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"Have a cuppa... Coffee?"

WikiCup 2014 February newsletter

And so ends the most competitive first round we have ever seen, with 38 points required to qualify for round 2. Last year, 19 points secured a place; before that, 11 (2012) or 8 (2011) were enough. This is both a blessing and a curse. While it shows the vigourous good health of the competition, it also means that we have already lost many worthy competitors. Our top three scorers were:

1. Godot13 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer whose high-quality scans of rare banknotes represent an unusual, interesting and valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Most of Godot's points this round have come from a large set of pictures used in Treasury Note (1890–91).
2. Adam Cuerden (submissions), a WikiCup veteran and a finalist last year, Adam is also a featured picture specialist, focusing on the restoration of historical images. This month's promotions have included a carefully restored set of artist William Russell Flint's work.
3. WikiRedactor (submissions), another WikiCup newcomer. WikiRedactor has claimed points for good article reviews and good articles relating to pop music, many of which were awarded bonus points. Articles include Sky Ferreira, Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus and "Wrecking Ball" (Miley Cyrus song).

Other competitors of note include:

• Hahc21 (submissions), who helped take Thirty Flights of Loving through good article candidates and featured article candidates, claiming the first first featured article of the competition.
• Prism (submissions), who claimed the first featured list of the competition with Natalia Kills discography.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions), who takes the title of the contributor awarded the highest bonus point multiplier (resulting in the highest scoring article) of the competition so far. Her high-importance salamander, now a good article, scored 108 points.

After such a competitive first round, expect the second round to also be fiercely fought. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2, but please do not update your submission page until March (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 00:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes, Issue 4

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 4, February 2014

News for February from your Wikipedia Library.

Donations drive: news on TWL's partnership efforts with publishers

Open Access: Feature from Ocaasi on the intersection of the library and the open access movement

American Library Association Midwinter Conference: TWL attended this year in Philadelphia

Royal Society Opens Access To Journals: The UK's venerable Royal Society will give the public (and Wikipedians) full access to two of their journal titles for two days on March 4th and 5th

Going Global: TWL starts work on pilot projects in other language Wikipedias

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:00, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from January 2014

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for January 2014, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • New community-centered trademark policy
  • After one year, Individual Engagement Grants demonstrate potential for impact
  • Multimedia vision for 2016, and request for comment on MP4 video
  • New search engine
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
  • Project to record voices of Wikipedia subject gains support from Stephen Fry and the BBC
  • Ukrainian chapter and Wikipedia community protest laws proposed by Ukrainian government

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe, 09:53, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #99

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Discussion about defining lists
  • Open RfAs: לערי ריינהארט, Pamputt
  • Closed RfAs: Epìdosis (Successful)
• Events/Press/Blogs
  • Wikidata scholarships for the Zürich Hackathon
  • Wikidata FOSS Outreach Program for Women
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: unemployment rate, manner of death, file extension, received signal, prevalence, connecting service, first performance, Universal Decimal Classification, Chinese Library Classification, Dharma Drum Buddhist College place ID, Dharma Drum Buddhist College person ID, MEP directory identifier, Rodovid ID, handle, Gewässerkennzahl, LIBRIS editions, numeric value, visitors per year, Geokod, approximation algorithm, transmitted signal
  • Showcase item: Why not improve Kleinmachnow (Q104192) to showcase standard?
  • Wikidata's presence: vici.org are using Wikidata identifiers in their data storage
• Development
  • Made loading items a lot faster
  • Enabled access to the data on Wikidata for Wikisource
  • Fixed the diff view sometimes showing the wrong revision
  • Attended ConFoo and learned all of the things
  • Released Wikibase DataModel Serialization 0.1
  • Continue work on caching javascript config variables in parser cache
  • Started to make Wikidata even faster by removing StaticExpert and BifidExpert
  • Started reviewing interface animations. You should be able to disable them all by setting $.fx.off = true; in your Special:MyPage/common.js.
  • Fixed Wikidata looking a bit odd when enabling the Typography refresh Beta feature.
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the MedlinePlus ID (P604) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 18:38, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

GAN March 2014 Backlog Drive

The March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive has begun and will end on April 1, 2014! Sent by Dom497 on behalf of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Times Square Studios the studio in NYC vs Times Square Studios (division)

In regard to an edit you made to the Times Square Studios (division), I think that you confused it with the Times Square Studios facility in NYC. Both are part of Disney-ABC which is a source of confusion for many.

General Hospital is indeed taped in California but it is part of the Times Square Studios (the division, not the NYC studio) just like the rest of the Disney-ABC daytime shows with the exception of Live with Michael & Kelly. Regards. Farine (talk) 21:25, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Farine, I don't remember making that edit but thanks for correcting it if I made a mistake! All the best, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:19, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Custard

I fired up AWB and did a "transclusions on page" run through all the templates on the article to figure out what template was transcluding the category — the offending template is {{circular definition}}, which was present after the sentence "While custard may refer to a wide variety of thickened dishes, technically (and in French cookery) the word "custard" (crème or more precisely crème moulée, [kʁɛm mule]) refers only to an egg-thickened custard." Since that isn't really a circular definition per se, but simply a clarification that the term has both a broader and a more restrictive meaning, I removed the template — and hallelujah, the category disappeared with it. The sentence probably does still need rewriting, admittedly, but its primary problem isn't so much that it's a "circular definition" as that it's just kind of confusing.

Custard indeed seemed to be the only article in all of Wikipedia that was actually transcluding that template at all — its only other direct transclusion is on a talk page — and it was created by the same user who added it to the custard article. So for the moment I'm not sure whether we should create a "circular definitions" category to keep any future uses out of Category:Wikipedia articles with content issues, or if we should just delete it as a template that's really not getting used at all. What would be your take on that? Bearcat (talk) 07:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Mystery solved, Bearcat! How very clever, I've never gotten AWB to really work. I didn't see that template at all but I regular get frustrated with templates that automatically insert categories that can not be altered or removed. Often, folks that are good at building templates don't necessarily understand how categories are structured.

I think "circular definition" would be useful if it were easier to identify and if editors were aware of this template. But the fact that it is only used in one article shows its use is limited and maybe should be nominated for deletion. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana Semi-Active?

Hi,

Seen you've changed Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana status to Semi-Active whilst is still active. :-D. Regards. →Enock4seth ^(talk) 23:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, →Enock4seth, it was a semi-active WikiProject and I removed that tag so it would show that it's active now. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:53, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Ah! That was a crash on you :-) Sorry! Just realized. →Enock4seth ^(talk) 23:55, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

No problem at all, →Enock4seth! I have been recategorizing WikiProjects all day that have been abandoned for years so it was nice to come across Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana and find it to be an active project. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:08, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Cool :-) And thanks. →Enock4seth ^(talk) 00:11, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #100

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Discussion about enabling GuidedTours on Wikidata
  • Open RfA: ElfjeTwaalfje
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Wikiquote will get language links via Wikidata on April 8th. Coordination is happening at d:Wikidata:Wikiquote
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: portal's main topic, Finnish municipality number, carries scientific instrument, upper stage booster, river basin category, mode of inheritance
• Development
  • Added more details to the diffs of time and geocoordinate values (will show which globe the coordinate is on and so on now as well)
  • More work on badges by Bene* - most work left is now in the GUI part of it
  • Removed unneeded and unused permissions/rights
  • Fixed a bug concerning spaces in quantities (bugzilla:61911)
  • Started work on taking ranks into account for queries, the property parser function and Lua. (By default only preferred values should be used if available. If not available then it should use values with rank normal.)
  • test2.wikipedia.org and test.wikipedia.org now use test.wikidata.org as their data repository, instead of wikidata.org
  • Started work on WikibaseInternalSerialization component
  • Released Wikibase DataModel 0.7 - https://github.com/wmde/WikibaseDataModel/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES.md
  • Added indexes to Wikibase QueryEngine
  • Improved SQLite support in Wikibase Database
  • Started moving virtual machine instances of various test systems to the new Wikimedia Datacenter
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the sport (P641) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 15:39, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration request motion passed

An Arbitration Clarification request motion passed. You contributed to the discussion (or are on the committee or a clerk)

The motion reads as follows:

• By way of clarification, the formal warning issued by Kevin Gorman was out of process and therefore has no effect. The provisions of WP:BLPBAN will be reviewed by the Arbitration Committee and where necessary updated.

For the Arbitration Committee, --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:59, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 March 2014

• Traffic report: Brinksmen on the brink

• Discussion report: Four paragraph lead, indefinitely blocked IPs, editor reviews broken?

• News and notes: Wikipedia Library finding success in matching contributors with sources

• Featured content: Full speed ahead for the WikiCup

• WikiProject report: Article Rescue Squadron

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Project names

Please discuss with the appropriate WikiProjects before you go around changing their names en masse. --Rschen7754 00:53, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Rschen7754 , I was only changing names for inactive WikiProjects so I'm not sure there would be any discussion in response to a talk page comment...I'm talking about projects that have had no edits on their main page in a year or two or three. But since you object, I will post any suggested name change on the talk pages.

I've been working on activity levels as described in Template:WikiProject status to guide my edits. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:59, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, the reasoning for that particular move is a bit odd, since WP:USRD definitely uses the U.S. naming, and since there will be opposition to any such proposed move... meaning that it will not be consistent. --Rschen7754 01:11, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I really appreciate the explanation and WP:AGF. There is a mix of WikiProjects, some of which use United States and a few that use U.S.. I was trying to make that consistent but I should appreciate the autonomy of each Project.

I have to say that it's been kind of a shock to see how few of the 1500+ existing WikiProjects are active (have a main page edit at least once every other month). I'm guessing it's about 15-20% at most. Before I started working on them this week, I thought that most of them were active. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:21, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

That's the current state of things on enwiki, unfortunately. A lot of editors wanting to add their own trivia, or articles about their own business, but not wanting to improve the content to a professional standard. For as much as WikiProjects get bashed by administrators, ArbCom, and the general populace, when they are functional, they really do good work... --Rschen7754 01:28, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I had no idea that WikiProjects were bashed by anyone, Rschen7754 ! I know I had a positive opinion of them. That's why I was surprised to find so many inactive. They seem like a very useful tool for organizing editors who have a common interest but there needs to be a core group of regulars to keep up momentum. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:34, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Angels are people and angels are saints.

We had this conversation a year and a half ago. See Talk:Michael (archangel)/Archive 2#Is Michael a saint? and Category talk:Christian saints#Proposal to restrict the category to members of homo sapiens sapiens.. Current consensus is to include them in saint categories. Elizium23 (talk) 21:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

If you think angels are "people", I don't know what to say to you. Angels are spiritual, imaginary creatures, not people. Saints are people...they lived and died. Angels, if you believe in them, are immortal and were never flesh and blood. This must be some version of LDS theology. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

No, it is standard Christianity. Angels are beings with a will and intellect. They meet all the standard classic definitions of "person". I will remind you that Trinitarian theology regards God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ as three "persons". So I would ask you how can the Holy Spirit, for example, be a person while angels are not? Elizium23 (talk) 22:54, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

See Wikitionary,

1. An individual; usually a human being. [from 13th c.]  [quotations ▼]
2. Each person is unique, both mentally and physically.
3. The physical body of a being seen as distinct from the mind, character etc. [from 14th c.]  [quotations ▼]
4. A character or part, as in a play; a specific kind or manifestation of individual character, whether in real life, or in literary or dramatic representation; an assumed character.  [quotations ▼]
5. (law) Any individual or formal organization with standing before the courts. [from 14th c.] By common law a corporation or a trust is legally a person.

I don't see angelic beings listed here unless you think of them as characters in a play. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Angels qualify under definition 1, they are individuals. "Usually a human being" means that the definition is broader than merely human persons. If you will note, the idiom "human person" is common in theological discourse, why be so specific if "person" meant only humans? There are divine persons and angelic persons as well. More information on the definition of person. Original Aquinas source, in which he directly asserts that angels have personhood. Elizium23 (talk) 23:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Question

Hi Liz,

you have a user box that states: "This user is against Cyber-bullying." I'd like to ask you please if you've ever observed Cyber-bullying on Wikipedia? Thanks.69.181.42.100 (talk) 15:12, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, 69.181.42.100, I think I have seen cyber-bullying on Wikipedia. Sometimes it is ill-intentioned (a personal conflict), sometimes it comes from a feeling of ownership of certain articles and sometimes it comes from a misplaced sense of upholding selected Wikipedia ideals where a strict, idiosyncratic interpretation of rules takes precedence over being civil to other users.

I'll add that this behavior is not unique to Wikipedia, it is unfortunately common in online communities. Where there are people posting and working anonymously, there will be cyber-bullying unless there are clear guidance from community leaders that this behavior won't be tolerated. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:32, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

But isn't Wikipedia has a special place between online communities? I mean I don't know any other online community of such dimensions as Wikipedia that is governed by mostly anonymous users. 69.181.42.100 (talk) 19:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is very different in that it has an organizational structure and plenty of content devoted to policy and guidelines. So, it's not an anarchy. But, sometimes rules conflict with practice or there are different interpretations over which policies are more significant. Hence, a lot of disputes are "talked out" on article talk pages and noticeboards. So, there are forums devoted to resolving conflict which most online communities do not have. But, clearly, experienced Wikipedians who are familiar with its guidelines have the edge in these debates so newcomers start at a disadvantage. This is where bullying can occur.

Civility is important not just because everyone should be nice to each other. Editors burn out on editing Wikipedia so there is a natural turnover in contributors. Bringing enthusiastic new users on board, showing them the ropes and making them feel welcome is important to Wikipedia because every new editor brings their own knowledge to the project. They might know a lot about airplanes, silent film stars, chemistry, comic books or Chaucer and can contribute in those areas. That's why I try to refer new editors to the Teahouse where editors who staff it go out of their way to address newbies' questions and concerns. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:08, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Liz, I wonder, if you'd willing to look into specific case or cases of Cyber-bullying that happened here, on Wikipedia? I mean I present you with some evidences. You review them, and it would be interesting to find out id you'd agree with my assessment? If you'd like to take a part in this exercise maybe you could create a page in your user space, just to take it off your talk page. If you agree you could take as much time as you need to respond. Thanks.69.181.42.100 (talk) 21:54, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it is more feasible to create a page in your user space and I can come look at it. I can only offer you an opinion, I have no authority on Wikipedia other than being a regular editor. I also try to see both sides. If you are feeling truly harassed, I think you should contact an admin or bring the case to an appropriate noticeboard where you can get a resolution. But I'll look at your case if you put all of the information on one of your user pages. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:07, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Liz, I am feeling truly harassed, but the case I'd like to offer to your attention is not about me. It is about a different person. I asked you to look into it because you stated you're against cyber bullying, and IMO being simply against is not enough. I believe everybody who is against something should try to make a difference, and sometimes even an opinion could make a difference. Honestly I have no idea, if an IP could make a page in its user space.69.181.42.100 (talk) 22:58, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I thought that when you stated you were against cyber-bullying, it is what you meant, but I believe I understand what happened. Sorry I bothered you.69.181.42.100 (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

69.181.42.100, I'm not sure why you are reacting this way. I offered to give you my opinion. You didn't bother me. I created the page for you, it's at User_talk:69.181.42.100/Cyberbullying. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Could you please add it to your watch list?69.181.42.100 (talk) 20:49, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Of course, 69.181.42.100. No problem. ;-)

"But, clearly, experienced Wikipedians who are familiar with its guidelines have the edge in these debates so newcomers start at a disadvantage." That is very true Liz, very true indeed. In fact, I experienced this myself as a newcomer on Wikipedia. As I think the IP posting above knows. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:13, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

A second point of view

Hi Liz, I think it's great that you go out of your way to help people who feel they've been slighted by the Wikipedia system. The Wikipedia system is, as we all know, a bit of a mess. So every improvement on that is good!

I wanted to give you some further information about the individual you're talking to above. Not in any mean or military sense, as Raoul Duke said, but merely to make you more aware of what is happening. Perhaps so that you can help them better, perhaps not.

You don't have email enabled, so I can't send you an unsolicited email through Wikipedia.

If you are willing to receive an email from me, you may wish to enable email temporarily and then send me an email through Wikipedia. I should note that this will tell me whatever email address you used to do so.

Alternatively, you may wish to enable email (I think you do this somewhere in your Preferences), then I can email you from Wikipedia without my knowing what your email address may be.

Alternatively, you may not think it's worth the trouble, and that's fine too. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Liz, I could give you info about demiurge1000 without email. I've nothing to hide. It hounded me to death, when I was editing Wikipedia. Then it used the lies it got directly from the hacker of my private email account as evidences against me. That user is one of the worst cyber-bullies on Wikipedia, and with it around there is no use to continue our conversation. Thanks.69.181.42.100 (talk) 22:42, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why we wouldn't all talk about what we see as problems on Wikipedia? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:57, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

69.181.42.100, I'm sorry you feel that way. I responded on your user page. I'm happy to continue the conversation but I'd like you to refer to other editors as "he", "she" or "they", not "it". It's dehumanizing. As far as I'm concerned your past interactions with Demiurge1000 are between the two of you, not me. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:02, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Liz, for your offer to continue the conversation, but I see you agreed to receive demiurge1000's email about me, which once again is going to be a bunch of lies, which I would not be able to respond. BTW please be careful in your email exchange with demiurge1000. Once demiurge1000 published my private email to another user at Jimbo's talk, and with that I am outta here. Good luck with demiurge1000.69.181.42.100 (talk) 23:29, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd just would like to add an opinion of another person concerning demiurge1000 behavior towards me "As a matter of fact I did apologize to several people whom I had bad interactions with, including someone you have also behaved vilely and despicably towards, namely Mbz1. It is unfortunate that you will likely never do right by her, given the resounding lack of ethical fiber you have displayed in this thread by acting like Kaldari's enabler and apologist." because I believe you should be aware about this, if you're going to read my worst wikihound lies about me.69.181.42.100 (talk) 02:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Projects

While I understand your desire for consistency, your recent rename broke all the subproject links for U.S. Congress. If you look at "your" new main page, you'll see all the links are now bright red. This appears to be a complete list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Congress/ Please fix asap, as it appears an actual discussion is being attempted by User:JesseAlanGordon. 71.23.178.214 (talk) 16:00, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, my, I didn't realize this was part of a renaming a page. I thought there would simply be a redirect that would taken any reader to the renamed page. I'll look into this, thanks for letting me know, 71.23.178.214. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:03, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

It also broke all the banners, userboxes, etc. I suggest you just revert and leave it as an exception. 71.23.178.214 (talk) 16:05, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Oy. You're right. My apologies. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I still think that "United States Congress" is a better WikiProject title but this should be decided by Project participants. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Anonymous Wikipedians

Hi Liz! Can you explain this edit to User talk:76.117.247.55? This editor surely qualifies for Category:Anonymous Wikipedians, as he's made over 5000 edits from that IP address. Is there a discussion about that category somewhere that I haven't found? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, John! First, I undid that edit. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I don't think that this is a particular useful category. Except for 76.117.247.55, none of the editors list was active. Most hadn't edited for several years, one hadn't edited since 2006. And, aren't 99% of Wikipedian editors anonymous? Few people use their real name and there are tens of thousands of IP editors that could feasibly be in this category. That was my thinking. But, again, I reverted myself. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting. Yes, the category could do with a clearer name. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

RE:Page Protection

Thanks. I have trouble finding the correct notice board when I'm in a hurry. I was just trying to prevent more vandalism that I knew was coming. --Tarage (talk) 21:58, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Understood, Tarage. Behind the millions of articles, the inner working of Wikipedia can be a maze. I've come across Wikipedia articles and later tried to find them and I can't. In my first active months, I went to WP:HELP and WP:TEAHOUSE a lot!. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:04, 13 March 2014 (UTC) Jennifer Morrison is irish because i can tell by her last name justinfleming 810 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #101

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Notability of items
  • Organisation of statements, sitelinks and external identifiers
• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Media Hack Days, Berlin March 22nd-23rd
  • Ateliers Wikidata, Bordeaux, France March 22nd-23rd
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Happy Pi Day
  • paper by Denny Vrandečić and Markus Krötzsch
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: NLC authorities, Atlas ID, fuel system, supercharger, ID (General Administration of Press and Publication), ISMN, NUKAT authorities
• Development
  • Changed the {{property}} parser function and Lua’s mw.wikibase.entity.formatPropertyValues to only return the statements ranked as preferred or if none are available the ones ranked as normal (This will probably go live on April 25th.)
  • Worked on improving page load time further by reducing the number of reloads during page loading
  • Made diffs for time and geocoordinates more complete and prettier
  • Continued research for user interface redesign
  • Tpt worked on optionally showing links to other sister projects in the client’s sidebar (bugzilla:54374)
  • Wrote a fix for Wikidata changes not showing up in the client’s watchlist (bugzilla:62149)
  • Updated a major chunk of our inline code documentation
  • Continued discussing technical details about how coordinates should be stored in Wikibase
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the Léonore ID (P640) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 22:29, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

• News and notes: Wikimedians celebrate International Women's Day, Women's History Month

• Traffic report: War and awards

• Featured content: Ukraine burns

• WikiProject report: Russian WikiProject Entomology

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:45, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions 2013 review: Draft v3

Hi. You have commented on Draft v1 or v2 in the Arbitration Committee's 2013 review of the discretionary sanctions system. I thought you'd like to know Draft v3 has now been posted to the main review page. You are very welcome to comment on it on the review talk page. Regards, AGK [•] 00:16, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Liz. You have new messages at Iryna Harpy's talk page.
Message added 05:56, 15 March 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:04, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm working on it now

and will have it done by tomorrow, though I don't have a specific day. The data come in on Sunday morning; after that, it depends on what my schedule is. Serendi^podous 00:12, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Wiki editors' incident discussion - St. Helens Central (GCR) Station page

Hi Liz,

In the Wiki editors'Incidendent discussion you stated

---

"This editor is apparently not going to be continuing to edit on Wikipedia...."

---

I'm afraid that's an incorrect generalisation. My words were -

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"I WILL BE PROVIDING MY WITHDRAWN INFORMATION TO AN ALTERNATIVE UK WEBSITE WHOSE PRIMARY INTEREST IS IN THE HISTORICAL CONTENT OF THIS MATERIAL AND NOT ANY CONSTRUCTIONAL MINUTIAE."

---

"My withdrawn information" only concerns that text and images I had specifically provided to the St. Helens Central (GCR) Station page and nothing else. Information, by the way, I'd been asked to provide in an earlier Wikipedia mail from another Editor !!! The alternative UK website I refer to is actually on the page and is Disused Stations UK - if you look you'll see some of the same images on their equivalent website page already - with which they seem to have had no problem whatsoever as opposed to Wiki ! Paul Gaskell (talk) 02:02, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

fictional categories

Category:Fiction by topic, and then read this. It's perhaps better to just close your eyes, and not look.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:48, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Obi-Wan Kenobi, maybe we should have Category:Stray dogs, too! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:50, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been meaning to create Category:Those that, at a distance, resemble flies, but I'm sure someone would find it and kill it with fire... --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:00, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion about indefinite blocking of IPs

Hi Liz, I know you're interested in issues pertaining to new editors and IP editors, so I thought you might be interested in this discussion that proposes that IPs should never be indefinitely blocked, and to remove any current indefinite blocks of IPs. I saw that you hadn't participated there yet and I wasn't aware if you'd seen it. If you are uninterested, ignore this spam and feel free to delete. -- Atama頭あたま 22:36, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Atama, it's never spam to alert an editor to a discussion that might be of interest! I was somewhat aware of that conversation but I thought it involved more technical aspects of the effect of blocking IPs and IP ranges. I think IPs are frequently singled out and scrutinized, I know editors working on vandalism and all they seem to do is revert IP edits (there must be SOME vandalism from registered accounts, right?).

I'll look over the discussion, thanks for letting me know, Atama! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:42, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

March 2014

Hello, I'm RexxS. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions to Wikipedia:WikiProject Scuba diving because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks! RexxS (talk) 23:35, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases

Hi Liz! When you moved WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases to WikiProject United States Supreme Court Cases, the links on the front page to all the subpages [1] were broken. If you could fix this soon I'd be very thankful. Altamel (talk) 03:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I moved the page back, Altamel. I do think the full name is preferable but I didn't realize the consequences a move would have. Thanks for alerting me and I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:27, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Want to try an FAC?

Hi Liz, saw you getting encouraged to do an FAC review. If interested, I have a race horse article, Mucho Macho Man up, and Mike Cline has Cutthroat trout. If you want to look at old (and extremely anal-retentive reviews (which not everyone has to do; some people just read and say "support") for me, you can compare to my FAC for Oxbow (horse) and for Mike, compare to Rainbow trout. Montanabw^(talk) 01:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your encouragement, Montanabw. I have no experience in this so I'll need to look at some examples. And I'm in the midst of a different project I'd like to finish up. But I'll look over the article and see if there is any way I can contribute. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:26, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Other race horse/ horse "biographies" that are FAs are Oxbow, noted above, and Ealdgyth's Easy Jet, Go Man Go, Chicado V, Miss Meyers, Lightning Bar and Barbara L (though all of hers are Quarter horses not Thoroughbreds, and all are deceased, whereas Oxbow and MMM are still alive). For background, if you aren't a horse aficionado, you might want to read the FA (and TFA) Thoroughbred. Everyone who does FAC reviews takes a little different tack, some are copyeditors, some review references, some look for style and content, others look at copyright violations, some check images. It is the collective analysis that gets the article to its very best. Some people just read and say "support," though I'm not sure how the FAC directors view those, I think having some evidence that you've looked seriously at the article gives your vote more credibility. Montanabw^(talk) 17:05, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Odd edit summary

Hi, Liz. I was puzzled by this edit. Your edit summary said "Adding DefaultSort", but in addition to that you changed the project status from active to inactive. Maybe this was a mistake (and it has since been corrected), but the fact that the edit summary didn't describe what you actually did made it harder for project members to uncover the mistake. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:41, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

R'n'B, I was using shorthand because I'm adding {{DEFAULTSORT}} to all WikiProjects but, at the same time, I'm checking to see if the WikiProject status is correct. In most cases, the status is accurate, but in the case of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges, there hadn't been a main page edit since January 17, 2012‎. The Template:WikiProject status says that a WikiProject can be declared inactive if there hasn't been a main page edit in four months and in this case, it was over two years.

I'm surprised it was hard for project members to determine what edit made this change when mine was the only edit that had occurred on the Project page in years! But I'll try to leave more complete edit summaries in the future. I'm glad to hear that this WikiProject is, indeed, active. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:05, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

It wasn't hard to determine which edit had changed the status; it was that no one noticed for a few weeks that the status had been changed. At least in my case, it was because the edit summary that appeared on my watchlist gave me no reason to think that the edit was anything I needed to worry about. No harm done, though. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:42, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

• "Any editor may add this template to the top of any apparently inactive WikiProject. Any member of the project may remove it if it is placed in error. Upon removal, please consider placing a message on the WikiProject's talk page to indicate that the group is still active."

That's a statement from Template:WikiProject status and the premise I have been working with and, in this case, that's exactly what happened. In fact, even making simple {{DEFAULTSORT}} edits to some WikiProjects have caused them to show up on Watchlists and editors have returned to check in on them. That's not enough activity to reenergize some dormant WikiProjects but it's good to see there is still interest.

But I'm striving to be more complete in my edit summaries so that the changes are more obvious. Thanks for pointing that out, R'n'B! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:54, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Inactive Wikiprojects

I know you have been reviewing these based on some guidance in the high level project. I'd like to propose that we change the way the project status is reviewed. In my opinion, the current criteria based on talk page activity is misleading or incomplete. Personally using the project's assessment table is a better indication of activity. Projects that have very low numbers of unassessed articles or reductions in the ωおめが or Ωおめが measurements clearly are active, even if there is no talk page discussions. However the ωおめが or Ωおめが values may only be of use for projects that are not adding large numbers of articles. Any opinions? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Vegaswikian, I'm just following the guidelines in Template:WikiProject status, I'd follow whatever new standards are set, I'm not wedded to the ones that exist. I have to say that it's a small proportion of WikiProjects that have updates on the main page more than once or twice a year. This was a surprise to me because I thought this is the area where most updating would occur but if there is any activity at all, it's usually on the talk page.

Most of the time, there is no question that the WikiProjects are inactive as there is no activity on the main page at all after 2012 (and some WikiProjects marked as "active" were last edited in 2008 or 2009). But there are a few that hit that borderlines of no significant main page edits in the past four months. Maybe that number should be extended to six months? It's not clear to me how a project's assessment table would be used to determine the viability of a project. It has to be some feature that is easily determined.

Two more points:

• 1) I don't think this issue is an urgent concern. I've only run into a few (3 or 4?) Wikipedia editors who are not involved with a project who have altered the status and, currently, I am one of them. Most of the time, the editors who change the status work on that particular project and they return to it to mark it as inactive or from inactive to active. But what I mainly see are projects that have been dead for years that have never had their status changed to inactive. That was also something I didn't expect to see.
• 2) If you do want to pursue setting a new evaluation standard, I'd post the proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council as this is where most WikiProject policy issues are discussed. I don't think many editors even know that Template:WikiProject status exists so any conversation on the template talk page would probably go unnoticed.

Good luck and please keep me posted! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:35, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I just saw that you have made 245,124 edits! Jaw on floor. That's a lot of work! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:43, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

(TPS weighing in). I'd be careful; WikiProject Indigenous people of North America, WikiProject Montana, WikiProject Equine and WikiProject Horse racing are all very active, but none of us have bothered to edit the main project pages because we are too busy writing articles - there's some activity at the project talk pages, is that a factor? Montanabw^(talk) 21:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I am careful, Montanabw and I use the standards laid out in Template:WikiProject status which are very simple and straight-forward...I actually usually allow for more time than the standards recommend (four months). But as I quoted in the conversation right above this one, any editor can change a WikiProject status and, if it is incorrect, or another editor disagrees or the WikiProject activity level changes, any editor can change it back to a more appropriate status. It's not carved in stone, it's one edit to change "inactive" to "semi-active" or "active". I have to say that over the two weeks I've been working on this, only maybe 1 out of 10 WikiProjects I've evaluated are judgment calls, the majority of WikiProjects I'm reevaluating have gone a year or more without any activity.

It would make me very happy if any main page edits I make should cause these WikiProjects to appear on Watchlists after a loooong absence and reignite interest in working on them. There are quite a few WikiProjects (especially in geographic regions and sports teams) that were once full of activity that are basically dormant now. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:35, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

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This Month in Education: March 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014 Headlines Education Cooperative Kickoff Meeting in Prague Frank Schulenburg selected as Wiki Ed executive director Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in February 2014 Teaching students to use Wikipedia critically as a first source in research Welcome, Floor Koudijs! Articles of Interest in other publications To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Thanks for tidying up my talk page!

I'd completely missed the fact that I must have been showing up in a couple of categories! Bit disappointed that I'm no longer a sovereign state, but I'll have to live with it.

Incidentally, I haven't pursued the DRN as I've been seriously waylaid by the Crimean situation and some hefty drive-by opining on Ukrainian and Russian articles. It's still not forgotten... just on hold. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Apologies for the delay. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:19, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #102

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Wikiquote notability
  • Belongs to jurisdiction
• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Cambridge revisited II documents how you can query Wikidata and put the results on a map.
  • Cambridge revisited V shows that maps have popups with texts generated on Wikidata statements and labels.
  • The architecture of the Wikimedia storage of the meta data of media files discusses that integration of Commons is a subset of what we can achieve when we consider the whole of media files.
  • Spaghetti Open Data, Bologna. March 28th - 30th
  • GLAM Treffen, Bremen. March 29th - 30th
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Riksdagen person-id
• Development
  • Continued making the UI faster
  • Fixed Wikidata changes not showing up in the watchlist on the client (Wikipedia, etc.) (bugzilla:62149)
  • Decided to turn off the inoperable wikidata.org language subdomains for now to reduce confusion
  • Created initial version of Wikibase Internal Serialization component
  • wbEntity and wbUsedEntities JavaScript variables are now cached in the parser cache
  • Ongoing refactoring to get rid of the previously used numeric ID numbers in favor of prefixed IDs
  • Made wbsearchentities aware of previously unquoted percent characters
  • Put some time into fixing longstanding oddities that made the developers cry from time to time
  • Worked on reducing internal usage of EntityContent, in preparation for redirect support
  • Worked on performance issues with JSON dump generation (hopefully we can start generating dumps soon)
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the original language (P364) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 15:00, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 March 2014

• Forum: Wikimedia Commons mission: free media for the world or only Wikimedia projects?

• WikiProject report: We have history

• Interview: Nate Ott: the writer behind 71 articles in the largest-ever good topic

• Featured content: Spot the bulldozer

• News and notes: Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny

• Traffic report: Into thin air

• Technology report: Wikimedia engineering report

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WP Korea: Semi-active

Thanks for adding it to the WP. Is it alright to move the status tag to the front page of WP Korea? Jae ₩on (Deposit) 14:06, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Jae ₩on! The WikiProject status tag should be on the main page of WikiProjects and also any associated Task Forces and Work Groups, ideally at the top of the page. It shouldn't appear on any subpages of the WikiProject (like a separate Members page or Assessment page).

You can find out all you need to know about the status tag at Template:WikiProject status but if you have any additional questions, just ask. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Jae ₩on (Deposit) 14:27, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Re: Fix your signature

The user talk background was originally dark red to match my userpage's background color. My previous signature was intended to look like a fish ( IX|(C"<) ) so that it's imagery and not words. Both have now been changed because you came to my talk page: my signature is more like characters forming "Mr. Gonna", and the user talk page background color is light blue. IVI I^ *|(G0i\!i\!4) 22:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Signature: IVI I^ *|(G0i\!i\!4) 22:30, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Signature in large: IVI I^ *|(G0i\!i\!4)

I'm happy now! =D IVI I^ *|(G0i\!i\!4) 22:32, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

You might be happy with it, but you are going to get complaints, Mr. Gonna Change My Name Forever because a signature needs to be readable. It's a name that other users will know you by, how they will contact you if they want you to respond to something they've written and they want your opinion. No one will remember IVI I^ *(G0i\!i\!4). Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:31, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Here's the signature, now with more letters than symbols: Mr*|(60nna)

In large: Mr*|(60nna)

I'm happier now! =D Mr*|(60nna) 23:37, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Weigh in on discussion?

Hi. Would you care to weigh in on this discussion? It concerns whether a particular review quote should be removed from an article. Dan56 (talk) 11:23, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Dan56, just FYI, User talk:Drmies#RfC.2FU for Dan56. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I know. Look, he's taken a sudden interest (I suppose because I'm expanding a bit of an article he's close to) in an article he's never edited before that I've put up for an FAC. You're welcome to weigh in LOL. Dan56 (talk) 01:59, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't really have a stake in articles about rock music. I'm interested in the topic but no recent expertise.

As for the proposed RfCU, it got shot down, pretty quickly. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:17, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, my FAC is for a jazz album, but it's whatever. I'm confident it's decent enough to pass. Cheers anyway! Dan56 (talk) 02:21, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if I could shake this hostility off so easily. Good luck with the FAC. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

His hand has indeed grown long

This certainly is no concern of yours, is it not? Your tone and previous report(s) on me make it seem I am nothing more than a rascal that needs to be exacted upon for every misstep, regardless of the high degree of well intent. "My master, Annatar the Great, bids thee ^welcome!" 03:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure you are much more than a rascal. But you also seemed to be on a crusade against another editor. Disruption on Wikipedia is of concern to all editors but I've said what I had to say and will not be involved in this matter any longer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:26, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

A crusade against another's flawed edits is not a crusade against the editor him/herself. If they demonstrate marked improvement from their current despicable state or edit in a different area of the encyclopaedia, and I were to continue to persecute them, then you have every right to call it a "crusade against another editor". But that is not the case here. "My master, Annatar the Great, bids thee ^welcome!" 03:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam/Islam in China work group

I want to delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam/Islam in China work group page. --Islam90 (talk) 12:37, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, Islam90, just click the Edit tab for the page and put {{Db-g7}} at the very top, then Save Page. This is the code for when the creator of a page wants it deleted. Let me know if you have any other questions. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from February 2014

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • Frank Schulenburg named executive director of the new Wiki Education Foundation, which supports Wikipedia courses in the US and Canada
  • New Media Viewer: A better way to view images
  • Discussion about disclosure requirements for paid editing, and about the new privacy policy
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
  • Wikimedians visit European Parliament to take photos of politicians
  • New video intends to motivate GLAM organizations to open up their collections
  • "Art+Feminism" editathons address Wikipedia's gender gap

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe, 09:53, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Liz!

Were you trying to contact me?Stmullin (talk) 22:22, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Stmullin. No, I was just reading about the dispute over Super-team which led me to your talk page and I noticed a missing "|}" was causing all of the comments on your talk page to be centered instead of left-justified. I hope you don't mind me making that correction. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you . . . still learning . . . Stmullin (talk) 23:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

No problem at all, Stmullin. You can spend a lot of time on Wikipedia and still come across policies or features that are new to you. I think it is why editors often find a "niche" and specialize in it, like uploading photos, participating in a specific WikiProject, doing copy-editing, participating in deletion discussions or reverting vandalism. One can't be an expert in everything! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:49, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I'm becoming an expert in blockquote . . . sigh . . . Stmullin (talk) 23:52, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello

How to Change an icon of portal? --Islam90 (talk) 17:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe to make such a drastic change, you would need to discuss it on the talk page. You are the creator of Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam in China so, for the moment, there are no other editors to collaborate with. But to change the icon of an established portal, you need to discuss it first. For information about images on Wikipedia, check out Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images. Hope this helps! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:07, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You'll actually also need the help of an admin or template editor, as the relevant page (a subpage of Module:Portal/images) is template-protected. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:21, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that information, Writ Keeper, I was not aware of that but it makes a lot of sense. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:43, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Advice on next step?

Hi, Liz. I hate to impose, but there's a spot of bother on Russia and Ukraine as the result of (you guessed it) the Crimea 'crisis'.

An RfC was begun over 'which map' should be used, but was not consolidated on the one page: both the RfC's were used independently of each other to discuss the precisely the same issue. The contributor who started the RfC's simply made a mistake, further compounded it by adding pressure in the 'neutral' proposal by expressing that the map with Crimea in light green had already been accepted on the Russia talk page RfC and, that for the sake of parity, both should match up. Personally, I actually didn't (and don't) believe it to be a matter for WP:LOCALCONSENSUS considering the high media coverage.

For lack of an appropriate venue (it's not an ANI or DRN issue), I encouraged the user who'd started the RfC/s to post a message asking for admin assistance on the Village Pump notice board here. So far, it's been ignored. Not that I blame anyone for not wanting to touch it, but we were merely asking for at least an indication as to where to take it from here.

Hope you're willing to advise us further.

P.S. I've also pasted a copy of this on Guy Macon's talk page. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Please see my comments at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 159#Need help with the C Word (Crimea). --Guy Macon (talk) 09:54, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like it is necessary to close one of the RfC with a notice about the other (this happened recently with a RM discussion I participated in that ran over four different talk pages). Admin attention is necessary, particularly, by someone experienced in closing discussions. Guy has posted on Jimbo's talk page and hopefully, this will bring attention to the problem. If not, let me know. Liz 13:11, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Cheers for that, Liz. I think the Russia talk page discussion is the one to close off as it was WP:SNOW to have opened a discussion there (the disputed region map had already been posted a couple of days prior the RfC, so it wasn't likely to be met with any dissent). I'll advise EvergreenFir to take it to the Request for closure noticeboard. I think it prudent that the user who initiated the RfCs (never quite sure of what the plural form of acronyms of this nature should be) ask that it be closed. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:30, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

So, Iryna, is the DRN case about the "of Jewish descent" categories on hold? Just wondering. I can see you have your hands full with articles about the Ukraine. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:34, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, yeah! It's definitely just on hold. Funny thing happened on the way to open a DRN: a peninsula fell on me. Just wonder whether you've read my little summary and have anything you think should be added to it [2]. I want to keep it short and sweet because there won't be anything either short or sweet once it starts. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:59, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

No, I missed that comment, thanks for the diff. I'm usually very good with ambiguity but this is a case where I'd prefer the issue to be settled as it seems so straight-forward to me. And I thought you were a great "outside party" (so to speak) to bring it to DRN. But, inevitably, someone involved will push the envelope in time and it'll be back on the front burner. Thanks any way. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:17, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Aha, you'd rather that it be tackled as a straight forward, "I'm Iryna Harpy and I noticed undue category usage reflecting DNA research over the last few months. It appears to be overspill from ongoing disputes over Azhkenazi Jewish identity as can be found here, here, here and here. There are parties actively advocating the use of the South Asian category which seems counter-intuitive to me, and as expressed by other editors/contributors, who understand such categories to have been created and used to express far more recent human ethnic relationships to the area. Please see (Canadians of South Asian descent category diff) as an example of the effect it will have on such categories. The categories become unnavigable and confusing for readers. Those who wish to reflect DNA relationships stretching back over a millennium are arguing ITSIMPORTANT. There has been a lull in actual in edits, but this is contingent on resolving the issue as potential edit warring is on the cards." Is that more on the lines of what you're after? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

That would do! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay. In which case, I'll open it tomorrow. I still have a couple of things to tidy before I log off for the day, but clearing up the issue of the Ukraine and Russia articles as being issues outside of local consensus seems to be underway, so I won't feel badly about dragging my feet over any disputes that arise there. At least it's at a halt before they go ahead with WP:OR changes to splitting stats (population minus Crimea/plus Crimea; area -/+; etc.). I'm letting all the POV current affairs rubbish slide, then will address it in one big clean-up sometime next week. Considering that they're semi-protected articles, I have no idea who has opened the sluice-gates and is allowing unsourced and spuriously sourced content into the accepted revision. Grr. Seriously, how are comprehensive articles on any given country considered to be current affairs articles when the current affairs have whole new, dedicated articles under constant development. Summary and hatnotes, thank you very much! See you at the DRN, if not before. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'm confused, Iryna, I thought this case was on hold and you were just running ideas by me. I thought you were busy with Ukraine articles. But I'm wrong? You're going ahead? I'm surprised. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, it's not ideal... but I'm feeling badly about the delay. I should have gotten onto the categories issue sooner. I was going to have a poke around changes on the Azhkenazi talk page (which I haven't had the chance to since the blow up) just to see whether it's at least stable for the moment. Yes, my preference would be to get the Eastern European pages back on track. Do you think the category business could wait for a few more days? If it does get triggered in the meantime, you can send me an alert. I'll certainly write up the details of the nuts and bolts with links tomorrow, plus will have the list of involved parties ready to go. All I have to do is keep it as a .txt file locally. I can multi'skull' enough to discuss issues on two matters simultaneously, convoluted as they are, but don't particularly relish being caught with my pants down too early in the piece. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:08, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hannibal

Hey Liz,

I've noticed you have edited the Hannibal section regarding Beverly Katz several times now. I would like to let you know that Beverly Katz is dead, and that the creator Bryan Fuller has confirmed this in an article I have cited on the Hannibal page. Please read the article and refrain from editing my contribution out, yet again. Beverly is dead. I'm sorry, but it has been confirmed.

Thanks - RareBot (talk) 17:11, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Maybe not the best idea?

Hey, Liz, asking T13 about sig stuff is probably a bad idea. They were indeffed for a brief time almost a year ago over, in part, sig issues, and part of the unblock agreement was to avoid repetitions of sig-related drama. The extent to which the restrictions cover discussions of sigs can be (and is being) debated, but it's probably best to avoid the topic with them altogether, so as not to draw them into any more possible drama. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I had no idea, Writ Keeper, as I saw him contributing to a discussion on proper signatures. I'll undo my comment. Thanks for letting me know. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:41, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yup, no worries. I doubt an answer to your question would've been really problematic for T13, but like I say, better safe than sorry. "Lead us not into temptation" and all that. :) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:46, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 March 2014

• Comment: A foolish request

• Traffic report: Down to a simmer

• Recent research: Wikipedians' "encyclopedic identity" dominates even in Kosovo debates

• News and notes: Commons Picture of the Year—winners announced

• Featured content: Winter hath a beauty that is all his own

• Op-ed: Why we're updating the default typography for Wikipedia

• Technology report: Why will Wikipedia look like the Signpost?

• WikiProject report: From the peak

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Wikidata weekly summary #103

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
• Wikiquote notability
  • Discussion relating to DBpedia
  • Discussion over Wikidata data
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Summary: The summaries will now be sent out on Saturday as opposed to Friday.
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: astronomical filter, National Archives specific records type ID, National Archives topical subject ID, National Archives geographic ID, National Archives organization ID, National Archives person ID, compressor type, Internet Broadway Database person ID, Internet Broadway Database show ID, Internet Broadway Database production ID, Internet Broadway Database venue ID, English Heritage list number, apparent magnitude
• Newest task forces: Heraldry task force
• Development
  • Reduced page load time significantly once again. Page load time was cut to roughly 2/3. For now we’re happy with the resulting page load times. We’ll start concentrating on other areas of the user interface now.
  • Fixed faulty selection handling when adding a property using the keyboard (bugzilla:62868)
  • Worked on fixing issues with handling of spaces in quantities (bugzilla:62567)
  • Fixed miscount of Wikidata changes on the client watchlist (bugzilla:45812)
  • Wrote new browser tests for special pages using the Cucumber and Selenium frameworks
  • Improved error formatting, localisation and handling. We will work on error message wording next to make them more understandable.
  • Worked on the code which propagates page moves from the clients into Wikidata as a preparation for allowing page deletions to appear on Wikidata
  • Made the Wikibase extension work with the new “Compact language links” Beta feature and a bit more independent from the UniversalLanguageSelector in general
  • The student team working on the entity suggester has finished the first version of it. The code is being reviewed now and is hopefully ready for deployment soon. Once it is deployed it will show you what new properties you could add to an item.
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the original language (P364) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 19:05, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 March newsletter

A quick update as we are half way through round two of this year's competition. WikiCup newcomer Godot13 (submissions) (Pool E) leads, having produced a massive set of featured pictures for Silver certificate (United States), an article also brought to featured list status. Former finalist Adam Cuerden (submissions) (Pool G) is in second, which he owes mostly to his work with historical images, including a number of images from Urania's Mirror, an article also brought to good status. 2010 champion (Pool C) is third overall, thanks to contributions relating to naval history, including the newly featured Japanese battleship Nagato. Cliftonian (submissions), who currently leads Pool A and is sixth overall, takes the title for the highest scoring individual article of the competition so far, with the top importance featured article Ian Smith.

With 26 people having already scored over 100 points, it is likely that well over 100 points will be needed to secure a place in round 3. Recent years have required 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) and 100 (2010). Remember that only 64 will progress to round 3 at the end of April. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page; if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 22:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header

Hi Liz, I'm wondering why you add this category to pages that transclude alert reports. For those pages that actually transclude the header, the category is already set by Wikipedia:Article alerts/Report page header it's not, and it shouldn't, and for the others the header format doesn't seem to be relevant. Anyway, I'm happy to merge Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts/Header into Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts, but then all the category tags that were manually added to the transcluding pages have to be manually removed again, and I don't volunteer for that... Just out of curiosity: why is that header format deprecated and why should existing uses be changed? — HHHIPPO 21:46, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, because of a few templates, Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header was added to any user or article page where the template was placed. I was working with the category, trying to place category "keys" so that the category contents would be alphabetized. The only way I can add a key to a category that is automatically assigned is to re-add it manually with the key which supersedes the automatic assignment.

I don't know anything about transcluding or deprecation, I was just trying to get the contents of this category to be in alphabetical order and this was the only way I knew how to bring that about. By the way, there were four or five different templates automatically assigning this category, WikiProject Physics was just one of them. I just didn't want to go in and edit the templates. Occasionally, I have edited out categories from a template but, in these cases, they were WikiProject templates and I didn't want to touch those.

If you can remove the automatic assigning of the category, I'd be happy to manually remove the ones I just placed. Let me know, HHHIPPO. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:56, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I see. I think the category tags all originate from Wikipedia:Article alerts/Report page header, and one could probably set the sortkey there. I'll try to figure that out in a minute.

In general, I'd suggest to place any category tags on the WikiProject.../Article alerts pages inside <noinclude> tags, in order to avoid categorizing pages that transclude the alert pages. — HHHIPPO 22:55, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

OK, I think it's working: the sortkey set by Wikipedia:Article alerts/Report page header should now be the name part of "WikiProject name". That should make all manual additions of the category tag obsolete. — HHHIPPO 23:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Here's a more detailed explanation:

• In general, I think one should avoid setting manual category tags for categories that are automatically populated, since part of the idea of that mechanism is that the category also gets automatically de-populated of pages for which the reason for inclusion is gone. The manual tagging inhibits that feature. In most cases, it should be possible to instead design a reasonable sortkey in the original category tag by using magic words or string handling templates.
• If for some reason a manual tag seems needed to override the sort key, one should check if the automatic tag is placed inside some conditional construction like <noinclude>...</noinclude>. In that case the manual tag should be treated the same way (HotCat can't do that). Otherwise you change not only the sort key, but also the propagation of the category tag to other pages. (You probably noticed a number of new members showing up in Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header while you were working on it; this is why.)

I'll go and remove the manual tags from the WP:Physics pages. If the result is fine, maybe you can do the rest. — HHHIPPO 09:58, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't immediately understand all of this, HHHIPPO. I work with categories, not templates. I was simply trying to get the pages to appear in alphabetical order in the category listing, I don't know about designing sortkeys or templates. A very few times (under 5?), I have removed an automatically assigned category from a template if it wasn't a widely used template and the assigned category was inappropriate for the pages it was stuck on to.

Yes, I did notice pages just suddenly appearing in Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header while I was working on it that weren't there before (mostly user pages). I see you have done a lot of reversions already. Are there still more to be done?

Since you understand this better than I, I'll ask you about this as this problem has been occupying weeks of my time. Example: "Wikipedia: WikiProject X", appears alphabetized under "Wikipedia" or "WikiProject", not under "X". See here for what I'm talking about. So, I've been adding sort keys("X"s) to each WikiProject and, at the same time, evaluating them to see whether they are active or not. But it would be nice if whatever "read" the category names ignored the "Wikipedia" and "WikiProject" and just noticed the "X" (like how last names are recognized over first names or "User:" is ignored and accounts are ordered by username). It doesn't seem to work as how you describe in Wikipedia:Article alerts/Report page header.

It will kill me if there is actually a simpler solution to this rather than the one that has kept me busy all month. But, since I'm far from done so if there is a solution, it would save me a great deal of time. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:41, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• Re: Sortkeys for WikiProject pages: the trick here is to use {{WikiProjectbasename}} as a sortkey in the template that adds the category tag. I did that for the template populating Category:Active WikiProjects with this edit. Note that the modified sortkeys don't take effect immediately, it takes a while for the database to 'notice' the change. The easiest thing to do is to just wait for the job queue to run through, but that can take up to days or even weeks depending on server load. To see an immediate effect, you can do a null edit to any of the WikiProject pages, which will make it show up at the right place in the category. I did this for a couple of projects at the start of the alphabet and they moved from "W" to "A" as expected.
• Re: You're not working on templates: actually, you did work on something very similar to templates, without noticing. The problem is that pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject XXX/Article alerts are often transcluded into other pages, for example user pages. If you add a category tag to one of these alert pages without further precautions (e.g. by just using HotCat), then this tag will also be transcluded and therefore categorize not only the alert page but also the user pages transcluding it. This is unwanted, and it's why you saw all these user pages popping up in Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header. Therefore, if you do manually add a category tag to such a page (which I don't think is a good idea), then you should enclose this category tag in <noinclude>...</noinclude>, to prevent it from being transcluded.
• Re: Are there more reversions to be done? Yes, there are. Basically, the explicit category tag should be removed from all pages in Category:Article alert reports with deprecated header. It's a maintenance category and it should only be populated through the template that defines the inclusion criteria. Removing the tags will remove all the user pages from the category, and leave only the Article alerts pages, and those only as long as they really use the deprecated header format.
• Re: It would kill me...: I hope not ;-) But for categorizing WikiProject pages I think the method I described is indeed less work, both now and in case of future changes. In general, if you do a very tedious task that takes a lot of your time, one way to make sure you don't wast your time is to ask at WP:VPT if it can be done by magic, or at WP:BOTR if it can be done by a bot. HTH — HHHIPPO 23:24, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Sigh. Do you know how many of my 22,000+ edits have merely been to get articles and categories to appear in alphabetical order? Probably at least 1/4. Thousands and thousands of edits. It IS very tedious. But I keep running into this organizational problem everywhere, especially in Wikipedia pages and categories (rather than article space). I guess no one has really cared about administrative or maintenance categories because it's not a visible part of the encyclopedia. But making these edits was simple task that made finding pages and categories easier for editors looking for them. I don't even know where to start, proposing categories to fix, it's a problem throughout "Wikipedia:" space. There is a lot of renaming categories that should be done (there isn't much consistency in naming) but I haven't tried to tackle that yet.

I'll do the remaining reversions tomorrow. I apologize, HHHIPPO, for the extra work this has caused you and I appreciate you taking the time to explain what is going on...I hope to fully understand more technical aspects of Wikipedia soon. I'm glad you can see that I set about to straighten this category up with the best of intentions even if the result means reverting all of the work I did.

To be honest though, it was worth going through hundreds of WikiProjects because there were many that were marked as active that hadn't had any activity in one year, two, sometimes no activity since 2009. They needed to be reevaluated. I didn't get to them all but I did make quite a dent! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:40, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I can understand your frustration, you really did a lot of work and obviously with good intentions. Unfortunately some of it was unnecessary, and some even problematic. On the plus side, in the future you'll need much less work for even better results. And I think for the task of findig and cleaning up problematic past edits, the use of 'magic' can also help: I have, just to see what's possible, put together a script that produces a list of (nearly) all edits where you added an explicit category tag even though the edited page was already in that category through a template. I think that should catch most of the problems (I won't bother you with technical details unless you really want to know). The script is running now, but slowly to be nice to the servers, so we should have results tomorrow. I can post the list here (probably more than one page), and then we can figure out the most efficient way to deal with it. — HHHIPPO 21:45, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, all I know about scripts is that I have a few copied and pasted into one of my user pages. I wish I had been keeping track of the more mundane, repetitive tasks I've been doing. This week I'll go through some of the Wikipedia category areas and see what problems still exist and whether it would be worth the time to address them via a script. Is there a place on WP to make a report/request or can I just tell you?

Sorry for the delay, I'm having some off-WP turmoil right now that has kept me from editing. No time and plus I don't edit when I'm stressed out...too easy to make mistakes or overreact. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:30, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

We're talking about different kinds of scripts here: what you have on a user-subpage is a piece of javascript that runs in your browser and adds features to the user interface. What I mean is a perl script that runs on the command line and retrieves data through the API. The script is not making any edits, it just collects data and then gives me a list of edits that should be checked. We should have a look at that list when it's done and then decide how to do the cleanup, in particular if we need help from a bot (then we would ask at WP:BOTR).

Not editing when stressed is a really good idea! I wish everybody would do that. In this case it's even good to avoid any fixing until the script is through, otherwise it might get confused. I had to modify and re-start it this morning since it got stuck when it ran into a deleted revision. I'll let you know when it's done. — HHHIPPO 07:30, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, the script is done, results are here. I'll have a closer look at the list later. I'm surprised it's so short. Can it be that you did only about 440 edits where you added (not modified) a category tag in order to owerwrite the sortkey of an existing, implicit categorization? As opposed to about 6700 edits where you added a category that previously wasn't on the page at all? Otherwise it might be that a lot of problematic cases were hidden from the script because someone fixed the original tag already, but the question is if the follow-up problems were fixed as well (tags to pages that shouldn't have the tag at all, but popped up in the category while you were working on it. Did that happen a lot?). Don't worry if you don't understand the details, we'll figure it out. I think this is kinda fun :-) — HHHIPPO 16:48, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Holy Land during Byzantine rule

Category:Holy Land during Byzantine rule has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page. GreyShark (dibra) 17:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Liz. You have new messages at The Blade of the Northern Lights's talk page.
Message added 22:30, 1 April 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Blade of the Northern Lights (話はなして下ください) 22:30, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	Always impressed by your level-headed input at ANI. Just what it needs. Keep up the good stuff that you do on here! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:35, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Wow, thank you, Dr. Blofeld, what a surprise! I try not to be reactive in AN/I discussions which can get heated and veer away from the OP's complaint. Your gift is much appreciated! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Thoughts on DS

Hi Liz I saw your comments and questions about DS. I'm running off now, but maybe tomorrow I might comment here about some thoughts on DS given my somewhat varied and inconsistent experiences. The system doesn't work very well, perhaps discussion can help clarify.(Littleolive oil (talk) 02:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC))

Littleolive oil, my main issue is the confusion surrounding DS, who can give warnings, whether they are considered official or unofficial, what "uninvolved" really means, etc. Hopefully, the current conversation that's going on will clarify things. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:09, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Those are my concerns too. What I've found is that there is great inconsistency even among admins and arbs on how DS is implemented and what the parameters are. I see that you have it in hand though so won't post further. Best wishes.:O)(Littleolive oil (talk) 03:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC))

Just curious: by DS you mean discretionary sanctions, not deletion sorting or defaultsort, right? — HHHIPPO 06:44, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. :O}(Littleolive oil (talk) 12:40, 3 April 2014 (UTC))

Sorry, if that wasn't clear, HHHIPPO, DS=Discretionary sanctions in this instance. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:25, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Your message/grammar of a new article

I appreciate that you have advised regarding two accounts working on the same article.

As you have seen in my userpage, I'm a native Russian speaker. Could you please check the article UE Boom for any grammar/structure mistakes, and advise upon improvements that I could implement. Thank you. Dmatteng (talk) 22:04, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, it is simpler to just correct any obvious mistakes I see...if I notice any substantial changes that would improve the article, I'll let you know on the article talk page. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:23, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I decided to post my advice on your talk page instead. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

SPI archive links not showing up

Hi Liz. When SPI archive links don't show up, such as here, you don't actually need to edit the page to fix it; simply purge the page cache and the link will appear. Just thought I'd let you know! Thanks. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 22:36, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, ɐuɐʞsǝp, I'm not really sure about "page purging". This was an SPI case that was not brand new. I didn't understand why the Archive link didn't show up when I was checking out the page so I first tried adding the link and then discovered that I didn't need to do that, a simple edit would cause it to appear. Now, I know I can "purge" and I'll try to figure out what that means before doing any future edits. But I have made only a handful of edits to the SPI area so you will not see me there very often! Thanks for the correction though. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:48, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Purging a page is basically asking the servers to rebuild it from the current contents of the database, instead of showing you whatever version is handiest, which they tend to do when they‘re overloaded. One way is to copy the Edit (or History) link for the page, paste it into your browser’s navigation field, change the “&action=edit” (or“&action=history”) to “&action=purge” and hit Return. There are also Gadgets you can activate in your preferences that will add a purge button or link to every page.—Odysseus1479 06:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #104

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Closed: Merge project chats
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Wikidata Toolkit 0.1.0 released!
  • Wikidata development has been going on for two years!
  • Wikiquote gets Phase I on Tuesdays (April 8th)
• Did you know?
• Newest properties: JSTOR journal code, Openpolis ID, Philippine Standard Geographic Code ID
  • Newest task forces: France task force, US legislation task force
• Development
  • Property of an existing claim can no longer be changed through API with wbeditentity (bugzilla:62425)
  • UI for simple query SpecialPage (bugzilla:55593)
  • minor fixes in the UI
  • UI for claims on property pages
  • worked on review of property suggester (review)
  • still looking for a working student/intern
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the original language (P364) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 23:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 April 2014

• News and notes: Wikimedia conferences—soul-searching about costs, attendance, and future

• WikiProject report: Deutschland in English

• Special report: On the cusp of the Wikimedia Conference

• Featured content: April Fools

• Traffic report: Regressing to the mean

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!

Liz, I wholeheartedly appreciate your response at the arbitration talk page. It was very kind of you to help. Best wishes.--MarshalN20 ^Talk 19:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, thanks, MarshalN20...I'm not sure that I helped much because you knew about the case I referred you to. In my experience, posts on Arbitration talk pages don't result in action, at best a clerk or arbitrator will say a word to clarify an existing case, but they won't launch a new investigation based on talk page comments. I hope you received a fair response, I haven't checked back to look at the Argentine history case. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice. Another user has suggested me to keep quiet while the arbitrator's deliberate. I plan to take heed of that suggestion, and will also keep in mind your recommendation. The Argentine history case is weird, perhaps even more-so because it seems me getting a topic ban probation for a year is not enough to quell others from burning straw mans in effigy of me. Regards.--MarshalN20 ^Talk 20:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I have my share of editors who are not too fond of me and I've found the best course of action is not to overreact. Some editors have buttons that are easily pushed and they hold on to grudges that go far beyond whatever the initial disagreement was about. While there are a couple long-time editors whose emotional reactions are given a pass, usually going on the attack or being overly quick to take offense over what is simply a disagreement is viewed very poorly by admins.

Keep a level head, let most of the crap slide off your back and focus on working on articles on subjects that really interest you. If you find an editor tracking your edits, give it some time to be sure (at least a week) and then post the incident at AN/I (with diffs) and sit back and let other people weigh in. Editors who have no allies are at a disadvantage in these discussions so be sure not to burn any bridges and when given an opportunity, help other people out. My two cents. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Wise words, Liz; wise words, indeed. Nevertheless, I must admit that eight months of having this slide off my back is starting to leave mark (and a very dirty stain along the tracks).

Perhaps what worries me the most is that this will spill-over into my everyday life. Academic dishonesty is a very harsh accusation, both here in the project as well as in my profession.

Maybe I should just change my username to something more cryptic. As much as I agree with Eric's point that it would be better for the project to be less anonymous, the backlash can be great when dealing with mudslinging problems.

I appreciate the advice. I'll maintain inner peace. Best.--MarshalN20 ^Talk 23:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I didn't know the problem has been going on for so long. Then this is definitely a situation that deserves intervention by an admin or via mediation. Sorry for the spill-over. :/ Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:05, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Geography of Christmas

Hi Liz,

Thank you for contacting me on this issue! Geography of Christmas is not a metaphor; it is a more direct statement of what the article entails than "Christmas worldwide" as the article explains how Christmas traditions differ geographically; the main Christmas article is already about "Christmas worldwide". Another user has already initiated a discussion on the subject of this article's title here, where I have explained my position in greater detail. I would welcome your contributions there.

Neelix (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

PS - It looks like the discussion has been moved here, which is a better location for the discussion anyway. See you there! Neelix (talk) 19:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 9

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Milk (How I Met Your Mother), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Craig Thomas (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article 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) 08:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

AR Notification

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Battleground Off of Rupert Sheldrake and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, The Cap'n (talk) 18:35, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #105

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • RfC: Quality is measurable
• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Announcing ToolScript. With ToolScript can be used to get the output of all Magnus' tools
  • Feline mayors of the world or why Wikidata is awesome
  • A Rijksmuseum representative indicated what kind of information she hopes Wikidata will deliver
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Wikiquote now gets its sitelinks via Wikidata. Welcome, Wikiquote! Access to the other data will follow.
  • Do you want automatic sidebar links to other Wikimedia projects powered by Wikidata? Here you go: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2014-April/003690.html Thanks Tpt!
  • Use Wikidata for internationalization on any website! How awesome is this? Very!
  • Vote for some Wikidata talks for Wikimania
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: KulturNav-id, compression ratio, patent number, OmegaWiki Defined Meaning, phone number, International Standard Recording Code, Theatricalia play ID, Swiss Football Association Club Number, Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator level, ISFDB publisher ID, Swedish Football Association ID, Box Office Mojo film ID, Parsons code, ISFDB series ID, ISFDB publication ID, ISFDB author ID, Linguist list code, NARA online catalogue
• Development
  • Still looking for an awesome intern. Do you know someone who'd fit?
  • Bene* continued working hard on making “badges” (the “featured” and “good article” stars) in Wikidata a reality
  • Finishing touches for Statements on properties
  • Worked on better error messages when parsing failed
  • Updated the translations to use much easier to manage JSON files for each language
  • Made a list of hard to understand messages that should be reworded
  • Implemented a usable interface for Special:SimpleQuery
  • Closed a backdoor that let you change the property of a snak via the API, sorry guys
  • Continuous refactoring and improving of the code base that defines what Wikidata and the Wikibase extensions are
  • Kept Wikidata up to date with the typography update
  • Started to redesign the Wikibase page on mediawiki.org
  • Investigated if standard spam prevention features of MediaWiki work as they should on Wikidata (Result: mostly yes but some fixes/tweaks are needed.)
  • Released version 1.0 of the Diff extension.
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the movement (P135) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 20:20, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 April 2014

• News and notes: Round 2 of FDC funding open to public comments

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Law

• Special report: Community mourns passing of Adrianne Wadewitz

• Traffic report: Conquest of the Couch Potatoes

• Featured content: Snow heater and Ash sweep

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Arbitration request declined

The arbitration request involving you (Rupert Sheldrake) has been declined by the Arbitration Committee

The comments made by arbitrators may be helpful in proceeding further. In particular, several arbitrators noted that the article is subject to Discretionary sanctions, so issues should be handled at WP:AE For the Arbitration Committee,--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:37, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, S Philbrick. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:41, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: April 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2014 Headlines Consolidation of Portals and newsletter for the Global Education Program Remembering Adrianne Wadewitz Remembering Cynthia Ashley-Nelson Engineering students in Panama work on Spanish Wikipedia Jisc/ Wikimedia UK partnership Wikimedia Sverige: New resource for Swedish teachers on Wikiversity Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in March 2014 Happenings at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus Educational programming continues on Wikinews Welcome, Anna Koval! Exploratory research started for setting up a Wikipedia Education program in the Netherlands LiAnna Davis joins Wiki Ed as head of communications and external relations To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Why are you acting hostile?

Hi Liz,

As you probably know, I am one of those editors who prefers to work in content building rather than spending time "talking". However I do recognize the necessity of communicating as long as it does not become my only contribution. Anyway, the reason I am posting to your talk page today, might be a little unusual. I would like to ask you this blunt question in the hope that you are willing to spend your own valuable time to help me understand. So here goes:

You have always been very friendly to me, but have turned sour recently starting with this User_talk:Ottawahitech#WikiProject X in the Signpost. And today I see you have become hostile. Is it me, or is wikipedia in general getting to you. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk)

I don't think I'm acting hostile. I have good feelings towards you, Ottawahitech. But that doesn't mean I agree with all of your editing decisions and you don't agree with mine. You've reverted a number of my edits and I don't take it personally. We disagree about how to file the Signpost articles in the topical categories but I didn't challenge your reverts even though I stated that I thought filing the articles under "Signpost" was better than under "*". I didn't want to and still don't want to edit war. I let it go. It's a minor dispute and it's not worth fighting over. There is plenty of other things to do.

My recent comment on your talk page was to encourage you to archive the content as it is way too big and it is hard for people to find conversations. That's not hostile, that's a suggestion. Editors give me suggestion on Wikipedia on a regular basis. It's not a put-down or an insult...it's advice on how I could work better on Wikipedia. I listen and if I think the words have merit, I try to put the advice into practice. If it's clear that the other editor and I see things differently, I say, "Thanks, but no thanks." I would hope other editors approach constructive criticism similarly.

I assume if I transgress some Wikipedia policy or make a thoughtless or redundant edit (it happens!), you, or someone else, will point it out to me. Look at my talk page and you can see editors pointing out mistakes I've made. But I would only consider it hostile if there were name-calling and personal attacks and I did neither.

So, no, it isn't you and no, it isn't Wikipedia. It just means that sometimes, editors acting in good faith will disagree. If my comments were too blunt, then I sincerely apologize to you, Ottawahitech. I never meant to slight you or hurt your feelings. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The reason I thought you were acting hostile is that your edit stopped my ability to revert User :Arthur Rubin's deletion in my page. You are probably not aware, but Mr. Rubin has been editing my user space for a while knowing full well I object, even though my understanding is that my user space is mine to do what I want with. I apologize if you were not aware of it, it just seemed that your timing was unusual in its proximity. Peace XOttawahitech (talk) 23:39, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

No, Ottawahitech, I had no idea my edit effected your ability to revert another edit. I've come across Rubin's name elsewhere on Wikipedia but I wasn't aware he was editing your talk page which is totally out-of-line. I had that problem when some former editors contacted me on my talk page and another editor kept coming in and deleting our conversation because it was supposedly a blocked user (although I was never given proof that was the case). So, I believe that editors' should control the content of their talk page, my comment was just that maybe you should just keep one or two months' worth of comments and archive the bulk of what you have. I find it easiest to do so by date so I can find things more easily but I am having problem with my bot set-up and have to manually go in an copy and paste to get comments on the right page. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:51, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:; I deleted a duplicate section on your talk page. I realize that you have (to a great extent) control over your talk page, but I never imagined you would object to removing duplication. You also never said you objected to my posting to your talk page. I only made one change in your userspace, in which it appeared you had miscounted the (almost entirely justified) deleted edits. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:24, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Category:Articles about possible neologisms from March 2014

When you tag empty categories for deletion, please leave the category text. It makes checking before deletion easier. Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:11, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I've been doing tagging empty categories for months now and I never heard this before, Vegaswikian. Is this both for monthly categories as well as subject categories? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:14, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually it is easier to leave it in both. The monthly cleanup ones can go as soon as they are empty. For the others, it makes it easier to check if the category was emptied out of process. Though any check is not without issues. Also, G7 works faster when it is a valid request in place of C1. You had at least one of those. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:17, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, my aim is to stop having these empty categories appear in parent categories. Would it be alright if I removed their assigned categories but left any text on the page? I don't mean to be splitting hairs, I just thought a blank page looked cleaner than one full of information that was no longer relevant because the category was empty. But I'll leave the text on the page and I'll try to remember to use G7 if I created the category instead of C1. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:23, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes - Issue 5

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 5, March 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

• New Visiting Scholar positions
• TWL Branch on Arabic Wikipedia, microgrants program
• Australian articles get a link to librarians
• Spotlight: "7 Reasons Librarians Should Edit Wikipedia"

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:54, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #106

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Sources will be called references because of a discussion
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • List of items without images but possibly free images available
  • Any interested in another Wikidata office hour? (Say yes)
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator (BFI) SNO/CNO, earliest written record
• Development
  • Lots of small little cleanups.
  • Sprintbreak as most people are taking a few days off.
  • Happy Q21196! Say Hi to the Q108636 ;-)
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the academic degree (P512) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 22:36, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 April 2014

• Special report: 2014 Wikimedia Conference—what is the impact?

• Op-ed: Five things a Wikipedian in residence can do

• News and notes: Wikimedian passes away

• WikiProject_report: To the altar—Catholicism

• Wikimania: Winning bid announced for 2015

• Traffic report: Reflecting in Gethsemane

• Featured content: There was I, waiting at the church

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #107

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Discussion over property creation guidelines
  • Open RfA: JurgenNL
• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Lydia will give an update on Wikidata at the WMF Metrics and Activities meeting
  • Indian Parliamentarians' Label-a-thon is taking place to add labels for all members of the Lok Sabha.
  • In May, edit-a-thons hounouring Adrianne Wadewitz are taking place to add more gender related information to Wikidata.
  • Wikidata office hour on May 19th at 17:00 UTC.
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Time and geocoordinates have been reworked and need some testing at test.wikidata.org. Found issues? Let Lydia know.
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: coordinates of the point of view, Rotten Tomatoes ID, depicts Iconclass representation, Iconclass notation, Helveticarchives ID, Slovenska biografija ID, BCU Ecrivainsvd, AUSTLANG code, ABS ASCL code
• Development
  • Worked on making it possible to use languages not supported by MediaWiki in Wikidata
  • We now also display statements with "no value" or "unknown value" on the client (when using the parser function or Lua)
  • Created another maintenance script to fix data integrity issues
  • Finishing touches on the first version of the new entity suggester
  • Simple queries are starting to work (If you want to see a demo attend the WMF Metrics and Activities meeting)
  • Worked more on making error messages localizable
  • Released Wikibase DataModel 0.7.4
• Monthly Tasks
  • Fix a format or content violation for the academic degree (P512) property
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · John F. Lewis 20:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Escrituras

This group of people (read noticeboard) are sabotaging articles for to justify a hypothesis that they believe is true. --Pownerus (talk) 01:38, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no idea what you are talking about with these articles. I was just responding to a complaint on the AN/I board and encouraged you to talk out your differences with other editors on the article talk pages. You should try to work things out rather than get into an edit war. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)