GOCE September activities

Reminders from the Guild of Copy Editors
 

A quick reminder of our current events:

  • The August 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the discussion and voting stage until midnight September 14 (UTC).
  • The September 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the submissions stage until midnight September 30 (UTC), when discussion and voting begin.
  • The September 2012 Backlog elimination drive is now underway! The event runs until midnight September 30 (UTC). The goal is to copy edit articles with the oldest tags and complete all requests placed before September. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who participates, with special awards given to the top five in the following categories: "Total articles", "Total words", "Total articles over 5,000 words", "Total articles tagged longest ago", and "Longest article". – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Message delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 04:30, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)

Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.

 
Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow

In this issue:

  • Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
  • Research: The most recent DR data
  • Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
  • Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
  • DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
  • Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
  • Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?

--The Olive Branch 19:25, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Family Research Council

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Family Research Council. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 16:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot’s recommendations. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet.

We have added information about the readership of the suggested articles using a Low/Medium/High scale which goes from Low   to High  .

Suggestions

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs   Cleanup
  By the People: The Election of Barack Obama     Homintern
  Jeremy Chatelain (bassist)     Autoland
  Sterling M. McMurrin     Honor Blackman
  Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians   Merge
  Necrophobia     Romanization of Georgian
  Peace Maker (pamphlet)     Birthright generation
  Gregory L. Smith     Japanese nationality law
  Don Carlos Smith   Add sources
  Timothy Clement-Jones, Baron Clement-Jones     History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Snowden v. Hughes     Plan of salvation
  Bernal v. Fainter     Dimitrios Ioannidis
  Molly Hagan   Wikify
  Byron Crawford (journalist)     Catholic prayers
  Blind item     Rogers v. Lodge
  Anderson Regional Airport     Georg August Stahl
  William Robert Wright   Expand
  Sampson Avard     Mormonism and Christianity
  Fred Barton     Mormon cosmology
  Via Paolo Sarpi     The Family: A Proclamation to the World

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 00:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion item added to wrong page (not my talk page)

(copied from User talk:SuggestBot)

Hi. The newest "Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot" posting was added incorrectly. Instead of being appended to my talk page, it was appended to a separate page (User:Richwales/Tabs/TalkBanner), which I transclude at the top of my talk page. Any idea why this happened? Can the problem please be fixed? I moved the posting to where it should have been put to begin with, but I don't want to have to keep doing that every time. — Richwales 01:07, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I had the configuration template in the wrong place. I've moved it onto my talk page now, so I assume the problem will not reoccur. — Richwales 05:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'm of course happy to hear you figured it out, sorry about the confusion it must've caused. Moving the template to your talk page does solve the issue, I checked our system just to be sure that it has picked it up correctly and it has, so next time it should be posted there. I've also made a note about this problem, it might be possible for us to easily resolve the template transclusions (e.g. that it in your case would resolve to your talk page and not the sub-page). Thanks for bringing it to my attention and also thanks for using SuggestBot, appreciate it! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 18:23, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
There are a lot of user page / talk page tools being used nowadays that, I assume, were developed in a simpler time when few users had anything more than a simple user page and a simple user talk page. So it didn't really surprise me when I realized that the SuggestBot template would always assume the postings should go on the same page as the template.
Along similar lines, I recently discovered (to my dismay) that most userboxes which invoke categories also assume they are always going to be put on a user's main user page (and not on a subpage). Since I realized it would be a hopeless task to get a zillion userbox authors to fix their creations to find the main user page, I ended up shuffling my subpages so as to make my separate userbox page into my main user page!
I suppose it's conceivable that someone out there just might be intentionally diverting SuggestBot postings into a separate subpage, rather than putting them in their main user talk page. So you might want to hold off on making that change — possibly check to see where other people are filing their SuggestBot postings, and talk to users who seem to be receiving them into a subpage to see what they really want. — Richwales 19:24, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
About 20% of our users intentionally put the template somewhere else than their user talk page. When I worked on implementing the support for the template we wanted it to work that way since some users had asked if it was possible to not have them posted on their user talk page. The only time the posts don't go to the same page is if you put it on your user page, then they end up (not surprisingly) on your user talk page. :)
If/when I look into it, I'll only try to figure out a way to handle nested transclusions, e.g. if the SuggestBot template is transcluded on "User:Example/Header", and then that header is transcluded on "User talk:Example" (similar to your set-up). In that case we should resolve the nested transclusion to "User talk:Example" and thus ignore "User:Example/Header". Not yet sure how feasible it is, will have to look more into it. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

GOCE mid-drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2012 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter
 

  • Participation: Out of 37 people signed up for this drive so far, 19 have copy-edited at least one article, about the same as the last drive. If you've signed up but haven't yet copy-edited any articles, every bit helps; if you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Join us!
  • Progress report: We're almost on track to meet our targets for the drive. Great work, guys. We have reduced our target group of articles—August, September, and October 2011—by about 44%, and the overall backlog has been reduced by 58 articles so far, to around 2600 articles. The biggest difference between this drive and the previous one is a stronger focus on large articles, so total word counts are still comparable.
  • Don't forget about the Copy Edit of the Month contests! Voting for the August contest has been extended through the end of the month. You don't have to make a submission to vote!
>>> Sign up now <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:18, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

ANI

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful responses on the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability thread on ANI, it sums up my thoughts on the dispute. Your comments have been informative, and I hope that Himesh84 listens to your advice on how to constructively edit Wikipedia. You've been particularly amiable and courteous throughout the whole discussion, and I strongly appreciate it.--SGCM (talk) 02:46, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I apologise. It irritated me that I was accused of being part of a conspiracy when I closed the DRN on the grounds that it was nearing the time when a review was needed and a consensus seemed to have been established. I was brought into the dispute via the DRN as an uninvolved editor. My involvement should have ceased after the DRN was closed, I have never edited any of the Sri Lankan articles prior to the DRN and have no position on the war. My further involvement in the dispute is unnecessary, and I believe that you will better handle it.--SGCM (talk) 05:41, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Just to be sure I'm not missing something here — I didn't say or do anything to make you feel I was criticizing you, did I? I certainly did not intend to do any such thing. — Richwales 05:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
No. It was nothing that you said, you've been cordial throughout the entire discussion. It was the conspiracy remarks by another editor that prolonged my involvement, and further involvement is unnecessary at this point, given my lack of familiarity with the subject. You've handled the dispute remarkably well, and my remark here only serves to encourage your continued hard work improving the neutrality and balance of the article.--SGCM (talk) 06:16, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot’s recommendations. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet.

We have added information about the readership of the suggested articles using a Low/Medium/High scale which goes from Low   to High  .

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Suggestions
Stubs   Cleanup
  Farrington v. Tokushige     Sandra Day O'Connor
  Armand Nicholi     Dearborn, Michigan
  Amboy Conference     Innocence of Muslims
  Bajadera   Merge
  Bennis v. Michigan     Index of Eastern Christianity-related articles
  The Obama Story     LDS Humanitarian Services
  William C. Conway     Obscenity
  Council of Friends   Add sources
  Andreas Bomba     Freedom of religion in the United States
  Danel W. Bachman     Yasin al-Qadi
  Brown v. New Jersey     Richard Abanes
  Rebaptism (Mormonism)   Wikify
  Miracles of Joseph Smith     The Rise of Mormonism
  True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints     Euro-Ukrainian alphabet
  Peggy Fletcher Stack     Orthodox-Catholic Church of America
  Old Georgian language   Expand
  Millennial Star     Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt
  Cyprus at the 1984 Winter Olympics     Adam–God doctrine
  United States Senate election in Vermont, 2012     David Rossi

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 00:28, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Nostalgia

I know you are not interested any more in this topic area, and am not asking you to return, but if you remember our "intervention-invasion" discussion on Cyprus and would like to see some interesting fact, only for nostalgy, you may take a look at the TP of the "invasion" article. All the best. --E4024 (talk) 10:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Good luck with this and related articles. — Richwales 05:29, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I have brought this a week ago to ANI and on the advice of an Admin, one of the editors has taken this issue to the DRN and it was resolved. But User:Himesh84 is constantly pushing his Original Research as a single person. Since you have already involved in the Sri Lanka related issues on defense.lk and Lies Agreed Upon, I need your involvement how to tackle this user who is so adamant to listen others and pushing his Original Research aggressively without heeding the Wikipedia guidelines.Sudar123 (talk) 09:56, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for bringing this issue to my attention, though I'm not sure if I can really help very much right now. I note that it's been brought back to WP:ANI, and for the moment, I think that's probably the best place to handle it at the moment. WP:DRN (as stated in the page's introduction) "is not a court with judges or arbitrators that issue binding decisions" — and my reading of the WP:DRN discussion makes me think that the request did not in fact lead to a consensus and should instead have been closed as failed "because it is unlikely that consensus will be reached".
I would point out that, per the edit warring policy, you shouldn't engage in edit warring even if you are convinced that you are in the right and someone else is in the wrong. An uninvolved third party could conceivably conclude here that both you and Himesh84 are equally guilty of edit warring (and, accordingly, could both be at risk of a short-term block to stop further disruption). It may be better for you to hold off on further reversions of his edits for a while, and see what happens at WP:ANI. Again, as I understand WP:DRN, it is not a binding process, and editors cannot automatically be blocked for being disruptive solely because they have refused to accept suggestions made at DRN.
I'll keep an eye on this situation in case there might be something I can do later. I will emphasize that I don't feel it appropriate for me to become deeply involved in the Sri Lanka situation. For what it may be worth, I would prefer to see an amicable resolution to the ongoing conflict — which is apparently continuing to simmer under the surface despite the formal end to the civil war — but I don't see any prospect of this happening anytime soon because people on both sides have deeply entrenched views and (what they consider to be) valid grievances which they are unwilling to let go of. I recognize that a middle-of-the-road position like this is unlikely to endear me to either side in this dispute, but so be it. — Richwales 16:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your advice and the concern. I will wait for the ANI result and won't get involved in Edit Warring hereafter.Sudar123 (talk) 04:53, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
I also replied to your comment. If you feel interest you can comment back --Himesh84 (talk) 10:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I saw your comments at WP:ANI, and the lengthy discussion which followed. I have also seen your latest comments on the article's talk page. Thank you for alerting me to this debate. — Richwales 15:54, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I put a reply to your comment in the article talk page. If you interested please comment back --Himesh84 (talk) 07:33, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I did add a comment of my own, a few days ago. — Richwales 16:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

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