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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-03-25. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Blog: The Wikipedia Library Team reflects on its new Visiting Scholars program (1,005 bytes · 💬)

Wehwalt has provided me with some material, which I've used to expand some articles which were once little better than stubs, and there will be many more to come. When I first joined Wikipedia, I had a decent numismatic library, but there was still an endless amount of extremely valuable information to which I had little or no access. Others, who don't have access to the publications I own, had even less capacity to expand articles. Like the articles which need and deserve improvement, the value of this program is endless. My hope is that it will be continued and expanded in the future.-RHM22 (talk) 03:38, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

We hope so too, but we could use some help! Nikkimaria (talk) 04:13, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Featured content: A carnival of animals, a river of dung, a wasteland of uncles, and some people with attitude (273 bytes · 💬)

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Just great work. Love the occasional humorous moment on top of a very well-written and arranged page. Tony (talk) 12:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation adopts open-access research policy (1,200 bytes · 💬)

Well done folks on the open Bach project, what a great addition to Commons. Thanks.--ukexpat (talk) 12:12, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely great Bach projects - both the WT Klavier and the Goldberg Variations. It looks like both were funded through kickstarter at bargain basement prices, $40,000 for WTK and $20,000 for GV. It seems like Wikimedia could organize itself to help fund some of these, not just Bach and western music, but African, Indian, Japanese, etc. Well, it's always temping to tell the WMF how to spend money, but I imagine a committee of editors going to possible uploader/musicians and saying, "fund your projects through kickstarter, make the recordings PD, and we'll kick in the final $5,000. BTW this invitation goes out to multiple musicians and we have a budget of $50,000 this year." An idea, don't know how it would work in practice. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:20, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Op-ed: How my father's railroad image collection now benefits the world: the value of digitization (5,795 bytes · 💬)

Thank you for your story. It's a testament to how people can contribute to Wikipedia and open culture in ways other than editing articles. Encouraging more people to do this is especially valuable because of the large gap between the end of the public domain and today. Sure, we can create content now, and we can use content older than 1923, but this is the only way we can use content created in the decades in between. Gamaliel (talk) 23:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for a great write-up. Ijon (talk) 04:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to all the Bareras for making these photos available. Gamaliel is right that we need more photos taken from 1923-2000. There are likely 1000s of photo collections from this period taken by very able photographers, and we'd love to upload their photos. Just a few could do wonders for many of our articles. Perhaps we could organize a WikiProject to identify and help them.

I have to mention a particular photographer who this story reminds me of. I ran into User:ROY KLOTZ during the 2012 Wikipedia Loves Monuments contest. His photos go back to the 1970s, perhaps earlier. He continues to photograph and upload new pix mostly of historic sites, about 3000 so far in total. He does have a few quirks, such as typing in all caps, and needing help in categorizing and placing his photos. If anybody wants to help, please see his uploads at Commons - he's wearing me out! As I said, just a few photographers like this can work wonders. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:30, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Piling on here. Thank you for writing this; I've already emailed it to my own father. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
And another piler on! It's great to see that some very able photographers such as your grandfather and father have given us the privilege of seeing their collections. The period is, in terms of free media, sadly underdocumented. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Makes me want to go and get my parents to pull out the tins of family photos to see if we've got any gems in there too! Great op-ed. Miyagawa (talk) 11:46, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the positive feedback, everyone! If I may, I'd like to add a quick story from a couple of months after the digitization project, when my Dad took me to Joliet Union Station for a little railfanning of our own. Over fifty years after his trip there with his father, it felt like we had come full circle, and I have the photos to prove it: strikingly, this photo I took of a BNSF freight in Joliet is from almost the exact same place of a train heading the same direction as this ATSF freight that was shot (probably by my grandfather) 51 years prior. I honestly didn't try to create a parallel image intentionally, so I got a real kick out of it when I discovered the similarity upon comparing my photos to my father/grandfather's images. Michael Barera (talk) 14:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

My photo of a BNSF freight in 2014
My grandfather/father's photo of an ATSF freight in 1963, from almost exactly the same location

My father has a collection of slides going back to the 50s and the entire collection is of short line railroads, his preference as a railfan. He's actually considered the expert on certain lines. One interesting thing about his collection, it had a purpose. My father took specific photos so that he could go back home, take measurements, and then build scale replicas of the rolling stock. He turns 80 today, I'll have to show him this story and see what he thinks of doing the same with his collection. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 19:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

What a great story! Thank you. — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Michael, I'm a railfan who has digitized and uploaded to commons a number of train slides I took in my home country, Australia, in the 1980s. In addition to having similar motivations to those of your dad, I wanted to use my old slides to illustrate Wikipedia articles I had created. Some of my digitized slides are now displayed on Wikipedia, and at least one of them has been published in a railfan book, under the creative commons licence. Up until now, I've digitized my slides only by scanning them on a small scanning device I purchased at an electronics store. However, I'm planning to have my next batch digitized by a professional service provider, who would be able to produce a better quality scan. My own dad has some other slides, of other subject matter, from the 1960s and earlier, and recently we've been discussing digitizing them, too. So I'll probably also be showing him your story. Bahnfrend (talk) 02:25, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Recent research: Most important people; respiratory reliability; academic attitudes (3,123 bytes · 💬)

The Pulmonary Medicine review is informative and, to my layman mind, persuasive that the "study" in question is misguided. Or, to use more words less precisely, a bungled hatchet job. However, the point about accuracy stuck in my mind as possibly valid. Did the chosen WP articles actually say many things that are not true? That's my impression of what "inaccurate" ought to mean. Or rather, did they say things that are contrary to conventional opinion among practitioners in the relevant field? Or is "accurate" defined according to other criteria? Jim.henderson (talk) 21:25, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Jim. Thank you for reading my review, and for your insightful questions.

The paper's author claims to use the modified DISCERN tool to assess accuracy. Yet most of the DISCERN questions are unrelated to accuracy. As far as I can tell, the researchers assigned a score between 1 (serious/extensive shortcomings) and 5 (minimal shortcomings) for each article's accuracy. This was determined by comparing the articles to medical textbooks. The lowest rated article was "(Nail) clubbing". As far as I can tell, the accuracy of the article looks just fine.

This paper (and other assessments of Wikipedia's medical content) seem to have a tacit assumption that the researchers know how to assess these articles. Unfortunately this is not the case. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Wild. Seems like the most obfuscatory depths of, say, social science. The author says he's checking whether Wikipedia is a good tool for learning, but apparently is only interested in whether it can substitute adequately for a textbook. Well, duh! I worked 41 years as a telephone switching technician. Becoming good at it required attentive time in classrooms. Also reading a bunch of books, journals and other things. And seeking guidance from old practitioners. Were someone to ask today how to become a good technician, I would answer, do as I did, and since we've got Wikipedia, use that, too. But as a substitute? What? Who would expect to need statistical analysis to put down that idea? We're not trying to write a textbook, or a series of textbooks, for practitioners. We're trying to write an encyclopedia so, for example, doctors can learn something about how telephones connect to each other, or engineers can get a rough idea of the main ways lungs get sick. When we fail at that, as we often do, we should be knocked for it. Not when a switching technician remains clueless after trying to use Wikipedia to set a NT6X18A line card for Ground start. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Special report: Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2014 (569 bytes · 💬)

I am so happy that the pic I nominated for Featured Picture has found its place among the pictures of the year and that too at 3rd place! Thanks to all the voters and last but not the least David Guber for the wonderful picture. I was just lucky enough to be ahead of so many alert users in nominating this pic. Nikhil (talk) 06:47, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Traffic report: Oddly familiar (2,146 bytes · 💬)

gradeschool cruelty ? Sounds like you went to an awfully harsh elementary school. I don't recall any cruelty associated with St. Patrick's Day, just Irish pride (and I'm only part Irish). Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:13, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

What, you were never pinched for not wearing green? What's St Patrick's Day coming to? Serendi ^pod ous 21:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, the pinch for not wearing green. Is that still done? It wasn't a big deal in the schools I went to. Or else I just wore a lot of green. I don't recall pinching others or being pinched so maybe I went to a kinder and gentler grade school. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

#22 has a redlink picture, you have to change it. Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook) 07:30, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't have to do anything to it, and I can't change it, because there are no free to use images available. But I can get rid of it. Serendi ^pod ous 09:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)