User talk:WereSpielChequers/Archive 18

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This is where I archive threads from 2012 that don't fit in my themed archives.

Invitation !!

Mumbai Photowalk II

Greetings from the Mumbai Wiki Community, We are organising a Photowalk for images/videos/audios related to Mumbai and Mumbaikars. Sign-up and other event details: Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II Recognition: Certificates will be awarded to prize winners. Best images will be featured in the respective article page on Wikipedia. Upload: Files have to be uploaded to Wikimedia commons through the photowalk portal using a customised version of the commons upload wizard. Or if you choose to upload directly to commons, the category "WTM" has to be added to the files. Venue: Oval Maidan (Forte,Mumbai) Date  : 28 January 2012 Time : 8am till 2pm followed by upload of images All files should be uploaders own work. Copyright expired and PD/CC images of others are not eligible. We invite you all to participate in the event. Please spread the word among your friends and share our Facebook group: -- Nikita (talk)

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Delete revision history

Hello! Today I was editing a page on Wikipedia. I closed the browsers window as usual and then opened it again when I felt like to edit the page again. When I was done I checked the revision history of that page and I could see an Ip-adress, my Ip-adress, I werent logged in the second time! I have been searching and reading all around wikipedia, how to delete revision history on an article because I dont want my Ip visible when I have an account. It seems that admins have a tool for this and could you help me with this, please? Best regards EN — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertnature (talk • contribs) 19:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure. You have two people working on it, just tell them the page and it is done. ϢereSpielChequers 19:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast answer, this concern my swedish wikipedia, where can I find those two persons

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertnature (talk • contribs) 20:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

OK the Swedish Wikipedia means you need a Swedish Wikipedia admin. Try asking here. Good luck ϢereSpielChequers 20:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool - things to do

Hey guys! A couple of highly important things to do over the next few weeks:

• We've opened a Request for Comment on several of the most important aspects of the tool, including who should be able to hide inappropriate comments. It will remain open until 20 January; I encourage everyone with an interest to take part :).
• A second round of feedback categorisation will take place in a few weeks, so we can properly evaluate which design works the best and keeps all the junk out :P. All volunteers are welcome and desired; there may be foundation swag in it for you!

Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Stipple engraving

Hi, I reviewed your DYK nomination of this article and I wonder if you need to do a quid pro quo . . . also I see a problem with the hook and the relevant sentence in the article. Letting you know. Yngvadottir (talk) 07:26, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. It isn't a self nom so quid pro quo doesn't apply. ϢereSpielChequers 12:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I rechecked the rules and saw that. I've taken Johnbod's comments and improvements to the article on board (this is not an area I know much about), asked him to reference the key sentence, and put up an ALT3 hook. Could you please add him to the credits if you know how? I don't, and he's distinctly improved the article's coverage. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:49, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

DYK for Stipple engraving

Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussions - other Wikis

Hi WSC. Do you happen to know if it is permitted to invite users of projects on other Wikipedias to comment on our RfCs? Such as for example the wording of the {{Please see}} invite template that we put on project talk pages..Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Apart from asking people to comment on templates targetted at visitors to here from their language, I'm not sure when this would involve approaching people with relevant interest as opposed to people who might have a similar view to yourself. So I'd sugget proceed with caution and only if you can justify the relevance and neutrality of the invitation. ϢereSpielChequers 14:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool

Hey guys; apologies for the belated nature of this notification; as you can probably imagine, the whole blackout thing kinda messed with our timetables :P. Just a quick reminder that we've got an office hours session tomorrow at 19:00 in #wikimedia-office, where we'll be discussing the results of the hand-coding and previewing some new changes. Hope to see you there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

A beer for you!

I'm signing off for a while. Too many stale projects I keep badgering people about. You know how to get me if you need. Keep the wheels turning, mate! Best wishes, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the beer, and just in time for breakfast as well! Sorry if you are feeling jaded, I can understand the stale projects business, I've got a heavy week in real life, but lets talk next week.ϢereSpielChequers 09:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

office hours

Another notification, guys; Article Feedback Tool office hours on Friday at 19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office :). If you can't attend, drop me a note and I'll send you the logs when we're done. We're also thinking of moving it to thursday at a later time: say, 22:00 UTC. Speak up if that'd appeal more :) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fæ

A request for comments has been opened on administrator User:Fæ. You are being notified due to your prior participation in ANI, RfA, or RfC discussions regarding this user. Thank you, MadmanBot (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at BigDwiki's talk page.
Message added 23:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

BigDwiki (talk) 23:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Mrtk56

hi its mrtk56. and by the way did i mintion <redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrtk56 (talk • contribs) 01:20, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mrtk56, nice to see you around. ϢereSpielChequers 15:46, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the welcome

Thanks for the kind welcome WSC, and for righting my attempt at righting. This is a fun and scary place, and it's good to know there are folks out there sweeping up the dust bunnies.

I've been sucked into this for one specific reason: to fix a page that is hopelessly awry. Hopefully I'll succeed without too much ado, but if not I might come begging for some hand-holding...

All the best JFdove (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC).

Disambiguation link notification

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Battle of Radzymin (1920)

Thanks for dropping by. Regarding your copyedit, I have one minor question. I was under the impression that proper names of military units are capitalised in English. Hence my use of 21st Wilno Rifles Regiment and not regiment. It's not an ordinary noun but rather part of a proper name of that unit, much like the word "corporation" is part of the proper name of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. //Halibutt 10:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Halibutt, as a non-military person I'm happy to defer to your specialist knowledge in that area. ϢereSpielChequers 16:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:AN and WP:ANI

Hey WCS, I noted this edit[1] and wanted to make sure you were aware of that the discussion had moved to here---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 23:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:AN

Hi WSC. Sorry for the revert, but it looks like some weird caching or edit conflicting was going on and you replied to a very old version of the page, wiping out some newer content. 28bytes (talk) 09:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Weird indeed, it may just be caching, but with that page at 365k it may be beyond my technology to participate there. It took me a while just to deal with edit conflicts and the very long wait for the edit to save may mean I take that noticeboard off my watchlist until I can upgrade my kit. ϢereSpielChequers 11:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania Panel

I've been thinking about going to Wikimania and to that end, I was considering putting a submission in to do a panel about the featured article process. But I see you've already got one. If I do go, would you be interested in having me as a panelist? Raul654 (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely delighted and honoured, though as you may have noticed our panel is supposed to be about the synergy between FA and GLAM rather than broadly about FA - so I'm hoping that things like the recent discussions about FA governance will be out of the panel's scope. I've been discussing it with Johnbod and we agreed that we needed a panel containing:

1. An FA writer who has been involved in GLAM events
2. Ditto but active in a language other than English
3. A DC GLAM person ideally with some experience of us and our FA work
4. Your good self or one of your current and former delegates.

We have the first two and have asked a DC contact with help re the third, and I was supposed to send you an invite. My apologies for not getting round to inviting you before you spotted that the Panel was being proposed. ϢereSpielChequers 20:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

You do know that I was one of the participants in the Wikipedia/GLAM discussions in Denver and that I administer Wikipedia's museum-l mailing list, right? Raul654 (talk) 21:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't even know there was a Museums mailing list, that sounds like it might have quite a bit of overlap with http://lists.wikimedia.ch/listinfo/cultural-partners. My own GLAM involvements have been fairly UK focussed, though I attended Mumbai and the last three wikimanias. John was at GLAM camp Amsterdam and the Dusseldorf event, Do you think you could find us a suitable person from a DC museum for the fourth slot on the panel? ϢereSpielChequers 23:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you want a museum employee, or a Wikipedian who has worked with a museum? If it's the latter, Dominic (the in-house Wikipedian at the National Archives) would be the obvious choice. Raul654 (talk) 00:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Ideally a museum employee. I'd really like to get the perspective of a GLAM person who isn't a Wikimedian but who has been involved in collaborations with us. ϢereSpielChequers 11:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for Mar 2

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Disambiguation link notification for March 10

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Thanks!

... for your get-well wishes over at New Page Triage. I will get an almost-instant fix (hopefully) when my neurosurgeon can fit me in to be re-built! Surgery is the only fix; I try to avoid the morphine unless I really need it (and, regardless of pain, try to have at least one morphine-free day in every three). I have three discs in a row, in my neck (C4, C5 and C6) which are basically FUBAR, and causing some serious compression on the nerve roots :o( (This affects motor function and sensation in the whole of my left arm and hand, and the upper part of the left hand side of my back.) Neuro-chappie fixed up a similar problem on the right side of my neck a few years back, just by drilling out bits of bone to give the nerves a bit more room, with close to 100% success, but the left side of my neck needs fixes in a lot more places, so it will be a much bigger op. Eventually, at least those three discs will need to be replaced with artificial ones, but we're holding off on replacements for as long as possible as the technology is progressing so rapidly that the longer we wait, the better artificial ones we'll get. But hey! Half the discs in my neck seem to be just fine! Hehe! Pesky (talk) 11:14, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

You are being discussed at . . .

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Suggestion_for_new_crats.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 521,630,598) 23:58, 10 March 2012 (UTC) {{Talkback}}

{{You've got mail}}

help triage some feedback

Hey guys.

I appreciate this isn't quite what you signed up for, but I figured as people who are already pretty good at evaluating whether material is useful or not useful through Special:NewPages, you might be interested :). Over the last few months we've been developing the new Article Feedback Tool, which features a free text box. it is imperative that we work out in advance what proportion of feedback is useful or not so we can adjust the design accordingly and not overwhelm you with nonsense.

This is being done through the Feedback Evaluation System (FES), a tool that lets editors run through a stream of comments, selecting their value and viability, so we know what type of design should be promoted or avoided. We're about to start a new round of evaluations, beginning with an office hours session tomorrow at 18:00 UTC. If you'd like to help preemptively kill poor feedback, come along to #wikimedia-office and we'll show you how to use the tool. If you can't make it, send me an email at okeyeswikimedia.org or drop a note on my talkpage, and I'm happy to give you a quick walkthrough in a one-on-one session :).

All the best, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

User script listing cleanup project

I'm leaving this message for known script authors, recent contributors to Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts, and those who've shown interest in user scripts.

This scripts listing page is in dire need of cleanup. To facilitate this, I've created a new draft listing at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts cleanup. You're invited to list scripts you know to be currently working and relevant. Eventually this draft page can replace the current scripts listing.

If you'd like to comment or collaborate on this proposal, see the discussion I started here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts#Scripts listing cleanup project. Thanks! Equazcion ^(talk) 02:56, 25 Mar 2012 (UTC)

Wrong Title

The article "bombing hitlers dam" has the wrong title. It is supposed to be called "Bombing hitlers dam's. Mrtk56 (talk) 01:49, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, good spot. I've renamed it to Bombing Hitler's Dams as that is the name on the Nova site. ϢereSpielChequers 08:46, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} Sarah (talk) 15:04, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool updates

Hey all. My regular(ish) update on what's been happening with the new Article Feedback Tool.

Hand-coding

As previously mentioned, we're doing a big round of hand-coding to finalise testing :). I've been completedly bowled over by the response: we have 20 editors participating, some old and some new, which is a new record for this activity. Many thanks to everyone who has volunteered so far!

Coding should actively start on Saturday, when I'll be distributing individualised usernames and passwords to everyone. If you haven't spoken to me but would be interested in participating, either drop me a note on my talkpage or email okeyeswikimedia.org. If you have spoken to me, I'm very sorry for the delay :(. There were some toolserver database issues beyond our control (which I think the Signpost discussed) that messed with the tool.

New designs and office hours

Our awesome designers have been making some new logos for the feedback page :) Check out the oversighter view and the monitor view to get complete coverage; all opinions, comments and suggestions are welcome on the talkpage :).

We've also been working on the Abuse Filter plugin for the tool; this will basically be the same as the existing system, only applied to comments. Because of that, we're obviously going to need slightly different filters, because different things will need to be blocked :). We're holding a special office hours session tomorrow at 22:00 UTC to discuss it. If you're a regex nut, existing abuse filter writer, or simply interested in the feedback tool and have suggestions, please do come along :).

I'm pretty sure that's it; if I've missed anything or you have any additional queries, don't hesitate to contact me! Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello WereSpielChequers. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 11:53, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

question

I noticed that you had posted on a users talk page, and I was wondering if you knew what was going on here. I figure if you're already up to speed on the matter then you may be able to make a more informed and objective judgement. Right now it looks to me like WebTV3 is looking to get himself blocked or something. I hate to do things like that if he's trying in good faith though. — Ched :  ?  21:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ched, I agree with the analysis. I feel like I'm talking him of the ledge but it isn't looking hopeful. ϢereSpielChequers 22:12, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi WSC - I guess it's moot now: link IDK. Oh well. Perhaps they are young and in time they'll return in a better frame of mind. — Ched :  ?  22:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

• Just wanted to say a public thanks. I appreciate all you do. — Ched :  ?  21:05, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day

Happy First Edit Day, WereSpielChequers, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 00:21, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 12

Hi. When you recently edited Musashino, Tokyo, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Masayuki Mori (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.

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Wikimania Admin panel

Hello WereSpielChequers,

This is a reminder to all indicated participants for my Wikimania admin panel that I need your answers to the questions by next Wednesday (the 18th). If this is not a good time for you, and need a little extra time, please let me know by talkpage or by email as soon as possible. If you know anyone who still would like to participate and meets the criteria of being an administrator and their wiki not already taken, please let them know as this is the final week to signup. If you have any questions, please stop by my enwiki talkpage linked in the signature. I also still need to know your prefered contact page. :) Thanks. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 02:10, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thanks for stepping in to defuse the drama on my talk page this weekend. It looks like the matter is being resolved at ANI, and the user is currently on a 48-hour block. I appreciate your efforts to gently explain that staffer != overlord of the wikis, though I'm not sure the message got through :-/ Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

No problem, deleting pages without warnings is one of my personal bugbears and has been at least since NEWT. I've tried more than once to make informing the author as much part of the process as it is when you file an ANI report on someone, but there is a blocking minority who don't want to overburden our more deletionist taggers. I thought we had it fixed with a bot, but that isn't guaranteed and slips up when the page gets deleted before the bot has time to see it. So I was inclined to try and help that chap, but ultimately perhaps he was a bit too shouty for here. ϢereSpielChequers 21:36, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Re :Welcome

Hi! thank you for the welcome message. Althoug I seldom login in en.wiki.. See you here around...--Salkaner (talk) 11:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Short and curly

Oh, that made me wince... well caught ! Haploidavey (talk) 21:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome! I keep an eye on that particular word and run a check on it every week or so. Usually I pick up a couple of vandalisms and a couple of typos, This weeks haul was four typos and no vandalism - the teenagers of today are just too well behaved. ϢereSpielChequers 21:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

100K Club

Just the other day the # of 100K editors increased to 160. Usually the newest member is easy to discern...but, for some reason, I can't figure out who it is. The last award/barnstar I gave out was to Editor:Jj98. At the time he was #159. I keep track of the awarding process at User:Buster7/Sandbox-100K Awards. Please let me know as soon as possible. I like to make sure the newest member is properly acknowledged. Thanks. ```Buster Seven Talk 05:43, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Buster7, glad to see that's still going, and the numbers will increase as I'm expecting that a whole pack of editors with over 90k will reach the 100k mark this year, I predict there will be 200 100k editors by next Xmas. As for the current anomaly, look for third place last week. A retired bot was deflagged so came into the list straight into third place, it should drop out again in next week's run. If you come across any yourself feel free to update the unflagged bot list, but take care to check if they are really bots as we have some longstanding editors who picked usernames containing bot before that was reserved to bot accounts - including three editors in the top 5k. ϢereSpielChequers 08:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool office hours

Hey WereSpielChequers/Archive 18; just a quick note to let you know that we'll be holding an Office Hours session at 18:00 UTC (don't worry, I got the time right ;p) on 4th May in #wikimedia-office. This is to show off the almost-finished feedback page and prep it for a more public release; I'm incredibly happy to have got to this point :). Hope to see you there! Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:49, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sant Joan C.E.

Hi, Thanks for the corrections on the wiki i've to improve mu english. Thanks a lot :)Ynthem (talk) 09:20, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hola Ynthem, You are very welcome. I wasn't sure what to do with "the dismiss", were you referring to relegation or bankruptcy? ϢereSpielChequers 11:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

It's refered for a bankruptcy and disappearance at same time. Maybe "dismiss" it's not the most correct word. You win here. Ynthem (talk) 07:27, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 28

Hi. When you recently edited Yanshanian Tectonic Period, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Yanshan (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.

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That one will have to do as the article doesn't specify which Yanshan it is. Sorry. ϢereSpielChequers 23:55, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Research project relating to the Wikimedia Strategy Process

Dear WereSpielChequers,

My name is Gordon Mueller-Seitz and my colleague, Leonhard Dobusch, and I are currently engaged in a research project relating to the Wikimedia Strategy Process that took place in 2009-2010. Our key interest is to explore how this strategy process actually unfolded.

In this connection, we started with interviewing WM personnel and promoters such as Eugene Kim in a first step. By now we want to broaden our insights in a second step and we would like to kindly inquire if it was possible to make a short telephone interview with you concerning the WM strategy process? If yes, we would very appreciate it if you could suggest a date/time that would suit you and the telephone number we could reach you on.

Thank you very much for a brief reply. We look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Gordon and Leonhard

--
Dr. Gordon Mueller-Seitz
Freie Universitaet Berlin, Chair for Inter-firm Cooperation
School of Business & Economics, Dept of Management
Boltzmannstrasse 20, 14195 Berlin (Germany)<br / 82.113.98.169 (talk) 11:24, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Holger Salin

Hello,

I would like to thank you for making small changes to my new articles. I know I'm good in English except grammar, so I appreciate your changes much to make it look better for Wikipedia Rakuten06 (talk) 14:51, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rakuten06, you are very welcome, thanks for writing those articles. ϢereSpielChequers 14:54, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool - notes and office hours

Hey guys! Another month, another newsletter.

First off - the first bits of AFT5 are now deployed. As of early last week, the various different designs are deployed on 0.1 percent of articles, for a certain "bucket" of randomly-assigned readers. With the data flooding in from these, we were able to generate a big pool of comments for editors to categorise as "useful" or "not useful". This information will be used to work out which form is the "best" form, producing the most useful feedback and the least junk. Hopefully we'll have the data for you by the end of the week; I can't thank the editors who volunteered to hand-code enough; we wouldn't be where we are now without you.

All this useful information means we can move on to finalising the tool, and so we're holding an extra-important office hours session on Friday, 6th January at 19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. If you can't make it, drop me a note and I'll be happy to provide logs so you can see what went on - if you can make it, but will turn up late, bear in mind that I'll be hanging around until 23:00 UTC to deal with latecomers :).

Things we'll be discussing include:

• The design of the feedback page, which will display all the feedback gathered through whichever form comes out on top.
• An expansion of the pool of articles which have AFT5 displayed, from 0.1 percent to 0.3 (which is what we were going to do initially anyway)
• An upcoming Request for Comment that will cover (amongst other things) who can access various features in the tool, such as the "hide" button.

If you can't make it to the session, all this stuff will be displayed on the talkpage soon after, so no worries ;). Hope to see you all there! Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:49, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Alert message on biography page

Hello,

I am trying to get rid of the alert on top of Regan Cameron's page. I have added verifiable citations where it was asked and yet the alert is still there. What else can be done to remove this?

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 53025fp (talk • contribs)

Hi 53025fp, I'm afraid it is a manual process and can take a bit of time. But having looked at the first link it does look overly similar to the source; Please remember that we write our own words - citations are to show where we found facts, not where we copied sentences from. Also I'm not sure that all of the sources that the article currently uses are ones that we would count as reliable. If in doubt ask yourself whether the source you are citing is has a factchecking process behind it. ϢereSpielChequers 17:37, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Ad hominem and Delicious Carbuncle

WereSpielChequers, in my opinion, your comment implying Delicious Carbuncle is motivated by homophobia in engaging in dispute resolution ("But running an RFC on a gay editor whilst simultaneously campaigning against them on a site that allows Homophobia, and doing so after you've posted their phone number seems to me in breach of our policies on Outing and Canvassing.") I have listed in this section in relation to the Fae RfC constitute an ad hominem attack. Since ad hominem arguments attack the character of the person (in an attempt to damage the credibility of their message), I believe such debate tactics violate WP:NPA. Also, an ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy, and thus provides little help in addressing the validity of the issues raised in the statement of dispute. Please refrain from ad hominem arguments in the future. Thank you. Cla68 (talk) 11:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I have raised the issue of this "warning", which Cla68 is spamming to multiple editors, at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Cla68 now posting "warnings" to editors. Please feel free to comment on this issue on that page. Prioryman (talk) 11:13, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Cla68 welcome to my talkpage. I disagree with your interpretation of my statement. I mentioned two policies that I considered to have been breached, Outing and Canvassing. The Outing breach seemed to me quite clear, the phone number, real name and postal address had been acquired by sleuthing rather than by it being published on wiki. As for the reference to the subject of the request for comment being Gay, and the relevance of the site where this took place being rather more tolerant of Homophobia than we are, well one of the things that differentiates canvassing from publicising is the neutrality of the audience. Asking a bunch of editors who are interested in Martial Arts whether they think that a particular Martial Arts competition is notable or even genuine can be done within the rules and spirit of our canvassing policy; Asking a bunch of editors who've argued for deletion in a similar debate would not. Criticising a Gay Wikipedian and telling people you are going to launch a request for comment on him on a site whose community includes Homophobes is IMHO encouraging a non-neutral audience to participate in a discussion, and therefore a breach of our rules on canvassing. From my experience of that site I'd be suspicious of any intervention on this site that was planned there, but one this struck me as more egregious because some of them would be more prejudiced against Gay Wikipedian admins than they would be against someone who was only one or two of those things. Hope that clears things up for you. Feedback welcome from you and others, I don't remember ever previously being accused of making a personal attack on this site, I do take your criticism seriously and I'd be interested in your view on this as well as the views of others. ϢereSpielChequers 16:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear WereSpielChequers,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 22:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Special report

Thanks for the look-through, I should be able to finish it soon. ResMar 16:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. My own views both of the nature of the NPP problem and of the patrollers are very different to those in your article. I've made one point on the talkpage, and I may make more. ϢereSpielChequers 18:29, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Well that's understandable I suppose; personally I have no opinion, and didn't even know this was a problem until I came up and went through the literature, so to speak. ResMar 18:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

OK two things you might want to look at The last few months have been marked by a degradation of the process. and Coupled by a need to "get it right the first time," I'm not convinced that NPP is any worse now than it has been for years - back in 2009 we often had the queue run to thirty days and some articles reach the end of the queue unpatrolled. So there has been a shortage of patrollers for years. We've reduced that by running drives to appoint Autopatrollers, and there are other ideas that would help. But many of them require changes to be made by the Foundation. ϢereSpielChequers 19:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

War of the three kingdoms

Thanks for the copy edits to Western Association (Scotland)‎ and William Govan‎. If you have time the related articles Western Remonstrance and Archibald Strachan would probably benefit from similar treatment. -- PBS (talk) 23:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Happy to do so, I was eradicating a particular typo when I found those two but stayed to read the rest of the articles. My knowledge of Scottish history is woefully sketchy with a huge gap between Montrose and Darien, and one day I'd like to really learn more. ϢereSpielChequers 00:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Me too! I only got involved in these because I wanted to clean up the "Others" section in List of regicides of Charles I. It had been copied with minimal alterations from David Plant's "British-civil-wars: The Regicides. The question that needed answering was "why was the Marquis of Argyll in the list?" This lead to finding out about the Scottish Restoration. This lead me to the men executed for treason at the Restoration in Scotland, and that lead to these articles to try to make sense of the politics of 1650 north of the boarder (as it was the events during 1649-1651 and their part in them that marked these men as traitors and of course it was Restoration politics that determined which of them should be hanged). I'm glad that at least one other person found them more interesting than watching paint dry! -- PBS (talk) 03:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} v/r - TP 14:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Hi WereSpiel. You are one of the first "celebrity wikipedians" to comment on our ideas, so it's exciting. Your reputation proceeds you, and it's a good reputation :) I'd invite you to edit the essay in ways you suggested (if you think it merits your time).

More generally, it's been suggested that we pick "one" recommendation to focus on. For me, the cosmetic changes seem more difficult (ala bikeshed). My main insight is that this is going to take serious leadership to fix. We need a "safe space" where so long as contributors follow a VERY simple unambiguous "terms of service", their contributions are never deleted. Their contributions may not be incorporated in to Wikipedia proper, but they will exist at least in that "safe space", so long as they are legal, moral, and a good-faith attempt at a positive contribution.

I recognize you as the the most 'senior' Wikipedian on site, and I ask your advice: If we were to create a "safespace", how should it be implemented? As a namespace in EnWP? As a new project under WMF? As a unaffiliated projects?

Or is the idea of a "safe space" just the wrong way to think about this? --HectorMoffet (talk) 01:55, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Hector, firstly I wouldn't describe myself as the most 'senior' Wikipedian on site, whether you measure seniority by age, tenure, Featured content or even wiki hierarchy I'm not really senior. I'm just one of over 700 admins here, and as far as audited content is concerned I'm probably not in the top 700. That said I have been heavily involved in the discussions about our deletion processes. If by legal moral and a goodfaith attempt at a positive contribution you accept that overly promotional stuff isn't considered a positive contribution, plagiarism isn't considered moral and copyvio isn't legal then you already have a safe space in your userspace. You can develop pretty much any article in your own sandbox other than an unreferenced biography of a living person. We could broaden that further by the simple expedient of allowing people a draft pace in their userspace which only they have access to but where wikimarkup works. Categories and links would need to be one way - you can link out but not inwards from the rest of the project. What I doubt would be acceptable to the community or the WMF would be an area that was reserved for logged in editors.

My own preference is to keep things simple, especially for newbies and to try to work with the grain of the community. My belief is that articles belong in Mainspace, but that we need a way to make mainspace more welcoming to goodfaith contributors (this will of course leave a gap for articles that are goodfaith but insufficiently notable). Currently the most promising development is at mediawiki:New_Page_Triage as the Foundation has assigned developers to improve the newpage patrol process and we can make quite fundamental suggestions at this stage in the process. My own preference is that all unpatrolled articles are automatically {{NOINDEX}} and that newpage patrol shifts from a binary system to triage. New pages can be tagged for deletion or marked either "goodfaith" or "ready for mainspace" and the "goodfaith" ones would then have rather longer to be improved and collaborated on before being patrolled as ready for mainspace. I suspect this would give you something fairly close to your safespace idea, but it wouldn't exclude IP editors from the process and crucially it would be less snarky in the way it treated the newbies whilst at the same time being more efficient at screening out the badfaith stuff. ϢereSpielChequers 09:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage engagement strategy released

Hey guys!

I'm dropping you a note because you filled out the New Page Patrol survey, and indicated you'd be interested in being contacted about follow-up work. This is to notify you that we've finally released both the initial documentation about the project and also the engagement strategy, which sets out how we plan to work with the community on this. Please give both a read, and leave any comments or suggestions you have on the talkpage, on my talkpage, or in my inbox - okeyeswikimedia.org.

It's awesome to finally get to start work on this! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:49, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for advice

There is an old issue tangentially related to new page triage (in that I think the articles in question were from a review queue) that I'd like to ask for your advice on. The latest post I've made about this issue that I want to ask you about is here. It will take a bit of digging and clicking through links to get the full picture (best summary is here), but essentially there is a list of over 3000 articles that may (or may not) need re-reviewing after some of the reviewing the first time round was found to be not ideal (some copyvio got missed and the editor who passed these thousands of unreviewed articles said they didn't know they needed to check for copyvio). Unfortunately, since then, a combination of various factors meant not very much got done, and I get the feeling that even now getting anything else done will be very slow. My question is whether it is worth trying to get all those articles to be re-reviewed again or not, or whether it is best to trust any mistakes to be found eventually? A mid-way option would be spot-checks to see whether there is a big problem or not. For some of the articles, some of the problems will have been fixed or tagged. For others, the problems will still exist. For still others, there will not have been any problem in the first place. What would you suggest be done here? Carcharoth (talk) 01:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

There is a general issue here and a specific one. The general issue is how much do we expect people to check before marking an article as patrolled or a new article as reviewed? I'm not familiar with AFC, but at newpage patrol we focus on stuff you can see in the article, Wikipedia:Newpages encourages people to check for copyvio in "articles that show suspicion of text copied from other sources should be checked manually." I suspect that different patrollers operate very different standards as to how much should be checked before marking an article as patrolled. Personally I would rather that all new articles were at least checked for G10 and G3 than have some checked to a high standard and others not at all, if we can make NPP more efficient and maybe more user friendly then in my view the time to raise minimum standards is when the new higher standard is attainable. As for your specific example, do a few spot checks and see how big the problem is, if the problems are as rare as in some of our other huge backlogs like unreferenced pages then I'd be inclined not to target those pages. If the problems are more frequent then maybe it is worth targeting. ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. Would you be able to suggest where I could ask for help in doing spot-checks on that list? Ideally (in general) there would be a way to flag what revision of an article was checked for copyvio, as if that doesn't happen then you have to assume that an article is suspect when you start work on it and it is not good when people do good-faith work on an existing article without realising that they are building on top of a copyright violation. Carcharoth (talk) 14:50, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Page Triage newsletter

Hey guys!

Thanks to all of you who have commented on the New Page Triage talkpage. If you haven't had a chance yet, check it out; we're discussing some pretty interesting ideas, both from the Foundation and the community, and moving towards implementing quite a few of them :).

In addition, on Tuesday 13th March, we're holding an office hours session in #wikimedia-office on IRC at 19:00 UTC (11am Pacific time). If you can make it, please do; we'll have a lot of stuff to show you and talk about, including (hopefully) a timetable of when we're planning to do what. If you can't come, for whatever reason, let me know on my talkpage and I'm happy to send you the logs so you can get an idea of what happened :). Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage newsletter

Hey all!

Thanks to everyone who attended our first office hours session; the logs can be found here, if you missed it, and we should be holding a second one on Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. I hope to see you all there :).

In the meantime, I have greatly expanded the details available at Wikipedia:New Page Triage: there's a lot more info about precisely what we're planning. If you have ideas, and they aren't listed there, bring them up and I'll pass them on to the developers for consideration in the second sprint. And if you know anyone who might be interested in contributing, send them there too!

Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Special:NewPages bugs

here you pointed out the two existing bugs, which are being fixed :). Any chance you can point me to the specific bugs so I can poke the bugmeister to say "we're fixing these, these should probably be closed up"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Sent you an email

• A gentle reminder sir :) Wifione ^Message 15:51, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

A big NPT update

Hey! Big update on what the developers have been working on, and what is coming up:

coding

• Fixes for the "moved pages do not show up in Special:NewPages" and "pages created from redirects do not show up in Special:NewPages" bugs have been completed and signed off on. Unfortunately we won't be able to integrate them into the existing version, but they will be worked into the Page Triage interface.
• Coding has been completed on three elements; the API for displaying metadata about the article in the "list view", the ability to keep the "patrol" button visible if you edit an article before patrolling it, and the automatic removal of deleted pages from the queue. All three are awaiting testing but otherwise complete.

All other elements are either undergoing research, or about to have development started. I appreciate this sounds like we've not got through much work, and truthfully we're a bit disappointed with it as well; we thought we'd be going at a faster pace :(. Unfortunately there seems to be some 24-72 hour bug sweeping the San Francisco office at the moment, and at one time or another we've had several devs out of it. It's kind of messed with workflow.

Stuff to look at

We've got a pair of new mockups to comment on that deal with the filtering mechanism; this is a slightly updated mockup of the list view, and this is what the filtering tab is going to look like. All thoughts, comments and suggestions welcome on the NPT talkpage :). I'd also like to thank the people who came to our last two office hours sessions; the logs will be shortly available here.

I've also just heard that the first functional prototype for enwiki will be deployed mid-April! Really, really stoked to see this happening :). We're finding out if we can stick something up a bit sooner on prototype.wiki or something.

I appreciate there may be questions or suggestions where I've said "I'll find out and get back to you" and then, uh. not ;p. I sincerely apologise for that: things have been a bit hectic at this end over the last few weeks. But if you've got anything I've missed, drop me a line and I'll deal with it! Further questions or issues to the usual address. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

4 Million Pool

At the current rate it looks like you are going to win the Four Million Pool. I really can't wait to see how it turns out! Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)^[1] 00:09, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Cool, just hope people won't think I have a COI when declining incorrect speedies in the next few months ϢereSpielChequers 07:29, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hehehe Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)^[1] 09:34, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

you would have to be declining a WHOLE lot of speedies to alter the flow enough to game the system. good luck, though:) (Mercurywoodrose)50.193.19.66 (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Nice scripts

I just came across your monobook.js and found some wonderful scripts there. Actually, I think you asked me to have a look at it as soon as my RfA got over; I must learn to take your advice! Lynch7 15:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Glad you find them useful, I should point out that I didn't write any of them, but I do try and encourage others to use them as they do make some things much easier. ϢereSpielChequers 13:22, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Pedro's recall criteria

You may care to reconsider your position.[2] Malleus Fatuorum 03:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh **** that doesn't look good. I don't know what if anything provoked that comment, but no-one deserves to be described like that. I'm afraid that I'm not around sufficiently for the next 72 hours to look into this, but I hope to be back on Friday and will look into this then. ϢereSpielChequers 08:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

It was the result of fallout from this RfA. Malleus Fatuorum 13:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• Who doesn't like a good Malledrama!--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

  If you're referring to me then don't. Malleus Fatuorum 20:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Milowent, from what I can see Malleus is the victim in this, so unless I'm missing something Malledrama is a tad inappropriate here. ϢereSpielChequers 23:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Malleus can dish it out better than anyone I know and I fully enjoy it when I see it. He can surely never be a victim, its aMalleus Fact.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 00:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I have dished nothing out in this case. But the hypocrisy I've seen in some of the comments made about this issue, which basically boil down to "well, it's only Malleus, anyone can say anything they like about him", really does put the civility policy into its proper context. Malleus Fatuorum 00:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Malleus, I've suggested to Pedro that he owes you an apology for that edit summary. Pedro hasn't edited in four days now, and seems to be taking a little break. I'm not intending to take this further at this moment in time. Your perspective on this is not an unreasonable one, and you might well wonder why at this stage I'm only asking for Pedro to apologise. It isn't because I'm in a ""well, it's only Malleus, anyone can say anything they like about him" camp, and I can promise you that is not how I think of you. I suppose its more that as an admin I model myself on Mr. Barrowclough rather than Mr. Mackay. ϢereSpielChequers 13:05, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

A whole new perspective! I hope you will let us see you in uniform one day. Johnbod (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Now that would be a perfect one for a fancy dress party! Maybe at a UK Wikimania? ϢereSpielChequers 17:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

New Pages update

Hey WereSpielChequers/Archive 18 :). A quick update on how things are going with the New Page Triage/New Pages Feed project. As the enwiki page notes, the project is divided into two chunks: the "list view" (essentially an updated version of Special:NewPages) and the "article view", a view you'll be presented with when you open up individual articles that contains a toolbar with lots of options to interact with the page - patrolling it, adding maintenance tags, nominating it for deletion, so on.

On the list view front, we're pretty much done! We tried deploying it to enwiki, in line with our Engagement Strategy on Wednesday, but ran into bugs and had to reschedule - the same happened on Thursday :(. We've queued a new deployment for Monday PST, and hopefully that one will go better. If it does, the software will be ready to play around with and test by the following week! :).

On the article view front, the developers are doing some fantastic work designing the toolbar, which we're calling the "curation bar"; you can see a mockup here. A stripped-down version of this should be ready to deploy fairly soon after the list view is; I'm afraid I don't have precise dates yet. When I have more info, or can unleash everyone to test the list view, I'll let you know :). As always, any questions to the talkpage for the project or mine. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:25, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Appreciate your patience

In regard to the DC thread, your answers have been thoughtfully considered and polite. It's much appreciated. -- Avanu (talk) 16:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, though hopefully almost any Wikipedian would be the same. I often leave the Drama boards for weeks at a time, most of the rest of the pedia is far more positive. ϢereSpielChequers 17:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania 2012 GLAM panel

I see the GLAM panel proposal got rejected. That's disappointing. Raul654 (talk) 02:56, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and I'd thought the intention was to have GLAM as a major theme for this year. I might put in a submission for Hong Kong next year, everything I've suggested or been involved in has been rejected for this one. But thanks for your support, and apologies you didn't hear about it from me first. ϢereSpielChequers 06:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was a pity too; there is really very little on article content at all in the programme so far. Johnbod (talk) 13:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Between the rejected scholarship applications (three or four over the past few years), the rejected panel here, and my new job, the chances that I'm going to make it to Wikimania at all this year have decreased substantially. Raul654 (talk) 21:15, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Oof, well if even you are getting turned down for scholarships then I'm in no position to grumble. Perhaps we should propose an alternative to Wikimania, a conference focussed on content creation and improvement? ϢereSpielChequers 23:03, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

If London ever gets it, that would be a good opportunity to make content king, for 3 days. Johnbod (talk) 23:43, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I might even consider attending that one myself. Malleus Fatuorum 00:14, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

That would be good, would you be interested in making a presentation or running a masterclass? One possibility would be to have a fringe to Wikimania, with Hoxne challenge type events at various Museums, and maybe a photo session at Kew gardens or the V&A. Those sort of events need a lot more time than the presentations and panels of the core three days, but it would be a waste to have an event in London and not do that sort of thing, especially as a lot of international visitors will actually come for more than three days. I'd also like to see more cross fertilisation ideas - when I presented the Death anomalies project last year I got four languages signing up during or just after Wikimania, and I think some of those who signed up in the Spring were people who'd seen the submission idea on the draft program. There is a real risk that the different language versions will drift apart, and it would be good to at least discuss those differences. For example there may be others who've already hit our problems with DYK and found a different solution. ϢereSpielChequers 01:04, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd be prepared to consider it, but I doubt that either Jimbo or the WMF would like to hear what I had to say. Malleus Fatuorum 01:21, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Each Wikimania creates its own program committee, and ultimately they set the agenda, not Jimbo or the WMF. So there should be room for a thought provoking and controversial presentation. ϢereSpielChequers 09:19, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Mtotin

Would you help with this user? They've created Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Trauma Plate, and the submission has been rejected by two users. They're claiming that this page is different than ceramic plate, that ceramic plate can be a type of trauma plate. I was hoping you could help me provide some solutions to this user. The AfC page has also be slated for a third review. SwisterTwister talk 20:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Sister Twister, thanks for asking, but this isn't my subject area at all, Reading the two articles my head can certainly see his point, ceramic plates sound like trauma plates of a particular material. But as a fullyfledged patchouli smoking hemp clad hippy, my heart isn't in trying to sort this one out. May I suggest a request at Wikiproject Milhist? They are likely to have interested and knowledgeable editors who know about contemporary military body armour. ϢereSpielChequers 20:35, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage prototype released

Hey WereSpielChequers! We've finally finished the NPT prototype and deployed it on enwiki. We'll be holding an office hours session on the 16th at 21:00 in #wikimedia-office to show it off, get feedback and plot future developments - hope to see you there! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:35, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Illuminated Manuscript rogue student group

As I've just archived it, I'm sending the link to the discussion on my talk about thing we discussed, just FYI. Any other ones spotted by anyone would be very welcome. User_talk:Johnbod/22#Congrats.21_and_manuscripts_MANUSCRIPT_CLEANUP

Johnbod (talk) 16:51, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism experiment

I read the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive819#Vandalism experiment. You made the comment:

The ridiculous thing is that we have heaps of vandalism available if anyone wants to study it. All you need do is take a random batch of edits from a year ago, check which were good and which were vandalism then track through to see which have been resolved.

I agree with you that this would be more ethical than actually doing vandalism and measuring it. I also agree that it would be a valid method of study.

However, in experimental design, what you have described would be known as a "pseudo-experiment", not an "experiment".--Toddy1 (talk) 04:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I assume you mean my alternative rather than the original? If so what would be the problem for a researcher if they were to measure using actual data rather than creating data? In my view it would be a form of non-invasive testing, more ethical and avoids the pitfalls of not necessarily looking like the real thing. For example, we are more effective at detecting vandalism by vandals who go on a spree and vandalise multiple articles than we are at detecting vandals who hit one article and then change account or IP, we are even more effective at detecting vandalism by known problem editors such as educational IPs that have multiple previous warnings. But since we don't know how much undetected vandalism there is on the pedia at any one time, a researcher wouldn't know what proportion of their test vandalism should be of each kind. But if they were to measure actual vandalism that had taken place anyway then it would be more robust and ethical. ϢereSpielChequers 06:07, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

The theory is that in an experiment, you can control all the variables. In a pseudo-experiment you can attempt to control variables either through sample selection or by analysis of the data - but this only works for variables you know about.

• In an experiment to see the benefits of sun-cream, you could expose randomly assign people to 8 equal size groups. Four groups C1-C4 would have sun-cream, and four not N1-N4. Then you could expose C1 and N1 to no sun, C2 and N2 to 3 hours sun a day, C3 and N3 to 6 hours sun a day, and C4 and N4 to 9 hours sun a day. You could then plot some graphs showing how in N1-N4 sun-burn incidence is higher with increasing sun exposure, and compare with C1-C4 to see the benefit of the sun-cream. You could also try having groups P1-P4 with a placebo sun-cream - i.e. the cream does not have the key ingredients, but you lie to the subjects and tell them it does - maybe the act of putting it on, or the psychological effect of the cream will have as big an effect as sun-cream? Placebos are difficult - I read a report of a study of the effect of ascorbic acid on sick people where they used citric acid as the placebo - there was no difference in effectiveness - but one of the supposed benefits of ascorbic acid was that it dealt with free radicals - and citric acid will also do this - a poor choice of experimental design.
• In a psuedo-experiment you could collect data on this - but maybe people who do not naturally sun-burn would be less likely to use sun-cream. This would distort the results. Similarly there might be people who had habits that allowed them to be exposed to the sun but not to burn so much (e.g. choice of clothing and wearing a hat with a brim all round) - again this would distort the results, because they would be less likely to use suncream for a given exposure to the sun.

In dealing with how people react, pseudo-experiments have the advantage that the experimenter does not affect the behaviour of the subjects.

I do not think the experimenters with Wikipedia have much ability to control variables, so a pseudo-experiment would be better. Unusually, in this case, the advantage of an experiment is that it involves less work than an pseudo-experiment. Usually psuedo-experiments are cheaper to run.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:10, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you are close to the nub of it there. Researchers will prefer what seems to them to be the cheaper or easier solution, and if they value their time as being as valuable or even more valuable than our volunteers, then there is going to be a temptation to do lower quality but cheaper research even if it seems to us to be unethical. Vandalising a random group of articles is always going to be easier than identifying all the vandalism in a random group of edits (identifying most of the vandalism would be fairly easy, you just look for use of rollback and edit summaries of rvv, but there's more than that - I may not bother to label an edit as vandalism if it is an old edit by an IP). ϢereSpielChequers 10:21, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi!

Thanks for patrolling a few of the pages I made. See this. Thousands left! --Tomtomn00 (talk • contributions) 16:19, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage/New Pages Feed

Hey all :). A notification that the prototype for the New Pages Feed is now live on enwiki! We had to briefly take it down after an unfortunate bug started showing up, but it's now live and we will continue developing it on-site.

The page can be found at Special:NewPagesFeed. Please, please, please test it and tell us what you think! Note that as a prototype it will inevitably have bugs - if you find one not already mentioned at the talkpage, bring it up and I'm happy to carry it through to the devs. The same is true of any additions you can think of to the software, or any questions you might have - let me know and I'll respond.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:17, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you! (2)

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For patrolling a few of my 700+ articles! (See this) --- Thine Antique Pen (talk • contributions) 16:22, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW as you are in the UK perhaps we'll meet at one of these some time? ϢereSpielChequers 07:54, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, possibly! I may be able to make a meetup in August, if there are any. --Thine Antique Pen (talk • contributions) 18:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

meta:Meetup/London/60 12th August. Though there is a chance that I may not be available on that second Sunday - things will firm up in the next month or so. But if I can't make it there are others who will be there. ϢereSpielChequers 22:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} I remarked it with Madlamark skole with A2 The Determinator p t c 17:04, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool, Version 5

Hey all :)

Just a quick update on what we've been working on:

• The centralised feedback page is now live! Feel free to use it and all other feedback pages; there's no prohibition on playing around, dealing with the comments or letting others know about it, although the full release comes much later. Let me know if you find any bugs; we know it's a bit odd in Monobook, but that should be fixed in our deployment this week.
• On Thursday, 7th June we'll be holding an office hours session at 20:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. We'll be discussing all the latest developments, as well as what's coming up next; hope to see you all there!
• Those of you who hand-coded feedback; I believe I contacted you all about t-shirts. If I didn't, drop me a line and I'll get it sorted out :).

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The discussion about Bell-Pottinger

I did a google search on "Bell Pottinger" wikipedia OR Dahashiil. I was surprised to read about a discussion between Bell-Pottinger and "wikpedia administrators". You and User:John Vandenberg were mentioned by name.

Would it be possible for you to provide a link to that discussion? I drafted the passages in the article on Dahabshiil that Bell Pottinger employed shills to excise, and I can't help wondering whether I could have offered useful input -- or alternately, received important feedback, if someone thought there was a problem with my role.

Is this discussion or discunssions over?

Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 17:58, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, for some reason it is on the UK wiki. here The UK chapter director who started the dialogue got voted off our board at the AGM a few weeks ago, and I don't see that this dialogue is going to do much for relations. I think it is still going and fairly civil, so please pile in. The PR folk have been quiet of late, so we may have upset them, Though they might take up my suggestion to "please give us photos",...... ϢereSpielChequers 18:29, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Notification

WikiThanks

I have mentioned you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fæ/Evidence#Reply to questions by Fæ. If you wish to comment please take note of the guidelines at the top of the page and either the same page or Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fæ/Workshop may be suitable. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:43, 7 June 2012 (UTC) Fæ (talk) 09:43, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind helping with refunding articles?

Hello there, WSC. I'd like to thank you for being part of our project here at enwp. I really appreciate the work you been doing with NPF/NPT/NPP and the new interface over the last year or so. I'm also very grateful for the work you've done with new editors and editor retainment. I think it's very important for the future of our project and I thank you very kindly for that.

Anyhoo, as you're part of CAT:RESTORE, I was wondering if you'd be willing to help with a big task. I've recently asked Moonriddengirl for a bunch of deleted articles (see discussion here) and I was wondering if you would be willing to help. Either way, I'd like to thank you for all the work you done for our project over these many years. Best regards. 64.40.54.81 (talk) 16:44, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thanks, I've done a couple, including one temporarily moved to my userspace. Please tell me when you've transwikied it so I can delete it again. ϢereSpielChequers 22:47, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I've grabbed the article from your userspace here, so it can be deleted again. I really appreciate your generous support. All the best. 64.40.54.100 (talk) 16:29, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

		The Shining Star Award
		There are certain people that make our community shine. These are kind and gracious souls that not only improve our encyclopedia, but they also help others with their generous support. Although their number is small, they shine so brightly that they make the whole project glow. WereSpielChequers, you are certainly one of those shining stars and I am very grateful for the support you have given me. Thank you so very much for your help. 64.40.54.160 (talk) 22:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated. ϢereSpielChequers 23:00, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 release coming up - help us design a banner!

Hey all :). First-off, thanks to everyone for all their help so far; we're coming up to a much wider deployment :). Starting at the end of this month, and scaling up until 3 July, AFT5 will begin appearing on 10 percent of articles. For this release we plan on sending out a CentralNotice that every editor will see - and for this, we need your help :). We've got plans, we know how long it's going to run for, where it's going to run...but not what it says. If you've got ideas for banners, give this page a read and submit your suggestion! Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Year of birth/death categorisation

You might want to have a quick look at WP:VPR#Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year and leave a comment - I don't know if this proposal would affect the death anomalies checking (or if it might even help, for that matter...). Andrew Gray (talk) 17:05, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Birkbeck

Thanks for this and excuse any further blunderings I may make to your own spaces Erica McAteer (talk) 15:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Jagged 85

Hi,
not sure those additional usergroups are a good idea, two years ago the user very much /didn't/ know how to reference properly as was shown in this RfC/U. Maybe he has learned from it, but I would at the very least recommend a very thorough look first.
Cheers, Amalthea 16:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. I didn't go back two years, but I did trawl through some of the more recent stuff. However I didn't read the 2010 RFC so I didn't pick through and look for recent continuation of the same behaviour. I'm not sure that NPP is the right place to pickup on the sorts of things that the RFC focussed on. Maybe it should be, but currently I'd only rely on NPP to spot attack pages, spam, vandalism, the blatantly unnotable and the completely unsourced. ϢereSpielChequers 17:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I mainly wanted you to be aware of it. Cheers, Amalthea 09:18, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No problem, appreciate the feedback. On a broader note, what do you think about former copyviolaters and Autopatrol? How far should one go back in their talkpage history and how effective is NPP at dealing with copyvio? Up to now I've been very cautious about such editors when I come across them. My thinking being that if they don't know that I've found them on the list of active article creators and checked them out for autopatrol then they aren't going to be aware let alone miffed that I've skipped them and moved on to the next on the list. But there is the argument that new page patrol is not currently very good at picking up copyvio, and if it is checked for at a different stage then they might as well have autopatrol.... ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Project-specific image filter

Hi. I saw your recent comments on a WikiEN-l thread about Fox News's kind offer. Can I point you to this proposal and invite you to comment? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, I'm slowly getting back up to speed after the summer hols and hope to visit that next week. ϢereSpielChequers 08:19, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Great. No hurry at all. There's nothing happening there. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

done ϢereSpielChequers 09:36, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate you taking the trouble here. I'm thinking and will ping you when I post a response. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:51, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Editor Retention

Hi there, I see you made some good points at the Wikiproject Editor Retention discussion page, but I don't see you on the project members list. Wouldn't you consider joining? Thanks... Zad68 17:31, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

• Link to Survey (should take between 5-10 minutes): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8FQ6MM

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

IAF 14 sqn

Why did you remove Indian Air Force category from the page? Anurag2k12 (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Because it is a redundant category as the article was already in category:Indian Air Force aircraft squadrons ϢereSpielChequers 23:55, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Then I'll get rid of the category on my other article as well. Thanks for the info. Anurag2k12 (talk) 00:25, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Sourcing

Can you help me with the sourcing policies? What sources go to Citations section, Notes section, and External Links section? Anurag2k12 (talk) 14:21, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure, external links is an optional section, if the subject has their own website then you can list it there. As for citations we are looking for sources that are independent of the subject and that also have a certain level of quality. WP:reliable sources gives a good explanation. ϢereSpielChequers 13:08, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Anurag2k12 (talk) 21:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 13

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Four-million pool

Hi. I guess you are the winner of the Four-million pool. Congratulations! --Ciphers (talk) 14:16, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations for winning the Wikipedia:Four-million pool! JIP | Talk 14:20, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Congrats! -- Zanimum (talk) 15:29, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, though real life has intervened to frustrate my plans - I was hoping to make it a double by creating an article on an iron age hill fort but real life has distracted me. ϢereSpielChequers 15:58, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Hillfort

Thanks for adding the commonscat and category. Perhaps you'd be interested in adding to Hotu-iti ?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:32, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. I have vivid memories of my visit there, and somewhere a stack of photos. But it was from a time before Wikipedia when I was still using 35 mm film and scanning them is a task I keep procrastinating. One of these days I'll reread some of my Easter Island books and some more recent stuff and return to that topic. The statues in that photo were one of the main dig areas for the Routledge expedition, and for a century or two almost the only place where you could see standing moai. One of my favourite stories from Archaeology is the way Mrs Routledge established the cultural continuity between the statue makers and the Polynesians who she encountered there. The tattooed posteriors of a few old guys in the island's leper colony had the same designs as she found when she excavated those heads and found uneroded bodies in the soil. ϢereSpielChequers 11:57, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

My sister is visiting next month for 3 days on a holiday to Chile. Its an extremely fascinating island I think, as is Polynesian mythology and culture in general I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:21, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Three days is probably only enough to see the most famous sites such as Orongo, Anakena and Rano Raraku. I was there for three weeks and got to see a fair bit more than that. One of the best walks of my life was from the hotel to Rano Kau and back, plucking wild guavas from the bushes as we went, we still don't have a photo of the crater lake from the water's edge, so I must get hold of a scanner sometime. But I didn't get out to the islets, or to two of the summits. If she doesn't get claustrophobic and has a torch then I'd recommend a scramble into one of the fortified cave complexes, and if you can persuade her to take a camera...... ϢereSpielChequers 13:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Might sound funny but did you at all get any spiritual sort of feelings anywhere on the island. It strikes me as a very atmospheric place. I had that sort of feeling in some of the caves I went in in Kauai, of the Hawaiian ancestors sort of thing, its difficult to explain. I remember one of the beaches I went to standing alone on the rocky point with choppy surf there was this tremendously powerful feeling of the forces of nature and the island's past! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:12, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

An article about it here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:43, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, not entirely keen on Jared Diamond as in my view he underplayed the slave raids in order to portray Easter Island as a self inflicted eco catastrophe. I haven't yet been to Hawaii, the only bits of Polynesia I've been to so far are Aotearoa and Rapa Nui. But yes it is an incredibly atmospheric place, and Orongo is one of the most sacred places I've ever been to. Imagine being on the lip of a cup with an enormous marsh filled crater down the cliffs on one side of you and even further below on the other side a vast ocean with just a couple of islets and a sea stack. Then add that every inch of the rocks has been carved with petroglyphs of birdmen... ϢereSpielChequers 00:03, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback newsletter

Hey all!

So, big news this week - on Tuesday, we ramped up to 5 percent of articles :). There's been a lot more feedback (pardon the pun) as I'm sure you've noticed, and to try and help we've scheduled a large number of office hours sessions, including one this evening at 22:00 UTC in the #wikimedia-office ^connect channel, and another at 01:00 UTC for the aussies amongst us :). I hope to see some of you there - if any of you can't make it but have any questions, I'm always happy to help.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey again all :). So, some big news, some small news, some good news, some bad news!

On the "big news" front; we've now deployed AFT5 on to 10 percent of articles, This is pretty awesome :). On the "bad news", however, it looks like we're having to stop at 10 percent until around September - there are scaling issues that make it dangerous to deploy wider. Happily, our awesome features engineering team is looking into them as we speak, and I'm optimistic that the issues will be resolved.

For both "small" and "good" news; we've got another office hours session. This one is tomorrow, at 22:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office ^connect - I appreciate it's a bit late for Europeans, but I wanted to juggle it so US east coasters could attend if they wanted :). Hope to see you all there!

The Wikipedia Adventure: Request for feedback on Community Fellowship proposal

Hi! I'm contacting you because you have participated or discussed The Wikipedia Adventure learning tutorial/game idea. I think you should know about a current Community Fellowship proposal to create the game with some Wikimedia Foundation support. Your feedback on the proposal would be very much appreciated. I should note that the feedback is for the proposal, not the proposer, and even if the Fellowship goes forward it might be undertaken by presently not-mentioned editors. Thanks again for your consideration.

Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Adventure

Cheers, User:Ocaasi 16:42, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at User talk:Neutralhomer/WWMAD.
Message added 00:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Neutralhomer • Talk • 00:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC) 00:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Dispute Resolution IRC office hours.

Hello there. As you expressed interest in hearing updates to my research in the dispute resolution survey that was done a few months ago, I just wanted to let you know that I am hosting an IRC office hours session this coming Saturday, 28th July at 19:00 UTC (approximately 12 hours from now). This will be located in the #wikimedia-office ^connect IRC channel - if you have not participated in an IRC discussion before you can connect to IRC here.

Regards, User:Szhang (WMF) (talk) 07:07, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Page Triage newsletter

Hey all. Some quick but important updates on what we've been up to and what's coming up next :).

The curation toolbar, our Wikimedia-supported twinkle replacement. We're going to be deploying it, along with a pile of bugfixes, to wikipedia on 9 August. After a few days to check it doesn't make anything explode or die, we'll be sticking up a big notice and sending out an additional newsletter inviting people to test it out and give us feedback :). This will be followed by two office hours sessions - one on Tuesday the 14th of August at 19:00 UTC for all us Europeans, and one on Wednesday the 15th at 23:00 UTC for the East Coasters out there :). As always, these will be held in #wikimedia-office; drop me a note if you want to know how to easily get on IRC, or if you aren't able to attend but would like the logs.

I hope to see a lot of you there; it's going to be a big day for everyone involved, I think :). I'll have more notes after the deployment! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Your unblock of User:SmashTheState

I suggest you look at STS's comments on the SPI which include violations of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA sufficient to warrant a block. The same is true of his comment on AN/I. I think your unblock was much too narrowly focused on the CU results on SPI, when, in reality, this is a disruptive user who is overall a net negative for the project. Further, the evidence is that editor was unblocked in order to participate in an AfD and then, by an oversight, never re-blocked once the AfD was completed. Please take these factors into account and undo your unblock. Thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:30, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I did go through the SPI - just as I as a typo fixer have overlaps with people who make the typos that I fix so SmashTheState has overlaps with someone who shares his dislike of trivia sections. The rants that I saw were either against Wikipedians in general or whilst he was being unfairly accused of sockpuppetry. I hadn't noticed the AFD and will go look for that. ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but the difference is that you have close to 100,000 edits, and would be expected to have a certain number of overlaps with almost any editor on Wikipedia because of it. (For instance, you and I have 403 overlaps, but I'm reasonable certain we aren't coordinating our edits). On the other hand, SmashTheState and TurtleMelody have only 600+ edits each, a very small number, and for that reason the overlaps between them cannot be dismissed as random occurences - if they aren't the same person (as CU says they aren't) then there must be some off-Wiki coordination between them, because the list of articles is inexplicable otherwise. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:52, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

If we have only 403 overlaps then we probably have dissimilar interests. If two editors are looking for trivia sections and removing them then I would expect to see them both skewed towards articles with trivia sections, and overlapping on those articles where trivia sections get reinstated. I haven't checked to see if there are so many such sections for the overlap to still be odd, but it is way less odd than if their editing interests were unrelated. The AFD was in 2009, can that really be relevant? As for civility, well I'm not seeing a very collegial response to those who were accusing him of sockpuppetry, but what very few recent edits he had don't seem to me to merit a block. I'm more concerned with what we prevent him doing if he has been cleared of sockpuppetry - I'm less concerned about a general lashing out at fellow Wikipedians whilst he was being incorrectly accused of sockpuppetry. ϢereSpielChequers 08:04, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Except the lashing out started before anybody said a word about socks. [3] - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 08:14, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) @WereSpieChequers: Then you'll please excuse me for saying that I believe your priorities are misplaced. An editor who is here to rant and rave is no benefit to this project, and I see no advantage to us in a bureaucratic adherence to technicalities when it's a simple and practical matter to send them on their way. I would suggest to you that you need to have a serious rethink of how you should use your admin powers to benefit the project. If you have no intention of reconsidering, then let's consider this discussion ended, at least on my part. I walk away disappointed in you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

@Bushranger Yes, not the most diplomatic response to being taken to AN/I, that would certainly torpedo an RFA. But if I'm right in thinking that was after he'd been summoned to AN/I then I don't think that one should assume it is indicative of how he'd respond in normal discussion on a talkpage.

@Beyond My Ken I'm having a simultaneous discussion with an admin who declined the unblock request at the same time as I did the unblock. SmashTheState is an editor with a somewhat jaundiced view of his fellow Wikipedians, but I don't see that his actions show him simply as an editor who is here to rant and rave. There are good edits he has done - including removing unsourced contentious material. ϢereSpielChequers 08:35, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for reconsidering your unblock. It was the right thing to do. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:37, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

• Having been on the receiving end of some <withholding adjectives> comments regarding unblock attempt(s), I just wanted to let you know that I fully support your efforts to bring someone in, rather than shutting them out. — Ched :  ?  13:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks, there's a related issue I've been mulling over re our millions of blocked IPs. Your input would be welcome. ϢereSpielChequers 14:08, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a read through that this evening. — Ched :  ?  14:20, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

BLP edits

Hi, these edits need revision deleting or whatever it is. Cheers, Johnbod (talk) 13:26, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Done. Good spot. ϢereSpielChequers 14:01, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - on watchlist because of the archaeology. A hairy one. Johnbod (talk) 14:02, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and the BLP violations weren't too nice either. Semi'd ϢereSpielChequers 14:04, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I was just randomly passing, and have suppressed those edits from administrator view. Revisions which contain unreferenced allegations that someone was involved in a crime are potentially libellous and should always be requested to be oversighted. WilliamH (talk) 16:14, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Well I did say that in my first edit summary. Then I looked at the very unhelpful WP:Oversight & gave up. Does the page say what you've just said? I don't think so. Johnbod (talk) 17:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

New Pages newsletter

Hey all :)

A couple of new things.

First, you'll note that all the project titles have now changed to the Page Curation prefix, rather than having the New Pages Feed prefix. This is because the overarching project name has changed to Page Curation; the feed is still known as New Pages Feed, and the Curation Toolbar is still the Curation Toolbar. Hopefully this will be the last namechange ;p.

On the subject of the Curation Toolbar (nice segue, Oliver!) - it's now deployed on Wikipedia. Just open up any article in the New Pages Feed and it should appear on the right. It's still a beta version - bugs are expected - and we've got a lot more work to do. But if you see something going wrong, or a feature missing, drop me a note or post on the project talkpage and I'll be happy to help :). We'll be holding two office hours sessions to discuss the tool and improvements to it; the first is at 19:00 UTC on 14 August, and the second at 23:00 on the 15th. Both will be in #wikimedia-office as always. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

BLP ban clause

Hi - please note and change your comment if required - Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Youreallycan#YRC_Proposal

I have updated my position -

I think that the civility condition and the one RR restriction would render this BLP discussion clause as unnecessary and extreme punishment - if I cant revert and I cant make a single rude comment without being site banned then as I am not a BLP violator then I can be allowed to comment about living people but not allowed to edit content about such.

Youreallycan 15:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi YRC, when you get back come and have a chat here or on Skype. I have a little project I've been running that is now in Alpha test mode to hunt down contentious content, and I'd be happy to collaborate with you on it. My experience has been that the more contentious the content you remove the less likely it is to cause a ruckus. I'm already able to find far more contentious content than I have the stomach to go through, so a collaborator would be very welcome. ϢereSpielChequers 12:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

...For the signing of my guestbook and the suggestion to visit the Coventry meet-up. I think i'll skip it, as well organized as it is to wait for a Birmingham one. Thanks again though ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 15:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'll mention Brum to some of our Coventry crowd, I'm not clear why Coventry rather than Brum has become our West Mids focus, and I'm sure people who attend London events from Coventry could be persuaded to go closer to home. ϢereSpielChequers 12:29, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Add teahouse to welcome template?

As you were involved in a previous discussion regarding this issue, I am informing you of a new discussion proposing that the Teahouse be linked from the Welcome template(s). The discussion can be found here. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 19

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Template:WikiProject Handball

I noticed you 'seeded' this template, but I see now that it doesn't do anything - there's no task force for handball at WP Sports. It looks like the right way to go is to create a new WP. Would you be interested? :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Joy, I created this during the big BLP cleanup exercise a couple of years ago. A group of us were putting WikiProject templates on tens of thousands of bios as part of that cleanup, but I've no interest in that sport itself. So having such templates should mean that if we ever get a bunch of people interested in handball they will find part of their project tagging already done for them. ϢereSpielChequers 11:15, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Holy hell

I can't believe you've been an administrator for three-and-a-half years now. Seems like only yesterday I'd supported your successful bid, and here we are now several years later. Isn't it amazing how time flies? Kurtis (talk) 20:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Yup, and the bizarre thing is I'm still a relative newbie among admins. I've now been an admin for nearly two thirds of my editing career, but there are still a bunch of admin type things that I've barely touched. ϢereSpielChequers 17:55, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Request for feedback on Social Bot proposal

Hi there! About a month ago you gave a helpful and much appreciated response to my VP proposal for a 'Social Encouragement Bot'. I answered with some more detail but the idea didn't get much further attention, so I'd be extremely grateful if you could give it another look.

No worries if you're busy - I was just a but unsure of who/where else to turn to for more feedback! Maybe I should start a new discussion elsewhere?

Thanks again for your help so far! :) KimRT (talk) 05:10, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I think I did reply, but the whole subject has been archived. I'm not entirely sure what the difference would be between your proposal and the existing watchlisting system, apart of course from your idea of shifting from opt in to opt out, and as I think I've explained before that part of your proposal is somewhat antithetical to the site. ϢereSpielChequers 07:41, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Fred Rogers

Can you make a change to the Fred Rogers page?

From: "Despite recurring rumors he never served in the military.[15][16][17]" To: "Despite recurring rumors, he never served in the military.[15][16][17]"

Adding the comma after 'rumors' changes it to a complete sentence, instead of just a phrase.

Not having the comma makes it sound like a start of a sentence explaining that he did serve in the military, instead of explaining that he did not serve in the military (as is intended).

I would make the change myself, but the page is semi-protected.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.220.143.90 (talk) 23:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Sure no problem. ϢereSpielChequers 08:17, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

San Gimignano Collegiate Church

Thank you! People like me need people like you! Amandajm (talk) 01:31, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Our need is mutual. Reading articles like Collegiate Church of San Gimignano is what keeps me on this site. ϢereSpielChequers 01:41, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Revision deletion on a WT

Hello. Could you please delete revisions 513761690 and 513797041, which I believe is a NPA violation. Thanks, 117Avenue (talk) 03:50, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't be naming and shaming currently blocked editors, and that your removal and the previous hiding of the list of blocked editors makes sense. But I don't see those edits as meeting either part of "Material must be grossly offensive, with little likelihood of significant dissent about its removal". As for the "former editors", I'd much prefer the term currently inactive, but I don't see that being on that list is a criticism. However I'm obviously involved in that page and the whole process of listing editors with high edit counts, so please treat my comment as being the views of one of your fellow editors and disregard my being an admin; If you still want to discuss it with an admin I won't regard it as forum shopping if you talk to an uninvolved one. ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter

Hey WereSpielChequers. This will be, if not our final newsletter, one of the final ones :). After months of churning away at this project, our final version (apart from a few tweaks and bugfixes) is now live. Changes between this and the last release include deletion tag logging, a centralised log, and fixes to things like edit summaries.

Hopefully you like what we've done with the place; suggestions for future work on it, complaints and bugs to the usual address :). We'll be holding a couple of office hours sessions, which I hope you'll all attend. Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

An idea to improve the ArbCom body

A very good start would involve your candidacy for the upcoming election. I can understand why you might not wish to run, but I can also hope that you will. 76Strat ^String da _Broke da (talk) 06:39, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi My76Strat, that's very flattering, but I'm not going to run this year. At the moment I have far more things to do in mainspace on Wikipedia and in Commons than I have time to do, and I have some things coming up next year that mean I'm expecting to step back from some things I do on Wiki. I agree that it is important to reform Arbcom, they've made at least one shocking miscall this year, but I'm not going to run this time. ϢereSpielChequers 15:00, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

dbpedia

Following our conversation in the pub, here is the source of the query for people with a birth date after their death date. You can simply paste it into dbpedia.org/sparql. The URL to SPARQL results are copy-and-pasteable, so that query is [4].

There's plenty of queries you can do like that. I may run some queries tomorrow that look for birth dates and death dates in the future, birth dates that are more than 150 years before death date. I'll have a look to see if there's any other similar predicates (the Semantic Web translation of infobox properties) we might use to find more anomalies. There's also dbpedia for other versions of Wikipedia, so we might be able to use it to start up some anomaly hunting elsewhere. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Most of these are Persondata errors, some are clear vandalism. The worry about these infoboxes and templates is that they replicate info giving opportunity for error, and they are less visible, so the vandalism that gets through sticks. ϢereSpielChequers 15:01, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

PC

FYI. And FWIW, on a slightly different note regarding NPP, although I am not entirely in favour of creating a right for NPP, I fear that the question may become inevitable when the NewPagesFeed is finally released for general use and has been monitored for a while. The reviewer right (whatever that will be) could be a possible guideline, and might incorporate both if need arises. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:12, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, I've kind of drifted away from newpage patrol after the new system succumbed to bloat and made patrolling multiclick. I've not been as keen as you were on making newpage patroller a right, but I see no harm in the German proposal, mainly because I doubt if many potential patrollers would fail to meet the automatic criteria before they found newpage patrol. What is your concern re this? ϢereSpielChequers 10:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the new NewPageFeed is a brilliant tool - in the hands of the right people; but my fears are that some may mistake it for a video game console. I always felt that NPP requires a greater degree of knowledge of policies and tagging than Rollbacker which needs a user right. It remains to be seen what happens during the first few weeks of its final release. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

Thanks

Thanks for your comments on User_talk:Homunq/WP_voting_systems#Strong_Oppose. I think you've misunderstood how the proposed voting system works, though. Could you respond to [5] and [6] over there? Homunq (talk) 15:30, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Responded further. Thanks again, Homunq (talk) 17:07, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Medicine

I haven't forgotten about your image filter comments, and will get back to you on that, but nothing will be moving on that front for a bit so I've been triaging my time a bit. Meanwhile, can I point out the current discussion at the top of User talk:Iridescent? We're forming a new m:Thematic organization and this is one of the pre-incorporation discussions. One concern raised is the potential for undue influence from pharmaceutical companies and quackery. You were active in this COI discussion so I was wondering if you might be interested in commenting, or at least keeping an eye on things. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:16, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow that's one from the vaults. I think my views on paid editing have somewhat moved on from there, at least as far as commercial entities are concerned. I'm very happy with paid editors from the GLAM sector, provided they are writing about the sort of objects they are curating and not about the institution they work for. Otherwise I'm no longer sure that I'd accept any edits from paid editors and I'm increasingly a convert to the idea that "don't ask, don't tell" would actually be useful in this context. A corporate PR person who is covertly editing Wikipedia and consciously trying to write in such a neutral way that they won't be spotted is probably going to do a much better job of writing neutrally than if they'd declared their COI and feel they are entitled to edit. If they've got any sense they will also do a bunch of uncontentious and unrelated good edits, so we'll get the benefit of those as well. It would also make their life easier with their colleagues, as they can always respond to suggestions that they whitewash something by saying that it would blow their cover and be reverted and locked.

As for my getting involved in some medical taskforce, you need to remember that this was one of the key events that scuppered Citizendium. They set out to be a Wikipedia but with greater control by experts, and then appointed as their expert for the healing arts someone from outside the ambit of conventional western medicine. My suggestion would be that if you want to set up a thematic organisation for Medicine you restrict the membership to people qualified in mainstream medicine, and that excludes me.

I'm in no great hurry for the image filter either. I think that you, I and Jimmy are coming at this from completely different perspectives. I found it an interesting challenge to design a filter that would resolve the concerns of as many as possible of the opponents, and came up with an option that would be expensive in cash, but few opponents of filtering would object to. Jimmy seemed to think that the objections were price related and proffered a solution that annoyed even many of those who are willing to see a filter introduced. You are designing a system that would work best for mainstream native speakers of English, but you are hoping to get the foundation or someone else to overrule those who oppose your design, rather than trying to understand and where possible accommodate their concerns. In trying to amend your proposal I'm really trying to alter your whole approach, as I don't intend to try and persuade the community to support a system that isn't designed to try and get consensus support from the community. ϢereSpielChequers 10:37, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the trouble. I know nothing about Citizendium. Perhaps I should read our article on it. WM:MED will get experts to contribute but I hope we won't have to pay them for it. I and Blue Rasberry, and several others I think, are aiming at conversion rather than employment. We won't prevent non-experts or anonymous editors from editing such articles either. The present en.WP editing model works fine for the vast majority of decent med articles which are quite stable. The outer fringes are a bit iffy but that's a tiny minority and the boundary riders such as WLU, Yobol and others seem to have the upper hand there, though they could always use more help. So, no one's proposing a new restricted editing model for med articles. Mainly we'll be (a) persuading / teaching / helping experts to write a GA/FA, and (b) supporting their translation as they reach GA/FA.

I don't know what to do about commercial COI: drug companies and the like. I personally wouldn't rule out en.WP at some point revising (downwards) the strength or validity of all efficacy and safety claims in out articles - for at least the psychiatric drugs, and probably a lot more - while they're suppressing negative trial results. Along with James on Iridescent's page, I'd feel very, very icky about any kind of formal embrace there.

We may not be that far apart on our approach toward an image filter: one or two things you've said lead me to think you may have misread me; but for above-stated reasons, if it's not too rude of me, I'll address that later. Again: thank you, and sorry if I'm being a pain. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that anyone currently has the right answer on COI, paid editing and expert involvement. I'm not active in our med articles, but I've heard that we have quite a few experts already editing anonymously, and after recent events that I've seen people go through I'm tempted to advise against anyone editing here under their own name; Both of which would rather make it awkward to involve named experts - you certainly don't want to start paying some people when you might have equally qualified experts already volunteering for free. As for the image filter, I'm happy to wait and when you are ready see if we can come up with something that we can both endorse. ϢereSpielChequers 14:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Cool. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

PC RfC

Hi. The instructions in the second section ask participants to endorse one of three options. Of course, anyone is free to reject all three and propose an alternative; however, if everyone adds his or her proposal as an additional option, it likely will result in unnecessary confusion, if not quite utter chaos. Therefore, I wonder if you'd mind removing the number 4 from your addition and moving it down to the discussion subsection. Please? Rivertorch (talk) 11:15, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

There is a balance to be struck between over and under managing RFCs. In my view there was a big gap there and a fourth option was relevant. I would be surprised if there was room for many more options without them becoming slight permutations on each other, and I doubt that many more will be added. ϢereSpielChequers 14:13, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

All right. Helping to set up this RfC has been a learning experience for me. If nothing else, it has confirmed the old adage about the best-laid plans going awry. Thanks for explaining your reasoning. Rivertorch (talk) 09:08, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Question about Edit conflict

Hi,

Thanks for writing on my talk!! I have a question. I recently edit a music band article and provide two source (one is their offical website and a different source). For some reason, someone undo it. How do I go about seeing what I did wrong, because I don't think I did anything wrong. Thanks S2nancy (talk) 18:28, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi S2Nancy, http://www.crunchyroll.com/group/Shinee is a not the sort of source we can use here, as far as I can see it is a site for their fans to write about them. We should only use wp:reliable sources, especially when writing about living people. As for their "official site", I'm afraid it didn't work on my PC. But yes if that is their own site it could be used to verify uncontentious information about them. as it is a primary source you just need to watch for it being overly promotional, and of course the article as a whole has to have secondary sources as we don't create articles on people unless they have already become notable enough for others to write about them. ϢereSpielChequers 14:08, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Modification to May PC be applied to pages to protect against violations of the policy on biographies of living persons (WP:BLP)?

Hello. Because the "Yes" section was split between one group in favor of applying protection to all articles and one group in favor of applying protection to articles only when there has been a problem, I have split the section to reflect this difference. Please go back to that page and make sure that your vote is still in the section that most closely reflects your views. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:16, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

A request

Hey,

I'm aware it's slightly outside your remit - I've been doing a bit of work on the COI noticeboard for a little while. I'm aware that I'm very much at the low end of editor experience, and feeling a bit out of my depth on a few occasions - so I've asked for an editor review. The reason I'm dropping by on you particularly is because you have quite a lot of experience vetting editors at a high level and I'd like to be held to a high standard on this - I think COI is too important a place to let any mistake slide. The other reason is that I don't think we've had any on-wiki interaction so it's easy for you to be impartial. The good news is that I've got pretty few edits and I'm only looking for a review on a small range of them. Fancy it? Fayedizard (talk) 09:58, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Fayedizard, much as I'm flattered to be asked I'm afraid I'm going to have to swerve this one. When I do editor or nomination reviews I tend to focus on editors who have specialised in areas that I know well, and though I've reported stuff to the COI noticeboard I'm not active there as an admin. At present I'm not even sure if my views in that area even reflect consensus. Plus I'm a bit busy in real life. Sorry, perhaps one of my esteemed stalkers might step in? ϢereSpielChequers 17:54, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

That's no problem - thank you for your reply - any stalker of yours is a welcome stalker of mine ;) Fayedizard (talk) 19:49, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

How to report dbpedia.org parsing issues

Great work on sorting out issues located through dbpedia.org

To report issues with dbpedia's parser, you need to get an account on Sourceforge.net and then post the issues on here. Alternatively, if you don't want to report the issues or you want me to have a look over them before reporting them, feel free to email them to me and I'll report them. —Tom Morris (talk) 07:31, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

For-profit projects managed from within Wikipedia

Hi WereSpielChequers. I've started a discussion on for-profit projects managed from within Wikipedia at Jimbo's talk page that may be of interest to you, using Gibraltarpedia and WP:Communicate OER as examples. The latter is, as far as I understand, a non-WMF, privately coordinated and for-profit project, funded by an external grant, that in some ways is similar to Gibraltarpedia.

Are you still planning to draw up an RfC on place-pedia projects? If so, it might make sense to utilise a more generic definition, to include paid projects like the OER project in the RfC's scope as well. Please have a look at the discussion. Best, JN466 18:06, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

We're (very shortly) closing down this development cycle for Page Curation. It's genuinely been a pleasure to talk with you all and build software that is so close to my own heart, and also so effective. The current backlog is 9 days, and I've never seen it that low before.

However! Closing up shop does not mean not making any improvements. First-off, this is your last chance to give us a poke about unresolved bugs or report new ones on the talkpage. If something's going wrong, we want to know about it :). Second, we'll hopefully be taking another pass over the software next year. If you've got ideas for features Page Curation doesn't currently have, stick them here.

Again, it's been an honour. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:03, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

DYKers going for some sort of prize

You realize that in this case, they literally are, right? Gigs (talk) 02:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and that is not the first prize scheme to have included DYK. It may be the first to offer a tangible prize and specify a topic at DYK, the British Museum ran an FA scheme a couple of years ago but their prize was less generous and more relevant - some books from their shop. WikiProject Bacon ran a themed contest but their prize was honorary. So most of the Gibraltar DYK will be in that contest, and all the people submitting Gibraltar related DYKs who would be caught up by my proposal can be presumed to be in the contest. But here's the difference between my proposal and Jimmy or others that involve a topic ban at DYK. Under my proposal a complete newby can come to DYK and submit a DYK about anything without having to consult some list of topics banned at DYK. If they like it and start doing a string of them on their pet subject then at some point someone will point them towards the throttle and suggest that they diversify their topic choice. Under Jimmy's proposal a complete newbie could come along in four years time, write an article about Ceuta and get badly bitten because of something that by then will be ancient history. The 12 month proposal is less silly, but still risks biting some newbie. ϢereSpielChequers 09:40, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo never seriously meant 5 years. Gigs (talk) 06:28, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Didn't he? If so has he retracted that or is that your interpretation? In any event that's a shame for those who wanted to set an example by cracking down on Gibraltarpedia. I can't speak for others on this, but if I hadn't been worried by some great overreaction catching out a bunch of goodfaith newbies then I might not have bothered to get involved. There is a great risk in this community of overreaction, escalating things to RFCs without first trying to resolve things. Apologies if there was a discussion at Gibraltarpedia about not awarding points for DYKs, but I couldn't find that and have concerns about an RFC that skips such a stage. ϢereSpielChequers 08:37, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

From memory, not a single person in the RfC has advocated a five-year ban, which I agree is over the top. As for the genuine noob, an exception could always be made (as Jimbo told Dr. Blofeld would be made). As for the withdrawal of the extra two points, my feeling is that this will have zero effect on the number of Gibraltar DYKs reaching the main page. Even if an author doesn't nominate an article, someone else will. Main page placement has always been a part of "selling" this business model, and I doubt it will be abandoned for the remainder of the project's duration. Cheers, AndreasKolbe JN466 02:13, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem with such exceptions is that if they happen they tend to happen after someone has been bitten. Minor get out clauses are useful for those who like exploring the rules and taking advantage of arcane ones, but they add to the complexity that bedevils our rules. Better, much better to design something simpler and more effective. As for whether the change in the points system will make a difference, well time will tell. But crucially this is how Wikipedia is supposed to work - people have concerns about something and they raise those concerns with the people doing it and work towards consensus. Remember a large part of the problem here has been people ignoring the early steps of dispute resolution and escalating things to Jimbo or even going to the press before trying to resolve things internally. So in that sense if we now have a dialogue in which people are discussing concerns with the team behind Gibraltarpedia and getting changes made then things are at least moving back onto the right track. ϢereSpielChequers 14:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

There were really two stories: the first – and major one – was the conflict of interest. This was never going to be resolved within Wikipedia, using on-wiki discussion and dispute resolution, simply because it wasn't an on-wiki problem. The second – and minor one – was that the product placement was resumed once the press weren't looking, and as far as that is concerned, there were copious discussions about it, initiated by a number of different people at WT:DYK, which led nowhere, before it went to Jimbo. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:53, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

As for whether we are likely to have less Gibraltar articles on the main page in November, please go to the DYK nominations page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Did_you_know and then look for occurrences of the word Gibraltar in your browser. I make it 29 nominations at present, including a few more Australian landscape features named after Gibraltar ... AndreasKolbe JN466 17:09, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Andreas, Wikipedia does have well worn processes for dealing with conflicts of interest. They don't work so well when people are concealing the COI, and especially when accusing someone of COI breaches outing, but that obviously didn't apply in this case. So I see no excuse for sidestepping the on wiki processes on that one. As for the discussions that took place and which you consider lead nowhere - as I understand it the decision included a throttle of no more than one Gibraltarpedia related DYK per day. You obviously don't agree with that result, but the question now isn't whether that was an adequate response - by saying that the discussions which resulted in that throttle "led nowhere" you invite a response that you are simply wrong, the discussions about Gibraltarpedia have resulted in several changes including a one DYK per day throttle on that project. If in a future scenario you consider that a community decision is insufficient I would suggest that you be very clear as to why you disagree with the decision and that you are aware of the response but you consider it insufficient. Otherwise you risk having people simply correct your mistake and point you to the decision that was taken. As for the Australia issue, if someone has a DYK about a Gibraltar outside the geographic scope of Gibraltarpedia I would suggest you ignore that when criticising Gibraltarpedia. Places in North Africa that could be reached from Gibraltar if one hired a helicopter are one thing, but if you broaden your criticism of Gibraltarpedia to DYKs that couldn't be reached without a return trip of more than 24 hours flying from Gibraltar then you weaken an already damaged case. ϢereSpielChequers 19:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

First, the WMUK problem was not something that could have been addressed at COIN (and by the way, no one I know of had anything to do with the Violet Blue article in CNET that broke that stoy, beyond having posted on Jimbo's talk page). Next, papers unanimously criticised there being 17 Gib DYKs in a month (that's what Jimbo called "absurd"). How does a one-a-day throttle address that? The rate was always less than one a day already. It's like establishing a spending ceiling of £500 a day when the most you ever spent was £250 a day and you got criticised for spending as much as that. And the ferry to Morocco takes 35 minutes; you do not need a helicopter. And the only reason the Australian Gibraltar DYKs are being written surely is as pushback against the criticism of the product placement. Any four-year-old would understand that – in fact, four-year-olds would be particularly well placed to understand it. :) The fact that they are written by someone who's been criticised for writing dozens and dozens of DYKs all on the same topic is just icing on the cake. AndreasKolbe JN466 22:37, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Andreas, I have no idea why you think that the Gibraltarpedia conflicts of interest couldn't have been dealt with via our internal processes. If there is an obvious flaw there then I'd suggest you raise it at the COIN talkpage. Of course hindsight is 2020, but it seems to me that this a case where our processes were bypassed rather than one where they failed. As for whether one per day was a sufficient response, well that's a very different issue than whether there had been no response. I suspect that if you'd challenged the community response as insufficient then you'd have had a very different reaction. As for Gibraltar articles that relate to Gibraltar, Australia, I'd repeat my suggestion that you ignore them in your analysis of Gibraltarpedia. Including them in your criticism simply leaves you open to the rebuttal that Australia is not a day trip from the pillars of Hercules. ϢereSpielChequers 15:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

We are probably talking about different things. The process that led to Roger's resignation – which was necessary – could not have taken place at COIN; it was a WMUK governance matter rather than a matter of Wikipedia editing. Andreas JN466 19:06, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

As for the five year thing, this was the posting that set the scene for the reopened debate. If you as the author of that hadn't wanted to have much of the response be a reaction against the idea of a five year moratorium then it would have been better not to have mentioned Jimbo's statement. As it was I and I suspect others were reacting against your first point rather than responding to your second one. ϢereSpielChequers 19:51, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Everybody was free to define their preferred length, and people by and large did. No one opted for anything as long as that. Jimbo said what he did: I guess the real story here is how much he and the community do not see eye to eye on this. Meanwhile, the press hear far more from him than from the community. Cheers, AndreasKolbe JN466 22:37, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Jimmy is almost a constitutional monarch, I think of him as a bit of a Prince Charles figure; Whether or not one agrees with him on modern architecture or organic agriculture, his word is not law. Jimmy is of course a trustee of the WMF and therefore has a voice and a vote at our top table. But that is a top table in a decentralised structure where much is decided at different levels of the organisation, and while his voice is far more influential than mine, he also probably has more opponents. So one shouldn't be surprised if no one was willing to support a position that Jimmy himself might consider an overreaction, or that starting a debate by quoting such a statement from Jimmy was going to weaken your own case. My advice if such a situation were to recur would be not to quote a position that you weren't prepared to defend. There is an argument that one could quote such a position and make it very clear that you disagree with it, but misunderstandings are easy on the Internet, so if you weren't going to propose a 5 year ban it would have greatly strengthened your argument if you'd simply not mentioned Jimmy's comment. As for Jimmy's role as an Ambassador for the project, my view is that he does a very good job of that even if he occasionally says something I disagree with. ϢereSpielChequers 15:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Prince Charles is quite a good comparison. :) But the reason I mentioned the statement was simply because it was "news" for our constitutional monarch to make such a statement. And while I disagreed about the duration, I agreed with the principle. Frankly, I don't think there was much of a reaction against the five-year duration: the reaction was against a "ban" of any sort. Wikipedians don't like anything that limits their freedom: they want to be able to do what they want (e.g. get 50 DYKs on Australian paralympians on the main page, or 200 DYKs on Bach cantatas ...), even if that means that others are free to do stuff that hurts the project. Andreas JN466 19:02, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello, WereSpielChequers. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Congratulations

		100000 Edits
		Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that very few editors have been able to accomplish. Ever since you designated me as the Official 100K Award Dispensor, I have watched your name rise up the list toward the 100K plateau. Of all the awards I have handed out, this one gives me the most Joy. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.

```Buster Seven Talk 13:17, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Buster, that's much appreciated I just wish we had someone doing the same thing on Commons...... ϢereSpielChequers 00:03, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, Congratulations! Johnbod (talk) 01:10, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

RE: Commons Awards.. I don't know anything about Commons but just tell me what to do and I'll get it done.```Buster Seven Talk 16:09, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

The best place for the info used to be meta:User:Emijrp/List of Wikimedians by number of edits but it hasn't been updated for a while so I've emailed the bot runner. Roughly half the accounts with over 100,000 edits are on EN wiki, and the rest are well scattered. It would be great if there was a cross wiki project so that when someone in any wiki reached 100,000 they got an award. ϢereSpielChequers 12:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
	Thanks for reverting that on my talk page. Go Phightins! 04:23, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

You are most welcome, and much thanks for the bling. ϢereSpielChequers 15:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:29, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey all :). A couple of quick updates (one small, one large)

First, we're continuing to work on some ways to increase the quality of feedback and make it easier to eliminate and deal with non-useful feedback: hopefully I'll have more news for you on this soon :).

Second, we're looking at ways to increase the actual number of users patrolling and take off some of the workload from you lot. Part of this is increasing the prominence of the feedback page, which we're going to try to do with a link at the top of each article to the relevant page. This should be deployed on Tuesday (touch wood!) and we'll be closely monitoring what happens. Let me know if you have any questions or issues :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Books!

Hi there,

I've put up a quick outline of the 19th Century Books at Wikipedia:GLAM/BL/Books - please do disseminate it to anyone who might be interested. Unfortunately, Wikisource have hit some technical problems preventing the system from being able to proofread new books, so your other ones haven't gone up yet... Andrew Gray (talk) 14:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, WereSpielChequers!
As we all sit down at the dinner table and say our thanks, I would like to give thanks to you for your wonderful contributions and wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. May your turkey, ham or beast of choice satiate you until next year! TRA! ```Buster Seven Talk	A traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Talkback

 Done

{{talkback}}

Images Workshop

• Dornoch Firth

YGM

 Done

{{you've got mail}} Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:58, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Research on who is contributing to Wikipedia?

Greetings! A while back, you commented on my proposal for a Wikimania presentation and I was to follow up on that. On the subject of why there are not more women editors on Wikipedia, you wrote: "I wouldn't say that women playing the major role in child rearing was the number one reason for their low participation level on wiki; we underepresent parents of children whether male or female, but for some reason we attract childless men far more effectively than we attract childless women. However attracting empty nesters and retired women is certainly a sensible tactic." As I am doing further research on the women void, I was wondering if you could direct me to any statistics/studies that you are familiar with on this subject. I know you are really busy, and I do appreciate any direction you can give. Thank you. Georgiasouthernlynn (talk) 21:46, 5 December 2012 (UTC)--Georgiasouthernlynn (talk) 21:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi GeorgiaSouthernLynn, there have been a couple of editor surveys done by the foundation, presumably you know about them but if you can't find them I can find them for you. There was also a big multilingual survey that was reported at either the 2009 or 2010 wikimanias. It's been a while since I looked at them but at least one had the childlessness thing as well as gender balance. Our age and gender skews are I think well known and fairly consistent across multiple surveys, I'm pretty sure that the age profile is changing quite rapidly as we are no longer recruiting so many young editors, and my own experience is that generally the silver surfers tend to stick here longer. As for lists of studies, your first point of call would be M:Research:Index Also are you subscribed to the research newsletter? If not I'd at least suggest a trawl through its archives. Hope that helps. ϢereSpielChequers 23:09, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 11

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done. ϢereSpielChequers 11:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Here's wishing you a merry whatnot and a happy new thingy! I'll be in th UK somteime around late January - hope to meet up with you again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:18, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas back at ya

File:Magical Stonehenge - geograph.org.uk -1628518.jpg

Regards, Sun Creator<sup>(talk)</sup> is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solsticeor Xmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even theSaturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec12}} to your friends' talk pages.

Thanks for the jolly. I was just passing Wikipedia, so great timing on your behalf. :) Regards,Sun Creator<sup>(talk)</sup> 23:54, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and Merry Christmas to you, too! Lugnuts<sup>Dick Laurent is dead</sup> 13:46, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you WSC

It was great to get such a beautiful note from you. It's been ages since we talked, I hope you're doing well. I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season as well. All my best. —Ched : ?  14:45, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ched, yes, far too long. We must find something to collaborate on. In fact if you have the time I'd welcome your thoughts on User:WereSpielChequers/IP and OS blocks - other TPS's also welcome.ϢereSpielChequers 01:30, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

And a very merry season to you!

Good editing to you! --j⚛e decker<sup>talk</sup> 18:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

And yo ho ho to you too

Thanks WSC and Happy Whatever to you too. Now that the sun has set in Guatemala, it looks like the world will live another day after all so there'll be more dead people to recategorize. For that, I am truly thankful. Best, Pichpich (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes it did cross my mind to ask for a bot that would detect a week without editing or viewing Wikipedia and change all our BLPs to deceased on the first day of that week. But I couldn't work out how to identify the ones who'd died earlier. ϢereSpielChequers 23:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks for signing my guestbook. AutomaticStrikeout(T •C) 02:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Brands

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You are invited to join WikiProject Brands, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of brands and brand-related topics. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000(talk)16:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite, but not really my cup of tea. ϢereSpielChequers 21:58, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Holiday cheer

		Holiday Cheer
		Michael Q. Schmidt my talk page is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings.

Merry Christmas

Greengreengreenred is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user aMerry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Happy Holidays

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. J04n(talk page) 11:45, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user aMerry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hello WereSpielChequers! Wishing you a very Happy Merry Christmas :) TheGeneralUser (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

..

Seasons greetings to you and yours
Dougweller (talk) 14:33, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

	Happy Holidays!
	From the frozen wasteland of Nebraska, USA!MONGO 12:15, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

2013

File:Happy New Year 2013.jpg		Have an enjoyable New Year!
		Hello WereSpielChequers: Thanks for all of your contributions to Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, Northamerica1000(talk) 16:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks and a Happy New year to you too. ϢereSpielChequers 19:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Jolly good fellow

		Civility Award
		There has been a spate of unseasonal grumpiness recently. Perhaps too much attention is paid to that and not enough to more sensible behaviour. You are the most consistently congenial and helpful editor that I have encountered here. Please accept this small token of appreciation and my best wishes for another happy new year. Warden (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Much thanks Colonel. I'm afraid that real life events have distracted me and I haven't completely kept track of the recent holiday season events on wiki. Though perhaps that's for the best. In any event I wish you and all my Wikipedian friends as happy a new year as I'm having so far.... ϢereSpielChequers 18:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)