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Wikipedia Ambassadors update

Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Wikipedia:Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

Please do these steps as soon as possible

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Wikipedia:Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

Communication and keeping up to date

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:

  1. The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
  2. The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
  3. If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the #wikipedia-en-ambassadors connect IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.
Ambassador training and resources

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:NWLawSeal.png)

  Thanks for uploading File:NWLawSeal.png. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Werieth (talk) 18:01, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:24, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

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Thanks for uploading File:NLaw Wordmark.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Surreply to User:Corkythehornetfan

@Corkythehornetfan: Now you are just being insulting and rude. I would be incredibly delighted if you would help productively edit the Northwestern Law article. I have been doing it primarily myself for over ten years, if you haven't guessed. I desperately want the the following heading removed:

If you can help with that, I would be much indebted to you. Regards IvyLaw (talk)

I'm done discussing this with you and I will only update the article if I see something that needs to be updated. Other that, best of luck to you on the article. I closed it on my talk page, which is why your last edit was reverted. If you'd like to take part in the discussion over the licensing of the file, the link can be found here. Again, the it's about the licensing of the file at this point. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 21:51, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
It looks like the debate re: the licensing of the seal is a done deal. There should have never been an issue regarding that. I specialize in adding and editing legal articles as well as analyzing intellectual property rights. IvyLaw (talk)

Maintenance template removal

You've mentioned above that you would like to remove {{Peacock}} from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Any editor can pretty much remove a maintenance template, as explained in WP:MTR, if they have fixed the problem indicated by the template or believe said problem no longer exists. If you prefer to not be so bold and are concerned about somebody just re-adding it, then you can discuss the template's removal on the article's talk page first per WP:CAUTIOUS to see if there's a consensus for removal, or even with the editor (as a courtesy) who seems to have originally added it. In addition, you could ask for opinions at a general discussion board like WP:THQ or something more specific like WP:NPOVN. You can even request that someone from one the WikiProjects whose scope the article falls under to reassess the article or ask for a peer review. The latter two are often a good way to gain insights into how an article can be further improved since different people tend to notice different things. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@Marchjuly:Thank you kindly for this information. I tried starting a task force without success, and then I e-mailed my network of Wikimedia Ambassadors, also without success. IvyLaw (talk)

Sourcing

Howdy, Ivylaw. I've had to remove references to mirrors many times from the article at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Some of them can be a little tricky; they deliberately try to obfuscate their origins while still abiding by our republication licenses. If it helps at all, I keep a cheat sheet here that's pretty simple. Kuru (talk) 18:20, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

@Kuru: My apologies. Did I inadvertantly add new ones today? I'm trying to fix all those after I noticed the problem. Thanks, IvyLaw (talk)
Not a problem; it was one of the obscure ones in the "World Heritage Encyclopedia" collection. He's got a business model around re-packaging our content through a bunch of domains. It's a bit of a mess. :) Kuru (talk) 18:30, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

October 2016

  Thank you for your contributions. It seems that you may have added public domain content to one or more Wikipedia articles, such as United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. You are welcome to import appropriate public domain content to articles, but in order to meet the Wikipedia guideline on plagiarism, such content must be fully attributed. This requires not only acknowledging the source, but acknowledging that the source is copied. There are several methods to do this described at Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Public-domain sources, including the usage of an attribution template. Please make sure that any public domain content you have already imported is fully attributed. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 20:24, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thank you for adding the proper source information and citations. — IvyLaw 🌿 (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Ivylaw. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 19:17, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:IDEA IP Law Review.png

 

Thanks for uploading File:IDEA IP Law Review.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:31, 31 August 2019 (UTC)