User talk:Catfish Jim and the soapdish/Archive 17
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The Signpost: 29 June 2018
- Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?
- Op-ed: What do admins do?
- News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania
- In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress
- Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page
- Featured content: New promotions
- Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed
- Traffic report: Endgame
- Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa
- Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry
- Humour: Television plot lines
- Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors
- From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
Administrators' newsletter – July 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).
Administrator changes
Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
Gogo Dodo
Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.
Technical news
- Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
- Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (
) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates. - IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
Miscellaneous
- Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Precious anniversary
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| Three years! |
|---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:20, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2018
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
Administrators' newsletter – August 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
- Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
- The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
The Signpost: 30 August 2018
- From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend
- In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles
- Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Special report: Wikimania 2018
- Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits
- Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work
- Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies
- Humour: Signpost editor censors herself
- From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words
Administrators' newsletter – September 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam
Interface administrator changes
- Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux
Guideline and policy news
- Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.
Technical news
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
- Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says
Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_textwhich is nowpage_title. - Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is
page_age.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
The Signpost: 1 October 2018
- From the editor: Is this the new normal?
- News and notes: European copyright law moves forward
- In the media: Knowledge under fire
- Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom
- Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile
- Gallery: A pat on the back
- Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?
- Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle
- Essay: Expressing thanks
Administrators' newsletter – October 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).
Administrator changes
- Justlettersandnumbers • L235
- Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter
Interface administrator changes
- Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333
Oversight changes
- Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
- There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
Technical news
- Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
- The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
- Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
- The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
- Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
- Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
To avoid Further Cluttering the Talk Page on the Picts
"It is not appropriate to call the political entity that was around in AD 1000 "Scotland" because it just wasn't called that."
In what language, by who, at what point? See this is your problem, and the problem I felt I had pretty clearly laid out, clearly I was not concise enough and for that I apologise. It wasn't called the Kingdom of Scotland, it also wasn't called Kingdom of Alba either, modern English was not spoken at this time. It certainly was never at any point in its history in any language of the time in nearby areas called the Kingdom of Alba, even in Gaelic, as I have alluded to it was called 'Rìoghachd na h-Alba', or at least is known as that in MODERN Gaelic, what is was called in the Gaelic of the time, I don't know.
It's absolutely appropriate to call it the Kingdom of Scotland from AT LEAST the point in king lists where it starts being labelled 'Alba' (as that literally means Scotland) because it was the same entity, in a political sense, as it was right up until 1707. While the culture/naming changed drastically throughout its history, the entity itself remained largely the same in various aspects. Same royal centres, coronation ceremonies such as at Scone, same royal dynasties and even similar rough geographical area.
I made a point that, as you have mentioned as well, some people are of the opinion that Alba may simply have been the word the Picts used for their own kingdom, which existed, at least in a historically valid sense, from at least 550 with Cennalath being recorded in corroborative historical sources (such as the Irish Annals). However I would not suggest actually calling Pictland Scotland in English without some kind of substantive academic consensus on the idea that Pictland to Alba was in fact merely a change in nomenclature as opposed to a change in political entity.
What I am asking for is CLEAR and CONSISTENT naming guidelines, okay? Dal Riata did not call their kingdom Scotland or themselves Scots/Scottish, so according to your own logic Dal Riata and its people should never at any point be referred to as Scots in any article unless discussing what they were at some point called in a certain language by certain people, correct? Pictland I am happy to remain calling Pictland/Pictish until some academic consensus on whether this theorized union between Pictland and Dal Riata ever actually happened or not, okay?
So we have clear naming consensus. Nobody is Scots/Scottish/Scotland until AT LEAST Alba (literally Scotland in Gaelic, again) starts appearing. Or to use your silly arbitrary academic/undergradutate consensus timeline. We have Picts and Dal Riatans, yes? Up until either the emergence of the name Alba OR the arbitrary point in time yourself and academics have arrived at.
As I already explained to you academics and undergraduates use the term Alba merely to describe a particular cultural/societal period in SCOTLAND, this is clearly stated in other articles, it has nothing to do with what it was known by AT THE TIME in languages WE ARE NOT SPEAKING/WRITING the article in.
Is this clearer to you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.178.222 (talk) 22:35, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Edit - The capitals were meant to emphasize but it just comes across as aggressive/obnoxious, so I apologize for the tone there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.178.222 (talk) 22:39, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Caledonians/Picts
There's also a case to be made, by the way, that the entity that today is known as Scotland basically orginated with the confederation known by the Romans as Caledonians. Both Caledonians and Picts were confederations of tribes in the same general area, Caledonians to Picts again seems to merely be a gradual change in nomenclature, what sources in diverse languages evolve the names of these groups into over time.
This would be original research though and would never suggest rewriting articles based upon it, just food for thought though.
I don't know what your strange obsession with siphoning off sections of Scotland's history and fabricating the notion that these represent individual kingdoms/entities with arbitrary nomenclature changes in sources of varying languages is, but... it's clearly "shared by academics", for no explainable reason really, other than the one I have already given you, which doesn't really apply to the format of Wikipedia. So that's cool. Are multilingual political entities several different entities? Is Switzerland 4 different countries for example because it has different names in 3 different languages? There are far better examples which display the absurdity of your position when applied on a standard scale to countries as well.
Your position is very strange, and leads to massive problems if applied universally, so why apply it to Scotland. It just makes no sense to me, to be honest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.178.222 (talk) 23:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely
- News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks
- In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias
- Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform
- Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring
- Technology report: Bots galore!
- Special report: NPP needs you
- Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six
- In focus: Alexa
- Gallery: Out of this world!
- Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion
- Humour: Talk page humour
- Opinion: Strickland incident
- From the archives: The Gardner Interview
Administrators' newsletter – November 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
- A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.
Technical news
- Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
- A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
- The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
- The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en
wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Reverting of the Caledonian page
Your reversion of the Caledonian page is tantamount to vandalism. This content you reverted is unsourced, uses only partial names without reference to what the expertise or validity to the contributed information has, is contradictory and therefore pointless, and does not rise to the level of encyclopedic content.
The title of the section on etymology should be titled "Etymology". This is the common word used in all Wikipedia articles. Titling the section simply "Name" is vague, too casual and confusing.
The footnote to someone simply referred to as "Zimmer" (as if this person is so renown that anyone reading the article should know who it is) is a dead link. The referenced source cannot be found with a Google search. Likewise, the use of the solo name "Moffat" without any previous mention of who this is or why this person's opinion is valid, is improper, confusing, but more importantly, only contradicts what was previously written, and is presented as such, rather than a list of differing viewpoints. An encyclopedia is not the place to argue differing opinions. The entire exercise of these contradicting statements is confusing to the reader. The referenced footnote for "Moffat" is nothing more than the name Moffat with a year and page number after it. Suffice to say, this also is considered a dead link.
Either allow the information to be cleared up in this section of the article or allow it to be removed. If not, you will be reported for vandalism.
- Have another look at the article history. You deleted a chunk of text that was sourced although the actual reference had been omitted from the bibliography. I reverted your edit and inserted the reference for Moffat, 2005:
- Moffat, Alistair (2005), Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History, London: Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0-500-05133-X
- It was extremely easy to find, particularly since he's a well known author of Scottish popular history books. Likewise, so was the reference for Zimmer, 2004... wasn't too difficult as it is included in the footnotes:
- Zimmer, Stefan (2004), "Some names and Epithets in «Culhwch ac Olwen»", Studi Celtici, vol. III, pp. 163–179
- He's a Professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn and has a long publication record. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 16:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Nomination for merging of Template:Infobox pictish stone
Template:Infobox pictish stone has been nominated for merging with Template:Infobox artifact. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Catfish Jim and the soapdish. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)