which names are legitimate and which aren't. The main problem I have with the subject matter is that, as I said in the decline reason, it looks like an indiscriminate collection of information. The key question is, what are the significance of these names? Is the fact that they are in pure Tamil important because very few names are in pure Tamil? (If so, say that, and cite your sources!) In its current state, the article appears to be a list in which literally anything can belong, with virtually no standards for inclusion, which goes against the concept of an encyclopedia. Let me know if you have any more questions. — The Earwig (talk) 02:12, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Joshua Eaton Elementary School page

Could you help me understand why the source thtat I cited isn't acceptable. It is a published history of the town of Reading, MA and it is cited on another Wikipedia page (see Joshua Eaton (the person) page). I would like to get this page published, but need your guidance as to how. Thank you Erikson6 (talk) 01:11, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Truthfully, I was close to accepting this one. The article itself is well-written and encyclopedic, but I'm a bit wary about accepting an article with only one source, especially one that I cannot verify myself (as I don't have the book). Looking a bit closer, I found the book on Google Books and decided that the submission was worth accepting. It's now located here. Best, — The Earwig (talk) 02:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Raised By Machines submitted 02.01.12...can't seem to find in AFC Statistics

Hi Earwig,

I am admittedly new to this, but try as I might...I am unable to find an AFC submitted on Feb 01, 2012. I checked [(AFC statistics)] and searched by name...but found nothing.

I understand that this page updates hourly, and there may be some lag in my submission being formally assessed...but it has been about 24 hours since I posted under Musicians: Raised By Machines.

Am I being too eager and need to wait a few days before checking?

Best, Inga Jensen

71.240.2.71 (talk) 21:46, 2 February 2012 (UTC)February 02, 2012 16:45 EST

Hello! I searched for your submission and I couldn't find it either; it's not listed in your contributions, nor is it in the pending submissions category. At first I thought it was a problem with my bot (the page does update hourly and submissions should appear immediately after they are submitted), but it looks like you never actually submitted your article. If you did create the submission page and have a link to it, give me that and we'll figure out what the problem is. Otherwise, perhaps you should try to resubmit it? Pages generally don't disappear like this. — The Earwig (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


Thank you for your quick response! I shall indeed attempt another post...later this weekend pehaps... Best, Inga

Cyberinga (talk) 07:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 February 2012


Greetings.

Please let me know the aspects to cover in order to make my article ready for submission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Kiran_Mehta

Regards, Satish Bhatt — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scb3108 (talk • contribs) 06:48, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Dear The Earwig, After reading your review comment on my Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/State Insignias of Kerala I merged it with the article Kerala now I want know how to delete the existing article request. Please help me because I am new to Wikipedia. H. sudev (talk) 16:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC) H. sudev (talk) 16:47, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Fix toolserver stuff

You have 10 minutes. :- ) DCS 06:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Wha—? — The Earwig (talk) 11:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 February 2012

MSU Interview

Dear The Earwig,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.


So a few things about the interviews:

  • Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
  • Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
  • All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
  • All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
  • The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.


Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 21:43, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2012

Articles for Creation appeal

Articles for Creation urgently needs your help!

Articles for Creation is desperately short of reviewers! We are looking for urgent help, from experienced editors, in reviewing submissions in the pending submissions queue. Currently the are 1115 submissions waiting to be reviewed.

Do you have what it takes?
  1. Are you familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines?
  2. Do you know what Wikipedia is and is not?
  3. Do you have a working knowledge of the Manual of Style, particularly article naming conventions?
  4. Are you autoconfirmed?
  5. Can you review submissions based on their individual merits?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then please read the reviewing instructions and donate a little of your time to helping tackle the backlog.

--Bmusician 12:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 February 2012

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:The_Earwig/Archive_6&oldid=1232553103"