User talk:This, that and the other

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Bug 5645

Saw this bug report over the signature button appearing in namespaces that editor's would rather it didn't and figured I should mention the "obvious"

Just add

		'filters': [ 'body.ns-talk, body.ns-4' ],

to the signature button's entry in jquery.wikiEditor.toolbar.config.js and your done. The same approach is used for the references button (see that same .js file if you don't believe me)

If you want to allow the signature button's generation in more namespaces, just add their numeric designation(s) to the filter using body.ns-4 in the above as your example (no comma after the last entry btw).

You can also exclude button generation for certain namespaces this way....

		'filters': [ 'body:not(.ns-2, .ns-8, .ns-828)' ],

Hope that helps -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:54, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That implementation method was not something I was aware of, so thanks for enlightening me :) However I don't think it is necessarily appropriate for this situation. It wouldn't be right to hard-code the list of namespaces in this JavaScript code, and it also seems a bit wasteful to be stringing together a 'body.ns-' + namespaceId type thing when we can just delete the entry from the JavaScript object.

The main issue surrounding this bug is that no-one can agree on how we should decide which namespaces get the sig button. I would appreciate it if you could contribute, based on the three options I outlined in comment 19 of the bug. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:31, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Same old, same old. No-one agrees because each has their own embedded bias/perspective by now if they've been a regualar for any noteworthy amount of time by now. I dare say even your poo-poo'ing of the existing filter settings has some trace degree of that too.

Look, it seems like all the wiki-projects at least share the same ~17(I forget what the right # is) core namespaces - that's all you folks should be discussing a default setting for. Period.

Half of those are talk-pages so body.ns-talk or some similar solution should allow the button for those talk namespaces. That leaves "you" with what? ~8 core namespaces shared acrosss all the wiki-projects to bicker over? Out of those remaining namespaces, only the Project: ns (ns-4) would have any legit reason to host talk-page like discussions (a la Village Pump for example) where the button is useful.

Get into the namespaces numbered ~100 or higher from one Wiki-domain to the next, and you'll find using content namespaces to include/exclude button generation will not be as neatly uniform as the core namespaces are. This area is where 'ickypedia blinders' cause developers to make changes that typically don't go over well @ any project BUT Wikipedia or Commons (I can almost bet next week's pay-check that whatever solution is applied at the end of the day, it will conflict with the existing ability to use the filter).

My vote is to set a default using whatever manner or method makes the most sense for the core namespaces that all wikis share and leave the far lower trafficked assignable namespaces out of it - let folks deal with it or solve it on their own locally if the presence of the button so annoying to them. Prost. :) -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We want to be able to configure this behind the scenes on a per-wiki basis. For example, Meta uses signatures in the main namespace, while this wiki does not. It's more about how to determine exactly how this configuration interacts with other wiki elements. For instance, does the presence of __NEWSECTIONLINK__ indicate we should allow the signature button on that page? I don't know the answer to that.

I should also stress that this relates to the MediaWiki software in general, which is used by many others besides the WMF (for example, a lot of companies use MediaWiki internally for planning and collaboration between staff). We need a solution that will work out-of-the-box for all wikis, as well as to be configurable by the server administrator as required. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you answered your own question - especially if your rationale goes beyond the Wiki foundation projects and into the "commercial" aspects of the software. Again the core namespaces are not likely not be re-tasked into blogs or newsfeeds but additional namespaces might be. If that rationale is true, the logical approach would be set only the .ns-talk namespaces as the extension's default for sig. button generation while leaving deviation or modification of said default a matter left to local administration to wrangle with post-deployment. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I don't think I'm "poo-poo'ing" the existing settings, insofar as there are none. The status quo is to show the signature button in all namespaces, which seems rather inadequate. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well that point on 'showing in all namespaces' goes back to the rather bloated default package of defaults loaded with WikiEditor and the hoops one has to jump through just to customize the basics that are sold as "tools" in a tool-bar. For example, I can appreciate the need to cover Asian character sets along with the others but there should be a way for at least the local administration if not User:s themselves to pick and choose individual sets. Sure, one can add characters to existing sets and add entirely new sets but there is no way to prevent sets in the existing defaults from loading every time the tab is selected - well at least I can't find a way other than removing the entire booklet and rebuilding it without the unwanted sets (I think this is due to the setting 'deferLoad': true, in that same .js mentioned above usurping anything I might have set to removeFromToolbar in my local .js file(s)). If you know better, please, I'm I dying to find out how its done.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that its great to incorporate defaults that allow for a positive "out-of-box experience" but they should not be so embedded in the module that customizing/deviating from those defaults necessitates the negation then duplication of the original coding involved. As the move to more mobile platforms plays out and/or the need for screen-space management increases, it seems things like which default loaded buttons (or tabs) you want loaded by default in which namespace scenario(s) is something that should be standardized in one's User: preferences rather than locked into additional scripting and/or patching as those options currently seem to be. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FtCG

I loveFtCG, but it would be nice if it could delete templates like {{Category ordered by date|Files licensed by third parties|2013|08|13}}. Thanks! (t) Josve05a (c) 00:09, 1 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Josve05a, I'm really sorry it's taken me this long to answer! Do you think FtCG should remove all invocations of the template "Category ordered by date", or only those with "Files licensed by third parties" as the first parameter? — This, that and the other (talk) 02:51, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All instances, since Commons don't have (didn't the last time I checked) that template. (t) Josve05a (c) 07:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing

Is it possible to make FtCG to add:
[[Category:Files uploaded by Josve05a (cleanup)]] [[Category:Files transferred from en.wikipedia by Josve05a]] ‎ to all files I tranfer? (t) Josve05a (c) 00:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ping. (t) Josve05a (c) 15:26, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the Common Good : run reversely

Hi, my home-wiki is Russian.

It is rather often it is needed to move files from Commons to ru-wiki: because a set of files is found not corresponding to the free content criteria yet is useful for many articles under fair use restrictions.

Before writing some bot from a scratch I am wondering if For the Common Good can be a little bit changed (or some settings applied to it as it is) so it could transfer sets of files from Commons to ru.wikipedia.org File: namespace?

The relevant discussion about a bot (in Russian) is currently here.

Best regards, Seva — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neolexx (talk • contribs) 16:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

+1. Please help. Details here: Википедия:Запросы к ботоводам#Выгрузка файлов из Викисклада в Рувики (via google translate) --Fastboy (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fastboy Neolexx: My apologies for not replying any sooner. Such a tool would certainly be possible to create. Indeed, in the past, I used a "lightly hacked" version of For the Common Good to transfer files from Wikitravel Shared (a site similar in nature to Wikimedia Commons) to local Wikivoyage editions after the establishment Wikivoyage in late 2012. So it is certainly possible. I will be happy to look at this in the coming week. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That would be terrific! By all other means the app seems fit perfectly to our needs uncluding the ability of an editable "template dictionary". I have translated your answer at our forum - as there is no rush then to do and to debug something from a scratch, it is better to wait then. --NeoLexx (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fastboy and Neolexx, I have uploaded version 1.0.5.11 of For the Common Good to http://atlight.github.io. In conjunction with the instructions at User:This, that and the other/For the Common Good/Reverse transfers, it should now be possible to run FtCG in reverse! If you find any problems or would like additional features to be added, please let me know. Thanks for your interest in FtCG. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I will start learning and testing immediately. --NeoLexx (talk) 07:41, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for silly question, but where does the installation go by default? I installed it on Windows 8, closed and now no signs at Program files. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:18, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh, OK, sorry. It is not installed, it is a single exe. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:20, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, what is the license you want to be mentioned for this program? I didn't find it at the download page. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:23, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- The current version is released into the public domain. Even so, I appreciate it if you provide attribution if you choose to make copies of the program. I will probably release the next version under a license such as MIT, but for the moment, it is in the public domain. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:25, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I tried reverse and it worked. I spent decent time to make a config but then I transferred twenty images very quickly. But I found some obstacles that slowed me down:

FtCG doesn't memorize chexbox settings (I had to ckeck "ignore warnings" every other image)
FtCG doesn't have automating to bypass a ban to create image with a name that already exists in commons. Of cauze admins doesn't have this problem. But I had to rename each image manually. It would be nice if you could set some prefix/postfix to new file name once and FtCG would apply it for each next image.
One more feature I'd like to see: mandatory replacements or replacement groups (one of). If such "mandatory" replacement pattern not found, FtCG must make a very nicely visible error warning.

Could you make some of such features? Or, could I contribute to code? ~Nirvanchik~ ^⊤άλҟ 07:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And, by the way, in reverse order you can configure only "source" wiki which is commons and which is English, and you can't configure "destination" wiki, which is not English, so I had to use very coplicated replacement pattarn to change image description template by Russian version of these template, and to move all variables correctly. It would be nice if reverse wiki could be supported in more natural way. ~Nirvanchik~ ^⊤άλҟ 07:39, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Btw thanks for that previous support! It really helped! ~Nirvanchik~ ^⊤άλҟ 07:43, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

512 character limit for special page titles

Assuming you are the "tto" on Freenode who asked "just wondering if you could clarify for me why you added the 512-character limit on special page titles in r18220?" I didn't add a 512-character limit, I raised the limit from 255 to 512 bytes on the basis that 255 bytes was not sufficient. 512 bytes was sufficient for use cases then in existence. -- Tim Starling (talk) 09:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That was me :) Thanks for the clarification. So it was mostly an arbitrary choice, then. That was what I was interested in knowing. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:This, that and the other/For the Common Good/Reverse transfers

Did you notice that this redirect format doesn't work? I'm not sure if it is the page or Mediawiki which should be fixed. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:37, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's the long standing bug 6151. I've been poking around at the MediaWiki title code recently, so I might try to fix it... although the fact that it hasn't been fixed in 8 years isn't promising... — This, that and the other (talk) 23:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Beth Sotelo (September 5)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Beth Sotelo and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk or on the reviewer's talk page.
You can also get real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Coin945 (talk) 07:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Beth Sotelo (September 10)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Beth Sotelo and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk or on the reviewer's talk page.
You can also get real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Coin945 (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A3 template changes

Hello TTATO,
I don't mean to be pushy, but you said on Wikipedia talk:Twinkle that you would do preliminary work on Twinkle tomorrow (which is probably yesterday now), however Twinkle is still tagging pages with {{db-nocontent}}. Please tell me why this is the case as my new templates are now finished and are ready to be moved. Thanks, Passengerpigeon (talk) 14:54, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Passengerpigeon, this is a bit of a "chicken or egg" problem. But so long as the new A3 templates are set up as redirects to db-nocontent for the time being, there shouldn't be an issue. I can't promise when the change to Twinkle will be deployed, but hopefully it will be available on-wiki not long after I finish writing the code tonight. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:15, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{db-a3}} will not change in the move, and {{db-a3-notice}} currently redirects to {{db-nocontent-notice}} but will be overwritten by {{db-nocontent-notice}} once the move takes place, thus everything should work the same way it does currently. Passengerpigeon (talk) 23:32, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright checks when performing AfC reviews

Hello This, that and the other. This message is part of a mass mailing to people who appear active in reviewing articles for creation submissions. First of all, thank you for taking part in this important work! I'm sorry this message is a form letter – it really was the only way I could think of to covey the issue economically. Of course, this also means that I have not looked to see whether the matter is applicable to you in particular.

The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.

If you don't do so already, I'd like to ask for your to help with this problem by taking on the practice of performing a copyvio check as the first step in any AfC review. The most basic method is to simply copy a unique but small portion of text from the draft body and run it through a search engine in quotation marks. Trying this from two different paragraphs is recommended. (If you have any question about whether the text was copied from the draft, rather than the other way around (a "backwards copyvio"), the Wayback Machine is very useful for sussing that out.)

If you do find a copyright violation, please do not decline the draft on that basis. Copyright violations need to be dealt with immediately as they may harm those whose content is being used and expose Wikipedia to potential legal liability. If the draft is substantially a copyvio, and there's no non-infringing version to revert to, please mark the page for speedy deletion right away using {{db-g12|url=URL of source}}. If there is an assertion of permission, please replace the draft article's content with {{subst:copyvio|url=URL of source}}.

Some of the more obvious indicia of a copyvio are use of the first person ("we/our/us..."), phrases like "this site", or apparent artifacts of content written for somewhere else ("top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", use of smartquotes, etc.); inappropriate tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone or a very slanted marketing voice with weasel words; including intellectual property symbols (™,®); and blocks of text being added all at once in a finished form with no misspellings or other errors.

I hope this message finds you well and thanks again you for your efforts in this area. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Sent via--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the Common Good

Good day.

My name is Sergey Semenov, I'm the administrator Russian Wikipedia. I am writing to you about the reverse transfer images from the Commons in the Russian Wikipedia using a program For the Common Good. Unfortunately, this program is quite difficult to master, and will move quite a lot.

I have uploaded to Commons several thousand images of tombstones set in the cemeteries of Russia. Unfortunately, in our country there is complete freedom of panorama, so these files can at any time be removed. I decided to move them to the Russian Wikipedia template FoP-Russia. In connection with this appeal to you to write the configuration files for the particular transport mechanism to simplify the programming work far from the participants. In today's conditions, the use of mass transfer of files can lead to disastrous results.

P. S. I'm sorry for the mistakes I badly speak English and translate through Google translator. --SerSem (talk) 12:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sergey, thanks for your message, and don't worry about your English, I understand it well! I understand that reverse transfers with FtCG aren't as easy as they perhaps should be. I'll have a moment later today to see if I can prepare you a configuration file that will do what you ask. Thanks, — This, that and the other (talk) 03:40, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I'll wait. --SerSem (talk) 12:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I made this configuration file for For the Common Good: http://atlight.github.io/ftcg/ForTheCommonGood_SerSem.cfg You should download it, rename it to ForTheCommonGood.cfg, and move it to the same location as ForTheCommonGood.exe.

Be aware of a couple of things:

You must turn off the "Tag file with {{now commons}}" check box above the "Transfer" button.
If you want to go through each of your uploads, you can download this text file: http://atlight.github.io/ftcg/SerSem_files.txt and click the "Other source" option to load this text file into FtCG.
There is no template on ruwiki for CC-BY-SA version 4.0 (see c:template:cc-by-sa-4.0). You will need to create this template on ruwiki before transferring.

I would say that, since you have such a huge number of files, it might be better to ask for a bot to perform the transfers. I think you will find FtCG too slow for this work. But if you wish to give it a go, I hope it helps you. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your help, I was able to master the program and begin to transfer files with its help. All I do not need to unload, I have old photos uploaded to Commons. With the help of your program I have unloaded in Russian Wikipedia about 700 photos. This is a very important and necessary option in the program. --SerSem (talk) 18:01, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good day. I tried to upload a list of files at once from the category "Literatorskie mostki", but I did not succeed. If I use the text in this form, as provided by you in the file, the program writes the message: "An API error occured. Bad title" File: "". If I add the "File:" at the beginning of each line, the program writes the message: "An API error occured. Bad title:" File: <>. JPG ". What could be wrong? --SerSem (talk) 14:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- I would suggest that you check the encoding of the text file. For the Common Good expects the file to be stored in the UTF-8 encoding. Alternatively, you could upload the file to the Internet so I could look at it and check it for any problems. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	For assistance in establishing unloading unfree files in the Russian Wikipedia Commons. The administrator Russian Wikipedia SerSem (talk) 18:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Toolserver

Hi Purodha, I was triaging some old Toolserver migration bugs, and noticed that there is a task phab:T63028 relating to one of your tools. Do you intend to migrate this tool to Tool Labs? — This, that and the other (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although I do not unterstand the phab:T63028 web page, I understand that someone ist asking whether or not I plan to migrate former toolserver tools to tools labs. I do. I only do not have plans as to when I have time to do it. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 19:39, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bugzilla seems not wo work any more. It redirects to something else. My account to bugzilla was lost in the process. So, for the time being, I am out of this business. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 09:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Purodha: Bugzilla was migrated to the new Phabricator issue tracking system a few weeks ago. You can create a Phabricator account that is attached to your Wikimedia SUL account, if you want to comment on bugs. See mw:Phabricator/Help#Creating_your_account for some info.

In any case I'll update the Phabricator task to say that you haven't forgotten about it. Thanks for the reply! — This, that and the other (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I knew about the migration, and I was on the Phabricator page that should allow me to connect to my old bugzilla account a few day ago. That is why I wrote that my access was lost. Maybe, I just have to wait for it to be migrated, I did not really dive into the details. -- Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#Custom notices on user .js and .css pages

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#Custom notices on user .js and .css pages. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:04, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting of TfD for Template:Infobox academic division

TTO, Template:Infobox academic division has been re-nominated for deletion/merger, following a DRV. You participated in the previous TfD discussion, and I thought you would appreciate the opportunity to comment on the newly re-opened/re-listed discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 January 22#Template:Infobox academic division. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 07:26, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now re-re-relisted for more betterness (under the original link), containing the original discussion, but not any comments made in the re-listing. Sorry for the mess. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:13, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RfC - Helper Script access

An RfC has been opened at RfC to physically restrict access to the Helper Script. You are invited to comment. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Problem!

Hi! In attempt to load the file from Ruvika jumps out the message: "The Internet inquiry isn't executed. The inquiry was interrupted: The inquiry is cancelled." Photo: http://radikall.com/images/2015/02/13/ecRa7.jpg --Dogad75 (talk) 10:43, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle for TRwiki

I am a technician from TRwiki. I wanna activate Twinkle. I created following pages(from ENwiki) but "TW tab" didnot appeared.

And I made necessary changes in Gadgets tab. Wikipedia:Twinkle/Localisation pages is outdated. Is there a new instruction page? What I am missing? --Mavrikant (talk) 01:27, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mavrikant: Try altering the Gadgets-definition line to the following:

Twinkle[ResourceLoader|dependencies=mediawiki.user,mediawiki.util,jquery.ui.dialog,jquery.tipsy|rights=autoconfirmed]|morebits.js|morebits.css|Twinkle.js|twinklespeedy.js|twinklediff.js|twinkleconfig.js|twinklefluff.js

— This, that and the other (talk) 06:28, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is working. I followed new version of Wikipedia:Twinkle/Localisation page. Thank you Siddhartha Ghai and User:This, that and the other --Mavrikant (talk) 14:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail!

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— MusikAnimal ^talk 03:10, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Did you get my email? I'm eager to move forward with the block module but am having trouble with testing. Should I use the fragmented modules on testwiki (as opposed to one big twinkle.js)? How can I get the perl script to upload there instead of enwiki? I can't get the concatenated twinkle.js to work in my userspace since it requires morebits. Morebits doesn't appear to be a module that I can use with mw.loader.load and mw.loader.using, and even trying putting the Twinkle init stuff in a callback of $.getScript things still don't load in the right order. I feel like there must be an easier way. Thanks — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:45, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I often have trouble getting Twinkle to show up in the UI on testwiki. Normally I will just open my browser's F12 tools and directly call the callback, e.g. Twinkle.protect.callback(). — This, that and the other (talk) 01:34, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Beautiful :) Not sure why I didn't think of that! Many thanks — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you wish not to communicate through email? I understand if you do not, there's just some matters I'd rather discuss in private. Anyway, I've been working hard and have the interface for the blocking module more or less done. I thought I'd run this by you before I move on to the actual blocking functionality, just in case something stands out that I'm doing wrong. Pull request is here, feel free to comment. Thanks! — MusikAnimal ^talk 03:13, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation

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MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Lua/Modules

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Hillary Rodham Clinton - Move Discussion

Hi,

This is a notification to let you know that there is a requested move discussion ongoing at Talk:Hillary_Rodham_Clinton/April_2015_move_request#Requested_move. You are receiving this notification because you have previously participated in some capacity in naming discussions related to the article in question.

Thanks. And have a nice day. NickCT (talk) 18:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Persondata RfC

Hi, You participated in the previous Persondata RfC. I just wanted to notify you that a new RfC regarding the methodical removal of Persondata is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Thanks, —Msmarmalade (talk) 08:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New question raised regarding Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request

Some opposers of this move have now contended that there is a "Critical fault in proposal evidence", which brings the opinions expressed into question. Please indicate if this assertion in any way affects your position with respect to the proposed move. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:36, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback on WP:UND

Hello, This, that and the other. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#User talk:User.
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I thought I'd post this here as well since i assume you were asking about this in order to find Twinkle defects. Steel1943 (talk) 14:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Talkback

Hello, This, that and the other. You have new messages at Eman235's talk page.
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Community desysoping RfC

Hi. You are invited to comment at RfC for BARC - a community desysoping process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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very belated reply re Wikiquote 'This Sporting Life' deletion

Hi there TTO (I hope that abbreviation is ok, I'm very lazy),

I'm just writing to say I've been meaning to reply to your April 2014 heads-up on my talk page regarding the above. Unfortunately I was probably either taking a break from the insanity that is Wikipedia or else just busy with other things when you posted. What a shame that was removed (was it because TSL doesn't meet USA-dominated notability standards or something like that?). Very annoying.

Kind regards,

--Ty rS 07:07, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TyrS! Wow, that was a long time ago. I had forgotten about it. If you head over to the Wikiquote link, you will see the page was deleted because it had "no sourced quotes", so I suspect it was not a matter of notability - rather, one of sourcing. If you want to further work on the page, I imagine Wikiquote has a process for requesting undeletion or deletion review, in the same way as we have our processes here. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:10, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi, as a user in the edit filter manager user group we wanted to let you know about the new wikipedia-en-editfilters mailing list. As part of our recent efforts to improve the use of edit filters on the English Wikipedia it has been established as a venue for internal discussion by edit filter managers regarding private filters (those only viewable by administrators and edit filter managers) and also as a means by which non-admins can ask questions about hidden filters that wouldn't be appropriate to discuss on-wiki. As an edit filter manager we encourage you to subscribe; the more users we have in the mailing list the more useful it will be to the community. If you subscribe we will send a short email to you through Wikipedia to confirm your subscription, but let us know if you'd prefer another method of verification. I'd also like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute to the proposed guideline for edit filter use at WP:Edit filter/Draft and the associated talk page. Thank you! Sam Walton (talk) and MusikAnimal ^talk 18:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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please delete the user page for master vijay singh

vijay15:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)Dispuralive (talk)

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Thanks for contributions minor-edit filter

Thank you for working on "Allow minor edits to be filtered out of Special:Contributions"! I'm looking forward to it going live. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks... but I should point out that the code hasn't been reviewed yet. Unfortunately, changes like this normally take at least a month to be approved, quite often longer. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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User:This, that and the other/transclude

May I ask what purpose this page serves? —Skyllfully ^(talk | _contribs) 02:30, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyllfully: I was probably trying to debug some problem with the MediaWiki software or something like that. Is the page showing up in some database report or backlog? — This, that and the other (talk) 02:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, I found it in Main Page's WhatLinksHere maintenance report. —Skyllfully ^(talk | _contribs) 02:35, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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TTOBot request re minor league affiliates navboxes

Hey, after a (brief) discussion at WT:BASEBALL, I'd like to nominate all the templates at Category:Minor league baseball affiliates navigational boxes for deletion, as they are redundant to the main Major League Baseball teams' navboxes (which already include links to all of an MLB team's MiLB affiliates, with a more correct breakdown of classifications). As I've never done a mass XFD nomination before, and I really don't relish dong it all manually, I'd appreciate a pass through with the bot for tagging and some advice on the setting up of the appropriate discussion. If you can, ping me to let me know. Thanks. oknazevad (talk) 03:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'll get TTObot to perform the tagging once the TFD nomination is set up. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_September_11#BTCC.2FPTR_season_templates for an example of how to format a multiple template discussion: simply give it a descriptive heading, and write out one :{{Tfd links|...}} line for each template, like this:

:{{Tfd links|MLB Team}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Blue Jays franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Braves franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Brewers franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Cardinals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Chicago Cubs franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Indians franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Nationals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Orioles franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Phillies franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Pirates franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Rays franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Reds franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Royals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Arizona Diamondbacks}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Boston Red Sox}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Colorado Rockies}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Houston Astros}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Los Angeles Angels}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Los Angeles Dodgers}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Miami Marlins}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Minnesota Twins}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team New York Mets}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team New York Yankees}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Oakland Athletics}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team San Diego Padres}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team San Francisco Giants}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Seattle Mariners}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Texas Rangers}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Tigers franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB White Sox franchise}}

Let me know once the TFD nomination has been started. Thanks, — This, that and the other (talk) 03:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I made the nominations. It's at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 December 3#Minor league affiliates navboxes. oknazevad (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done. You may like to notify the following users, who created the templates:

Gateman1997
Vikreykja
SportsMaster
Dale Arnett
Enkrates
JB82
Evill72
Tommie91
NClark128

— This, that and the other (talk) 22:50, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Editors cannot break the site, only (sys)admins can do that

In regards to this edit, I feel that the intended word was sysadmins, not admins. It seems like the gist of that section is that there is nothing that an editor can do (admin or otherwise, with the occasional but negligible odd occurrence where an admin really screws up) that can break Wikipedia. In order to truly cause permanent damage, you'd need to be a sysadmin — ie. with access to the actual backend/databases/servers/whathaveyou. Discant X 13:42, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I removed "sys" is because the text of the section seemed to be talking about admins (as in local users with sysop rights). The first sentence is "In a few cases, there are things sysops can do that will slow down or crash the site". It's clearly talking about sysops on the wiki, not system administrators in the back rooms; it even links to WP:Administrators. Then: "If you get chastised for trying to delete Wikipedia:Sandbox and crashing the site, don't try to delete the same page again". Again talking about sysops. I don't think I agree with the message of the section, but that is beside the point; I think my edit was correct. — This, that and the other (talk) 13:46, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't particularly agree with the tone of the message but the two lines "although there are a few things admins can do maliciously which are very difficult to clean up, it shouldn't ever be possible to do something which will result in permanent data loss or unfixable breakage" and "If you're unsure about something, you can ask a sysadmin on IRC if it makes you feel better, but generally it's not necessary," plus that the preceding sections reference sysadmins rather than admins seems to suggest that the message of the article in whole is not to worry about edits, because non-employees can't break the site in an irreversible fashion — having the section title say admins can break the site and then go on to say that they can't do any serious damage so "don't be afraid to do similar things... This damages Wikipedia far more than a minor temporary slowdown" seems contradictory.

The whole section is a bit vague, but regardless of what the original author intended to say, I think it is true that only a sysadmin could truly break the site, not an admin (you may be a bit more familiar with the backend, but I imagine that even if every admin were to start acting maliciously it could be reversed by a sysadmin by a manual change outside of the normal tools). Discant X 14:13, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seasons' greetings!

Steel1943 (talk) is wishing you Happy Holidays! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user Happy Holidays, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Steel1943/HappyHolidays}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

This, that and the other, hope your holidays are happy, and a happy new year! Steel1943 (talk) 17:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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TB

Hello, This, that and the other. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Question_about_DIFF_pages.
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Category:Tennis name templates

Hi. After discussions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis#Tn template and a "successful" TfD for Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 February 22#Template:Tn Yuki Bhambri, where decision was taken that these articles are not needed, I want to nominate all templates in Category:Tennis name templates for deletion. Is this something you and your bot, User:TTObot, can help with? The templates where only used on a handful articles and I removed them so they are not currently used anywhere and I follow all related pages at my sandbox and watchlist. I would not ask if I would not think a nomination would be successful. Qed237 (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Qed237: Thanks. If you start the TFD discussion, then I can provide a link to that discussion from the edit summary. Otherwise I will just provide a generic deletion summary, like "Nominated for deletion". — This, that and the other (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@This, that and the other: Discussion opened at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 March 4#Tn templates. Thank you. Qed237 (talk) 00:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Qed237: Done (I had to do it in 2 passes because some of the accents in the names of the players played havoc with my script). — This, that and the other (talk) 08:19, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Thank you very much. Qed237 (talk) 10:00, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 02 March 2016

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In the media: Angolan file sharers cause trouble for Wikipedia Zero; the 3D printer edit war; a culture based on change and turmoil

Traffic report: Be weary on the Ides of March

Editorial: "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Featured content: Watch out! A slave trader, a live mascot and a crested serpent awaits!

Arbitration report: Palestine-Israel article 3 case amended

Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #120: Status of Wikimania 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 April 2016

News and notes: Trump/Wales 2016

In the media: Saskatoon police delete Wikipedia content about police brutality

WikiProject report: Why should the Devil have all the good music? An interview with WikiProject Christian music

Traffic report: Donald v Daredevil

Featured content: A slow, slow week

Technology report: Browse Wikipedia in safety? Use Telnet!

Recent research: "Employing Wikipedia for good not evil" in education; using eyetracking to find out how readers read articles

Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #121: How April Fools went down

Blog: Growing hashtags: Expanding outreach on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 April 2016

Op-ed: Should prison inmates be permitted to edit Wikipedia?

News and notes: Denny Vrandečić resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board

In the media: Wikimedia Sweden loses copyright case; Tex Watson; AI assistants; David Jolly biography

Featured content: This week's featured content

Traffic report: A welcome return to pop culture and death

Arbitration report: The first case of 2016—Wikicology

Gallery: A history lesson

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:46, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 April 2016

News and notes: Lunar project; steering group formed to search for next executive director

Op-ed: Knowledge Engine and the Wales–Heilman emails

Special report: Update on EranBot, our new copyright violation detection bot

Traffic report: Two for the price of one

Featured content: The double-sized edition

Arbitration report: Amendments made to the Race and intelligence case

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:43, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle. An second opinion?

Thank you for answering my question on Twinkle. That helped and I have been thinking about reporting it. This is not for a second opinion on content or to have the content in the article.This is because I think Twinkle was misused with false summary edits. I just want an second opinion by someone that knows Twinkle and Wikipedia policies better. Just too much to read and take in at one time. The situation is solved but I still question some things. In short what happen, I edited some nonconstructive edits that was half accurate (unknown to me they were in the wrong place) and my edits were done in verified accuracy when I corrected them. Instead of looking at the original edit it was reverted back to them twice by different editors, however, in both summaries did not fit my edits, twinkle was used both times. In the first one the summary had nothing to do with my edits. The second was a little better but still did not match the situation. This whole thing could had been avoided if the original edits were read than being revert back to them or changed when they were made. Also, maybe realize I was correcting what was there and then explain what the original edits should not been there and not made my edits to be the ones in the wrong place like nothing was there before. So, is reverting my good-faith verified accuracy edits back to nonconstructive edits in the wrong place with summaries that did not match my edits and using twinkle abuse? I have felt like my edits were being called vandalism because Twinkle is used for vandalism and nonconstructive. And to me, my edits were to fix nonconstructive edits. Also, When the first editor that reverted my edits, I had wrote on their talk page. no answer. The second editor that reverted my edits, we had a confusing conversation until I understand the original edits I corrected were in the wrong place. That editor did remove most and corrected the rest. The situation is over. If I knew about Twinkle before hand I would had reported it because I feel it is against Twinkle but is it? Truthseeker1022 (talk) 03:33, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 May 2016

News and notes: Wikimedia Switzerland's board and paid-editing firm; passing of Ed Dravecky

In the media: Wikipedia Zero piracy in Bangladesh; bureaucracy; chilling effects; too few cooks; translation gaps

Traffic report: Purple

Featured content: The best ... from the past two weeks

Arbitration report: Two editors unbanned; Wikicology case enters workshop phase; Gamaliel restricted from Gamergate at his own request

Recent research: The eight roles of Wikipedians; do edit histories expose social relations among editors?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 May 2016

News and notes: Affiliates' nomination of WMF trustees announced; FDC's straight talking to WMF

Op-ed: Swiss chapter in turmoil

In the media: Wikimedia's Dario Taraborelli quoted on Google's Knowledge Graph in The Washington Post

Featured content: Two weeks for the prize of one

Traffic report: Oh behave, Beyhive / Underdogs

Arbitration report: "Wikicology" ends in site ban; evidence and workshop phases concluded for "Gamaliel and others"

Wikicup: That's it for WikiCup Round 2!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 May 2016

News and notes: Upcoming Wikimedia conferences in the US and India; May Metrics and Activities Meeting

Special report: Compensation paid to Sue Gardner increased by almost 50 percent after she stepped down as executive director

In the media: The perils of Wikipedia's monopoly; Wikipedians' fragility; Street Sharks hoax

Featured content: Eight articles, three lists and five pictures

Op-ed: Journey of a Wikipedian

Arbitration report: Gamaliel resigns from the arbitration committee

Recent research: English as Wikipedia's Lingua Franca; deletion rationales; schizophrenia controversies

Traffic report: Splitting (musical) airs / Slow Ride

Blog: Freely licensed magic at Eurovision

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 05 June 2016

News and notes: WMF cuts budget for 2016-17 as scope tightens

In the media: Jimmy Wales on net neutrality—"It's complicated"—and his $100m fundraising challenge

Featured content: Overwhelmed ... by pictures

Traffic report: Pop goes the culture, again.

Arbitration report: ArbCom case "Gamaliel and others" concludes

WikiProject report: WikiProject Video Games

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle question

Where should I go to request a uw template be added to Twinkle? The template in question is {{uw-afcaddition}}. Anarchyte (work | talk) 10:05, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Filtering minor edits from user contributions

[posted to User talk:Jeffq#Filtering minor edits from user contributions]: Hi Jeff. Back in October last year, you asked whether there is a way to hide minor edits from user contributions pages. This feature has finally been implemented in MediaWiki software, and will be available here on 16 June. You can try it out at Wikipedia Beta. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:50, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 15 June 2016

News and notes: Clarifications on status and compensation of outgoing executive directors Sue Gardner and Lila Tretikov

Special report: Wikiversity Journal—A new user group

Featured content: From the crème de la crème

In the media: Biography disputes; Craig Newmark donation; PR editing

Op-ed: Commons Picture of the Year; Wikidata licensing

Traffic report: Another one with sports; Knockout, brief candle

Blog: Why I proofread poetry at Wikisource

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:58, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 04 July 2016

News and notes: Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director; Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany

Op-ed: Two policies in conflict?

In the media: Terrorism database cites Wikipedia as a source

Featured content: Triple fun of featured content

Traffic report: Goalposts; Oy vexit

Blog: Jimmy Wales names Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight as Wikipedians of the Year

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 21 July 2016

News and notes: Board faces diversity and skill-base issues in new FDC appointments

Discussion report: Busy month for discussions

In the media: Women in science editathon gets national press; Wikipedia "shockingly biased"

Featured content: A wide variety from the best

Traffic report: Sports and esports

Arbitration report: Script writers appointed for clerks

Recent research: Using deep learning to predict article quality

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 04 August 2016

Editorial: Wikipedia policy suppresses sharing of information

News and notes: Foundation presents results of harassment research, plans for automated identification; Wikiconference submissions open

In the media: Paid editing service announced; Commercial exploitation of free images; Wikipedia as a crystal ball; Librarians to counter systemic bias

Obituary: Kevin Gorman, who took on Wikipedia's gender gap and undisclosed paid advocacy, dies at 24

Traffic report: Summer of Pokémon, Trump, and Hillary

Featured content: Women and Hawaii

Recent research: Easier navigation via better wikilinks

Blog: All-new notifications page helps Wikimedians focus on what matters most

Technology report: User script report (January to July 2016, part 1)

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 August 2016

News and notes: Focus on India—WikiConference produces new apps; state government adopts free licenses

Special report: Engaging diverse communities to profile women of Antarctica

In the media: The ugly, the bad, the playful, and the promising

Featured content: Simply the best ... from the last two weeks

Traffic report: Olympic views

Technology report: User script report (January–July 2016, part 2)

Arbitration report: The Michael Hardy case

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A kitten for you!

...meow...

Mountebank1 (talk) 00:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 06 September 2016

News and notes: AffCom still grappling with WMF Board's criteria for new chapters

Special report: Olympics readership depended on language

In the media: Librarians, Wikipedians, and a library of Wikipedia coverage

WikiProject report: Watching Wikipedia

Featured content: Entertainment, sport, and something else in-between

Traffic report: From Phelps to Bolt to Reddit

Technology report: Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them

Recent research: Ethics of machine-created articles and fighting vandalism

Blog: Upload of free photos from Swiss library underway

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:44, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 September 2016

News and notes: Wikipedia Education Program case study published; and a longtime Wikimedian has made his final edit

In the media: Wikipedia in the news

Featured content: Three weeks in the land of featured content

Arbitration report: Arbcom looking for new checkusers and oversight appointees while another case opens

Traffic report: From Gene Wilder to JonBenét

Technology report: Category sorting and template parameters

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 October 2016

News and notes: Fundraising, flora and fauna

Discussion report: Cultivating leadership: Wikimedia Foundation seeks input

In the media: A news columnist on the frustrations of tweaking his Wikipedia bio

Technology report: Upcoming tech projects for 2017

Featured content: Variety is the spice of life

Traffic report: Debates and escapes

Recent research: A 2011 study resurfaces in a media report

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:29, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 November 2016

News and notes: Finally, a new CTO; trustee joins Quora; copyright upgrade impending

In the media: Washington Post continues in-depth Wikipedia coverage

Wikicup: WikiCup winners

Discussion report: What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?

Technology report: New guideline for technical collaboration; citation templates now flag open access content

Featured content: Cream of the crop

Traffic report: Un-presidential politics

Arbitration report: Recapping October's activities

Recent research: Why women edit less, and where they are overrepresented; article importance and quality; predicting elections from Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer - RfC

Hi This, that and the other. You are invited to comment at a further discussion on the implementation of this user right to patrol and review new pages that is taking place at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC on patrolling without user right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:12, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 November 2016

News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence

In the media: Roundup of news related to U.S. presidential election and more

Blog: The top fifteen winning photos from Wiki Loves Earth

Gallery: Around the world with Wiki Loves Monuments 2016

Featured content: Featured mix

Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog

Op-ed: Fundraising data should be more transparent

Traffic report: President-elect Trump

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:06, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Db-meta

There is an (apparent) problem with the addition of the "help=off" parameter that you added to Template:Db-meta in this edit. The problem is that sometimes editors use the "help=off" parameter even without notifying the article author of the speedy delete nomination. Thus, as an administrator, when I am reviewing articles up for speedy deletion, and I find that the author has not been notified, I don't get the help section to provide notice to the author automatically. As I commented at [1], using the "help=off" parameter is like saying, "I didn't notify the article creator that I nominated this page for speedy deletion, and I want to make it more difficult than normal for anyone else to do so, too." If it was your intention that the help=off parameter should only be used or activated once the author has been given notice, it doesn't seem to be working that way. I don't know enough about template parameters to fix the template myself. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:38, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Metropolitan90: As you identified, the parameter was added so that the help section is not shown when the creator has been notified. Twinkle, as far as I can see, only adds |help=off when the creator is about to be notified by the tool. If Twinkle has been asked not to notify the page creator, it will not add help=off. However, in the very rare case that the posting to user talk fails (such as because the user talk page is fully protected), the help=off parameter will be added regardless. I suspect (and hope) this is a vanishingly rare scenario.

If people are misusing the parameter, the solution is not to remove the parameter; it might be to change the template documentation, engage with individual users, or identify if any tools, gadgets or scripts are to blame. If you can provide some diffs of users who have been using the parameter incorrectly, it would help to identify the source of the problem. However, at the end of the day, I can't control what other users are doing with the parameter I added. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:59, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will follow up when I have diffs to provide. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 22 December 2016

Year in review: Looking back on 2016

News and notes: Strategic planning update; English ArbCom election results

Special report: German ArbCom implodes

In focus: Active user page filter prevents vandalism and harassment

Op-ed: Operation successful, patient dead: Outreach workshops in Namibia

In the media: In brief: Coverage of gender gap initiatives, banner fundraising, and more

Featured content: The Christmas edition

Technology report: Labs improvements impact 2016 Tool Labs survey results

Traffic report: Post-election traffic blues

Blog: Wiki Loves Monuments contest winners announced

Recent research: One study and several abstracts

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 January 2017

From the editor: Next steps for the Signpost

News and notes: Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?

Interview: What is it like to edit Wikipedia when you're blind?

In the media: Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more

Featured content: One year ends, and another begins

Arbitration report: Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases

Traffic report: Out with the old, in with the new

Technology report: Tech present, past, and future

Recent research: Female Wikipedians aren't more likely to edit women biographies; Black Lives Matter in Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CSS styling in templates

Hello everyone, and sincere apologies if you're getting this message more than once. Just a heads-up that there is currently work on an extension in order to enable CSS styling in templates. Please check the document on mediawiki.org to discuss best storage methods and what we need to avoid with implementation. Thanks, m:User:Melamrawy (WMF), 09:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 February 2017

Arbitration report: WMF Legal and ArbCom weigh in on tension between disclosure requirements and user privacy

Special report: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing

News and notes: Official WMF rebuke to Trump policy; WMF secures restricted funds

In focus: WMF strategy consultant brings background in crisis reputation management; Team behind popular WMF software put "on pause"

WikiProject report: For the birds!

Op-ed: How to make editing workshops useful, even if participants don't stick around

In the media: Presidential politics, periodic table, and our periodic roundup of updates

Technology report: Better PDFs, backup plans, and birthday wishes

Traffic report: Cool It Now

Featured content: Three weeks dominated by articles

Forum: Productive collaboration around coordinated protest marches; Media and political personalities comment on Wikipedia at its 16th birthday celebration

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Addition of un-redirected pages to Special:NewPages and Special:NewPagesFeed

I'm contacting you because you participated in this proposal discussion. While the proposal was approved, it has not received developer action. The request is now under consideration as part of the 2017 Developer Wishlist, with voting open through the end of day on Tuesday (23:59 UTC). The latter link describes the voting process, if you are interested. —swpb^T 18:02, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 February 2017

From the editors: Results from our poll on subscription and delivery, and a new RSS feed

Recent research: Special issue: Wikipedia in education

Technology report: Responsive content on desktop; Offline content in Android app

In the media: The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia

Gallery: A Met montage

Special report: Peer review – a history and call for reviewers

Op-ed: Wikipedia has cancer

Featured content: The dominance of articles continues

Traffic report: Love, football, and politics

Blog: WikiIndaba 2017: A continent gathers to chart a path forward

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:20, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Greetings!

The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

Arbcom

Magioladitis ARBCOM case has closed. The remedies of the case include:

Community encouraged to review common fixes
Community encouraged to review policy on cosmetic edits
Developers encouraged to improve AWB interface
Bot approvals group encouraged to carefully review BRFA scope
Reminders/Restrictions specific to Magioladitis

BRFAs

We currently have 27 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

There are multiple ongoing discussions surrounding bot-related matters. In particular:

RFC on COSMETICBOT
Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes
Requested move for the Bot Owners' Noticeboard
A phabricator ticket T162685 has been made to have a "bots" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked

New things

Several new things are around:

A BAG Guide has been created (WP:BAGG, discussion).
Users now have the option to hide AWB from their watchlists via a script (WP:HIDEAWB, discussion)
The guidance on how to deal with bot issues has been overhauled (WP:BOTISSUE, discussion)
The bot policy has been updated to clarify that bot operators are required to register accounts. (WP:BOTACCOUNT, discussion)

Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by:Headbomb 11:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(You can unsubscribe from future newsletters by removing your name from this list.)

JavaScript RegExp problem

I noticed you have experience in JavaScript. I'm hoping you can help me with a problem I've run into writing a userscript.

Please see my post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject JavaScript#Nested RegExp.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 12:27, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 June 2017

From the editors: Signpost status: On reserve power, help wanted!

News and notes: Global Elections

Arbitration report: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis

Op-ed: Wikipedia's lead sentence problem

Featured content: Three months in the land of the featured

In the media: Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?

Recent research: Wikipedia bot wars capture the imagination of the popular press

Technology report: Tech news catch-up

Traffic report: Film on Top: Sampling the weekly top 10

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:18, 9 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 23 June 2017

News and notes: Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)

In the media: Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill

Op-ed: Facto Post: a fresh take

Featured content: Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues

Traffic report: Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth

Recent research: Utopian bubbles: Can Wikipedians create value outside of the capitalist system?

Technology report: Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle help deployment

I notice that you pushed the code for this to GitHub, but it's not reflected on my Twinkle yet, and it's been a few weeks. Can you deploy from there to here, or does @MusikAnimal: have to do it? – Train2104 (t • c) 22:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Train2104: I'm not an administrator, so no, I can't. MusikAnimal can though. I've been waiting for mw:Gadgets 2.0 for about 6 years - hopefully one day we will get it, and then non-admins will be able to manage gadgets. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done Just ping me whenever it needs to be synced, only takes a few minutes :) I don't think there's a way to get notifications about commits to select repos on GitHub, or else I'd just go by that — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 15 July 2017

News and notes: French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes

Featured content: Spectacular animals, Pine Trees screens, and more

In the media: Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce

Recent research: The chilling effect of surveillance on Wikipedia readers

Op-ed: Why Task Forces are Dying in 2017

Gallery: A mix of patterns

Humour: The Infobox Game

Traffic report: Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday

Technology report: New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts

Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 3 wrap-up

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:49, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Greetings!

Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

BAG

BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are now members of the BAG (see RfBAG/BU Rob13 and RfBAG/Cyberpower678 3). BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are both administrators; the former operates BU RoBOT which does a plethora of tasks, while the latter operates Cyberbot I (which replaces old bots), Cyberbot II (which does many different things), and InternetArchiveBot which combats link rot. Welcome to the BAG!

BRFAs

We currently have 12 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes are still ongoing.
The RFC on COSMETICBOT has concluded with "a clear consensus exists to adopt the proposed language". The new wording is now live.
The venue for bot appeals and reexaminations has been changed from WP:BRFA to WP:BOTN (see discussion)
The Wikipedia:Bot owner's noticeboard is now the Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard (see discussion).

New things

A historical correction was made to WP:BOTPOL (see discussion).
WP:HIDEBOTS now mentions how to hide all bots from your watchlist, not only specific bots.
The phabricator ticket T162685 is now closed, and we now have "#Bots-Framework" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked.
Wikibits.js has been removed (see discussion).
21 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
WP:BOTISSUE has been updated to mention that BAG members can act as neutral mediators in bot-related disputes.
WP:INTERWIKIBOT has been updated to reflect the post-February 2013 practice of putting interwiki links on Wikidata, rather than on Wikipedia (see discussion).

Upcoming

HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ).

Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 5 August 2017

News and notes: Non-English special edition! 99% no news about English-based wiki communities!

Recent research: Wikipedia can increase local tourism by +9%; predicting article quality with deep learning; recent behavior predicts quality

WikiProject report: Comic relief

In the media: Wikipedia used to judge death penalty, arms smuggling, Indonesian governance, and HOTTEST celebrity

Traffic report: Swedish countess tops the list

Blog: Canadian Supreme Court rules against Google in favor of worldwide court orders

Special report: Sharing Wikipedia offline medical information in the Dominican Republic

Featured content: Everywhere in the lead

Technology report: Introducing TechCom

Humour: WWASOHs and ETCSSs

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedia bots running on the Wikimedia Labs cluster has been nominated for discussion

Category:Wikipedia bots running on the Wikimedia Labs cluster, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides 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. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 September 2017

From the editors: What happened at Wikimania?

News and notes: Basselpedia; WMF Board of Trustees appointments

Featured content: Warfighters and their tools or trees and butterflies

Traffic report: A fortnight of conflicts

Special report: Biomedical content, and some thoughts on its future

Recent research: Discussion summarization; Twitter bots tracking government edits; extracting trivia from Wikipedia

In the media: Google's Ideological Echo Chamber; What makes someone successful?

WikiProject report: WikiProject YouTube

Technology report: Latest tech news

Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 4 wrap-up

Humour: Bots

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:45, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Marvel Comics characters

Hello. I would like to nominate a number of templates for discussion, and I noticed that your bot TTObot may help with it. The problematic templates are:

All those navboxes are linking articles by a trivial theme (the first character of their names). There are several templates already that group Marvel characters by more reasonable criteria, such as those that appear in a same publication (like {{Fantastic Four}}), so those ones are not really needed. Cambalachero (talk) 15:09, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Cambalachero: With only 27 templates it's probably easier to do it by hand. If you had, say, 50 or 100 templates to tag, then TTObot might be a good choice. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 September 2017

News and notes: Chapter updates; ACTRIAL

In the media: Monkey settlement; Wikipedia used to give AI context clues

Humour: Chickenz

Recent research: Wikipedia articles vs. concepts; Wikipedia usage in Europe

Technology report: Flow restarted; Wikidata connection notifications

Gallery: Chicken mania

Special report: Two steps forward, one step backward: The Sustainability Initiative

Traffic report: Fights and frights

Featured content: Flying high

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Users who do not wish to receive talkbacks

I have proposed renaming of Category:Users who do not wish to receive talkbacks to "Wikipedians...". – Fayenatic London 10:09, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 23 October 2017

News and notes: Money! WMF fundraising, Wikimedia strategy, WMF new office!

Featured content: Don, Marcel, Emily, Jessica and other notables

Humour: Guys named Ralph

In focus: Offline Wikipedia developed at OFF.NETWORK Content Hackathon

Blog: The future of offline access to Wikipedia: The Kiwix example

In the media: Facebook and poetry

Special report: Working with GLAMs in the UK

Traffic report: Death, disaster, and entertainment

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 November 2017

News and notes: Cons, cons, cons

Arbitration report: Administrator desysoped; How to deal with crosswiki issues; Mister Wiki case likely

Technology report: Searching and surveying

Interview: A featured article centurion

WikiProject report: Recommendations for WikiProjects

In the media: Open knowledge platform as a media institution

Traffic report: Strange and inappropriate

Featured content: We will remember them

Recent research: Who wrote this? New dataset on the provenance of Wikipedia text

Humour: Good faith (but still incomprehensible)

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:38, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 December 2017

Special report: Women in Red World Contest wrap-up

Blog: Close encounters of the Wikipedia kind

Featured content: Featured content to finish 2017

In the media: Stolen seagulls, public domain primates and more

Arbitration report: Last case of 2017: Mister Wiki editors

Gallery: Wiki loving

Interview: Interview with Charlesjsharp, regular contributor of Wikipedia's Featured Pictures

Recent research: French medical articles have "high rate of veracity"

Technology report: Your wish lists and more Wikimedia tech

Traffic report: Notable heroes and bad guys

Humour: On their way to the WMF Incubator

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer granted

Hello This, that and the other. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.

URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:53, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to be on the NPP mailing list, sign up at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Newsletter list. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like I conflicted @Alex Shih:, but same message. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Same message. Thank you! Alex Shih (talk) 04:57, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New Years new page backlog drive

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Announcing the NPP New Year Backlog Drive!

We have done amazing work so far in December to reduce the New Pages Feed backlog by over 3000 articles! Now is the time to capitalise on our momentum and help eliminate the backlog!

The backlog drive will begin on January 1^st and run until January 29^th. Prize tiers and other info can be found HERE.

Awards will be given in tiers in two categories:

The total number of reviews completed for the month.
The minimum weekly total maintained for all four weeks of the backlog drive.

NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. — TonyBallioni (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC) [reply]

The Signpost: 16 January 2018

News and notes: Communication is key

In the media: The Paris Review, British Crown and British Media

Featured content: History, gaming and multifarious topics

Interview: Interview with Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the top contributor to English Wikipedia by edit count

Technology report: Dedicated Wikidata database servers

Humour: Why don't we have an article about _________?

Arbitration report: Mister Wiki is first arbitration committee decision of 2018

Traffic report: The best and worst of 2017

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Offing

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.
You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Offing, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly-defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

It is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. (See section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Wikipedia has standards for the minimum necessary information to be included in short articles; you can see these at Wikipedia:Stub. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.
It consists of a dictionary definition or other article that has been transwikied to another project and the author information recorded. (See section A5 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. 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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Matuko 09:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Offing

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.
You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Offing, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly-defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

It is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. (See section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Wikipedia has standards for the minimum necessary information to be included in short articles; you can see these at Wikipedia:Stub. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.
It consists of a dictionary definition or other article that has been transwikied to another project and the author information recorded. (See section A5 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. 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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Matuko 09:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@Matuko: I think {{wi}} articles ought to be considered more as soft redirects, so that the article CSD criteria do not apply. Let's see what an admin thinks. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 5 February 2018

Op-ed: Do editors have the right to be forgotten?

Featured content: Wars, sieges, disasters and everything black possible

Recent research: Automated Q&A from Wikipedia articles; Who succeeds in talk page discussions?

Blog: New monthly dataset shows where people fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes

Interview: Interview with The Rambling Man, Wikipedia's top contributor of Featured Lists

Traffic report: TV, death, sports, and doodles

Special report: Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative

Arbitration report: New cases requested for inter-editor hostility and other collaboration issues

In the media: Solving crime; editing out violence allegations

Humour: You really are in Wonderland

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your efforts in reviewing new pages!

Backlog update:

The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!

New Year Backlog Drive results:

We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!

General project update:

ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2018

News and notes: The future is Swedish with a lack of administrators

Recent research: Politically diverse editors write better articles; Reddit and Stack Overflow benefit from Wikipedia but don't give back

Arbitration report: Arbitration committee prepares to examine two new cases

Traffic report: Addicted to sports and pain

Featured content: Entertainment, sports and history

Technology report: Paragraph-based edit conflict screen; broken thanks

Humour: Impossible and unexplained traffic report

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

Magioladitis 2 happened, leading to further restrictions on Magioladitis (decision, summary).
Betacommand 3 was proposed to be amended to lift the indefinite ban on Δ, but was unsuccessful (decision).
A motion concerning Crosswiki issues (mostly concerning Wikidata) was passed (see discussion).

BAG

Hersfold was removed from the BAG due to long term inactivity.

BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things

WP:BOTDICT, a dictionary of common bot-related terms (see discussion).
6 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey happened. Two bot-related proposal passed, #6 deploy Article Alerts to other languages and #10 Commons deletion notification bot, although other entries may affect bots as well.
Category:Wikipedia bots and its subcategories has had some cleanup. Bot-related pages that were historically important but are no longer of interests can be found in Category:Wikipedia bots (historical)
The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.

Upcoming

HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ).

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018

Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost?

News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.

Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.

In the media: The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good

Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers

Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs

Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.

Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.

Humour: WikiWorld Reruns

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:48, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review Newsletter No.10

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.

Paid editing

Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies. A further discussion is currently taking place at: Can a subject specific guideline invalidate the General Notability Guideline?

Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled

While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.

News

The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.

To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming changes to wikitext parsing

Hello,

There will be some changes to the way wikitext is parsed during the next few weeks. It will affect all namespaces. You can see a list of pages that may display incorrectly at Special:LintErrors. Since most of the easy problems have already been solved at the English Wikipedia, I am specifically contacting tech-savvy editors such as yourself with this one-time message, in the hope that you will be able to investigate the remaining high-priority pages during the next month.

There are approximately 10,000 articles (and many more non-article pages) with high-priority errors. The most important ones are the articles with misnested tags and table problems. Some of these involve templates, such as infoboxes, or the way the template is used in the article. In some cases, the "error" is a minor, unimportant difference in the visual appearance. In other cases, the results are undesirable. You can see a before-and-after comparison of any article by adding ?action=parsermigration-edit to the end of a link, like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Foss?action=parsermigration-edit (which shows a difference in how {{infobox ship}} is parsed).

If you are interested in helping with this project, please see Wikipedia:Linter. There are also some basic instructions (and links to even more information) at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2018-April/001836.html You can also leave a note at WT:Linter if you have questions.

Thank you for all the good things you do for the English Wikipedia. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2018

From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again

Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost

News and notes: Photo of Kim Jong-un. Stephen Hawking death tops hits on many Wikipedias.

In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop

In focus: Admin reports board under criticism

Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide

Opinion: Guideline for Organization Notability revised

Op-ed: World War II Myth-making and Wikipedia

Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias

Discussion report: The future of portals

Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct

WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History

Blog: Why the world reads Wikipedia

Humour: Our Favorite Places to Whine About Stuff

Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March

Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation

Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

Gallery: A look at some famous and not as well-known border tripoints

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:48, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability. Since you had some involvement with the List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:54, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 May 2018

From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline

Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

Opinion: Integrating my many lives on Wikipedia

WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals

Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals

Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics

News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia

In the media: Wikipedia in Turkish politics; COI politics in Wikipedia; most cited work

Traffic report: We love our superheroes

Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies

Blog: Why I write about women on Wikipedia

Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues

Humour: Play with your food

Gallery: Wine not?

From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:25, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 May 2018

From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline

Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

Opinion: Integrating my many lives on Wikipedia

WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals

Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals

Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics

News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia

In the media: Wikipedia in Turkish politics; COI politics in Wikipedia; most cited work

Traffic report: We love our superheroes

Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies

Blog: Why I write about women on Wikipedia

Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues

Humour: Play with your food

Gallery: Wine not?

From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 June 2018

From the editor: The Admin Ship is still barely afloat, while a Foundation project risks sinking

Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?

Op-ed: What do admins do?

Opinion: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes

News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania

In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress

Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page

Featured content: New promotions

Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed

Traffic report: Endgame

Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements

Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa

Blog: Wikipedia should be open for editors in Turkey

Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry

Humour: Television plot lines

Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors

From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:29, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Subst and such

Hi TTO. I've been trying to get a basic grasp on subst and safsubst recently, and I see you have had it for years. Why, do you think, Special:Diff/849795156 ended up looking like that? Did you enter "revisionuser" manually in {{RMassist/core}} instead of using {{RMassist}} that includes a safesubst of REVISIONUSER? Sam Sailor 12:40, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did enter that manually. No idea why it didn't work. Perhaps I had a good grasp of subst and safesubst in 2011 when I wrote that page, but I have evidently lost touch with template substitution since then. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:51, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think you dropped something

Is this yours? Primefac (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: Yeah, sorry about that. I thought I'd pitch in and enact a non-admin closure, but I was unaware that the destination title was salted, so I ended up having to ask for a requested move. It did get moved eventually. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:50, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, no worries. Primefac (talk) 00:07, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules

New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.

Editathons

Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

The Signpost

The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 July 2018

From the editor: If only if

Op-ed: The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality

News and notes: Another newspaper for Wikipedia; Wikimania 2018 ends; changes at NPR

In the media: Blackouts in Europe; Wikipedia and capitalists; WMF Jet Set

Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals

Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose

Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes

Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else

Technology report: New bots, new prefs

Gallery: Independence days, national holidays, and football – all in July

Blog: Motivation of two editors

Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons

Humour: It's all the same

Essay: Wikipedia does not need you

From the archives: The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.

BAG

There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

24 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
5 open BRFAs and 3 BRFAs in need of BAG attention (see live status).
54 approved bot tasks since the start of 2018. Of note, Community Tech bot 5 (the #10 Wish on the 2017 Community Survey) was approved to notify users concerning problematic images and files from Wikimedia Commons.

Also

If you're a bot operator that can help with Tidy/Linter error cleanup (see discussion, discussion), please file a BRFA!
8 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion, discussion, discussion).

Discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

Use of tags by bots – Exploring the use of a new 'bot' tag.
Mass page moves – Bot policy question/clarification about mass moves.
Creation of redirects – Bot policy question/clarification about the creation of redirects.
Guidance on disruptive use of semi–automated tools? – Related to meatbots (see also MOS discussion, which resulted in small addition to MOS:VAR).
Discussion concerning WP:BOTFLAG/WP:RC – A reminder that bots should use the bot flag when it makes sense to use it (see also VPT discussion and CREATEBOT update).
Out of curiosity... (to all bot operators) – BotPasswords vs OAuth usage amongst bot operators.
Introducing Toolhub – Toolhub is looking for feedback.

New things

{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
Massive updates and improvements have been made to Citation bot in the past few months (see discussions, discussions, discussions). You can activate the bot here, amongst other methods.
HTML Tidy has been phased out (see Tech News #28).
{{Newbot}} has been reorganized a bit (diff). In particular, it links to previously approved BRFAs (see discussion).
Wikipedia:Bots#See also has been reorganized a bit (diff).
The bot dictionary has two new entries, context bot and context-sensitive edit.
The bot request header has been updated to include better guidance (see discussion).
The subcategories of Category:Wikipedia bot requests for approval have been sorted in a consistent manner to make past BRFAs easier to find.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 30 August 2018

From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia

Interview: 2018 Wikimedian of the Year, Farkhad Fatkullin

News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend

In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles

Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy

Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

Special report: Wikimania 2018

Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits

Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work

Gallery: Leapfrog, historic Thai cave, and a rhythmic beat

Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies

Humour: Signpost editor censors herself

Essay: Principle of Some Astonishment

From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:04, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news

The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.

As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.

There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Coordinator tasks for more info to see if you can help out.

Other

A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.

Moving to Draft and Page Mover

Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js^(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js^(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js^(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
User:Primefac/revdel.js^(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js^(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link.
User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.
User:Evad37/rater.js^(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC) [reply]

The Signpost: 1 October 2018

From the editor: Is this the new normal?

News and notes: European copyright law moves forward

In the media: Knowledge under fire

Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2

Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom

Traffic report: John McCain's death generates over 7 million hits, followed by historical low

Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile

Gallery: A pat on the back

Blog: After a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil, a drive to preserve what knowledge remains

Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?

Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle

Essay: Expressing thanks

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:45, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some TfD tagging for TTOBot

Hi. I have a mass Tfd nomination at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 October 7 which consists of 48 pages. Can your bot please tag all the template for deletion. Thanks. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:04, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Pkbwcgs: I may not have time to do this in the coming few days, as I am extremely busy IRL right now. It's not an enormous task, so you might be able to find a taker at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:09, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am doing it right now with AWB. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:11, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018^[update], there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal

There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!

Project updates

ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.

New scripts

User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js^(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 October 2018

From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely

Op-ed: Wikipedia's Strickland affair

News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks

In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias

Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform

Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring

Technology report: Bots galore!

Special report: NPP needs you

Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six

In focus: Alexa

Gallery: Out of this world!

Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion

Humour: Talk page humour

Opinion: Strickland incident

From the archives: The Gardner Interview

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello This, that and the other,

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW

Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.

If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.

We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.

With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 December 2018

From the editor: Time for a truce

Op-ed: Looking back, looking forward: A beginner's experience on Wikipedia

Special report: The Christmas wishlist

Opinion: The blogosphere migrates to Galaxy WMF

News and notes: Reviewer of the year, WikiCup winner, and the 2019 Wikimedia Summit

Reflections: Wikipedia, history, and the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day

In the media: Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars

Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee

Arbitration report: A long break ends

Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight

Gallery: Intersections

Recent research: Why do the most active Wikipedians burn out?; only 4% of students vandalize

Essay: No one cares about your garage band

Humour: The dark side of our favorite root vegetable

From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:48, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello This, that and the other,

Reviewer of the Year

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

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

The Signpost: 24 December 2018

From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?

Op-ed: Wikipedia not trumped by Trump appointee

Special report: The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right?

News and notes: Some wishes do come true

In the media: Political hijinks

Discussion report: A new record low for RfA

WikiProject report: Articlegenesis

Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case

Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents

Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone

Blog: News from the WMF

Humour: I believe in Bigfoot

Essay: Requests for medication

From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected

In focus: The Collective Consciousness of Admin Userpages

News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives

In the media: The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized

Discussion report: The future of the reference desk

Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity

Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope

Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther

Technology report: When broken is easily fixed

Gallery: Let us build a memorial fit for such pain and suffering

News from the WMF: News from WMF

Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?

Essay: How

Humour: Village pump

From the archives: An editorial board that includes you

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:51, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mass deletion nomination of templates

Hey, I was wondering if your bot User:TTObot could help me nominate all templates in Category:Elementbox templates. Template:Elementbox was converted into Template:Infobox element which uses a different syntax and does not use any of these templates which are marked as deprecated. --Gonnym (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 February 2019

From the editors: Help wanted (still)

News and notes: Front-page issues for the community

In focus: Wikimedia affiliate organizations seek community participation in 2019 board election

Discussion report: Talking about talk pages

Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!

Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee

Traffic report: Binge-watching

Technology report: Tool labs casters-up

Gallery: Signed with pride

Recent research: Research finds signs of cultural diversity and recreational habits of readers

Essay: Optimist's guide to Wikipedia

From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love

Humour: Pesky Pronouns

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello This, that and the other,

News

The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.

Discussions of interest

Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
{{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.

Reminders

NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.

NPP Tools Report

Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

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

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 March 2019

News, reports and features from the English Wikipedia's weekly journal about Wikipedia and Wikimedia

From the editors: Getting serious about humor
News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive
In the media: Women's history month
Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding
Featured content: Out of this world
Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM
Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations
Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles
News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive
Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention
From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion
Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37
Op-Ed: Pro and Con: Has gun violence been improperly excluded from gun articles?
In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch
Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride
Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 15:42, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2019

News and notes: An Action Packed April

In the media: Is Wikipedia just another social media site?

Discussion report: English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages

Featured content: Anguish, accolades, animals, and art

Arbitration report: An Active Arbitration Committee

Traffic report: Mötley Crüe, Notre-Dame, a black hole, and Bonnie and Clyde

Technology report: A new special page, and other news

Gallery: Notre-Dame de Paris burns

News from the WMF: Can machine learning uncover Wikipedia’s missing “citation needed” tags?

Recent research: Female scholars underrepresented; whitepaper on Wikidata and libraries; undo patterns reveal editor hierarchy

From the archives: Portals revisited

Humour: Jimbo and Larry walk into a bar ...

Opinion: The gaps in our knowledge of our gaps

Interview: Katherine Maher marks 3 years as executive director

Community view: 2019 Wikimedia Summit gathers movement affiliate representatives to discuss movement strategy

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:37, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello This, that and the other,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

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

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

Reliable Sources for NPP

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

Backlog drive coming soon

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

News

Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Discussions of interest

A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like

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

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 May 2019

From the editors: Picture that

News and notes: Wikimania and trustee elections

In the media: Politics, lawsuits and baseball

Discussion report: Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia

Arbitration report: ArbCom forges ahead

Traffic report: Dark marvels, thrones, a vile serial killer biopic, that's entertainment!

Technology report: Lots of Bots

News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey

Recent research: Wikipedia more useful than academic journals, but is it stealing the news?

Essay: Paid editing

From the archives: FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:12, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello This, that and the other,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

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

QUALITY of REVIEWING

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

Backlog

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

Move to draft

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

Notifying users

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

PERM

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

Other news

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

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

Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

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

The June 2019 Signpost is out!

Discussion report: A constitutional crisis hits English Wikipedia

News and notes: Mysterious ban, admin resignations, Wikimedia Thailand rising

In the media: The disinformation age

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Traffic report: Juneteenth, Beauty Revealed, and more nuclear disasters

Technology report: Actors and Bots

Gallery: Unlike the North Face, Wiki Loves Earth

Special report: Did Fram harass other editors?

Recent research: What do editors do after being blocked?; the top mathematicians, universities and cancers according to Wikipedia

From the archives: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching

Opinion: Why the Terms of Use change didn't curtail undisclosed paid editing—and what might

In focus: WikiJournals: A sister project proposal

Community view: A CEO biography, paid for with taxes

Op-Ed: 2019 Wikimedia Affiliate Selected Board Seats Election Results

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:53, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 July 2019

News and notes: Wikimedia grants less accessible for travel, equipment, meetups, and India

In the media: Politics starts getting rough

Discussion report: New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban

Arbitration report: A month of reintegration

Gallery: Classic panoramas from Heinrich Berann

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Community view: Video based summaries of Wikipedia articles. How and why?

News from the WMF: Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way

Recent research: Most influential medical journals; detecting pages to protect

Special report: Administrator cadre continues to contract

Traffic report: World cups, presidential candidates, and stranger things

In focus: The French Wikipedia is overtaking the German

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:18, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.

BAG

Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion).

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

Two BAG members retired
- Madman (talk · contribs) retired.
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired.
Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG!
- Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks.
- TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs).
- Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly
Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not

BOTPOL

Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).

New things

All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally.
{{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion).
WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests.
The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made.
AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions.
Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot.

Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019

News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings

In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff

In the media: Many layers of fake news: Fake fiction and fake news vandalism

Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users

Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes

Op-Ed: We couldn't have told you this, but Wikipedia was censored

Opinion: The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia

Community view: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong

News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year

Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:42, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog

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

Coordinator

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

This month's refresher course

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

Deletion tags

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

Paid editing

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

Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion

Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.

Not English

A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.

Tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mass TfD nomination

Greetings,

the instructions of User:TTObot say that I should request a mass-tagging task here. Is it possible to tag all the templates on Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 September 7 with a tag for Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 September 14#Template:Venezuela Squad 1990 FIBA World Championship? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Frietjes got in before me :) This, that and the other (talk) 01:59, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2019

From the editors: Where do we go from here?

Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup

In the media: A net loss: Wikipedia attacked, closing off Russia? welcoming back Turkey?

Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads

News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green

Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report

Gallery: Finding freely licensed photo collections

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

In focus: Wikidata & Wikibase for national libraries: the inaugural meeting

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:07, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2019

In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit

Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse

In focus: The BBC looks at Chinese government editing

Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars

Community view: Observations from the mainland

Arbitration report: October actions

Traffic report: Wrestling with a couple of teenagers, a Nobelist, and a lot of jokers

Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast

Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia

Essay: Wikipedia is in the real world

News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello This, that and the other,

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

Getting the queue to 0

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

Coordinator

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

This month's refresher course

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

Tools

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

Reviewer Feedback

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

Second set of eyes

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

Arbitration Committee

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

Community Wish list

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

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

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

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) 00:09, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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

Hello,

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

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

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

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

Thank you!

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

The Signpost: 29 November 2019

From the editor: Put on your birthday best

News and notes: How soon for the next million articles?

In the media: You say you want a revolution

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Arbitration report: Two requests for arbitration cases

Traffic report: The queen and the princess meet the king and the joker

Technology report: Reference things, sister things, stranger things

Gallery: Winter and holidays

Recent research: Bot census; discussions differ on Spanish and English Wikipedia; how nature's seasons affect pageviews

Essay: Adminitis

From the archives: WikiProject Spam, revisited

In focus: An update on the Wikimedia Movement 2030 Strategy

Special report: How many people edit in your favorite language? Where are they from?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

Reviewer of the Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

Redirect autopatrol

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

Source Guide Discussion

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

This month's refresher course

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

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

The Signpost: 27 December 2019

From the editors: Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, again

News and notes: What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages

Special report: Are reputation management operatives scrubbing Wikipedia articles?

In the media: "The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?

Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki

Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee

Traffic report: Queens and aliens, exactly alike, once upon a December

Technology report: User scripts and more

Gallery: Holiday wishes

Recent research: Acoustics and Wikipedia; Wiki Workshop 2019 summary

From the archives: The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited (re-revisited?)

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Op-Ed: Why we need to keep talking about Wikipedia's gender gap

WikiProject report: Wikiproject Tree of Life: A Wikiproject report

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:38, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Invalid dinosaur concern

Hi there, I'm HasteurBot. I just wanted to let you know that Draft:Invalid dinosaur, a page you created, has not been edited in 5 months. The Articles for Creation space is not an indefinite storage location for content that is not appropriate for articlespace.

If your submission is not edited soon, it could be nominated for deletion. If you would like to attempt to save it, you will need to improve it.

You may request Userfication of the content if it meets requirements.

If the deletion has already occured, instructions on how you may be able to retrieve it are available at WP:REFUND/G13.

Thank you for your attention. HasteurBot (talk) 01:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for December 30

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited The Offbeat of Avenues, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Michael McDonald (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) 09:28, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 January 2020

From the editor: Reaching six million articles is great, but we need a moratorium

News and notes: Six million articles on the English language Wikipedia

Special report: The limits of volunteerism and the gatekeepers of Team Encarta

In the media: Turkey's back up, but what's happening with Dot-org and a new visual identity?

Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019

Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments 2019, we're all winners

News from the WMF: Capacity Building: Top 5 Themes from Community Conversations

Community view: Our most important new article since November 1, 2015

In focus: Cryptos and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no!

Recent research: How useful is Wikipedia for novice programmers trying to learn computing concepts?

From the archives: A decade of The Signpost, 2005-2015

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

WikiProject report: WikiProject Japan: a wikiProject Report

Humour: Predicting the 6,000,000th article

Obituary: Remembering Wikipedia contributor Brian Boulton

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello This, that and the other,

Source Guide Discussion

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

Redirects

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

Discussions and Resources

There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

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

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

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

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 March 2020

From the editor: The ball is in your court

News and notes: Alexa ranking down to 13th worldwide

Special report: More participation, more conversation, more pageviews

In the media: Mapping IP editors, Smithsonian open-access, and coronavirus disinformation

Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?

Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed

By the numbers: How many actions by administrators does it take to clean up spam?

Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman

In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019

Recent research: Wikipedia generates $50 billion/year consumer surplus in the US alone

From the archives: Is Wikipedia for sale?

Traffic report: February articles, floating in the dark

Gallery: Feel the love

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Op-Ed: What I learned as Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator

Opinion: Wikipedia is another country

Humour: The Wilhelm scream

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 March 2020

From the editors: The bad and the good

News and notes: 2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked

WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report

Special report: Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters

In the media: Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story

Discussion report: Rethinking draft space

Arbitration report: Unfinished business

In focus: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"

Community view: Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19

Recent research: Disease outbreak uncertainties, AfD forecasting, auto-updating Wikipedia

From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own

Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world

Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia

News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:43, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2020

News and notes: Unbiased information from Ukraine's government?

In the media: Coronavirus, again and again

Discussion report: Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit

Featured content: Featured content returns

Arbitration report: Two difficult cases

Traffic report: Disease the Rhythm of the Night

Gallery: Roy is doing fine and sending more photos

Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias

Essay: Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing

By the numbers: Open data and COVID-19: Wikipedia as an informational resource during the pandemic

Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

Interview: Health and RfA's: An interview with Guy Macon

In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia

WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors

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The Signpost: 31 May 2020

From the editor: Meltdown May?

News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting

In the media: CBS on COVID-19, Sanger on bias, false noses, and five prolific editors

Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct

Special report: The sum of human knowledge? Not in one Wikipedia language edition

Featured content: Weathering the storm

Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction

Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam

Op-Ed: Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?

Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book

News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement

Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020

Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime

On video: COVID-19 spurs innovations in Wikimedia video and virtual programming

WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles

On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia

Obituaries: Dmitrismirnov, Kattenkruid, Muidlatif, Ronhjones, Tsirel

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New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello This, that and the other,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

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

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 June 2020

News and notes: Progress at Wikipedia Library and Wikijournal of Medicine

Community view: Community open letter on renaming

Gallery: After the killing of George Floyd

In the media: Part collaboration and part combat

Discussion report: Community reacts to WMF rebranding proposals

Featured content: Sports are returning, with a rainbow

Arbitration report: Anti-harassment RfC and a checkuser revocation

Traffic report: The pandemic, alleged murder, a massacre, and other deaths

News from the WMF: We stand for racial justice

Recent research: Wikipedia and COVID-19; automated Wikipedia-based fact-checking

Interview: What is wrong with rebranding to "Wikipedia Foundation"?

Humour: Cherchez une femme

Opinion: Trying to find COI or paid editors? Just read the news

On the bright side: For what are you grateful this month?

In focus: Edit Loud, Edit Proud: LGBTIQ+ Wikimedians and Global Information Activism

WikiProject report: WikiProject Black Lives Matter

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The Signpost: 2 August 2020

Special report: Wikipedia and the End of Open Collaboration?

COI and paid editing: Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money

News and notes: Abstract Wikipedia, a hoax, sex symbols, and a new admin

In the media: Dog days gone bad

Discussion report: Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy

Featured content: Remembering Art, Valor, and Freedom

Traffic report: Now for something completely different

Gallery: Photos of threatened species from iNaturalist

News from the WMF: New Chinese national security law in Hong Kong could limit the privacy of Wikipedia users

Recent research: Receiving thanks increases retention, but not the time contributed to Wikipedia

Essay: Not compatible with a collaborative project

Obituaries: Hasteur and Brian McNeil

In focus: WikiLoop DoubleCheck, reviewing edits made easy

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The Signpost: 30 August 2020

News and notes: The high road and the low road

In the media: Storytelling large and small

Featured content: Going for the goal

Special report: Wikipedia's not so little sister is finding its own way

Op-Ed: The longest-running hoax

Traffic report: Heart, soul, umbrellas, and politics

News from the WMF: Fourteen things we’ve learned by moving Polish Wikimedia conference online

Recent research: Detecting spam, and pages to protect; non-anonymous editors signal their intelligence with high-quality articles

Arbitration report: A slow couple of months

From the archives: Wikipedia for promotional purposes?

Obituaries: Marcus Sherman, Jerome West, and Pauline van Till

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The Signpost: 27 September 2020

Special report: Paid editing with political connections

News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki

In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later

Featured content: Life finds a Way

Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests

Traffic report: Is there no justice?

Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases

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The Signpost: 27 September 2020

Special report: Paid editing with political connections

News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki

In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later

Featured content: Life finds a Way

Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests

Traffic report: Is there no justice?

Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases

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Nomination for deletion of Template:No talkback

Template:No talkback has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 November 2020

News and notes: Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking

In the media: Murder, politics, religion, health and books

Book review: Review of Wikipedia @ 20

Op-Ed: Anti-vandalism with masked IPs: the steps forward

Discussion report: Proposal to change board composition, In The News dumps Trump story

Featured content: The "Green Terror" is neither green nor sufficiently terrifying. Worst Hallowe'en ever.

Traffic report: Jump back, what's that sound?

Interview: Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner

News from the WMF: Meet the 2020 Wikimedian of the Year

Recent research: OpenSym 2020: Deletions and gender, masses vs. elites, edit filters

In focus: The many (reported) deaths of Wikipedia

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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) 01:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2020

News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"

Op-Ed: Re-righting Wikipedia

Opinion: How billionaires re-write Wikipedia

In the media: Relying on Wikipedia: voters, scientists, and a Canadian border guard

Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria

Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election

News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker

GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large

Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup

Recent research: Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail

Essay: Writing about women

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New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello This, that and the other,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

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

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2020

News and notes: Year-end legal surprises cause concern, but Public Domain Day is imminent

In the media: Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds

Arbitration report: 2020 election results

Opinion: How to make your factory's safety and labor issues disappear

Featured content: Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time.

Traffic report: 2020 wraps up

News from the WMF: What Wikipedia saw during election week in the U.S., and what we’re doing next

Recent research: Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions

Essay: Subjective importance

Op-Ed: An unforgettable year we might wish to forget

Gallery: Angels in the architecture

Humour: 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas

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The Signpost: 31 January 2021

News and notes: 1,000,000,000 edits, board elections, virtual Wikimania 2021

Special report: Wiki reporting on the United States insurrection

In focus: From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades

Opinion: Wikipedia's war against scientific disinformation

In the media: The world's press says "Happy Birthday!" with a few twists

Technology report: The people who built Wikipedia, technically

Videos and podcasts: Celebrating 20 years

News from the WMF: Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world

Recent research: Students still have a better opinion of Wikipedia than teachers

Humour: Dr. Seuss's Guide to Wikipedia

Featured content: New Year, same Featured Content report!

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2020

Obituary: Flyer22 Frozen

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The Signpost: 28 February 2021

News and notes: Maher stepping down

Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video

Opinion: The call for feedback on community seats is a distraction

In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house

News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia

Recent research: Take an AI-generated flashcard quiz about Wikipedia; Wikipedia's anti-feudalism

Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day

Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?

Gallery: What is Black history and culture?

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The Signpost: 28 March 2021

News and notes: A future with a for-profit subsidiary?

Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments

In the media: Wikimedia LLC and disinformation in Japan

News from the WMF: Project Rewrite: Tell the missing stories of women on Wikipedia and beyond

Recent research: 10%-30% of Wikipedia’s contributors have subject-matter expertise

From the archives: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes

Essay: Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia

Obituary: Yoninah

From the editor: What else can we say?

Arbitration report: Open letter to the Board of Trustees

Traffic report: Wanda, Meghan, Liz, Phil and Zack

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The Signpost: 25 April 2021

From the editor: A change is gonna come

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise

In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia

Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles

Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia

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The Signpost: 25 April 2021

From the editor: A change is gonna come

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise

In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia

Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles

Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021

From the editor: A change is gonna come

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise

In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia

Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles

Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia

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The Signpost: 27 June 2021

News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more

In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money

Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release

Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report

Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way

News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia

Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things

WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview

Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive?

Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed

Obituary: SarahSV

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The Signpost: 25 July 2021

News and notes: Wikimania and a million other news stories

Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong

In the media: Larry is at it again

Board of Trustees candidates: See the candidates

Recent research: Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

Traffic report: Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

News from the WMF: Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

Humour: A little verse

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The Signpost: 29 August 2021

News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban

In the media: Vive la différence!

Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year

Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs

News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia

Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage

WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview

Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan

Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia

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New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021

Hello This, that and the other,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

News and notes: New CEO, new board members, China bans

In the media: The future of Wikipedia

Opinion: Wikimedians of Mainland China were warned

Op-Ed: I've been desysopped

Disinformation report: Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages

Discussion report: Editors discuss Wikipedia's vetting process for administrators

Recent research: Wikipedia images for machine learning; Experiment justifies Wikipedia's high search rankings

Community view: Is writing Wikipedia like making a quilt?

Traffic report: Kanye, Emma Raducanu and 9/11

News from Diff: Welcome to the first grantees of the Knowledge Equity Fund

WikiProject report: The Random and the Beautiful

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November 2021 backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| November 2021 Backlog Drive
On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. (t · c) buidhe 01:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

From the editor: Different stories, same place

News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded

In the media: China bans, and is there intelligent life on this planet?

Opinion: A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life

Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process

Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention

Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia

Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game

Technology report: Wikimedia Toolhub, winners of the Coolest Tool Award, and more

Serendipity: How Wikipedia helped create a Serbian stamp

Book review: Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality

WikiProject report: Redirection

Humour: A very Wiki crossword

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Category:Scribunto modules with errors has been nominated for deletion

Category:Scribunto modules with errors 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. Gonnym (talk) 10:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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) 00:22, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jade Thompson

I created an article for a Jade Thompson, about 10 years ago. I just read your message today. Michuk (talk) 23:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2021

In the media: Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2021

Deletion report: What we lost, what we gained

From a Wikipedia reader: What's Matt Amodio?

Arbitration report: ArbCom in 2021

Discussion report: On the brink of change – RFA reforms appear imminent

Technology report: What does it take to upload a file?

WikiProject report: Interview with contributors to WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers

Serendipity: "Did You Know ..." featured a photo of the wrong female WWII pilot

News from Diff: Content translation tool helps create one million Wikipedia articles

Traffic report: Reporting ticket sales on the edge of the Wiki, if Eternals should fail

Recent research: Vandalizing Wikipedia as rational behavior

Humour: A very new very Wiki crossword

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Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

Y Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · N2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · ? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

Y OAbot 3, DannyS712 bot 47, Pathbot 2, PearBOT 2, DannyS712 bot 59, DannyS712 bot 62, HasteurBot 14, PearBOT 4, WOSlinkerBot 4, MilHistBot 5
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthony pointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"

November 2019

Y BHGbot 4, YiFeiBot 2, DannyS712 bot III 64 · ? PearBOT
Old bots do new tricks: DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects, YiFeiBot 2 archived GoCE requests, and BHGbot 4 removed links to portals deleted at MfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operator BrownHairedGirl's request).

December 2019

Y DemonDays64 Bot, DannyS712 bot III 66, Bot1058 6, Monkbot 15, MilHistBot 6, PearBOT 5, DannyS712 bot IV 65 · N2 SportsStatsBot · Xinbenlv bot, SteveBot 8
Redirects to be autopatrolled: A RfC took place at WP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that new redirects should be automatically marked as patrolled by bot. DannyS712 wasted no time, and submitted DannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein, Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages from Category:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots of http links to https using JavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task, PearBOT 5, automatically generated short descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
Will reFill ever get fixed?
What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Listing of Template:Circle at templates for discussion

Template:Circle has been listed at templates for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 12:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 December 2021

From the editor: Here is the news

News and notes: Jimbo's NFT, new arbs, fixing RfA, and financial statements

Serendipity: Born three months before her brother?

In the media: The past is not even past

Recent research: STEM articles judged unsuitable for undergraduates below the first paragraph

Arbitration report: A new crew for '22

By the numbers: Four billion words and a few numbers

Deletion report: We laughed, we cried, we closed as "no consensus"

Gallery: Wikicommons presents: 2021

Traffic report: Spider-Man, football and the departed

Crossword: Another Wiki crossword for one and all

Humour: Buying Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:09, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Concern regarding Draft:Invalid dinosaur

Hello, This, that and the other. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Invalid dinosaur, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 23:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 January 2022

Special report: WikiEd course leads to Twitter harassment

News and notes: Feedback for Board of Trustees election

Interview: CEO Maryana Iskander "four weeks in"

Black History Month: What are you doing for Black History Month?

Deletion report: Ringing in the new year: Subject notability guideline under discussion

WikiProject report: The Forgotten Featured

Arbitration report: New arbitrators look at new case and antediluvian sanctions

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2021

Gallery: No Spanish municipality without a photograph

Obituary: Twofingered Typist

Op-Ed: Identifying and rooting out climate change denial

Essay: The prime directive

Opinion: Should the Wikimedia Foundation continue to accept cryptocurrency donations?

In the media: Fuzzy-headed government editing

Recent research: Articles with higher quality ratings have fewer "knowledge gaps"

Serendipity: Pooh entered the Public Domain – but Tigger has to wait two more years

Crossword: Cross swords with a crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:22, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

January 2020

Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

Y ST47Bot, Seppi333Bot, Qbugbot 4 · N2 PkbwcgsBot 25, PkbwcgsBot 26
A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
Two new bots dropped in January 2020: ST47Bot, the successor to STBot, and Seppi333Bot, whose task was to perform a weekly update of four "massive" wikitables for WikiProject Molecular Biology.
Cydebot, an adminbot operated by Cyde since 2006, was blocked after going berserk on categories that hadn't yet been CfD'd.

February 2020

Y AnomieBOT 78, Cewbot 2, DannyS712 bot 67, DannyS712 bot III 63, PearBOT 6, DemonDays64 Bot 2 · N2 PearBOT
On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
On February 18, ST47Bot got into a tussle with Amalthea (bot), and had to be partially-blocked from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview.

March 2020

Y MajavahBot, SDZeroBot, TheSandBot 6, TheSandBot 7, Bitbotje, FACBot 6, TheSandBot 8, Qbugbot 5, Cewbot 3, SDZeroBot 2, PrimeBOT 31, WikiCleanerBot 12 · AntiCompositeBot
In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
Some of the twelve bot tasks approved this month were TheSandBot 6 (removing blocked users from Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues), and TheSandBot 7 (removing unblocked users from Category:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for promotional user names). SDZeroBot 2 was approved to refine geographic stub tags. New bots approved this month were MajavahBot (to patrol WP:EFFPR), SDZeroBot (to merge stub tags), and Bitbotje (fixing DISPLAYTITLE modifications, DEFAULTSORT errors and broken behavior switches in draftspace).

April 2020

Y TheSandBot 9, BHGbot 5, DannyS712 bot 69, SDZeroBot 3, ST47ProxyBot, WugBot 4, SDZeroBot 4, DatBot 10, WikiCleanerBot 11, WikiCleanerBot 13, WikiCleanerBot 14, AntiCompositeBot 2, Cewbot 4 · N2 DaedanBot 1 · Creffbot
A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
ST47ProxyBot joined the stable in April, after a BRFA started in December was finally completed. As an adminbot, it was authorized to block IP addresses belonging to open proxies, public VPN services, and web hosts. New tasks approved for existing bots included BHGbot 5 (diffusing categories), TheSandBot 9 (taking over some tasks from the inactive RonBot), and WugBot 4 (updating data at {{Interactive COVID-19 maps}}). Also, DatBot 10 was approved to scale down non-free SVGs — I didn't even know that was a thing.
A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy was started by Thryduulf about whether WP:BOTCOMM should explicitly specify that bot operators must be responsive to concerns raised on English Wikipedia specifically (as opposed to Phabricator, SourceForge, Toolforge, et cetera). Eventually, the policy was amended to its current form:

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

Y MajavahBot 3, DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, Dreamy Jazz Bot 4, QEDKbot, William Avery Bot 2, DannyS712 bot 68, PrimeBOT 32, TheSandBot 10, Bot1058 7, BHGbot 6, EaglesBot 2, Cewbot 5, WikiCleanerBot 17 · N2 MDanielsBot, PhuzBot 3, Gedimon · ? PearBOT 7
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
Other approvals for this month were William Avery Bot 2 (processing redirects in {{R from scientific name}}), DannyS712 bot 68 (allowing users to schedule bot reminders for themselves), TheSandBot 10 (removing blocked/locked users from Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices), Bot1058 7 (updating Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests/Permalink), Dreamy Jazz Bot 4 (adding {{WikiProject Biography|living=no}} to talk pages where their associated article is in a year of death category), and QEDKbot (deleting and nominating empty categories).
General syntax fixing tasks were approved for DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, PrimeBOT 32, BHGbot 6, Cewbot 5, and EaglesBot 2, as well as WikiCleanerBot 15, 16, and 17.
Seven bots who fell below activity requirements (with neither the bots nor their operators having any edits or logged actions in two years) had their bot flags removed. They were NekoBot, Robert SkyBot, DASHBotAV, VoxelBot, JackieBot, ReferenceBot, and CensusBot.
On May 12, EmausBot was blocked.

June 2020

Y QEDKbot 2, AnomieBOT 79, WOSlinkerBot 6, Yapperbot 2, Yapperbot, AnomieBOT 80, Dreamy Jazz Bot 5, WikiCleanerBot 18, HasteurBot 15, MusikBot II 4, NoSandboxesHere · N2 RedWarn · ? Seppi333Bot 2
In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
Two new bots had their first BRFAs approved: Yapperbot, to replace Legobot for handling the Feedback Request Service, and NoSandboxesHere, to remove {{user sandbox}} from articles in draftspace using Category:Non-userspace pages using User sandbox.

Conclusion

What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 27 February 2022

From the team: Selection of a new Signpost Editor-in-Chief

News and notes: Impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine

Opinion: Why student editors are good for Wikipedia

Special report: A presidential candidate's team takes on Wikipedia

In the media: Wiki-drama in the UK House of Commons

Serendipity: War photographers: from Crimea (1850s) to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)

Technology report: Community Wishlist Survey results

WikiProject report: 10 years of tea

Featured content: Featured Content returns

Deletion report: The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February

Recent research: How editors and readers may be emotionally affected by disasters and terrorist attacks

Arbitration report: Parties remonstrate, arbs contemplate, skeptics coordinate

By the numbers: Does birthplace affect the frequency of Wikipedia biography articles?

Gallery: The vintage exhibit

Traffic report: Euphoria, Pamela Anderson, lies and Netflix

News from Diff: The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team

Crossword: A Crossword, featuring Featured Articles

Humour: Notability of mailboxes

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 March 2022

From the Signpost team: How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

News and notes: Of safety and anonymity

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Countering Russian aggression with a camera

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Western Ukraine: Working with Wikipedia helps

Disinformation report: The oligarchs' socks

In the media: Ukraine, Russia, and even some other stuff

Recent research: Top scholarly citers, lack of open access references, predicting editor departures

Wikimedian perspective: My heroes from Russia, Ukraine & beyond

Discussion report: Athletes are less notable now

Technology report: 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon

Arbitration report: Skeptics given heavenly judgement, whirlwind of Discord drama begins to spin for tropical cyclone editors

Traffic report: War, what is it good for?

Deletion report: Ukraine, werewolves, Ukraine, YouTube pundits, and Ukraine

Gallery: "All we are saying is, give peace a chance..."

From the archives: Burn, baby burn

Essay: Yes, the sky is blue

Tips and tricks: Become a keyboard ninja

On the bright side: The bright side of news

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 April 2022

News and notes: Double trouble

In the media: The battlegrounds outside and inside Wikipedia

Special report: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2)

Technology report: 8-year-old attribution issues in Media Viewer

Featured content: Wikipedia's best content from March

In focus: Editing difficulties on Russian Wikipedia

Gallery: A voyage around the world with WLM winners

Interview: On a war and a map

Serendipity: Wikipedia loves photographs, but hates photographers

Traffic report: Justice Jackson, the Smiths, and an invasion

Recent research: Student edits as "civic engagement"; how Wikipedia readers interact with images

News from the WMF: How Smart is the SMART Copyright Act?

Essay: The problem with elegant variation

Humour: Really huge message boxes

From the archives: Wales resigned WMF board chair in 2006 reorganization

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:43, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Bigredbox

Template:Bigredbox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:58, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.

Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.

In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 804 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 851 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.

This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.

If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 May 2022

From the team: A changing of the guard

News and notes: 2022 Wikimedia Board elections

Community view: Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections

Opinion: The Wikimedia Endowment – a lack of transparency

In the media: Putin, Jimbo, Musk and more

Special report: Three stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war

In focus: Measuring gender diversity in Wikipedia articles

Discussion report: Portals, April Fools, admin activity requirements and more

WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19 revisited

Technology report: A new video player for Wikimedia wikis

Featured content: Featured content of April

Interview: Wikipedia's pride

Serendipity: Those thieving image farms

Recent research: 35 million Twitter links analysed

Tips and tricks: The reference desks of Wikipedia

Traffic report: Strange highs and strange lows

News from Diff: Winners of the Human rights and Environment special nomination by Wiki Loves Earth announced

News from the WMF: The EU Digital Services Act: What’s the Deal with the Deal?

Video: How the entire country of Qatar was blocked from editing

Gallery: Diving under the sea for World Oceans Day

From the archives: The Onion and Wikipedia

Essay: How not to write a Wikipedia article

Humour: A new crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:48, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog status

At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000^[a] at the end of May.

Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.^[b]

In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).

While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).

Backlog drive

A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.

TIP – New school articles

Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.

Misc

There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:

Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 13071 articles, as of 12:00, 21 November 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot

There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.

Reminders

Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Notes

^ not including another ~6,000 redirects
^ The number of weekly reviews reported in the NPP feed includes redirects, which are not included in the backlog we primarily track.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 June 2022

News and notes: WMF inks new rules on government-ordered takedowns, blasts Russian feds' censor demands, spends big bucks

In the media: Editor given three-year sentence, big RfA makes news, Guy Standing takes it sitting down

Special report: "Wikipedia's independence" or "Wikimedia's pile of dosh"?

Discussion report: MoS rules on CCP name mulled, XRV axe plea nulled, BLPPROD drafting bid pulled

Opinion: Picture of the Day – how Adam plans to ru(i)n it

Featured content: Articles on Scots' clash, Yank's tux, Austrian's action flick deemed brilliant prose

Essay: RfA trend line haruspicy: fact or fancy?

Recent research: Wikipedia versus academia (again), tables' "immortality" probed

Serendipity: Was she really a Swiss lesbian automobile racer?

News from the WMF: Wikimedia Enterprise signs first deals

Traffic report: Top view counts for shows, movies, and celeb lawsuit that keeps on giving

Gallery: Celebration of summer, winter

Humour: Shortcuts, screwballers, Simon & Garfunkel

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!

New Page Patrol \| July 2022 Backlog Drive
On 1 July, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 20:26, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 August 2022

From the editors: Rise of the machines, or something

News and notes: Information considered harmful

In the media: Censorship, medieval hoaxes, "pathetic supervillains", FB-WMF AI TL bid, dirty duchess deeds done dirt cheap

Op-Ed: The "recession" affair

Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (part 3)

Election guide: The chosen six: 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Community view: Youth culture and notability

Opinion: Criminals among us

Arbitration report: Winds of change blow for cyclone editors, deletion dustup draws toward denouement

Deletion report: This is Gonzo Country

Discussion report: Notability for train stations, notices for mobile editors, noticeboards for the rest of us

Traffic report: US TV, JP ex-PM, outer space, and politics of IN, US, UK top charts for July

Featured content: A little list with surprisingly few lists

Tips and tricks: Cleaning up awful citations with Citation bot

In focus: Wikidata insights from a handy little tool

On the bright side: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war — three (more) stories

Essay: How to research an image

Recent research: A century of rulemaking on Wikipedia analyzed

Serendipity: Don't cite Wikipedia

Gallery: A backstage pass

From the archives: 2012 Russian Wikipedia shutdown as it happened

Humour: Why did the chicken cross the road?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog status

After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.

Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.

Coordination: MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.

Open letter to the WMF: The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.

TIP - Reviewing by subject: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.

New reviewers: The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.

Reminders

Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:25, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NPP message

Hi This, that and the other,

Invitation

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.

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

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 August 2022

News and notes: Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere

Special report: Wikimania 2022: no show, no show up?

In the media: Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth

Discussion report: Boarding the Trustees

News from Wiki Education: 18 years a Wikipedian: what it means to me

In focus: Thinking inside the box

Tips and tricks: The unexpected rabbit hole of typo fixing in citations...

Technology report: Vector (2022) deployment discussions happening now

Serendipity: Two photos of every library on earth

Featured content: Our man drills are safe for work, but our Labia is Fausta.

Recent research: The dollar value of "official" external links

Traffic report: What dreams (and heavily trafficked articles) may come

Essay: Delete the junk!

Gallery: A Fringe Affair (but not the show by Edward W. Feery that was on this year)

Humour: CommonsComix No. 1

From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| October 2022 backlog drive
On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive. Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Sign up here!
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 21:17, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2022

News and notes: Board vote results, bot's big GET, crat chat gives new mop, WMF seeks "sound logo" and "organizer lab"

In focus: NPP: Still heaven or hell for new users – and for the reviewers

In the media: A few complaints and mild disagreements

Special report: Decentralized Fundraising, Centralized Distribution

Discussion report: Much ado about Fox News

Interview: ScottishFinnishRadish's Request for Adminship

Opinion: Are we ever going to reach consensus?

Serendipity: Removing watermarks, copyright signs and cigarettes from photos

Recent research: How readers assess Wikipedia's trustworthiness, and how they could in the future

Traffic report: Kings and queens and VIPs

Featured content: Farm-fresh content

Gallery: A Festival Descends on the City: The Edinburgh Fringe, Pt. 2

CommonsComix: CommonsComix 2: Paulus Moreelse

From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 Years ago: September 2022

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

Suggestions:

There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders

Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 31 October 2022

From the team: A new goose on the roost

News and notes: Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after "somewhat-viral" tweet

News from the WMF: Governance updates from, and for, the Wikimedia Endowment

In the media: Scribing, searching, soliciting, spying, and systemic bias

Disinformation report: From Russia with WikiLove

Recent research: Disinformatsiya: Much research, but what will actually help Wikipedia editors?

Interview: Isabelle Belato on their Request for Adminship

Featured content: Topics, lists, submarines and Gurl.com

Serendipity: We all make mistakes – don’t we?

Traffic report: Mama, they're in love with a criminal

From the archives: Paid advocacy, a lawsuit over spelling mistakes, deleting Jimbo's article, and the death of Toolserver

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:44, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 November 2022

News and notes: English Wikipedia editors: "We don't need no stinking banners"

In the media: "The most beautiful story on the Internet"

Interview: Lisa Seitz-Gruwell on WMF fundraising in the wake of big banner ad RfC

Opinion: Privacy on Wikipedia in the cyberpunk future

Disinformation report: Missed and Dissed

Op-Ed: Diminishing returns for article quality

Book review: Writing the Revolution

Technology report: Galactic dreams, encyclopedic reality

Essay: The Six Million FP Man

Tips and tricks: (Wiki)break stuff

Recent research: Study deems COVID-19 editors smart and cool, questions of clarity and utility for WMF's proposed "Knowledge Integrity Risk Observatory"

Featured content: A great month for featured articles

Obituary: A tribute to Michael Gäbler

Concept: The relevance of legal certainty to the English Wikipedia

Traffic report: Musical deaths, murders, Princess Di's nominative determinism, and sports

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

CommonsComix: Joker's trick

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. 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 2022 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) 00:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 January 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation ousts, bans quarter of Arabic Wikipedia admins

In the media: Odd bedfellows, Elon and Jimbo, reliable sources for divorces, and more

Interview: ComplexRational's RfA debrief

Technology report: Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"

Essay: Mobile editing

Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee Election 2022

Recent research: Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes

Serendipity: Wikipedia about FIFA World Cup 2022: quick, factual and critical

Featured content: Would you like to swing on a star?

Traffic report: Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!

CommonsComix: #4: The Course of WikiEmpire

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders

Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 16 January 2023

From the team: We heard zoomers liked fortnights: the biweekly Signpost rides again

Special report: Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020

News and notes: Revised Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines up for vote, WMF counsel departs, generative models under discussion

In the media: Court orders user data in libel case, Saudi Wikipedia in the crosshairs, Larry Sanger at it again

Technology report: View it! A new tool for image discovery

In focus: Busting into Grand Central

Serendipity: How I bought part of Wikipedia – for less than $100

Gallery: What is our responsibility when it comes to images?

Humour: New geologically speedy deletion criteria introduced

Opinion: Good old days, in which fifth-symbol-lacking lipograms roam'd our librarious litany

Featured content: Flip your lid

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2022

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your draft article, Draft:Invalid dinosaur

Hello, This, that and the other. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Invalid dinosaur".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:18, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

sandbox/redirect tags

Hey! Would you mind changing User:This, that and the other/sandbox/redirect tags so that it won't be categorized in Pages with templates in the wrong namespace? Thanks! ~ Eejit43 (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Eejit43 I have no idea what that page was for, so I marked it for speedy deletion. Thanks! This, that and the other (talk) 03:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 February 2023

From the editor: New for the Signpost: Author pages, tag pages, and a decent article search function

News and notes: Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan

Section 230: Twenty-six words that created the internet, and the future of an encyclopedia

Disinformation report: Wikipedia on Santos

Special report: Legal status of Wikimedia projects "unclear" under potential European legislation

In the media: Furor over new Wikipedia skin, followup on Saudi bans, and legislative debate

Op-Ed: Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter

Opinion: Study examines cultural leanings of Wikimedia projects' visual art coverage

Recent research: Wikipedia's "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias

WikiProject report: WikiProject Organized Labour

Tips and tricks: XTools: Data analytics for your list of created articles

Featured content: 20,000 Featureds under the Sea

Traffic report: Films, deaths and ChatGPT

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:45, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 February 2023

News and notes: Terms of Use update, Steward elections, and Wikipedia back in Pakistan

In the media: Arbitrators open case after article alleges Wikipedia "intentionally distorts" Holocaust coverage

Disinformation report: The "largest con in corporate history"?

Essay: Machine-written articles: a new challenge for Wikipedia

Tips and tricks: All about writing at DYK

Featured content: Eden, lost.

Gallery: Love is in the air

Traffic report: Superbowl? Pfft. Give me some Bollywood! Yours sincerely, the world

From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago: Let's (not) delete the Main Page!

Cobwebs: Editorial: The loss of the moral high ground

Humour: The RfA Candidate's Song

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 March 2023

News and notes: What's going on with the Wikimedia Endowment?

Technology report: Second flight of the Soviet space bears: Testing ChatGPT's accuracy

In the media: What should Wikipedia do? Publish Russian propaganda? Be less woke? Cover the Holocaust in Poland differently?

Featured content: In which over two-thirds of the featured articles section needs to be copied over to WikiProject Military History's newsletter

Recent research: "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the Holocaust" in Poland and "self-focus bias" in coverage of global events

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:43, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 March 2023

News and notes: Wikimania submissions deadline looms, Russian government after our lucky charms, AI woes nix CNET from RS slate

Eyewitness: Three more stories from Ukrainian Wikimedians

In the media: Paid editing, plagiarism payouts, proponents of a ploy, and people peeved at perceived preferences

Featured content: Way too many featured articles

Interview: 228/2/1: the inside scoop on Aoidh's RfA

Traffic report: Who died? Who won? Who lost?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:18, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 03 April 2023

From the editor: Some long-overdue retractions

News and notes: Sounding out, a universal code of conduct, and dealing with AI

In the media: Twiddling Wikipedia during an online contest, and other news

Arbitration report: "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" case is ongoing

Featured content: Hail, poetry! Thou heav'n-born maid

Recent research: Language bias: Wikipedia captures at least the "silhouette of the elephant", unlike ChatGPT

From the archives: April Fools' through the ages

Disinformation report: Sus socks support suits, seems systemic

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

New Page Patrol \| May 2023 Backlog Drive
On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive. Article patrolling is not part of the drive. Sign up here! There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2023

News and notes: Staff departures at Wikimedia Foundation, Jimbo hands in the bits, and graphs' zeppelin burns

In the media: Contested truth claims in Wikipedia

Obituary: Remembering David "DGG" Goodman

Arbitration report: Holocaust in Poland, Jimbo in the hot seat, and a desysopping

Opinion: What Jimbo's question revealed about scamming

Op-Ed: Wikipedia as an anchor of truth

Special report: Signpost statistics between years 2005 and 2022

News from the WMF: Collective planning with the Wikimedia Foundation

Featured content: In which we described the featured articles in rhyme again

From the archives: April Fools' through the ages, part two

Humour: The law of hats

Traffic report: Long live machine, the future supreme

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:18, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 8 May 2023

News and notes: New legal "deVLOPments" in the EU

In the media: Vivek's smelly socks, online safety, and politics

Recent research: Gender, race and notability in deletion discussions

Featured content: I wrote a poem for each article, I found rhymes for all the lists; My first featured picture of this year now finally exists!

Arbitration report: "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" approaches conclusion

News from the WMF: Planning together with the Wikimedia Foundation

Special report: There Shall Be Seasons Refreshing – Stories from WikiConference India 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:26, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 22 May 2023

News and notes: Golden parachutes: Record severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

In the media: History, propaganda and censorship

Arbitration report: Final decision in "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland"

Recent research: Create or curate, cooperate or compete? Game theory for Wikipedia editors

Featured content: A very musical week for featured articles

Traffic report: Coronation, chatbot, celebs

WikiProject report: Wikipedians Convene for Queering Wikipedia 2023: The First International LGBT+ Wikipedia Conference

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 5 June 2023

News and notes: WMRU director forks new 'pedia, birds flap in top '22 piccy, WMF weighs in on Indian gov's map axe plea

In the media: Section 230 stands tall, WP vs. UK bill, Miss Information dissed again

Featured content: Poetry under pressure

Traffic report: Celebs, controversies and a chatbot in the public eye

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp ^connect on IRC.
Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 19 June 2023

News and notes: WMF Terms of Use now in force, new Creative Commons licensing

In the media: English WP editor glocked after BLP row on Italian 'pedia

Featured content: Content, featured

Recent research: Hoaxers prefer currently-popular topics

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:10, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Tutorial sandbox header VE

Template:Tutorial sandbox header VE has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:34, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol needs your help!

Hello This, that and the other,

The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:

There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 3 July 2023

News and notes: Online Safety Bill: Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK launch open letter

Disinformation report: Imploded submersible outfit foiled trying to sing own praises on Wikipedia

In the media: Journo proposes mass Wiki dox, sponsored articles on Fandom, Section 230 discussed

Featured content: Incensed

Traffic report: Are you afraid of spiders? Arnold? The Idol? ChatGPT?

Humour: United Nations dispatches peacekeeping force to Wikipedia policy discussions

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 July 2023

News and notes: Big bux hidden beneath wine-dark sea as we wait for the Tides to go out?

In the media: Tentacles of Emirates plot attempt to ensnare Wikipedia

Obituary: David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) and Ingo Koll (Kipala)

News from the WMF: ABC for Fundraising: Advancing Banner Collaboration for fundraising campaigns

In focus: Are the children of celebrities over-represented in French cinema?

Tips and tricks: What automation can do for you (and your WikiProject)

Recent research: Wikipedia-grounded chatbot "outperforms all baselines" on factual accuracy

Humour: New fringe theories to be introduced

Cobwebs: If you're reading this, you're probably on a desktop

Featured content: Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin', keep those readers scrollin', got to keep on scrollin', Rawhide!

Traffic report: The Idol becomes the Master

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:02, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 August 2023

News and notes: City officials attempt to doxx Wikipedians, Ruwiki founder banned, WMF launches Mastodon server

In the media: Truth, AI, bull from politicians, and climate change

Disinformation report: Hot climate, hot hit, hot money, hot news hot off the presses!

Obituary: Donald Cram, Peter McCawley, and Eagleash

Tips and tricks: Citation tools for dummies!

Humour: Does Wikipedia present neutral perspectives?

In focus: Journals cited by Wikipedia

Opinion: Are global bans the last step?

Featured content: Featured Content, 1 to 15 July

Traffic report: Come on Oppie, let's go party

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 15 August 2023

News and notes: Dude, Where's My Donations? Wikimedia Foundation announces another million in grants for non-Wikimedia-related projects

In the media: An accusation of bias from Brazil, a lawsuit from Portugal, plagiarism from Florida

In focus: 2023 Good Article Nomination drive is underway: get your barnstars here!

Special report: Thirteen years later, why are most administrators still from 2005?

Tips and tricks: How to find images for your articles, check their copyright, upload them, and restore them

Cobwebs: Getting serious about writing

Opinion: Copyright trolls, or the last beautiful free souls on this planet?

Serendipity: Why I stopped taking photographs almost altogether

Featured content: Barbenheimer confirmed

Humour: Arbitration Committee to accept case against Right Honorable Frimbley Cantingham, 15th Viscount Bellington-upon-Porkshire

Traffic report: 'Cause today it just goes with the fashion

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:18, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

From the editor: Beta version of signpost.news now online

News and notes: You like RecentChanges?

In the media: Taking it sleazy

Recent research: The five barriers that impede "stitching" collaboration between Commons and Wikipedia

Draftspace: Bad Jokes and Other Draftspace Novelties

Humour: The Dehumourification Plan

Traffic report: Raise your drinking glass, here's to yesterday

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:44, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| October 2023 Backlog Drive
On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Articles will earn 3x as many points compared to redirects. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 16 September 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia power sharing – just an advisory role for the volunteer community?

In the media: "Just flirting", going Dutch and Shapps for the defence?

Obituary: Nosebagbear

Serendipity: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no paywall, for thou, Wikipedia Library, art with me

Featured content: Catching up

Concept: Strange portal opened by CERN researchers brings Wikipedia articles from "other worlds"

Traffic report: Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol newsletter

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!

October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.

PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.

Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.

Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.

Reminders:

You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Mediazilla" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Mediazilla has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Mediazilla until a consensus is reached. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:01, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 3 October 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia Endowment financial statement published

In the media: History is written by whoever can harness the most editors

Recent research: Readers prefer ChatGPT over Wikipedia; concerns about limiting "anyone can edit" principle "may be overstated"

Featured content: By your logic,

Concept: Wikipedia policies from other worlds: WP:NOANTLERS

Poetry: "The Sight"

Traffic report: There shall be no slaves in the land of lands, it's a Bollywood jam

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The Signpost: 23 October 2023

News and notes: Where have all the administrators gone?

In the media: Thirst traps, the fastest loading sites on the web, and the original collaborative writing

Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to know how to restore images to make massive improvements

Featured content: Yo, ho! Blow the man down!

Traffic report: The calm and the storm

News from Diff: Sawtpedia: Giving a Voice to Wikipedia Using QR Codes

Humour: New citation template introduced for divine revelations, drug use, and really thinking about it

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November Articles for creation backlog drive

Hello This, that and the other:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 1200 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 November 2023

Arbitration report: Admin bewilderingly unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was extremely banned in 2015

In the media: UK shadow chancellor accused of ripping off WP articles for book, Wikipedians accused of being dicks by a rich man

News and notes: Board candidacy process posted, editors protest WMF privacy measure, sweet meetups

Opinion: An open letter to Elon Musk

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2023

News from Wiki Ed: Equity lists on Wikipedia

Recent research: How English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades

Featured content: Like putting a golf course in a historic site.

Wikidata: Evaluating qualitative systemic bias in large article sets on Wikipedia

Traffic report: Cricket jumpscare

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The Signpost: 20 November 2023

In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup

News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health

Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads

Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom

Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships

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ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. 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 2023 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) 00:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 December 2023

News and notes: Beeblebrox ejected from Arbitration Committee following posts on Wikipediocracy

In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns

Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history"

In focus: Tens of thousands of freely available sources flagged

Comix: Bold comics for a new age

Essay: I am going to die

Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence

Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain

Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies

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New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
On 1 January 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 December 2023

Special report: Did the Chinese Communist Party send astroturfers to sabotage a hacktivist's Wikipedia article?

News and notes: The Italian Public Domain wars continue, Wikimedia RU set to dissolve, and a recap of WLM 2023

In the media: Consider the humble fork

Discussion report: Arabic Wikipedia blackout; Wikimedians discuss SpongeBob, copyrights, and AI

In focus: Liquidation of Wikimedia RU

Technology report: Dark mode is coming

Recent research: "LLMs Know More, Hallucinate Less" with Wikidata

Gallery: A feast of holidays and carols

Comix: Lollus lmaois 200C tincture

Crossword: when the crossword is sus

Traffic report: What's the big deal? I'm an animal!

From the editor: A piccy iz worth OVAR 9000!!!11oneone! wordz ^_^

Apocrypha: Local editor discovered 1,380 lost subheadings in ancient Signpost scrolls. And what he found was shocking.

Humour: Guess the joke contest

BJAODN: Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

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The Signpost: 10 January 2024

From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

Comix: Conflict resolution

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The Signpost: 31 January 2024

News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

Opinion: Until it happens to you

Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 13 February 2024

News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers

Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?

Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to touch grass to dramatically improve images of flora and fauna

In the media: Speaking in tongues, toeing the line, and dressing the part

Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?

Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football

Crossword: Our crossword to bear

Comix: Strongly

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The Signpost: 2 March 2024

News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"

Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"

In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record

Obituary: Vami_IV

Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday

WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 March 2024

Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year

Interview: Interview on Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and finance strategy

Special report: 19-page PDF accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel, suggests editors be forced to reveal their real names, and demands a new feature allowing people to view the history of Wikipedia articles

Op-Ed: Wikipedia in the age of personality-driven knowledge

Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors

News and notes: Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter ratified

In the media: "For me it’s the autism": AARoad editors on the fork more traveled

Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune

Humour: Letters from the editors

Comix: Layout issue

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.

Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.

Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.

It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!

2023 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.

Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.

Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.

Reminders:

You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
On 1 May 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 April 2024

In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics, and another wikirace on live TV

News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law

WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap

WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)

Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users

Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 16 May 2024

News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections

Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

In the media: Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

Op-Ed: Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

Comix: Generations

Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 8 June 2024

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation publishes its Form 990 for fiscal year 2022-2023

Technology report: New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade

Deletion report: The lore of Kalloor

In the media: National cable networks get in on the action arguing about what the first sentence of a Wikipedia article ought to say

News from the WMF: Progress on the plan — how the Wikimedia Foundation advanced on its Annual Plan goals during the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024

Opinion: Public response to the editors of Settler Colonial Studies

Recent research: ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth

Featured content: We didn't start the wiki

Essay: No queerphobia

Special report: RetractionBot is back to life!

Traffic report: Chimps, Eurovision, and the return of the Baby Reindeer

Comix: The Wikipediholic Family

Humour: Wikipedia rattled by sophisticated cyberattack of schoolboy typing "balls" in infobox

Concept: Palimpsestuous

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:28, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 July 2024

News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates

Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board

In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators

Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna

In the media: War and information in war and politics

Sister projects: On editing Wikisource

Obituary: Hanif Al Husaini, Salazarov, Hyacinth, and PirjanovNurlan

Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion

Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos

Op-Ed: Why you should not vote in the 2024 WMF BoT elections

Crossword: On a day of independence, beat crosswords into crossploughshares

Humour: A joke

Cobwebs: Counting to a billion — manuscripts don't burn

Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps

Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 22 July 2024

Discussion report: Internet users flock to Wikipedia to debate its image policy over Trump raised-fist photo

News and notes: Wikimedia community votes to ratify Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation opposes ratification

News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation Board resolution and vote on the proposed Movement Charter

Essay: Reflections on editing and obsession

In the media: What's on Putin's fork, the court's docket, and in Harrison's book?

Obituary: JamesR

Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword

Humour: Joe Biden withdraws RfA, Donald Trump selects co-nom

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 August 2024

In the media: Portland pol profile paid for from public purse

Recent research: STORM: AI agents role-play as "Wikipedia editors" and "experts" to create Wikipedia-like articles, a more sophisticated effort than previous auto-generation systems

In focus: Twitter marks the spot

News and notes: Another Wikimania has concluded.

Special report: Nano or just nothing: Will nano go nuclear?

Opinion: HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing

Traffic report: Ball games, movies, elections, but nothing really weird

Humour: I'm proud to be a template

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:50, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive

New pages patrol \| September 2024 Backlog Drive
On 1 September 2024, a one-month backlog drive for new pages patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each article review will earn 1 point, and each redirect review will earn 0.2 points. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 September 2024

News and notes: WikiCup enters final round, MCDC wraps up activities, 17-year-old hoax article unmasked

In the media: AI is not playing games anymore. Is Wikipedia ready?

Recent research: Simulated Wikipedia seen as less credible than ChatGPT and Alexa in experiment

News from the WMF: Meet the 12 candidates running in the WMF Board of Trustees election

Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024

Serendipity: What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year

Traffic report: After the gold rush

Humour: Local man halfway through rude reply no longer able to recall why he hates other editor

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 September 2024

In the media: Courts order Wikipedia to give up names of editors, legal strain anticipated from "online safety laws"

Community view: Indian courts order Wikipedia to take down name of crime victim, editors strive towards consensus

Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics

Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing

News and notes: Are you ready for admin elections?

Gallery: Are Luddaites defending the English Wikipedia?

Recent research: Article-writing AI is less "prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)" than human Wikipedia editors

Traffic report: Jump in the line, rock your body in time

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The Signpost: 19 October 2024

News and notes: One election's end, another election's beginning

Recent research: "As many as 5%" of new English Wikipedia articles "contain significant AI-generated content", says paper

In the media: Off to the races! Wikipedia wins!

Contest: A WikiCup for the Global South

Traffic report: A scream breaks the still of the night

Book review: The Editors

Humour: The Newspaper Editors

Crossword: Spilled Coffee Mug

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 November 2024

From the editors: Editing Wikipedia should not be a crime

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation shares ANI lawsuit updates; first admin elections appoint eleven sysops; first admin recalls opened; temporary accounts coming soon?

In the media: An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel

Special report: Wikipedia editors face litigation, censorship

Gallery: Why you should take more photos and upload them

In focus: Questions and answers about the court case

Traffic report: Twisted tricks or tempting treats?

Technology report: Wikimedia tech, the Asian News International case, and the ultra-rare BLACKLOCK

Humour: Man quietly slinks away from talk page argument after realizing his argument dumb, wrong

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 November 2024

News and notes: Open letter to WMF about court case breaks one thousand signatures, big arb case declined, U4C begins accepting cases

In the media: Summons issued for Wikipedia editors by Indian court, "Gaza genocide" RfC close in news, old admin Gwern now big AI guy, and a "spectrum of reluctance" over Australian place names

Recent research: SPINACH: AI help for asking Wikidata "challenging real-world questions"

News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Endowment audit reports: FY 2023–2024

Traffic report: Well, let us share with you our knowledge, about the electoral college

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:44, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. 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 2024 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) 00:14, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] t including another ~6,000 redirects

[2] The number of weekly reviews reported in the NPP feed includes redirects, which are not included in the backlog we primarily track.

[a]

[b]