User talk:Nick Moyes: Difference between revisions
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:Our notability criteria for academics can be found at [[WP:NPROF]]. Clearly, he is an eminent physician, but there may be some uncertainty about whether he meets Wikipedia's notability. I would advise (after declaring any [[WP:COI]] you may have) that you focus on showing, in simple terms, the contribution he has made to medical science. Maybe as author of key textbooks used in teaching; media coverage of his medical achievements; biographies written by other people in prestigious magazines etc; winner of notable awards (i.e. those which already have coverage here on Wikipedia.) |
:Our notability criteria for academics can be found at [[WP:NPROF]]. Clearly, he is an eminent physician, but there may be some uncertainty about whether he meets Wikipedia's notability. I would advise (after declaring any [[WP:COI]] you may have) that you focus on showing, in simple terms, the contribution he has made to medical science. Maybe as author of key textbooks used in teaching; media coverage of his medical achievements; biographies written by other people in prestigious magazines etc; winner of notable awards (i.e. those which already have coverage here on Wikipedia.) |
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:If you read [[WP:LEAD]], you will see that it should simply summarise the reasons for notability without getting too technical. If you could simplify the lead, whilst emphasising reasons for notability, I think you may stand a chance of seeing this through into the main encyclopaedia. I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, [[User:Nick Moyes|Nick Moyes]] ([[User talk:Nick Moyes#top|talk]]) 19:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC) |
:If you read [[WP:LEAD]], you will see that it should simply summarise the reasons for notability without getting too technical. If you could simplify the lead, whilst emphasising reasons for notability, I think you may stand a chance of seeing this through into the main encyclopaedia. I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, [[User:Nick Moyes|Nick Moyes]] ([[User talk:Nick Moyes#top|talk]]) 19:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC) |
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::Thank you for your advice! I will make the proper changes and disclosures. |
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::Regards from Germany, Crosenow [[User:Crosenow|Crosenow]] ([[User talk:Crosenow|talk]]) 16:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC) |
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Mentor
Hi Hi mentor !!! You are in Mentor prog.
So you can be mine if you want to :) MumQuin (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
- @MumQuin It's more the case that you're welcome to just drop by with any question about how to edit. I'll help you if I can. If I'm not around, you're also welcome to seek help at the Teahouse if you need it. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:11, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Ok thx. :) I will. :) MumQuin (talk) 14:27, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Is this normal here people just delet comments you did in a dabate and tell you they "BELIVE" it was not constructiv? See on my talk page. Very friendly behavior here :) MumQuin (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there @MumQuin. I assume you mean this edit you made to the Vector 2022 discussion. I do know that page has attracted a huge amount of heated debate - sometimes from very new users who've just come to complain, so it's important to have contributions that take the discussions forward. I don't think yours was especially helpful (more hot air and annoyance than helpful comments). BUT (and it's a very big 'but'): I believe you made it in good faith because of your views, and that I don't think you deserved one of our low level templated notices left by one of my fellow administrators. It's very easy to be irritated by these impersonal templated messages, but please appreciate that it's a huge task ensuring that this encyclopaedia is kept running smoothly and sometimes we make mistakes. I know I do - even after 11+ years here. So, my advice is to try to see it from the other person's viewpoint, whilst considering how useful any particular comment is to take forward any debate. I might probably also have removed it with an edit summary saying 'not really very helpful', but wouldn't have left a message on your talk page. However, it could be argued that explaining to you (via a templated message) what I had done, it would at least have communicated clearly what my actions were and why. You might otherwise have wondered what happened to your edit. So, it's a balance thing.
- I don't mean to be rude, but I suspect that English may not be your first language, and so it can be hard for people like me to see past the unintended blunt words to the intended contribution behind them (I know when I go to German speaking countries I must sound terribly rude at times because I only have a tiny vocabulary and limited knowledge of how to say things correctly. I certainly can't write in German.)
- I hope this explains things. Bottom line: don't take this issue to heart. Wikipedia can seem like a harsh environment for new editors. My view is that new users are best advised to stay away from contentious areas like using WP:AFD and WP:PROD until they have more experience of creating content. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:34, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
![]() |
The Citation Barnstar |
Thanks for fixing the citations in my draft! QuickQuokka [talk • contribs] 13:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
![]() |
The Civility Barnstar |
For your help at the aforementioned WT:AWB QuickQuokka [talk • contribs] 22:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC) |
Illusion Flame Teahouse message
Hi Nick, I'm presuming that you didn't mean to post a Teahouse welcome on Illusion Flame's user page, as opposed to their talk? I have reverted the edit. Thanks, Schminnte (talk • contribs) 21:12, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Schminnte Thanks. Dealt with. (It's been a long and tiring day of cleanup and very repetitive editing!) Nick Moyes (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Understandable. Thanks for all your help with newer editors (including me not that long ago it seems! I knew I recognised that username). All the best, Schminnte (talk • contribs) 21:16, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Soccerpuppets on Vanessa Peters (04:56, 3 August 2023)
Hey I was copyediting this article about Vanessa Peters, the musician, and the original author put two spaces after every period. I know some people prefer this, but should I copy this style as well? Thanks --Soccerpuppets (talk) 04:56, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there Soccerpuppets. Great question! Double-spacing is a gradually diminishing habit, especially amongst North American editors. See MOS:DOUBLESPACE which explains that if anyone does type double spaces into an article, they render on the page as single spaced. Therefore, that tells me that single spacing is the correct approach to use.
- BTW: I noticed in a recent edit you changed 'both sides of the Atlantic' to 'globally'. Whilst I take your point, I would suggest that "in North America and Europe" would have been much more appropriate in that situation, as it's probably not referring to including China, Russia, Asia, Africa and South America etc. But it all depends what the cited source says.
- Another PS: your username might draw attention to yourself as it tends to suggest a cynical use of a new WP:SOCKPUPPET account to avoid a block. You might like to address that issue by saying something on your userpage about your rationale and motives for wanting to contribute to Wikipedia, and why you chose that name. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Ok thanks for the answer for single-spacing and "globally" word choice. This is very helpful in my journey to learn how to edit wikipedia pages effectively. Also, I understand your point about my username. I watched a video about long-term abuse yesterday which inspired to start helping out on wikipedia, and I felt choosing a satirical username would remind me of why I started. I did not know about the user bio, I will update that as soon as possible. Thanks again. Soccerpuppets (talk) 17:24, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Parthenon646546 (07:13, 3 August 2023)
Hi please teach me how to begin editing because i am not able to find arti le with any grammatical mistake --Parthenon646546 (talk) 07:13, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there @Parthenon646546. Thanks for your question and welcome to Wikipedia. I will leave an automatic welcome message on your talk page which includes a very helpful link to help you learn how to edit. (We have two different editing tools you can switch between, if you find one is not to your taste)
- If you have good English language skills, and want to improve the readability of articles here, you might wish to follow the guidance at WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors which focuses on improving the wording of articles.
- In desktop view, you will see you have a Tab next to your user page and talk page, called 'Homepage'. That offers you tailored suggestions for editing to help get you started. These are always small edits which are perfect for learning. I see you're on a mobile, so look for the very small link at the bottom of every page. It lets you switch your phone from mobile editing mode to 'desktop' editing mode. (It's something I always do on my tiny iPhone screen. Mobile view is great for reading articles, but not so useful for making edits to improve a page.)
- You might also like to visit WP:Task Center for ideas of the type of editing you might like to do. Let me know if this helps and how you are getting along. Learning to edit Wikipedia is a bit like learning to drive a car. Start slowly and move off gently until you've mastered the basic controls before you drive at high speed. Obviously, knowing where to go is important at whatever speed, so I hope my reply has been of some help to you. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Please remove edits to Michael P. Grace II
The removing of so-called coatracks has made the article unorganized...Work as a theater producer is now under Music Work. Please remove the edits if possible. Starlighsky (talk) 21:53, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Starlighsky The WP:COATRACK content was veering off-topic. I only removed one sentence and a supporting citation to Wikipedia, which is not acceptable. The rest of my edits were simply logical headings and sub-headings, and very wording minor tweaks. TBH: I doubt this person is notable by our standards, but keep working on it and digging out better sources of info on him. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- I understand what you saying. However, it put theater work under the heading of music work. I can fix it as entertainment industry work, but it damaged the article when the so-called coatracks were removed.
- All in all, I understand what you are saying and will keep working on it. Starlighsky (talk) 22:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- I just saw you fixed the issue, thanks Starlighsky (talk) 22:17, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Starlighsky OK, thanks. I was trying to be helpful and supportive for you! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks! Starlighsky (talk) 23:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from A C006 (15:29, 5 August 2023)
hello how can i create an article --A C006 (talk) 15:29, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there @A C006:, what would be the subject of your article, and what published sources do you have to base it on, please? I can probably help you better if you give me some idea what it's about. But, fair warning, trying to create a brand new article from scratch is extremely difficult if you've never spent any time getting to understand the basics of Wikipedia editing. Making small edits on existing articles and learning to add citations to support new content is a very good way to learn.
- I'll leave a welcome message on your talk page with links to learning to edit. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from TerDevor (01:31, 6 August 2023)
Hello Nick! I would like to create/edit Wiki pages for Companies. I feel that a lot of information related to companies is a little dated. Is that ok to do?
Terrance --TerDevor (talk) 01:31, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there, TerDevor. Creating articles about companies is a task fraught with many difficulties. First off: Wikipedia is not here to serve as free promotion for them. If you either work for, or are being paid to write about businesses, you have a Conflict of Interest. Paid editors are obliged by our policies to declare who is paying them, or they get blocked. See WP:PAID for advice on this.
- We reject all articles which fail to meet our Notability Criteria for Businesses. This is the bar you have to get over in your sourcing thaqt demonstrates the notability of a company. You cannot rely on demonstrating notability by citing the business website itself, or press releases, or insider business magazines. The business must have been covered by at least three mainstream media reports, in detail and in depth, and not just by insider business newsletter or paid-for articles, or interviews with CEOs etc.
- My advice would be to stick to other topics, and to learn the basics of editing first. i.e. work on improving existing articles and learning how to add citations to support unsubstantiated factual information presented in those articles. See WP:TUTORIAL and WP:YFA for further guidance. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:03, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
Help - TruxtVerified
I am a new host at Teahouse, I installed Scripts you provided. But when I click invite, that message come to me only. Help me to fix this issue. TruxtVerified (talk) 08:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
- @TruxtVerified It works for me. I've just gone to your talk page and successfully used the 'Invite' button to leave you a TH invite (You can obviously remove it now). I assume you didn't try to use it whilst you were on your own talk page? As I'm not a whizz with scripts, once you've investigated by removing and reinstalling it, and still find there's a problem, I suggest you post your query at WT:TH as there are some (like Sdkb) who are pretty good with scripts.
- But feel free to test it by leaving me invites - I'll know what's going on and remove them later.
- Please note: I'd not realised the teahouse badges were still in the 'active' section of that page, so I've just moved it down to the inactive section as these were used a lot in the very early days, but are no longer needed.
- Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
- It works, Thank you for you attention. A good friendship starts here❤️TruxtVerified (talk) 11:21, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Regarding Extended confirmed user
Hello Nick Moyes, i am a new user on Wikipedia and I am editing Wikipedia for past approx 20-30 days and I have more than 300 edits , i want to know that when will I become a Extended confirmed user on wiki and what are the benifits of this. and I also want to design my user page like many other Wikipedians but I don't know how to do that ? WikiAnchor10 (talk) 14:03, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
- @WikiAnchor10 Please read WP:XCON to appreciate the significance of Extended Confirmed rights. You will need an account that has been active for at least 30 days (today or tomorrow, probably) and have made 500 edits. So you've a little way to go on the second bit.
- If you find a userpage you like, you could look at the source code they've used to create it and copy and modify it to suit your interests. (Don't just paste in another person's userpage - that might rouse curiosity,. but modify it to suit (and perhaps also credit the source in an edit summary))
- Alternatively, take a look at Wikipedia:User page design guide for various ideas you could try out. I hope this addresses your queries. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:22, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks WikiAnchor10 (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Please review User:Artecollectic/sandbox for copyvio again
The source text appears in full on Fridays(!)otherwise the para you removed would have been sufficient. This is a 100% copyvio I'm afraid! There is history on the creating editor's talk page. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:17, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
- It has since been deleted. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 09:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for updating me. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:21, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Apex101 (20:05, 17 August 2023)
hello --Apex101 (talk) 20:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Nabi Bux Zardari (08:25, 19 August 2023)
I am Unable To Create knowledge panel please Help me.. --Nabi Bux Zardari (talk) 08:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Nabi Bux Zardari The true “knowledge panel” is found on Google Search results, and often incorporates Wikipedia information. We have no control over how Google uses our data. Here, we use Template:Infobox to create a INFOBOX in an article.
- Please check those out for guidance. As I am away from home right now until Monday, please seek further help at the WP:TEAHOUSE. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:55, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (06:11, 22 August 2023)
Hi Nick,
How can I tell when creating an article, whether I have included sufficient secondary references to qualify my subject as having received significant coverage?
I have recently had an article declined for this exact reason, and although since then I have added more secondary references, I cannot tell whether it meets the threshold. Since I don't want to go through the whole rigmarole of being rejected and having to resubmit, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me some assistance before the article is reviewed.
For reference, here is my draft article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Kate_Andrews --Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Bill Wilson AKA "CIA". I can't do much to help you with only those sources, I'm afraid. They're all just brief mentions of her, and none show an in-depth, independent article about her. As such, she fails to meet WP:NBIO. Your only course of action is to do further research, or wait until such sources are published. That is often the issue with news outlets and journalists - they're the ones who might make news stories available that you can use, but they rarely get written about in detail themselves. Sorry I can't assist you , though I have done some minor copy-editing of the draft and have marked where factual statements about a living person need to be supported with a citation. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the response Nick,
- If a could ask you a further question, my draft of the Kate Andrews article was modelled after this one on Katy Balls, yet I am not sure which sources in the Katy Balls article would qualify her as a notable person if my Kate Andrews one doesn't qualify. Is it just a case of an article being wrongly accepted? Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 10:46, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" It could well be. I'm not going through each of the refs in that article, but they all seem fairly short. See WP:NJOURNALIST for our notability criteria about creative professionals. Don't give up though, and keep working on it and looking for other sources. A year or so ago I created a page about journalist, Olga Rudenko from the Kyiv Independent, but by then then she had featured on the front cover of Time Magazine! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:36, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Cheers! Thanks for your assistance, Nick Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 14:24, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" It could well be. I'm not going through each of the refs in that article, but they all seem fairly short. See WP:NJOURNALIST for our notability criteria about creative professionals. Don't give up though, and keep working on it and looking for other sources. A year or so ago I created a page about journalist, Olga Rudenko from the Kyiv Independent, but by then then she had featured on the front cover of Time Magazine! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:36, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Alexandrachudinova (21:30, 25 August 2023)
How to publish a biography on Wikipedia? --Alexandrachudinova (talk) 21:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, Alexandrachudinova. Thank you for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia. I can see that you attempted to use Wikipedia to publish an article about yourself, and that it was (quite reasonably) deleted. (I happen to be an administrator here, so can view your deleted page)
- Simple question: Are you notable (as defined by Wikipedia)? See this page for our notability criteria for living people, or WP:NARTIST for creative individuals.
- If you can find three or more independent sources that talk about you in detail and in depth, then you may well meet our notability criteria for having an article about you. If not, just forget it. This encyclopaedia is not here for WP:PROMOTION. You would obviously have a Conflict of Interest in trying to write about yourself, and it's not always a good idea, anyway (see WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY).
- Finally, I always advise any new editor to spend time learning how to make small edits to existing Wikipedia pages before ever trying to create a new article. It's like a brand new learner driver setting off at 100 km/hour and trying to avoid crashing. It's very difficult! Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
- Dear Nick Moyes,
- My pleasure for your full answer.
- I have a question. The process of submitting the articles can be much easier than right now.
- Do you have an opportunity to submit a suggestion for Wikipedia?
- Have a nice day.
- Respectfully,
- Alexandra Chudinova Alexandrachudinova (talk) 13:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Alexandrachudinova I am afraid I do not quite understand your question.
- If you want to make suggestions for the way Wikipedia operates, these can be raised and discussed at 'the Village Pump'. There are different places for those discussions, depending on what your idea is. So read that page carefully.
- If, however, you just want to submit a new article, the best route for you would be to start work on a 'Draft' article, then submit it for review and feedback when you are ready. Go to this page to find a 'wizard' to help you get started. But I should warn you that creating a new article from nothing is one of the hardest tasks here. It is often best to spend time first making smaller improvements to existing pages, and getting to understand how things work.
- The most important thing for any new article is that it must meet our Notability Criteria, and be based upon Reliable Sources. If you can't find sources to show that a topic is notable, then we cannot have a page about it here.
- I hope one of these replies addresses your question. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Question from Jessica36363 on Advertising revenue (06:32, 29 August 2023)
How can I post an advertisement --Jessica36363 (talk) 06:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Jessica36363 You can't - we do not permit advertising here. See WP:NOTADVERT. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Source requirements for new topics (eg: Artificial Intelligence)
I just tried to edit this page Facial recognition system, by adding a much needed section on AI based facial recognition. Since AI is kind of a new an evolving topic, many researchers opt to self publish their work on arXiv, create their own project pages, or share their works on self published blog posts. I understand that these may not qualify as reliable sources according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and I do understand that there sometimes is a fine line between self-promotion and supporting a contribution. Can you help me improve my contribution (the AI section for face recognition) [1] ? Thanks! Nuwiz (talk) 14:46, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hi @Nuwiz, thanks for reaching out. Whilst I'm afraid I don't have the time to help improve your contributions, I can confirm that blogs and promotional links to company websites are never accepted here. I realise that AI/facial recognition is a cutting-edge, rapidly developing field. But we cannot accept such primary sources from a company website (it comes over as WP:PROMOTION). Instead, we need secondary sources which have reported independently on those developments. Wikipedia only collates and presents what others have reliably reported already. If that means waiting, then so be it.
- On another note, I'm afraid I need to advise you that your account name breaches our policy (WP:USERNAMES) on two points. It appears to represent or promote a company website, and it could therefore also have multiple users accessing it. Please permanently abandon that account, forget its password, and create a new one which is neither promotional, nor suggestive of multiple users accessing it. It faces being blocked for those two reasons alone, I'm afraid.
- Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:12, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
Hi Nick,
You said to drop you a note – unfortunately, this indeed appears to be a slow motion edit war. The two Rwandan IPs (41.186.194.39, 197.243.109.58) are likely the same person on different devices/connections, given previous overlap also at Menelik II and the tendency to paste the same prepared arguments in their edit summary. They might be trying to make some valid points, but the message keeps getting truncated, and attempts to direct them to the talk page failed.
Cheers, 2406:3003:2077:1E60:EDE9:C688:2C0C:D5F5 (talk) 05:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've blocked two IP addresses for slow burn edit warring and given low-level page protection to the article for 6 months. That'll impact on you as you're not editing from a registered account, even though I can see you've been active on this IP range since March 2021. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:26, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from Mrs.Stina (19:40, 8 September 2023)
Hello. I am wanting to add a Rosenwald school to the " List of Rosenwald Schools". The school is listed in the article, but it is not listed on the table showing the schools. I want to add this beautiful restored school to that list. --Mrs.Stina (talk) 19:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
- Welcome to Wikipedia, Mrs.Stina, and thanks for your question.
- The page entitled List of Rosenwald schools was not protected, so you are able to edit it yourself. (You did not need to make this request)
- Alternatively, you could leave a clear explanation of what you want doing on the article's Talk page (it's called an EDITREQUEST).
- If you have a photograph that you have personally taken (i.e. you own the copyright of it - rather than simply taking it off the internet - then you can upload it to Wikimedia Commons, and from there embed it into the List article.
- I have left you a standard 'welcome' message on you talk page with links to help pages which will help teach you the basics of how to edit Wikipedia. I will keep a watch on List of Rosenwald schools, so if you get in a muddle trying to do it yourself, I might spot the edit and fix it for you if I can. If you make a real mess of an edit, you can go to the 'Page History' Tab and find your edit at the top of the list of every single edit to that page. Look along that top row and you'll see an 'Undo' link to revert any change that you did not intend to make.
- I hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from The Soup Person (21:49, 8 September 2023)
Hello, I am hoping to edit the "Soup" article, as the information in that article only mentions soups in North America, and there is also a missing page I would like to create, "Íslensk kjötsúpa", and I see that to edit the "Soup" article I have to have 4 edits at least. There is no question here, I just wanted to inform you of my intention on Wikipedia. Good day, and goodbye. --The Soup Person (talk) 21:49, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
- @The Soup Person OK, thanks for letting me know. Please ensure you use at least three reliable, non-promotional citations to support any new article. As creating a page from scratch is one of the hardest tasks here, I advise you to get a little editing practice on existing articles beforehand. You can create a draft article (and work on it until you're ready for it to be reviewed) with our wizard tool at this page. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:41, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from Liverbrads1 (05:51, 9 September 2023)
What questions will you answer? --Liverbrads1 (talk) 05:51, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- Hi, Liverbrads1. I'll try to answer any problem you have that relates to editing or using Wikipedia, or if you need guidance about interacting with other users. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Autopatrolled?
Hi Nick. I noticed that you had given Theresearchroom and Shling00 the autopatrolled right. Since they seem to be brand-new editors who wouldn't meet the requirements for autopatrolled, I'm guessing you meant to give them confirmed instead? Just figured I'd check. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Extraordinary Writ Thanks for flagging this. They were at a training session I was helping with a few months ago, and I'm trying to remember why I need to change their rights. I think it may have been to do with access to translation software. But I'm sure you're right to flag this up as an administrative error on my part. I will look into it and fix it (though I can't do it right this minute). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:59, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from KuzynPedia (14:38, 19 September 2023)
Are you a bot or no? --KuzynPedia (talk) 14:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
- @KuzynPedia No, I'm a real human being. You can read about my interests and my involvement with Wikipedia over 13 years on my userpage. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
BLP issue
This looks like a pretty serious BLP infringement (uncited claim of major criminal activity by someone identified by full-name, and possibly even a public person), not mere vandalism. Could you explain your thinking why it does not merit a rev-del? DMacks (talk) 23:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
- Good question; thanks for asking. I've no objection to it being revdelled, but my feeling was that it was a random sentence added to a random article with no connection to that name and with that name not being findable online (I did take time out to search for it, and found nothing, apart from a similarly named American individual). Hence why I said "I don't think REVDEL is quite warranted" (my subsequent italics) as it seemed like a vandalism-related edit unrelated to the article, and thus already removed from view. But I was borderline, and might have felt differently on a less busy day, so please revdel it if yo disagree with my comment. I guess "better safe than sorry" is not a bad approach. I'll leave it to you to decide. But if you do, should you not then really also seek WP:OVERSIGHT in this instance? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
- If I may jump in as the person who originally suggested revdel (though I'm not an admin), thanks to both of you for bringing this up and laying out your reasoning. I didn't want to dive into the question at the teahouse because of streisand effect concerns, but it looked to me like potentially defamatory material, and the reason revdel came to mind is that the user looked like they were trying to not just get it deleted from the page, but (perhaps quite reasonably) to get it struck from the page history. I was also considering suggesting oversight. If somebody else doesn't move forward with that I'm happy to request oversight if you think it might be warranted. - Astrophobe (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from Kenneth Hatley (01:40, 23 September 2023)
Thank you very much. I need. Help in writing in Wikipedia. I have had a career in the Music Industry and film soundtracks. I have a lot of significant artists I have worked with, Produced, and Managed, as well as partners in projects, such as film soundtracks, concerts, studio musicians, and songwriters that my songs were with Richie Havens, Country Star Razzy Bailey, Johnny and June Cash, Willie Nelson I have worked on projects with these artists. --Kenneth Hatley (talk) 01:40, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Kenneth, thanks for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia. I'll put a welcome message on your User Talk Page with a few useful links to getting started with editing Wikipedia.
- It sounds like you've known lot of famous people in your time, and you probably have some great photos of them that you've taken? You could really help out by checking their Wikipedia pages and seeing if you have photos of these artists better than the ones already there that would improve the articles. Providing you own the copyright as the photographer, you could upload these to Wikimedia Commons (via this link) for use in Wikipedia articles.
- If your question relates more to you wanting to write an article about yourself, then I should point out two things. Firstly, the subject of any new article must meet our 'Notability Criteria'. This means that the world at large must have noticed and written about them in independent mainstream publications. For musicians and artists, the specific criteria for acceptance can be founds at WP:NMUSIC. Sources such as music books and mainstream magazines and newspapers are acceptable sources, but user-generated content such as WP:IMDB or personal blogs and websites are no regarded as sufficiently reliablet.
- Secondly, we very strongly discourage anyone from attempting to create an article about themselves. Not only is this an extreme Conflist of Interest, it is sometimes not a wise thing to do (see WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY). If someone is notable (by Wikipedia's standards, then there's a good chance another, unconnected editor will want to write about them. Of course, if you feel you do merit a page here on Wikipedia, you can make that suggestion (and include a few links to good sources) at Wikipedia:Requested articles/music.
- I hope this answers some of your questions. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Nick,
- Thank you for the advice. Yes I have many years throughout my career. I certainly understand that it is dangerous territory when one writes their own biography. As a professional in the industries of Music and film, I understand and have been diligent to back up any projects and achievements, good or bad Richie Havens advised me in the early 80's. Richie said get everything in writing, besides the contract, but put it in as a letter to certify any project, Richie further stated, we go to have facts with us, because there are too many liars out there that will try to claim it was not you. Richie, was a partner and the God Father of mny son. Richie was our my first Producer in Nashville in a band called the Raven, though the albu mnn did not getr off the ground, and the band lasted, but mine and Richie's relation almost until he passed away. David Carradine was another one, very much like Richie. When David went top Bangkok and was suspected murdered, after the Bangkok Police gave me five different stories. I had just spoken with David a day or two and was very positive about another film and the sound track he and I were going to do the Production and composing, unfortunately when he went to dinner out of the hotel, to meet with the film producers. After the evening, and dinner David had to walk back to the hotel. However, the Chauffeur had driven away. When David got to the hotel, the camera was on and saw him come in, when he went to the elevator the camera went blank. I received a call fom a Director in L.A. , Lance Miccio he called me at about 5:30 a.m. in the morning. I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico on business with an Executive Producer. The first words out of Lance was, "Kenny I am so sorry", I asked him what was he sorry about enough to wake me up; then the words that came out of Lance's mouth put me in a state of shock, his words "Kenny, I am sorry about David's passing, I asked him what was he talking about, he said David was dead the maids found him in his bedroom, with him tied up in the closet. Kenneth Hatley (talk) 01:59, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Kenneth Hatley - those are sad stories. I think David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu was utterly wonderful. I was glued to that series and really admired him, as well as the character he payed, when I was a kid growing up in the mid '70s. As you say, to know him personally and to lose him in that way must have been shocking for you.
- From a Wikipedia perspective, those personal stories - no matter how valid - can never be used unless they were properly published in quality newspapers, or equivalent. But if you need any specific advice on adding content here, do let me know. Or, if I should not respond in due course, feel free to seek help at The Teahouse - a place designed to help newcomers who are struggling with the intricacies of editing. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from Halabi51 (15:37, 27 September 2023)
1) MARIO VARGAS LLOSA Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru (born March 28, 1936) is one of the most popular contemporary Latin American writer, who is also an active political activist. Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. The major themes of his novels are centred around human tragedies and loss of identities under dictatorships, and the helplessness of the oppressed in temporalities of totalitarianism --Halabi51 (talk) 15:37, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, Halabi51. Welcome to Wikipedia! Do you have a question about the article on Mario Vargas Llosa? If so, please explain clearly what help you need. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:33, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Question from Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (19:54, 28 September 2023)
Hi Nick,
When it comes to articles about towns and other such places, would it be off-topic to mention nearby services like hospitals and schools solely because they are the closest available services of their kind to the settlement in question? --Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 19:54, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" I presume your query relates to the article about Helensburgh, which I see you've been working on. Before I answer your question, I should point out that I can see quite a few issues with what's in that article already- though probably not all of them are as a result of your own attempts to improve the page.
- At a quick skim through, I can see (in these edits of yours that the page contains lots of factual assertions without backing them up to proper citations. Instead someone has just linked to a business website within a citation, and one (the Outdoor Museum) is to a domain that isn't even functioning any more). That's not the right way to do it. It looks like you've started to move things around and tidy things up, as wellas improving the encyclopaedic tone. This is a good move. Editors have obviously added all sorts of details (presumably from their personal knowledge, but not given any links to enable someone to WP:VERIFY them. Just a link to an organisation is not sufficient. There is quite a bit of WP:TRIVIA which you could remove, such as the mention of who the museum's designer is. One citation is just an external link which needs to go; the other is a good one which verifies that the museum was 'award winning' - but it's not in the right place to support the statement about awards, whereas the whole sentence isn't needed. The actual word changes you have made have all improved the encyclopaedic tone of the article - so well done on that front.
- I would urge you to continue cleaning up the page and improving its encyclopaedic nature. Regarding schools and hospitals: well, yes, there's a danger that it becomes non-encyclopaedic by adding such stuff, and reads like a list of minor local facilities. Saying that the town is served by a major hospital and a key railway station may be valid, but listing all the schools probably isn't. Maybe cite a link to show which education authority it falls in. It's a balance between not bloating an article with WP:TRIVIA and keeping it trim, well cited, and with every factual statement supported by a Reliable Source that can be checked to verify the statement is correct.
- I'm not sure this was quite the answer you expected, but let me know if you want any further guidance. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:59, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for going the extra mile and reviewing the actual article, Nick.
- Firstly, I completely agree with the article's referencing issues. Just so you know, most of assertions predate my editing. The only reason why I didn't address them was because I thought it better to deal with the other problems first, such as the structure, outdated information, informal tone, etc... My thought was to not go too mental to begin with and just deal with the most striking problems, then decide on the references and trivia later.
- Secondly, regarding the hospitals: in the article, there is mention, for instance of Paisley and Vale of Leven hospitals - both of these hospitals are, of course, not in Helensburgh. This is the problem that I have: should the article be concerned with what is strictly in Helensburgh - in which case neither hospital should be mentioned - or rather, that, but also what might be relevant to the Helensburgh residents (in which case they would be mentioned)?
- Once again, thank you for your comment, that was really great! Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 21:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" You're welcome. And, yes, I see the things I dislike did predate your edits. (I've upgraded the article's quality rating and left a note on the talk page with my concerns.) Think of the article, not as a resource for local people to find out where they can access resources, but more for anyone else who does not know Helensburgh to find out things that are worth knowin about the towng. Looking at it that way, thenI'd suggest leainge out anything not related to directly to the town.
- One tip can be to raise issues of concern , and your proposals to address them, as a note on the talk page. If nobody objects to your proposals, then go ahead and make them. We work by consensus, but if nobody offers alternative approaches, then simply WP:BEBOLD.
- I don't know how committed you are to the idea of improving this article. But should you be, then once you've made all the basic improvements and additions that you think need doing, you could ask for 3rd party input at WP:PEERREVIEW. You could set an ambition to bring it up to WP:GA status, for example. But only submit it once you'd put in as much work as you think is needed to fix the basic things first. I worked on enhancing this article for months and months before getting a GA rating. It was a fascinating, in-depth exercise that was most satisfying. But it doesn't appeal to everyone! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:16, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you Nick, that's cleared things up.
- For future reference, is there a page on Wikipedia that I can consult for future queries like these - the suitability of content, lets say? I am aware of the Help section, but it seems intimidating to navigate (which is why I ended up asking you!) Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" (talk) 06:23, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Bill Wilson AKA "CIA" Yes, Bill. The best place to ask any question, day or night is The Teahouse. It's friendly forum designed to help new editors when they encounter problems. You may find me there, too, but there are over 80 'Teahouse Hosts' available to answer queries. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:00, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Testing from SAAO
This is a test from SAAO to see if this works 155.232.7.202 (talk) 09:15, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- That works fine, thanks. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:38, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Re: Thanks
Absolutly no problem here! Simply, the short notice entailed the serious risk that the request would not be processed. I, who fortunately live in the CEST/CET time zone, noticed the urgent request just before going to bed and immediately processed it. Luckily the deployment slots were free this morning! Let's say that luck did a lot :P Wish you a great Editathon and a nice day ;) Superpes15 (talk) 09:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Man was born to suffer why woman are born for grace
Man was born to suffer why woman are born for grace Halabi51 (talk) 10:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (01:10, 8 October 2023)
How can I deal with Vandalism? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 01:10, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
- @MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Thanks for your question. As a very new user yourself, first spend a bit more time simply learning the basics of editing. I've checked some of your contributions and not all were that appropriate. this, for example could be considered by some as unhelpful, bordering on vandalism. Yet you probably did it through Good Faith. But not to worry - new users make mistakes and need to learn (hence why I mention this), and why I welcome your question.
- To answer your question more directly, I suggest you take a long read through this page: WP:VANDALISM) and follow some of the links to get a grasp of how Wikipedia defines and deals with vandalism. Then, after a bit more experience of editing, you could enroll at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Academy (there are minimum requirements of being able to show 200 WP:MAINSPACE edits first).
- If I could make one suggestion: I would like to see you adding a very brief WP:EDITSUMMARY to all your edits, rather than simply reverting people with no explanation. That's pretty bad form and doesn't either help people learn, nor does it explain your motives for making any given edit. By guiding and steering people towards the right way to edit, we can change poor editing behaviour into really helpful editing., and I appreciate your interest and willingness to help out.
- If you have favourite articles that you are concerned about (maybe they are your pet subjects, or maybe you've already suspected bad faith editing happening there) you could add them to your WP:WATCHLIST, and then view recent changes to those articles, or even get notifications of changes, if you modify your Notification settings in Preferences. You can then revert and warn an editor if they continue making bad faith edits. You could enable WP:TWINKLE to help you inform and warn users more easily and quickly, placing a series of increasingly firm notices on a vandals talk page before you ever consider reporting them for administrators to take action at WP:AIV. As an admin myself, I get irked when a user gives a final warning to a vandal editor and then immediately reports them to AIV. I expect that editor to watch the actions of that person and only to report them after they have continued with further bad editing activity.
- On othre thing you might lie to look at as the live upodates of all edits at Special:Recentchanges. I use these settings to reveal the most likely bad faith edits. It is never wise to lurk at the top of the page - most editors tend to watch only these. Instead, go down the page to view older edits which might still be damaging, but which have been missed. Click on 'diff' to see their edit and then take time to assess and consider why those changes were made. e.g. Does it improve the page? If not, does it detract yet not appear like actual vandalism? view any edit summary; view the other Contributions of that editor; check their talk page for prior warnings; keep a Tab open with their contributions for half an hour or so (IP editors and brand new accounts tend to like causing havoc over a short period of time, and many stop when first warned. Make sure any warning you give is fair and proportionate, and that you explain why you have reverted someone. All things like this turn new editors into really helpful backroom folk. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:25, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks! I appreciate your help! and by the way, I am now autoconfirmed with 41 edits (As of right now the time I replied) :-) MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 22:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Editorrr164 on User:Editorrr164/sandbox (18:05, 11 October 2023)
Hello how can i create an article --Editorrr164 (talk) 18:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, Editorrr164. Your edit to User:Editorrr164/sandbox makes no sense to me. Your sandbox is the right place to prepare a new article, but doing so successfully is the hardest task anyone can do here on Wikipedia. For a total novice, it is much harder, still.
- Unless the topic can be shown to meet our Notability Criteria, then it cannot have an article on Wikipedia. Please read WP:NSCHOOLS to understand how that applies to educational organisations. Be aware that Wikipedia is not here to help you promote or advertise any organisation. See WP:PROMOTION. If you are connected to the school or college, you will have a 'Conflict of Interest' and must declare that on your userpage. See WP:COI to understand this guideline. Having understood and acted on those COI guidelines, and assuming you still feel the school meets our Notability Criteria, you may then wish to read Help:Your first article. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Doc Lusion (20:12, 11 October 2023)
Hi there. I would like to write a biography of a living physician with multiple citations, contributions and a long and illustrious career. How do I begin? Thanks. --Doc Lusion (talk) 20:12, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Doc Lusion The best way is to first spend time learning the basics of editing Wikipedia -especially understanding how to add content and to cite Reliable Sources to substantiate it. Then, and only then, is it sensible to attempt to create a new article about a person. They will need to meet our 'notability criteria' for living people, found at WP:NBIO. And you can create a draft article in either your 'sandbox' or as a formal Draft article and submit it for review and feedback. See Help:Your first article.
- If you either are, or know, this person, or are employed by them, then you would need to declare your connection to them by following guidance laid out at this page. I hope this helps? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #28
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg/220px-Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg.png)
Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Community_Configuration_accordions_expanded.png/220px-Community_Configuration_accordions_expanded.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Community_Configuration_dashboard.png/220px-Community_Configuration_dashboard.png)
Community configuration 2.0
- Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
- Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
- Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.
IP Masking
- The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
- Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)
Mentorship
- We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
- We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
- Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.
Scaling Growth features
- We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
- We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
- At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.
Other news
- We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
- You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
- After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF) Talk 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (01:10, 18 October 2023)
What exactly is a Steward? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 01:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- @MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Stewards are users with a very high level of technical access across all Wiki Projects and interfaces who help manage, maintain and restrict access to our platforms. There are only 31 stewards across the entire set of projects, and you and I rarely, if ever, need to worry about what roles they perform. However, you can find out more information here. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Ojando (22:42, 20 October 2023)
hi --Ojando (talk) 22:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there, @Ojando. Do you need any help or advice on editing Wikipedia? Nick Moyes (talk) 00:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Jrmango (22:32, 21 October 2023)
How do I create a page? --Jrmango (talk) 22:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Jrmango. Just a quick reply before I head off to bed tonight: Pages can be created about NOTABLE TOPICS, but not just about any old stuff you happen to know or like. If you tell be the type of topic (person, place, film, musician, species, nebula, etc, I can point you to the relevant notability criteria (such as WP:NBIO, WP:NMUSIC, WP:NFILM etc).
- You can create a draft article either in your personal sandbox or as a proper DRAFT and submit it for review and feedback when you think it's finally ready to go into the main part of the encyclopaedia. Please follow guidance and use the 'Article Creation Wizard' at this page. Everything you add to a page must be based upon properly published, good quality Reliable Sources. Follow the hyperlinks for all the information you will need to get you started. Regards, and good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
Moderator Tools newsletter - Issue #1
Welcome to the inaugural Moderator Tools newsletter! We’ll aim to publish new issues whenever we have big new updates about the projects we’re working on.
PageTriage
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/PageTriage_NewPagesFeed_-_October_2023.png/220px-PageTriage_NewPagesFeed_-_October_2023.png)
We’ve now wrapped up our work to support the English Wikipedia’s New Pages Patrol community by tackling some major technical debt in the PageTriage extension. The final project update gives an overview of all the work that we did over the past 6 months.
Automoderator
We’re currently working on a project called Automoderator, which will enable communities to automatically revert bad edits based on community-defined settings. We’re looking for input and feedback on our plans so far, and have a number of questions on topics we need patrollers and administrators to help us understand better. In addition to the overview and questions on the main project page, we now have two sub-pages with more specific information:
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Automoderator_-_model_testing_tool_screenshot.png/220px-Automoderator_-_model_testing_tool_screenshot.png)
- If you want to investigate Automoderator’s accuracy rate and check out how it would behave in practice, we’ve set up a testing process with data and scores so you can help us find new patterns we can take into consideration before Automoderator is deployed.
- The measurement plan is the first draft of our plan to measure whether Automoderator is achieving its goals and not having negative consequences. Want to propose some data for us to capture to help evaluate this project? This is the place to go!
Other
Our team has also been working to ensure that software we’re responsible for is updated to support temporary accounts. We’ve made changes to PageTriage, Nuke, and The Wikipedia Library.
Although we have active engineering projects ongoing, we're always happy to chat about your community's content moderation tool needs - feel free to get in contact at Talk:Moderator Tools.
Read past issues or sign up to this newsletter here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (22:01, 26 October 2023)
Can Autoconfirmed users like me get the rollback user right, or do you have to be extended confirmed? --MrLegacyVideoMaker666 (talk) 22:02, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- @MrLegacyVideoMaker666 Extended confirmed is a rough indication of the amount of experience we would expect from someone requesting rollback rights, but is not 'set in stone'. Please read WP:Rollback so you are aware of what is involved. Note the section which states that "Rollback is not for very new users: it is unlikely that editors with under 200 mainspace edits will have their request granted."
- I appreciate your keenness, but noting recent comments on your talk page, don't let your enthusiasm to revert vandalism blind you to good faith editing. Maybe also like to see WP:CVU and read WP:HATCOLLECTING. All the best, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from RobertoSanchez1990 (01:02, 27 October 2023)
Soccer player --RobertoSanchez1990 (talk) 01:03, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
- @RobertoSanchez1990 This makes no sense. Do you have a question for me about editing Wikipedia? Nick Moyes (talk) 13:03, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Bobby Sh3p007 (20:32, 28 October 2023)
I used my IP for my first actual edit, and then read that creating a login would eliminate displaying my IP and just display my chosen User Name, however after completing registration it does not cross reference that my User Name is from that particular IP address, stating that I have 0 edits. Is there a way of fixing this? --Bobby Sh3p007 (talk) 20:32, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, Bobby Sh3p007. There is no technical way to officially connect an IP address to a registered account on Wikipedia. You can create a userpage and disclose anything you want about your previous IP editing. Cullen328 (talk) 20:37, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Hi, Bobby Sh3p007. I'm afraid we can't 'merge' the edits from one user with those of another (or with an IP address). However, if you really wanted to link this account's edits with those when you were not logged in, you could easily add a note on your userpage stating that you formerly edited as IP 192.633.32.44 (or whatever it was). But it doesn't seem worth doing for just one edit, nor is it actually all that sensible to declare your real IP address that you're editing from. (Many registered users actually like to keep private the identity of their IP address and not link it to their account). Hope this (and Cullen328's reply) are of use. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:41, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Any advice?
I am debating whether or not to start regularly editing Wikipedia again. After looking at the contributions of my old account, I laugh at the foolishness of myself when I was immature and young. Based on my previous issues/complaints from three years ago, what are some specific things I need to improve on if I am to successfully return to this site? What was the main issue with my editing/behavior back then? What should I avoid? aeschylus (talk) 04:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Aeschylus Hi. You have two accounts and a large number of very small archive pages which I don't really propose to wade through in detail. But, at a skim through, I don't see much that you were doing wrong. Sometimes one can get sucked into spending ages working in areas of Wikipedia that aren't really that satisfying, yet one continues with it until one runs out of steam. If you're thinking about returning to activity again, decide what it is you want to focus on, and make sure you understand those areas well by reading all the relevant guidelines. This applies just as much to article creation as it does to dealing with vandalism, grammar and copy editing, article assessment or copyright work. For article improvement and creation, decide which areas you want to focus on - maybe making a 'to do' list to help you stick in a narrow area of the most important things for you. You can do that on your own, or get involved with some of the WP:Wikiprojects by working through some of their suggested areas to focus on. Not allowing yourself to get sucked down a rabbit hole is one tip to avoid losing the will to contribute.
- Perhaps I could turn the question around and ask you to link to things that have bothered you in the past and which you'd like guidance on?
- As an aside, if ytou do return to activity, do please find better archive settings which don't make innumerable tiny archives (one per month with one thread in each!). Such settings make it very hard for someone to look back through. Have a read of the settings at User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis. I'd suggest that |format=Y/F could do with being changed to |format= %%i to give you numbered archives (or at the most, have one archived talk page per year) and ensure that 'minkeepthreads' is set to something sensible, like |minkeepthreads=20 so that you've always got the last twenty topics available on your talk page. I tend to be a bit suspicious of users who archive everything off their talk pages all the time. It makes me wonder what they're trying to hide. OK, I do take things to extreme a bit myself so, if you look at my settings, I keep a large number of quick-to-refer-to threads on my talk page (50), and have | maxarchsize=200000 to give me a few large archives, not hundreds of tiny ones. This makes going back to look for a past thread and doing a Ctrl-F keyword search so much easier. For me, it would be a nightmare to have your archive settings; for you it's simply not needed.
- Whether you're a new editor or not, the things to avoid are unreasonably accusing other people of doing bad stuff; being defensive and not open to listening to another person's point of view; failing to spend time to read policies and guidelines relevant to the area you're working on, and not being polite or welcoming to others. I didn't sense any great issue with your earlier interactions, though.
- If someone challenges how you've made an edit, take time to read up and see if you've misunderstood something - and take the time to apologise if you have (I've had to grovel a few times over the years!) You handled a question about Mark Fowler (hitman) quite well. (I've since lost the link to one of those innumerable archives pages, so can't give you a diff), and you appear to have created some pretty good articles and DYKs in the past.
- My feeling is that I don't see an issue with you returning to editing activity - and I think you'd be a net positive if you did. But it comes down to what you want out of it, what time you want to spend on this site.
- I hope this helps a bit. If you want any further specific advice, do please ask. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:28, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the feedback! I will follow this advice if I return. aeschylus (talk) 20:34, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Sunnykhurma (09:02, 29 October 2023)
Hello Nick, Hope you are well!
I need your help in updating one article. --Sunnykhurma (talk) 09:02, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma Please cold you give me a link to the article you want to update, and tell me what you want to add or change. Linking to a source would be extra helpful so that I can guide you most effectively. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for Reply, Draft:The Jalandhar Times Please go through with this and suggest to move this on main page Sunnykhurma (talk) 09:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma I'm afraid I won't do that as the draft does not show how the newspaper meet our [[WP:GNG| notability guidelines]. There are no references at all - and any you do use must be independent of the subject and have talked about this newspaper in detail and in depth. At the moment it is not written in a language appropriate to an encyclopaedia, and sounds more like an advertisement - and that is not our purpose. There are thousands upon thousands of local and regional newspapers around the world. Whilst most are reliable enough to be sources of references for use on Wikipedia, few meet the criteria of actually being notable themselves. See The Kyiv Independent as an example of one that is. Sorry I can't help you, but you are free to continue working to improve it. Finding good sources to use as references should be your priority. Without them, you would be wasting your time, I'm afraid. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- Now, Please have look. I have modified the things which you suggest me to do. Please Sunnykhurma (talk) 17:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma All your sources are still based on The Jalandhar Times, or on its social media presence. To be notable, we need to see evidence that at least three other media outlets have written in detail and in depth about this newspaper. Simply existing is not a rationale for a Wikipedia article, I'm afraid. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBwgKMImXoQswoaG5Aw?ceid=US:en&oc=3
- Will these links help? Sunnykhurma (talk) 17:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma No, they won't The first six all linked TO the The Jalandhar Times. I assume the rest will, too. We need sources that talk ABOUT The Jalandhar Times. There is a significant difference! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- These Below links are talking about The Jalandhar Times
- https://www.thecompanycheck.com/org/jalandhar-times/480e94c295 Sunnykhurma (talk) 18:02, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma I'm really sorry. All that link does is prove that the company exists - but that was never in doubt! Millions of companies, newspapers, shops and people exist too. Only a small number ever get noticed and written about by the world at large. Our notability criteria for businesses would be explained further at this page.
- What you could consider doing is make mention in an existing article to demonstrate that the newspaper serves that region, alongside other newspapers and media. I assume Jalandhar#Media would be the place. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma No, they won't The first six all linked TO the The Jalandhar Times. I assume the rest will, too. We need sources that talk ABOUT The Jalandhar Times. There is a significant difference! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma All your sources are still based on The Jalandhar Times, or on its social media presence. To be notable, we need to see evidence that at least three other media outlets have written in detail and in depth about this newspaper. Simply existing is not a rationale for a Wikipedia article, I'm afraid. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- Now, Please have look. I have modified the things which you suggest me to do. Please Sunnykhurma (talk) 17:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Sunnykhurma I'm afraid I won't do that as the draft does not show how the newspaper meet our [[WP:GNG| notability guidelines]. There are no references at all - and any you do use must be independent of the subject and have talked about this newspaper in detail and in depth. At the moment it is not written in a language appropriate to an encyclopaedia, and sounds more like an advertisement - and that is not our purpose. There are thousands upon thousands of local and regional newspapers around the world. Whilst most are reliable enough to be sources of references for use on Wikipedia, few meet the criteria of actually being notable themselves. See The Kyiv Independent as an example of one that is. Sorry I can't help you, but you are free to continue working to improve it. Finding good sources to use as references should be your priority. Without them, you would be wasting your time, I'm afraid. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for Reply, Draft:The Jalandhar Times Please go through with this and suggest to move this on main page Sunnykhurma (talk) 09:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Question from Mariamkaram94 (18:57, 30 October 2023)
Hello, Why does Wikipedia keep deleting my translation? --Mariamkaram94 (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Mariamkaram94 I don't understand what you mean. We already have an article on English Wikipedia at Tantura massacre.
- You appear to have created an equivalent article in German at User:Mariamkaram94/Tantura-Masskar, and appear to have successfully edited it after posting your question to me. To be frank: You should really be creating translations into Germans over at German Wikipedia. But, oh, I see you already are!
- Assuming the version in German that you made here on English Wikipedia is no longer needed, would you like me to delete it for you? If you want to request deletion at a time of your choosing, just add
{{Db-author}}
to the top of the page, and someone like me will drop by and delete it for you. - Is there anything else you need from me? Nick Moyes (talk) 19:31, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- i was only trying to ass a German Translation to the already published article.
- As far as I understood, it's now in my drafts and am blocked from publishing for 3 days till I finish my editing then it will be published.. correct? Mariamkaram94 (talk) 19:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Mariamkaram94 You said
"I was only trying to ass a German Translation"
I presume you meant ADD a German translation? - If so, please stop! That's not the way to do it. You must go to German Wikipedia and add your article there, first checking all the sources you cite to ensure they genuinely support the text you have translated. Just literally translating word for word is sloppy and doesn't guarantee a good article. I do not know the rules governing German Wikipedia, I'm afraid. But here, brand new users should go through Articles for Creation until they're 'autoconfirmed'.
- Having done that, and had it accepted on German Wikipedia (not here!), you can make a link using the 'add language' function. Because de.wiki and en.wiki use different 'skins' which give you a slightly different layout, on de.wiki it's on the lower left hand column in desktop view, whilst here it's on the top right, just about the 'View History' tabs etc. You can make the link from either page back to the other - it doesn't matter which you start from. You only need to do it once. Hope this helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, and I'm pretty sure German Wikipedia would expect you to use INLINE CITATIONS. We certainly would! There are 28 inline citations in the English article; your draft in German has just one non-functioning reference right at the bottom. You're on the right track - but you've a fair bit more work to do to make this an article suitable for an encyclopaedia where each factual statement you add can be WP:VERIFIED to its source. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
- @Mariamkaram94 You said
Question from Kishan singh rathore jalila on User:Kishan singh rathore jalila (15:46, 3 November 2023)
Colified areas as that could be there in the evening of computer science and technology University admission coaching centre of the day --Kishan singh rathore jalila (talk) 15:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Kishan singh rathore jalila Hello. Do you need advice on editing Wikipedia? If so, please explain exactly what help you need. I cannot respond to a random string of words, as they simply make no sense to me. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Stenelmis concinna
That was a lovely manifesto. Cheers, Crawdad Blues (talk) 00:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Alieyah nicole (20:57, 7 November 2023)
Hello what can I do --Alieyah nicole (talk) 20:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Alieyah nicole. Sorry I didn't see your question until today - I'm afraid I was busy elsewhere.
- The answer is very much that it's up to you. At it's simplest, you have a 'Homepage' Tab which offers newcomers some easy editing suggestions to get them started. Click that Tab; select the broad topic areas you might be interested in and scroll through what it offers you. These will be things like adding a link to other articles, or fixing grammar and spelling.
- You could visit our WP:TASKCENTER, which offers categories of things people might like to do.
- Bottom line: this is an encyclopaedia if 'notable things', collated from properly published sources. Nothing we add should be our own opinions or our personal knowldge. So, adding 'citations' to support statements which might be deemed questionable and currently cannot be verified, is a really useful thing to do.
- I often suggest looking for topics on subjects that interest you, and reading through some of them, whilst asking oneself: "can I improve the sentence construction or readability?", or "are there big gaps in the article that I could find some books or good quality websites that would support the addition of new statements?"
- If you wanted to tell me a bit more about yourself and yhour inteersts, I might be able to make further suggestiosn for you.
- Meanwhile, I have left a welcome message on yor talk page with sme links to get you started, nd to teach you how to approrah editing with either of our two editing tools. gards, e Nick Moyes (talk) 20:25, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Jackalope256 (04:42, 8 November 2023)
Hello! I was thinking about adding to the 'In popular culture' section of the Antidisestablishmentarianism (word) article, as the word was featured as an answer to the New York Times crossword earlier this year (09/19), and I was wondering if that was considered significant enough to add, or something I would be able to add. On the page currently is a usage of the word by Eminem, so it looks like appearances of the word are considered noteworthy, and the New York Times crossword could be considered to be pop culture. Thank you! --Jackalope256 (talk) 04:42, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Jackalope256 That's a really interesting question! My initial reaction was 'No - don't be daft!', but then I looked at Antidisestablishmentarianism_(word) and I've shifted my view to 'Errm, maybe - why not give it a go?'. But I'm very doubtful the edit would stick, because I suspect the word is used in crosswords and quizzes all the time, and wouldn't be seen as significant enough. I also wonder if there was anything significant in the actual clue that was given, as maybe that could be worth quoting? You'd use
{{Template:Cite news}}
to add the relevant details, ideally including page number if you know it. Good luck (though I'm not holding out too much hope! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:10, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Boxingrec2144 (14:53, 10 November 2023)
Hi I heard for boxing rec website I have to edit through a wiki account Is this true? --Boxingrec2144 (talk) 14:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, @Boxingrec2144. I really didn't understand your question until I went to our article on BoxRec. It seems they run a wiki about boxing. You can find it here.
- Whilst it uses the same underlying software (called MediaWiki) that we use here on Wikipedia, the running of that project has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with English Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.
- A wiki is simply a website that any user can sign up to and contribute to. So, yes, if you want to do more than just read content about boxing (i.e. you want to edit and contribute there), then you will need to sign up to their wiki, and follow their rules. Your account you've just created here could not be used to edit the wiki at BoxRec nor, indeed, many thousands of other wikis around the world.
- Just to reiterate: the wiki being run by BoxRec has nothing to do with us here at en.wikipedia.org, and I would suggest you use a different username if you do want to contribute over there. BTW: Should you ever want to add information about boxers to English Wikipedia, BoxRec would definitely not be regarded as a Reliable Source that you could cite as a reference here. We do not accept citations to other wikis because anyone can add or edit information without any oversight or editorial control.
- I hope this answers your question. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi thanks mate I understand that. I made a boxing rec page but can't figure how to do it as I go edit it asks me to log into wiki witch yeah isn't this wikki cause I still couldn't log in so I'm abit confused I just saw email for help and this was where I was sent. Thanks for your time Ill give it another go with your links you shared. Kind regards Brodie 1.147.112.154 (talk) 13:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
- No worries. Happy to help. I hope you get the other wiki sorted. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Meetups
I'm having a blast at WikiConference North America. I remember you saying once that I should really try going to a meetup or editathon at some point, way back when I was a newbie. I'm also pinging Xeno because I think you might be able to help him find something he's looking for given your past experiences. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Clovermoss Hi there - that's great to hear. I missed online Wikimania this year because my ISP went down for about two days at the start of the event, and I never caught up. But being at events in person is better - especially if there aren't too many air miles involved. I'm definitely intrigued as to what you're alluding to by your second statement, but if Xeno wants to ping me, or email me off-wiki they can.
- I don’t know who @Xeno is. I don’t know what they want. If they're looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you, but which Xeno might need.
- So go for it guys! Nick Moyes (talk) 20:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi again Nick! I had typed this up yesterday, and I forgot to hit submit. Thanks for connecting us Clovermoss. What I was looking for was some kind of quick reference guides / cheatsheets / best practices on running meetups, edit-a-thons, that kind of thing. There's a lot of energy here in Toronto that we're trying to harness. –xenotalk 01:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi @Xeno That sounds wonderful (Please forgive the silliness above - I couldn't resist!)
- I'm guessing you've already visited WP:EDITATHON and WP:MEETUPS? These are good places to start event planning
- I will privately email you a link to a really useful 'Editathon Checklist' on Google Docs, put together by @Sara Thomas (WMUK). I don't want to publish it here as I can't seem able to make it 'read only'.
- From my own, relatively limited experience of helping to run editathons, I've felt that two things were really important, but often overlooked.
- Firstly, ensuring you capture the usernames of everyone who attends lets you monitor your event's success and support participants afterwards. Anything from a simple 'white board' to a properly logged event at the 'Outreach Dashboard' can be really useful (or even do both!).
- Secondly, give participants something to take away with them towards the end of the event so they don't feel bewildered once editing on their own. For one event I made a 2-sided A4 handout in MS Word. I put the text HERE. With hindsight, it was probably too detailed and lengthy. I still like the idea, though.
- Finally, HERE are some short notes and observations I made after attending my first Editathon at a major UK university. Having an admin present to support people to make brand new Wikipedia accounts was very helpful. But be aware that both live projecting or prepared screenshots from an experienced editor's account won't look the same as a those from newcomer's account. I created NM Demo 2 for that very purpose.
- I hope some of this helps. Shout if you want any further thoughts. Nick Moyes (talk) 15:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the detailed write-up Nick. And also thank you for the Liam Neeson impression, we were laughing out loud here at the WikiCon NA/Toronto lobby party :). For now we’re starting with a Wikipedia Day meetup! –xenotalk 16:26, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
- Aha, that's because it's left on "comment" in case anyone in the course that it's a resource for wants to make a comment :)
- There's some guidance in the Outreach Dashboard about running editathons @Xeno, in case that's useful, but please also feel free to drop me a line (email on my userpage) if you'd like a chat, always happy to help. Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 12:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi again Nick! I had typed this up yesterday, and I forgot to hit submit. Thanks for connecting us Clovermoss. What I was looking for was some kind of quick reference guides / cheatsheets / best practices on running meetups, edit-a-thons, that kind of thing. There's a lot of energy here in Toronto that we're trying to harness. –xenotalk 01:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Placeholderer (16:20, 14 November 2023)
Hello Nick! I tried to add a missing comma to the article "Water supply and sanitation in the United States", but it seems that whenever I do something else is getting edited and I'm not sure why. From my understanding the edit should say +1 bytes, but it's saying -2 instead. The place I'm adding a comma is right after a hyperlink, and the extra changes didn't show up when I previewed my edits. Any advice? Thanks! --Placeholderer (talk) 16:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Placeholderer I can't actually see where you've added a comma in this edit (maybe it's my eyes!), but you've moved elements of the citation around, so it's really hard to see what you've added. One extra byte is nothing to worry about, and is probably the result of you leaving in a space character which isn't visible, but which nevertheless adds to the total count.
- It can often be a good idea to experiment with different copies of a text block in your own sandbox if you want to delve into what's going on. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Anyalizbeth on Draft:Tina Alster (16:08, 15 November 2023)
How do I upload a photo to wikipedia? The photos are of Tina Alster and she owns them, and she gave me permission to upload them, but they keep getting deleted for copyright violations --Anyalizbeth (talk) 16:08, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Anyalizbeth The issue is that nobody knows whether you're telling the truth about being given that permission. That's not to suggest you're lying - just that we cannot take your word for it. We need an acceptable form of proof.
- So, the best way is to get the copyright owner of the photograph to send an email from an account that is clearly identifiable to them, containing the text of one of our formal image release templates. The copyright owner will be the person who was in control of the camera - not the person being photographed. So images taken for PR purposes won't necessarily belong to the subject of the photo. You can find guidance and template text here.
- I see that you have already had final warnings on Commons (see here) for uploading images that can't be proven to be copyright free. You really could have engaged with @Didym who left you the warnings there, but hopefully you can get at least one image owned by Tina Aster approved and released for use.
- If you know Tina Aster, then you should declare your CONFLICT OF INTEREST on your userpage. See instructions at WP:COI. If you are actually employed by them, or are being paid to create this article, you are obliged by our policies to declare that you are in receipt of payment, per instructions at WP:PAID.
- Personally, I would wait until your article has been approved as meeting our Notability Guidelines before worrying about images. Whether an article contains a photo of the subject is irrelevant to its notability. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:56, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for your help! I will submit the article for review first before I try to add pictures Anyalizbeth (talk) 14:54, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Placeholderer (16:30, 16 November 2023)
Hello again! I was browsing articles and I came across the "Dutch East Indies" article, where I noticed one user (Errenneff) made many edits critical of the Dutch, adding few (if any) citations. Though they created their account several months before the edits, this is the only article other than talk/user pages they edited. Would it be advisable to revert unreferenced edits they made for WP:NPOV or WP:Advocacy? I'm also less sure what to do because these edits were a few months ago, and they do include reasonable changes. Thanks again for your time! --Placeholderer (talk) 16:30, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Placeholderer Interesting question. The sum total of their additions and deletions can be seen here and here.
- The first set of edits appears to have added a fairly reasonable perspective to colonial rule (but I'm no history buff). Yet it wasn't supported by citations. Rather than deleting their edits 9which have clearly remained for some months) you could work through and judiciously add
{{citation needed}}
templates where you think some supporting reference might be helpful. - If it appears some of their edits have been inserted in such a way as to appear to be supported by an existing citation, then it is helpful to check that source. If it can't be substantiated, one can either insert the cn template, or add a
{{failed verification}}
template. - The second edit was the removal of a quote and supporting citation, which appears to have been discussed on the talk page, per Errenef's edit summary. I suggest reading discussion, then the entire section of the article, both with and without the deleted text, and determine her, in your mind, its deletion was reasonable. If you don't think it was, then reinstate it with a brief but clear edit summary to explain why.
- If you follow this advice, you could even think about posting a note on the talk page to explain what you have done, and why. That highlights your own activities on the article and helps others determine whether you did the right thing. I'm afraid I don't have time to read the entire article and set of edits in detail to be able to give you more detailed advice, but I think a common sense approach of adding cn templates where necessary could be useful. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Maryrose finuliar on Questionnaire (12:21, 18 November 2023)
Questionnaire --Maryrose finuliar (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Maryrose finuliar Hello. Do you have a question about how to edit Wikipedia? If so, I can probably help. But my mind-reading skills are not what they used to be; so please be clear what assistance it is that you seek. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from ZakayoBrighton (18:59, 18 November 2023)
I want to add a politian to Wikipedia and his information such as birth date, school attended and his personal info such as wife and children so that it may be available on google search .please help me publish his information and help me with the steps --ZakayoBrighton (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hello there, ZakayoBrighton. Every subject that is accepted into our encyclopaedia has to meet our Notability Criteria. Certain types of senior politicians may be accepted if they meet a subset of these criteria, found at WP:NPOLITICIAN. But, please be aware that just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline, of course.
- You can only add details of the type you mentioned if these have already been published elsewhere, because Wikipedia is only really just a collation of existing information already in the public domain.
- I should also advise you that trying to create a brand new article without prior experience of editing Wikipedia is a really, really challenging exercise. We advise gaining experience first, and then submitting a draft for review and getting helpful feedback from experienced editors. You can do this by reading the advice and using our 'Article Wizard' at this page. Hope this helps. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:33, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Nordbjerg (16:09, 19 November 2023)
Hi Nick, how do you provide citations for common practices? For example, on the Ethereum page:
> Source code and compiler information are usually published along with the launch of the contract so that users can see the code and verify that it compiles to the bytecode that is on-chain.[citation needed]
This is common practice as can be evidenced by various block explorers where this information is available; it is highly encouraged to do so as it builds trust (as publishing this information allows you to verify). But there is no article that would tell you this is common practice, except for maybe tutorials encouraging you to do so.
Your help is much appreciated! --Nordbjerg (talk) 16:09, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hello Nordbjerg. I'm struggling to understand exactly what you mean by "common practices". Is this a technical term linked to cryptocurrencies? Or does it just mean: "normally, x and y are published at the same time".
- I'm afraid the paragraph you're referring me to is too technical for me to suggest how to address the 'citation needed' template.
- May I suggest you raise this question on the article's talk page in the hope that interested/knowledgeable editors may be able to arrive at a consensus on whether or not a citation is needed, and how to proceed? I certainly think that such a large paragraph is either sufficiently factual that it needs a citation to something to support it, or is it perhaps so blindingly obvious that it isn't actually needed at all.
- I'm really hating the fact that I can't advise you more effectively with this one. But for basic guidance on how to add an inline citation, please see WP:REFBEGIN. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:19, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Nick, thanks for the reply! I think perhaps a better phrasing would be "best practice". I'm not entirely sure how to phrase it, forgive me -- essentially, the above paragraph I quoted is self-evident if you are in the space; there isn't really a singular document or book or study I could reference to back it up. People usually just publish those pieces of information.
- I could ask on the talk page in hopes there is someone who is both a skilled Wiki editor *and* knowledgeable in the area if I'm still not making sense. In any case, thank you for your time, I appreciate it! Nordbjerg (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Sagpok57 (05:57, 20 November 2023)
hello,
I am not able to publish my sandbox for public. Please guide. --Sagpok57 (talk) 05:57, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Sagpok57. Your sandbox draft article is not ready for publishing right now. You need to work on it a lot more.
- First of all, is this person NOTABLE by Wikipedia's standards? See either WP:NBIO or WP:NMUSICIAN to see our criteria for acceptance. Basically, this person needs to have either won prestigious awards, had song at the top of the music charts, or been written about in detail and in depth by independent news outlets. If they have, then you need to add an WP:INLINE CITATION to each factual statement to allow anyone on the other side of the world to find those sources and verify it for themselves. See WP:REFBEGIN for how to add references. Each award or achievement needs a supporting citation. (By the way, you don't need to wikilink to the word 'award' or 'achievements' as we all know what they mean without having to look them up!
- I don't understand the odd numbering you've used, such as "Kalika music award 2066 (best song of the year)" If this is the Nepali calendar, I think you should add Gregorian calendar dates in brackets.
- Once you have found and added references to support our Notability criteria, and tidied up the article, then you could submit it to our Articles for Creation review process. You will receive feedback if it's still not ready, or it will be moved into the main encyclopaedia space if it does. Just add the following text {{subst:AfC submission/draft}} to the top of the article (but leave out any 'nowiki' tags and their accompanying chevron brackets. Click 'publish' - which simply means 'save' in this context, and you will see a 'Submit' button which you should hit only once it's genuinely ready for the encyclopaedia.
- Finally, you are writing about yourself or about someone you know personally? If so, then you would have a 'conflict of interest' and must declare this on your userpage. Find out how to do this at THIS PAGE, or read WP:PAID if you are being paid to create an article about this person.
- Hope this helps you. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:12, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Assessment
Last summer, you assessed The House Across the Lake (novel) on my request. Soon afterward, I expanded another article on a different Sager book, The Last Time I Lied which still hasn't been reassessed. Perhaps you could give it a look. I've also done some work on Tom Ripley and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and made requests for both of those. Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 21:43, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Just Another Cringy Username That's now done for you. Nice work.
- Just one thing: I did find this statement in the Sleepy Hollow article:
"...but Ichabod has mysteriously disappeared from the area, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones."
to be rather a non sequitur. I wonder whether you could find a more flowing way of explaining these two events? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:34, 24 November 2023 (UTC)- Well, much of the story deals with the rivalry of these two men for Katrina's affection, so wouldn't it follow that the vanishing of one would result in a clear path for the other?
- Thanks for your assessments! Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 23:41, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Just Another Cringy Username No problem. I can appreciate the rivalry; it's just the wording. It seemed to suggest that the second event was dependant upon the first, and that marriage happened immediately. Maybe saying something like ", "...from the area, thus leaving Katrina free to marry Brom Bones." I'm simply trying to tease in a little bit of time between the two events, if you follow my drift. The marriage didn't happen that afternoon, did it? Nick Moyes (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
- The marriage occurred "shortly after" (Irving's words), so it's as much up to the reader's interpretation as the rest of the ending. I don't like the phrase "free to marry Brom," since it implies there was something standing in the way other than her own flirtatiousness. I'll mull it over for a bit and see what I can come up with. Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 00:54, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
- No worries - I was just trying to offer some thoughts. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:55, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
- The marriage occurred "shortly after" (Irving's words), so it's as much up to the reader's interpretation as the rest of the ending. I don't like the phrase "free to marry Brom," since it implies there was something standing in the way other than her own flirtatiousness. I'll mull it over for a bit and see what I can come up with. Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 00:54, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Just Another Cringy Username No problem. I can appreciate the rivalry; it's just the wording. It seemed to suggest that the second event was dependant upon the first, and that marriage happened immediately. Maybe saying something like ", "...from the area, thus leaving Katrina free to marry Brom Bones." I'm simply trying to tease in a little bit of time between the two events, if you follow my drift. The marriage didn't happen that afternoon, did it? Nick Moyes (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Aizazkhan5656 (04:49, 26 November 2023)
Hello! I hope you are doing well. I joined Wikipedia with the aim of improving rare/unpopular pages like the region that I come from. My question is is it right for me to add an article for my hometown? It has a population of 18000~ people and there is no mention of it on Wikipedia. I did look at the guidelines and everything, I just want to know it from a real person who has hands-on experience. Hence, I am asking you.
Thanks, Izaz --Aizazkhan5656 (talk) 04:49, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, Aizazkhan5656. A town with that size of population is almost certainly going to be marked on a map, so the answer is "Yes". See WP:NPLACE, which shows that all such places are regarded at NOTABLE.
- However (and it's a big however!) you cannot just write about your hometown based upon your personal knowledge or experience. Everything - and I mean everything - you add to Wikipedia must be based on properly published information, such as books, guidebooks, maps, official regional websites. We remove content that is not supported by a citation to a reliable source, and I see you've already experienced that issue. This is so that anyone, anywhere in the world can VERIFY that what you say is correct. It's also important to write in a neutral, encyclopaedic tone. We are not a tourism website, so avoid hyperbole and exaggerated claims.
- Because creating a new article is one of the hardest tasks to perform here, we always recommend spending some time editing existing articles to get to understand the way this encyclopaedia operates. But see this page for more advice on creating your first article. It is worth starting any new article as a 'Draft', and you can create a draft to work on by using the 'Article Wizard' at that page. Good luck Nick Moyes (talk) 17:40, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you Nick for sharing your valuable knowledge with me. I will definitely spend some time editing and then think about creating an article. I will also be careful and add neutral and verifiable information to the article. Aizazkhan5656 (talk) 05:10, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from MancDav (20:58, 29 November 2023)
Hi Nick, I would like to ask you a question about creating a Wikipedia page about a small local football club nearby to me. Can you give me any tips on where to start? --MancDav (talk) 20:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
- Hi MancDav. Because you say "small, local football club" I'm not hopeful that it would meet our essential 'Notability criteria'. There would need to be significant coverage of this club in non-local media to achieve that bar. Have there been books written about it (not vanity publications)?; coverage in national media, perhaps? If you can link me to three or four such high quality sources, i might be able to offer you a better answer. I suspect this subdivision of our notability criteria would be most relevant to you. Without such sources, it would be a pointless exercise trying.
- But do look at this guidance page about creating a new draft article which could be reviewed and feedback given to you. But be aware that Wikipedia is not here to help organisations and clubs promte themselves. I hope this helps, but I would also add that unless someone has spent time learning the basics of editing, then starting their frist article with no experience can often end in a lot of wasted effort. If I can help you further, I'm happy to do so. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Editor experience invitation
Hey Nick. :) I've been up to something pretty cool lately (and I sing your praises). If you want to check it out and contribute, it's over here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 22:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Question from Newton Flotman Pairsh Council (11:38, 30 November 2023)
Hello Nick. I have made changes to the Newton Flotman page on Wikipedia this morning. I need some help on how to cite my sources as I have added in new information and want to cite the sources for them. I also deleted and then reinstated a citation which is messed up on the page.
I look forward to hearing from you --Newton Flotman Pairsh Council (talk) 11:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #29
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg/220px-Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg.png)
Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community Conversations
The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.
This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.
Impact Module
At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [2]
Add a Link
We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [3] [4]
We have a few Wikipedias remaining:
- German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
- There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.
Community Configuration
- We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [5] 🖂
- Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
- A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
- Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.
Mentorship
When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [6]
We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [7]
We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [8]
It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [9]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Question from CarmelToby (18:10, 10 December 2023)
I'd like to create a new page about myself please --CarmelToby (talk) 18:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, CarmelToby. Thanks for your question. We would never advise anyone to attempt to create a Wikipedia encyclopaedia article about themselves. It stands to reason that anyone who wants to write about themselves is never independent of the subject and, despite knowing an awful lot about themselves, they are inevitably extremely biased! (See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY.) We strongly urge people not to try.
- If you do meet our Notability Criteria for Living People, someone will eventually want to take well-written properly published newspapers, journals or books that talk about you and your life and use them to create a page about you. If you can show that you have been "worthy of notice" by the world at large (and not just by you, your friends and your family), then you may well merit a Wikipedia entry here. Feel free to give me links or references to three such "Reliable Sources" and I will give you a quick opinion on whether you would merit such an article. Please don't supply links to your own social media pages, personal blogs, LinkedIn page or your own website - just offer those which you are completely unconnected to who have felt it worthwhile to write about you and your life. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:44, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Happy Holidays!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Happy_Holidays_%282135831016%29.jpg/217px-Happy_Holidays_%282135831016%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Arbuckle_Bros._%283093003361%29.jpg/190px-Arbuckle_Bros._%283093003361%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Season%27s_Greetings%2C_Christmas_Card_from_320_Ranch.jpg/217px-Season%27s_Greetings%2C_Christmas_Card_from_320_Ranch.jpg)
Hello Nick Moyes: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Patient Zerotalk 23:17, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/A_book_of_country_clouds_and_sunshine_%281897%29%2C_cropped.jpg/500px-A_book_of_country_clouds_and_sunshine_%281897%29%2C_cropped.jpg)
Question from Bogeydog (13:56, 12 December 2023)
Good Morning,
I don't have a question now but I will soon have some, Glad to know that you will be there to answer. Thank You.
Bogeydog --Bogeydog (talk) 13:56, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Bogeydog No worries. I'm here if I can help you. But if I don't reply in good time, do feel free to ask anything at our help forum for new editors. It's called the Teahouse, and you can find it HERE.
- I'll leave you some helpful links on your talk page, too. Good luck getting started. This encyclopaedia needs all the helpful input and good sources it can get. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Question from Ericudd (23:30, 18 December 2023)
Hi Nick
I am thinking of perhaps making a series of edits with respect to people and the history of fiber optic sensors. Not sure how I would start going about generating new entries and probably will not begin for some months as I get organized.
Probably should start by reading all the articles on the Home page and go from there.
Best Wishes,
Eric --Ericudd (talk) 23:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hello Ericudd. Thanks for your question. It's a very sensible thing to start slowly on Wikipedia - often by making small edits at first to familiarise yourself with the process. Have you seen your 'Homepage' Tab, which offers you a range of easy editing suggestions to get you started?
- The most important thing to say is that everything you add to Wikipedia must be derived from properly published sources (books, journals, mainstream newspapers etc), and nothing should come from your own personal knowledge. By all means use that knowledge to unearth good, reliable sources, and add them as an 'inline citation' at the end of each factual addition you want to make.
- After a while, you may feel more confident at starting a new page about a person. But, once again, make sure you base everything off good sources. This lets anyone in the world with access to a library VERIFY what it is that you've added. I'd encourage you to work on any female physicists, as there is a bias towards male biographies here. We even have a project to encourage more pages about women - see Women in Red Project).
- I will leave a welcome message on your Talk Page with a few useful links to get you started. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Happy Holidays!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Christmas_tree_sxc_hu.jpg/70px-Christmas_tree_sxc_hu.jpg)
Colman2000 (talk) is wishing you Happy Holidays! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user Happy Holidays, 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:Happy holidays}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Colman2000 (talk) 07:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive
New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | ![]() |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
A solstice greeting
❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️
Hi Nick! I'd like to wish you a splendid solstice season as we wrap up the year. Here is an artwork, made individually for you, to celebrate. Your work welcoming newcomers at the Teahouse is always invaluable. Take care, and thanks for all you do to make Wikipedia better!Cheers,{{u|Sdkb}} talk
![Solstice Celebration for Nick Moyes, 2023, DALL·E 3. (View full series) Note: The vibes are winter solsticey. If you're in the southern hemisphere, oops, apologies.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Holiday_tree_with_Wikipedia-esque_globes_in_a_winterscape_54.jpg/512px-Holiday_tree_with_Wikipedia-esque_globes_in_a_winterscape_54.jpg)
{{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:51, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Merry Christmas
![Christmas postcard](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Zeppelin_Christmas_postcard_1909.jpg/600px-Zeppelin_Christmas_postcard_1909.jpg)
Hello Nick Moyes: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 12:13, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Women in Red January 2024
![]() ![]()
Announcement
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
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--Lajmmoore (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Question from JoIrMu (17:22, 30 December 2023)
Hi Nick
I just published a page for my nephew Joakim Oldorff, a professional badminton player. I am not very familiar with the system, so what happens next? Will the page be checked first by someone and I will get feedback? I have photographers "waiting in line" to add some pictures of Joakim, once the page has been approved.
All the best
Johanna --JoIrMu (talk) 17:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hi there, @JoIrMu. That's certainly a pretty good first effort -well done. But I should point out a few things that will need addressing.
- First off, I know little about sports, but your nephew will need to meet our Notability Criteria for living people, or notability criteria for this particular sport (see WP:NBADMINTON). In other words, he either must evidently meet the sports notability criteria, OR he must have had a number of in depth and detailed articles in newspapers, magazines etc that have independently written about him and his life and achievements. I might have expected to see a page on Finnish Wikipedia, but I see there is not one as yet.
- The lead paragraph should clearly state why he is notable. i.e. not just that he is a professional badminton player, but what his biggest achievement is. That way he can quickly be assessed for 'notability' against the sports notability criteria.
- All your sources seem to be just short results pages. We would prefer to see factual statements about him and his life/achievements cited to longer newspaper articles, etc. I see you've linked to some as External Links", but these are best used as proper sources and citations. Every factual statement should be supported by a reference - it doesn't matter if you use the same source more than once, or if it is not in English. I see you've used Visual Editor, so please follow the guidance pages that you can find at Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/1.
- Also on citations: don't use other Wikipedia pages as a source for facts. Simply LINK to another Wikipedia page, and add a citation at the end of the sentence that allows anyone to verify the statement you have added. If it can't be verified - don't add it!
- As you are closely connected to him as a relative, you should add a Conflict of Interest notice to your userpage. See the instructions on that link on how to do it.
- Finally - and most importantly - at the moment, your article is just a draft in your sandbox. There it will remain, unseen and unassessed unless you submit it for review for inclusion in the main body of our encyclopaedia.
- I will shortly move the page into a 'Draft' and will add a big blue 'submit' button which you can hit when you've addressed the points I've raised above. Our review process at THIS PAGEoffers helpful feedback if a draft isn't yet suitable so that you can understand what further work or fixing might be needed. Unfortunately, there is a huge backlog (many thousands) so it may take up to a three months for a volunteer to review if. Should that not happen, it will then automatically be moved and indexed by Google. The latter doesn't happen until the review process has completed.
Done See Draft:Joakim Oldorff
- I hope this helps. Feel free to ask further questions, or ask at The Teahouse if you need a quicker response to any query. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you so much, Nick! All very good points and instructions. I will work on them the best I can in the coming days and submit the page for review. JoIrMu (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hi Nick, it took a bit longer but now I have tried to address all the points you raised, and in the meantime, the page on the Finnish Wikipedia has been published. However, I am having problems with submitting the draft. When I start to edit the drat that you kindly created for me, the submit button disappears. I tried clicking on "Publish the changes", but I am not sure if the draft is now waiting to to be reviewed or not. Can you please help me again? JoIrMu (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
- @JoIrMu The Submit for Review button works, but is only visible and works only when you’re NOT editing the page!
- Before submitting, please follow WP:COI to declare your conflict of interest. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:59, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi again, I am sorry for being so helpless with this, but I do not understand how I can not be editing...? I mean when I go to the draft you created, I need to click on edit, so that I can actually import the corrections and amendments you pointed out, right? When I have put the right code in the edit space, the submit button is not there. If I go back to the read space after adding the new code, it does not show the new version but the old version of the article. I apologise, but I still need more instructions on how to edit the draft you created and still get to click on the submit button. It was more straightforward on the Finnish Wikipedia, so I am really struggling with this technically. JoIrMu (talk) 09:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
- @JoIrMu Yes, you will need to edit the draft article at Draft:Joakim Oldorff, and then you will need to save those edits into the draft (by hitting the blue Publish changes button. But that merely publishes those edits to the online Draft. It is not yet a published article (which would be found eventually at Joakim Oldorff.
- Once you have completed all your edits, and saved them (i.e. publish changes), then you will still see the blue "Submit the draft for review" button again. Only when you click that will your submission be made.
- As an aside: we were forced by legal requirements from the Wikimedia Foundation about 2 years ago to accept a name change from 'Save changes' to 'Publish changes' and it has not helped new users. But there is literally nothing we can do about the confusion this occasionally causes. The reality is that every single thing that anyone saves (even to their own user page) is literally 'published' online, and potentially viewable by anyone, anywhere. That applies whether it's edits to a draft, this talk page of mine, or edits to an already published article, such as The Moon. I hope this clears things up for you.
- I'm away for a few days now, so if you still have problems, do ask at the Teahouse for a speedier reply. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:06, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi again, I am sorry for being so helpless with this, but I do not understand how I can not be editing...? I mean when I go to the draft you created, I need to click on edit, so that I can actually import the corrections and amendments you pointed out, right? When I have put the right code in the edit space, the submit button is not there. If I go back to the read space after adding the new code, it does not show the new version but the old version of the article. I apologise, but I still need more instructions on how to edit the draft you created and still get to click on the submit button. It was more straightforward on the Finnish Wikipedia, so I am really struggling with this technically. JoIrMu (talk) 09:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).
- Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
- The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.
- The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Your star adoptee is in this edition. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:19, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Chokeboy (03:01, 2 January 2024)
Hey, when it comes to uploading celebrities photos, will I be able to do it under the fair use act once my account is 4 days old? Thanks! --Chokeboy (talk) 03:01, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Chokeboy. No, I'm afraid not. Not unless the celebrity is dead and there are no other freely licenced images available. You cannot simply take (=steal) a copyrighted image from the internet and add it to an article about a living person. We take copyright theft very seriously. I assume you didn't take the images yourself? If you had, then there would be no issue. Does that help? Nick Moyes (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- okay, thanks for clearing this up! my friend has a photo they personally took of a celebrity so we'll use that one instead. Chokeboy (talk) 21:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Chokeboy Fine. It's a small, but importna t matter, but they will need to create their own account and upload it themselves. Your account is not in a position to release an image of their photograph. So just get them to create an account for themselves - please don't share one account between two or more people. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- understood! Chokeboy (talk) 02:21, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Chokeboy Fine. It's a small, but importna t matter, but they will need to create their own account and upload it themselves. Your account is not in a position to release an image of their photograph. So just get them to create an account for themselves - please don't share one account between two or more people. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- okay, thanks for clearing this up! my friend has a photo they personally took of a celebrity so we'll use that one instead. Chokeboy (talk) 21:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Rakiyahinspaceteam (22:52, 2 January 2024)
Hello, how do I delete the wiki page I've created? --Rakiyahinspaceteam (talk) 22:52, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Rakiyahinspaceteam The history of that page shows that you did not create it. And, because many others have since edited it, it is now too late to request deletion of the page even if you had created it. If you believe the subject is not notable (see WP:NBIO or WP:NARTIST) than you could start a deletion discussion at at the Articles for Deletion page.
- If you plan to continue editing her page, you should declare your connection to Rakiyah by following instructions at WP:COI., as you evidently have a conflict of interest. In future, please do not add 'facts' that the subject of an article has told you are true. This is not how we work. You must provide citations to independently published Reliable Sources that allow anyone in the world to verify whatever factual statement you have added. It's no reflection on any individual, but we never trust stuff that someone happens to know - even if they are the subject of an article themselves. Hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from ImaginalNomad (23:42, 3 January 2024)
Hello,
I tried to update an authorised image for a page but got a global block instead. What is wrong? --ImaginalNomad (talk) 23:42, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
- @ImaginalNomad Which account were you using? I can't help you without knowing more. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
- I received the below message when trying to update the Wikipedia page image for Dione Joseph. I am using this account. It is my own account.
- Msg:
- Something went wrong The page title "File:IMG-20240104-WA0001.jpg" is restricted from editing or creation because it matches the following entry on the local or global blacklist: File:IMG-\d{8}-WA\d{4}.jpg # WhatsApp, e.g. File:IMG-20230409-WA0001.jpg, intended to prevent vandalism. Instructions:
- If you receive this message when you try to edit, create, or move an existing page:
- Any administrator can create or move this page for you. If the page you tried to edit or create is not a talk page, suggest your changes at its talk page and add {{request COI}}. This will categorize the page into Category:Commons protected edit requests, which administrators regularly check. If this does not work, please post a request at the Administrators' noticeboard. You may also contact any administrator on their talk page or by email. Be sure to specify the exact title of the page you are trying to create or edit, and if it might be misunderstood (for example a page with an unusual name), consider explaining briefly what you want to do. If you wrote any text, save it temporarily on your computer until you can edit it. If you think it is an error that you cannot edit, move or create this page, please report the page title (and the entry on the title blacklist) to the Administrators' noticeboard. Thank you. ImaginalNomad (talk) 07:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
- @ImaginalNomad OK, it looks like you were editing the Dione Joseph page as User:BlackCreativesAotearoa, which was 'soft-blocked' as a promotional and corporate username, which could theoretically be used by any member of staff. Both are against our rules. So you then, as is permitted, created your new account that you're now using. Is that correct?.
- Before commenting on the image issue, I must point out that, if correct, you still have an obvious, undeclared CONFLICT OF INTEREST and should not be editing her article without declaring your connection to her. See WP:COI on how to do this. And, if you're being paid to do this, you have an obligation to declare who is paying you, so please see instructions at WP:PAID, as undeclared paid editing is not permitted here.
- Even then, you cannot just add stuff that you happen to know - everything must be verifiable by anyone in the world. So you must cite reliably-published, independent sources - at least one per paragraph - that anyone with access to a library, bookshop or internet could check. See this. And, see WP:REFBEGIN on how to add citations. So please address this, or remove the unverifiable information added by your earlier, blocked account.
- Now, you've given me the image filename you tried to upload. I'm no expert on Wikimedia Commons messaging, but it looks like you failed to give the image an informative title, and simply uploaded one with an automatically-generated year and image number. Firstly, that's not always possible because another image with the same title may well exist. That's why it's sensible to upload well-named images. Secondly, it looks like that title is a default numbering taken from Whatsapp. So an automatic filter will have stopped the upload to prevent the likelihood of images taken directly from social media (without the photographer's permission) being uploaded to Wikipedia or to Wikimedia Commons. If you are the copyright owner, then I suggest you retitle the image and try again. If you were not the original photographer, then you have no legal right to release it for free commercial use on Wikipedia, and should revert to the original photo in the article.
- Does this make sense, or have I missed anything? Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:18, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
![]() |
The Admin's Barnstar |
For being someone I've always looked up to and continue to hope to emulate. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC) |
- @Clovermoss Thank you. Your news caught me unawares -I've been extremely busy IRL recently, and hadn't even seen your RFA (though I did have words about recommending you quite some while ago). I am so, so pleased to see you've 'got the mop'. You've been amazing to watch over the years, and I know you're going to put that mop to good use. I still feel I've an awful lot to learn about being an admin, and find it much harder now to ask simple questions (as I feel I should somehow already know the answers). I hope you feel really proud - you certainly should be! Happy New Year! Nick Moyes (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Mynameisrainzrosli on Kim Pan-gon (13:01, 4 January 2024)
How I want to change the pictures which is already outdated? --Mynameisrainzrosli (talk) 13:01, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Mynameisrainzrosli Do you have a photo that you own the copyright of? If so, do you need help in uploading it?
- If you don't own the image, you cannot simply take other people's pictures and upload them as if they were yours. Unless the person is deceased, all images must on Wikipedia must have either been released into the public domain, or be licenced with a Creative Commons Commercial Re-use (CC-BY-SA). Do you need any further help? Nick Moyes (talk) 00:48, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Amelianine (09:05, 5 January 2024)
I have queries if any topic that don't have article on topic in which I will write about it can promote my article link. --Amelianine (talk) 09:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, Amelianine. Not any topic, no. We can only have topics in this encyclopaedia which are NOTABLE (as defined by Wikipedia). We have various Notability Criteria for different topics, such as WP:NBIO for living people, WP:NSPORTS for different types of sportspeople, or WP:NARTIST for creatives and musicians.
- So, what you want to write about must meet at least on of those criteria. It can't be WP:PROMOTION or WP:ADVERTISING, or be about yourself (unless you're notable, of course!)
- Everything needs to be based upon Reliable Sources that are independent of the subject you're writing about. Thus, we do not accept sources such as personal blogs, social media accounts, personal websites etc. I hope this helps. I'll leave a welcome message with a couple of useful links on your talk page. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Wikieditor09871234 (02:40, 6 January 2024)
Hi there, I am an artist and my music and art is all over the world. I just decided to update wiki and add my page and info. Is there something I can read to help me understand how to do it? --Wikieditor09871234 (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, @Wikieditor09871234. Thanks for asking. It's important to point out that we do not permit editors to alter their own Wikipedia articles, unless it relates to removing uncited/unsubstantiated statements which might be false or libellous. Only content sourced from independent publications should ever be added (e.g. books, magazines, newspapers and news websites etc) User-generated content such as IMDb, personal blogs or websites, social media, interviews with the subject, etc are not accepted.
- So, to get corrections or additions made to an article about you, you will need to first find RELIABLE< INDEPENDENT SOURCES which can be used to VERIFY what you want to say.
- Then follow the instructions to make an 'edit request' on the article's talk page (WP:EDITREQUEST). Your request should be clear and explicit. i.e. change sentence xxxxxx to new sentence yyyyyy based on the source zzzzz that you must also supply with your edit request. This will draw the attention of an editor who will assesss and make/reject the edit request, as necessary. Unsusbtantiated statements will not be added, unless they're very minor ones.
- If you need further help, let me know the article and the type of info and sources that you'd like to use. I'm no expert on music articles, but I can give you a good steer as to what's the best approach to take with the edits you'd like to see made. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, and you maye find WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY and useful page, especially this section of it. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:38, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from KAMCDERMOTT (23:08, 9 January 2024)
hello I have seen an article for Rancho Tehama Reserve that has old outdated information on it. How can I change that? --KAMCDERMOTT (talk) 23:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- @KAMCDERMOTT Great question! I can only find an article on Rancho Tehama, California - is this the one you mean? You can edit an article yourself, though not simply from things you personally happen to know about it. You must first find reliable, published sources (not personal blogs, personal websites opr social media). So, books, old newspapers, jopurnals or online news outlets are required. Make the improvements in your own words, then add an inline citation at the end of the factual statement (sentence or paragraph). Simply adding things you know is not the way we work, as we need anyone with access to a library or bookshop to be able to Verify what is stated is actually correct, according to the cited source.
- I have left a welcome message for you on your talk page, with a link to getting started. It can be quite a learning curve to begin with, so make small changes and then save (=publish) them before making further changes.
- Let me know how you get on, and I can check and give you feedback, if you'd like. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from SoloPlanet010 (00:57, 11 January 2024)
If you found a link error on wikipedia(the wikipedia page doesn't exist), what do you do? --SoloPlanet010 (talk) 00:57, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
- HI, @SoloPlanet010 Good question! Had you asked about a dead link in a citation to an external site, I would have advised against removing it. That's because, usually, it's a case that the url has been modified by the target website, and it can easily be re-found with a bit of searching.
- It's less of a concern if a link to another Wikipedia page has changed. But, once again, there are many, many cases here (we call them REDLINKS where someone intentionally makes a wikilink to a page title that has never existed. The rationale is that they believe the topic is sufficiently notable to deserve a page here, even though nobody has yet to create it. These redlinks are useful in guiding other editors to consider whether to create that page. But overuse of redlinks is frowned upon.
- So, my answer is to use one of careful judgement. Is the link to the non-existent page likely to be notable? Can you find online sources that mention it? If so, leave it in place. If you genuinely think it's a pointless redlink, then remove the link and add an explanatory EDITSUMMARY to justify your change. The clue is often that there are lots of redlinks in one article to people who played a very minor role in something, and the article creators is trying to push their importance more than is justified. (HERE is an example of a section I wrote some while ago. It contains many redlinks to plant names, every one of which deserves an article here, but as yet they don't exist. Meanwhile, many do exist in other language versions of this encyclopaedia!)
- But, when in doubt, just leave it as it is and let someone else ponder over it!
- If you'd care to link to the page you're talking about, I can give you a more considered opinion. It's good to ask questions like this when starting out - that way you get to know how the process of improving Wikipedia pages works. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:42, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Placeholderer (17:00, 16 January 2024)
Hello! I've been working on the Dutch East Indies article with the goal of making it a Good Article. At what point do you think it would be advisable to submit an article for GA review, and how does one submit an article for GA review? This one was quick failed twice in 2011, but I think those problems no longer apply. I could also ask the Teahouse if that would be more appropriate— I'm not sure! Thanks for your time either way! --Placeholderer (talk) 17:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Placeholderer. If you had asked at the Teahouse, I'd probably be just as likely to have answered you there! It looks a meaty article, and you should be aware that these things take a lot of preparation, time and commitment. I do have experience of spending 6 months or more getting one shortish list article up to a full-blown GA article (see Mont Blanc massif). It was hard work, but very satisfying. I've just checked, and it took over 300 edits to get it there. That involves very careful understanding of all the essential criteria of a WP:GA, so do read WP:Good article criteria and WP:Good article nominations/Instructions.
- I like your commitment and note you've made 29 edits to the article, thus far, and 92 edits here in total. That's not to denigrate your efforts, but I wonder how familiar you are as yet with all our key policies. It looks like you do know what you're doing. But my advice is not to rush at it, but to take it slowly and carefully. Print out a copy of the article. Read it line by line (out loud). Does the English flow? Is every factual statement cited to a reliable source? Have you been able to find some of the key books on the subject from your local library and to use them to guide you? Match every GA criterion to every single sentence and reference.
- I suggest you post your aspiration on the article's Talk page and invite comments or suggestions for anything you feel still needs work. You could ping any past users who are still active -especially those who worked on past GA nominations. User: Merbaru is certainly still around, and was editing earlier today. I'm sure they'd appreciate knowing what you're doing. You could add a link to the talk page discussion by posting a further request for input at WikiProject Indonesia
- Because of the two previous, failed nominations, I'd suggest you get the article to a point when you're really happy with, and have exhausted all improvements you think you can make, and and seek input from editors at WP:PEERREVIEW, explaining your aspiration for a GA nomination. That could give you some quick pointers of any major, but overlooked issues to address, including WP:MOS formatting that I don't have time to look at for you right now. Then, when you've addressed everything flagged up, consider the GA nomination, but not before. You'd be advised to time any nomination for a point in your life when you're sufficiently free to commit to addressing any GA issues raised over a period of a couple of weeks.
- I support what you're wanting to do, and I hope my suggestions don't in any way put you off. You might want to consider saying a little bit about your editing interests or background by creating your userpage. I always tend to take those editors more seriously who have taken the time to explain why they're here. Best wishes and good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 22:44, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
- I hadn't even considered that as a reason to make a user page! I'll get on it, and do as you suggest. Thanks again! Placeholderer (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
"Alps (Topic overview)" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect Alps (Topic overview) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 20 § Alps (Topic overview) until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 18:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from CforCharles (18:02, 21 January 2024)
Hi Nick. Nice to virtually meet you.
I'm trying to get a feel for how rigid or flexible the community applies the guidelines.
The first few suggestions in my feed ended up being articles flagged for sounding like an advert. One example, if you want to take a look, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxon_Group.
Maybe I'm overthinking things because it's my first edit but my interpretation of the guidelines would be that the majority, if not all, of the article should be cut. The text does reference a patent and they supplied parts for the Mars rover, "Perseverance", but I don't think this alone meets the criteria for company notability. Many companies hold patents and sell things to space agencies.
Is thinking the article should be deleted a little too strict and it should just be trimmed down? What would you recommend?
I appreciate your feedback. In the meantime I'll go get my first edit made on something less open for interpretation.
Cheers Charles --CforCharles (talk) 18:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi there, CforCharles. If you're a brand new Wikipedia editor, that's a pretty good spot! I took a look and it's mostly unsourced promotional content about a company's products, without any evidence that other, independent sources have taken note of the company and have written about it. I did a quick Google search and couldn't find much to support our Notability for Business criteria.
- So, yes, I think it merits a severe trim or, more probably, a deletion discussion at WP:AFD which is our community's way of deciding if an article should stay or go.
- I agree with you that notability is WP:NOTINHERITED, and that just because its products are in planetary rovers it doesn't mean that every manufacturer thaqt NASA uses should have an article about it.
- Generally, I'm reluctant to immediately push articles towards a deletion discussion. Before rushing to suggest deletion, we have a process called WP:BEFORE which expects the editor proposing deletion to have tried to find sources that can be used to improve an article. There's little on a general or 'news' search on Google, but Google Books came up with this, and other pages within the same book talk about Maxon, too. Then there's this which may also count somewhat towards notability. But, yes, a severe trim down and introduction of good sources would help a lot. If you want to give it a go and let me know when you're done, I'll happily take another look. Meanwhile, I've left a welcome message and some useful links for you on your talk page. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
Happy Adminship Anniversary!
![]() | Happy adminship anniversary! Hi Nick Moyes! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of your successful request for adminship. Enjoy this special day! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 05:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC) | ![]() |
Question from Kimboy Di Gun Talk (06:24, 25 January 2024)
My real name is Ainomugisha Ackim and am a musician from Uganda, I do dancehall, Ragga, and pop music. I would like to know on how to add my biography on Wikipedia --Kimboy Di Gun Talk (talk) 06:24, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, Kimboy Di Gun Talk. Thanks for your question. Because Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of NOTABLE THINGS, it cannot be used for promoting personal biographies. I'm afarid you may have a misconception about how things work here. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platforms are available for that.
- Every single topic that is on Wikipedia must meet our Notability Criteria There are millions of musicians in the worlds, and only those who meet our notabilty criteria for musicians would be able to have an article (unless they happened to already meet our general notability criteria for living people, SEE HERE). So, do please look at those two pages and assess whether or not you feel your musical fame has reached the point where you merit an article about you here. If you think you do, please point me to the sources that talk about you, your life and your achievements. Bear in mind that personal websites, social media pages, IMdB and other user-generated content is not accepted as a RELIABLE SOURCE. National newspapers, magazines and book and TV broadcasts with editorial oversight are needed.
- But even then, it would not be for you to write about yourself! We expect unconnected people to find detailed independent sources that talk about you to create those pages. Someone writing about themselves is never going to be neutral on the topic, and therefore has a huge CONFLICT OF INTEREST. See also WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Kind regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- thanks very much for your help, I will comply to what you have told and am glad that the earth still has such good people as you are. 102.222.234.128 (talk) 11:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- You're most welcome! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:38, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- thanks very much for your help, I will comply to what you have told and am glad that the earth still has such good people as you are. 102.222.234.128 (talk) 11:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Brian Merrick - Malibu on Wikipedia:Conflict of interest (19:32, 25 January 2024)
Hi Nick! Can you help me set up a wikipedia page?
I think I did something wrong with the conflict of interest page. --Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 19:32, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi there, Brian Merrick - Malibu. Is the page you want to create this one: Draft:Judge John J. Merrick? If so, do you have published sources that demonstrate he meets our Notability for people criteria? Anything you write must be based of properly published sources, not personal knowledge, private websites etc. So newspapers, books, magazines, TV documentaries are OK.
- If you're related, add a note on your userpage to declare that connection. Instructions are to be found at WP:COI. Just let me know if you need anything more specific.
- I should say that for a complete beginner to create a brand new page is very difficult - a bit like driving up the motorway at full speed the very first time you get behind the wheel of a car. It's easy to crash!
- See THIS PAGE about creating your first article. I'll also leave a welcome message on your talk page with links you should work through to learn how the editing process works. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Nick,
- Thank you we were able to submit the Judge John J Merrick page for review, however we were wondering if we could:
- continue adding to the existing page while it is being reviewed because we have many other sources & articles
- what is the best way to do that?
- --Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 20:30, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Hi again, Brian Merrick - Malibu. Not only can you simply carry on editing that page; you absolutely should if it is to stand more than an ice cube's chance in hell of being accepted!
- May I be blunt? It is totally unacceptable as it stands! You've not created an encyclopaedia entry about John Merrick, based on RELIABLE SOURCES. It looks more like a footnote on page 16 of a local history newsletter. It doesn't even start (as all encyclopaedia entries should) by saying John Merrick was a ...., and then continuing to tell us about why he meets our NOTABILITY CRITERIA...
- ...Grrr: and now I've just followed the sole link and discovered you've abused one of our golden rules by stealing copyrighted text and pasting it on Wikipedia and releasing it as if the words were your own. I have no idea why you thought the text on its own would make an encylopaedia entry, but now I am going to have to delete it for copyright violation and warn you not to do that again, please!
- If you think this person is notable, tell me what sources you would base it upon that demonstrate he meets WP:NBIO or WP:NJUDGE. I earnestly recommend you spend some time learning how to make minor edits and improvements to Wikipedia before ever attempting anything like creating a new article.I'm afraid you've really exceeded my driving metaphor by both crashing and burning! Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Nick I'm so sorry, my assistants were helping me and they were rushing and wanted to get the process started and were going to edit and revise once the page got approved. We know now that we can not copy content from articles. We will write all original work.
- Thank you so much for you help. We will re-do the page now.
- Thank you! Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 22:12, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Brian Merrick - Malibu OK, but you've broken another of our golden rules! We hold a strict one person per account rule. See WP:NOSHARING. You may not share or give access to your account to other people. Each person who edits Wikipedia MUST have their own account. If you cannot assure me that you will immediately change your password to this account and not share it, and that from this point forward only you will use this account, as an administrator here, I will have to remove your account's editing privileges and force each person to make their own account. We don't object to collaboration - just not account sharing. If you're all connected, each person also needs to declare their WP:COI as you, yourself, need to do.
- I feel I need to ask: who is we? Who are these assistants who are trying to get this article created, and why the unseemly rush? Please reinsert the COI notice that you put on your account's userpage and subsequently removed.
- The process for creating and developing any article about a notable person (as Wikipedia defines it) doesn't need to be rushed, and just results in rejection. Please read and follow the learning guide I left on your talk page and see THIS PAGE on how to start and grow a draft article to submit for review only when it's suitable for this encyclopaedia (and not before). Thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Apologies, the rule breaking was not intentional, there was just a lot of info at once. Can you please send step by step instructions on what I should do next to start the Judge John J. Merrick page to honor the first Judge of Malibu. I really appreciate the help! Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 22:42, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- @Brian Merrick - Malibu The first step is to find properly published sources that you can cite that demonstrate that this person is notable. Archives and personal papers are not suitable- they need to be in a form that anyone with access to the internet, a lending library or a bookshop on the other side of the world can VERIFY the things you write about them.
- If you can’t show that he’s Notable, then you’d simply be wasting your time trying further.
- There is no shortcut to creating a new article. You must be willing to follow and spend time to read the links I’ve provided in my answers above. But you could look at existing articles about other notable judges to appreciate what a biographical article should look like.
- Can you confirm you have changed your password and will not share it, please? Nick Moyes (talk) 23:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Ok no problem, I will take the time to do it properly. I just changed the password in settings although I'm not sure if it went through, but I will make sure not to share it.
- Thank you! Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 00:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
- Apologies, the rule breaking was not intentional, there was just a lot of info at once. Can you please send step by step instructions on what I should do next to start the Judge John J. Merrick page to honor the first Judge of Malibu. I really appreciate the help! Brian Merrick - Malibu (talk) 22:42, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Dinky13 on Draft:Qurio (05:55, 26 January 2024)
Hi Nick, how do I save a page in draft without publishing it? It only gives me the publish page option --Dinky13 (talk) 05:55, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Dinky13. Don’t worry - you were on the right track. Just use the big blue ‘publish’ button to save your edits in Draft (or anywhere else for that matter)
- For annoying legal reasons, what used to be labelled “Save” was renamed “Publish” because you are still putting your draft edits online. But that’s not the same as “publishing an article on Wikipedia” - you can still work on your draft and save edits to it until you reach the point where you think it’s ready to be reviewed and put into the main part of this encyclopaedia.
- I hope this makes sense. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks so much, Nick. Appreciated. Dinky13 (talk) 09:56, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
delete as read
Women in Red February 2024
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Announcement
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
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--Lajmmoore (talk 20:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Question from AirStream Pictures (22:58, 28 January 2024)
I was not able to use my own name when I created an editing account, so I've used my (wholly owned) company name. I wanted to edit a link that linked my name in the credits for the TV series "Gardening Naturally" to a murder in the UK. I was not allowed to link to my name to my Web site, as that was considered promotional (fair) but I'd like to create a brief bio page to link to. That can be within Wikipedia, but I don't know how to do that. Is that possible? --AirStream Pictures (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
- @AirStream Pictures unfortunately the account name you’ve chosen is not ok as it can imply more than one person has access to it. See WP:USERNAME. You will need to request a name change - instructions at WP:RENAME. I will leave a corresponding notice for you on your talk page.
- After that, you may add a very brief mention of you and your interests in editing Wikipedia by creating you Userpage. But don’t mention or link to your business website as this would be deemed promotional, and render it liable to deletion. We do not allow LinkedIn-style ‘Profiles’.
- I can see why you wanted to remove the wikilink that implied you were a convicted necrophile! That’s fine. We expect factual statements to be properly cited to reliable sources (see WP:REFBEGIN), but not simply as a hyperlink.
- I have to say that I don’t feel that article on Gardening Naturally needs every episode listing. Just stating there were 47 episodes and giving a link or citation to where those titles can be found is the right approach. The article also needs better citation to RELIABLE SOURCES to demonstrate that it actually meets Wikipedia’s Notability Guidelines (See WP:N). I would expect there to be mainstream media reporting of the series, in the form of reviews, behind the scenes stories, magazine articles about it, etc. Be aware that IMdB consists of user-generated content and is not regarded as especially reliable - certainly not as the main source. BTW: Ref [2] seems especially irrelevant.
- Finally, if you propose to make further edits to that article, we do require you to declare you connection with it in you userpage. (See WP:COI for how to do this.) I’m sorry if all this sounds rather negative and I hope you are able to act on these concerns. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 02:18, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from Prabir Saha1 (14:30, 30 January 2024)
Hello How do i create a citation? --Prabir Saha1 (talk) 14:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
- Hi there, Prabir Saha1. Depending on whether you've using our 'Visual Editor' our our Source Editor, you will find guidance on adding citations (=references) at the following pages:
- Let me know if you have any specific problems after trying one of those two routes. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Question from MichaelJackson2008 (02:01, 1 February 2024)
Where is the edit button? --MichaelJackson2008 (talk) 02:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- @MichaelJackson2008 If you’re viewing Wikipedia in ‘Mobile view’, just look for the dark sloping pencil icon to start editing either a whole page or a section within it. (You can tell if you’re in mobile view if the url contains .m. -as in en.m.wikipedia.org.
- If you’re viewing Wikipedia in ‘Desktop’ mode, look either for the ‘Edit’ tab towards the top of each page, or beside each section heading.
- We offer a choice of two editing tools. Depending which one you used last, it’ll either say “Edit source” or, simply, “Edit”.
- You can switch back and forth between the two editors.
- Hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).
- An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.
- Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
- Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.
- Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
- Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
- The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
Question from Bosren (05:12, 2 February 2024)
How many articles will I edit before I can post? --Bosren (talk) 05:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Bosren You can post an edit to an article immediately. However you need to have made ten edits and have an account at least 4 days old before you are AUTOCONFIRMED (See that link to see what it permits you to do). This includes creating new articles, but it is very strongly advised that you prepare a Draft article and work on it until it is in good shape before submitting it. It's not an easy task for a new editor to get everything right, and creating a new article from scratch is the hardest task anyone can do here. See this guidance page and then see this page for a Wizard tool that helps you prepare a draft article for review. If you put a poor article directly into the encyclopaedia, it stands a very good chance of being immediately deleted if it doesn't meet our basic article requirements of NOTABILITY. I hope this helps. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 11:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from The PPCo (14:42, 4 February 2024)
Hi Nick. I added some interesting info to the Wiki page and also linked back but it was removed for some reason. How do I get it to stay with a citation? Thanks --The PPCo (talk) 14:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
- @The PPCo No - you actually added a promotional external link to you business, which was reverted for good reason! Do not do that again, please. You may use articles in reliable media to support a factual statement, but you will be blocked from editing if you try to abuse Wikipedia be linking to commercial websites within articles. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:09, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the update Nick. The PPCo (talk) 09:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- HI Nick. Ive now re-added the information but removed the external link. I hope that is OK The PPCo (talk) 09:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- Got it... I will get started with other pages. Thanks, I wasn't sure how that worked. SchaefferBrian (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the update Nick. The PPCo (talk) 09:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from SchaefferBrian (18:46, 4 February 2024)
I am just retiring and have more time to spend working on things like Wiki. I created a page for myself, but wasn't able to save /post it. I'm not really sure to get started. Can you help? --SchaefferBrian (talk) 18:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
- @SchaefferBrian I’ve left you a welcome message on your talk page, with a link to our Getting Started tutorial. Don’t be too ambitious to start with; just find articles (maybe about your home area) and look for typos, poor English etc that you can improve.
- On your Userpage, you are permitted to say a few words about yourself and your interest in editing Wikipedia. But we don’t allow people to promote themselves by creating detailed profiles.
- In desktop mode, your Homepage tab offers you easy edits to improve articles. You may find this helpful, too. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 09:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Dave.W.Simmons (17:54, 5 February 2024)
how do I create an article? --Dave.W.Simmons (talk) 17:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Dave.W.Simmons Articles have to both be based on Reliable Sources ‘’and’’ meet our Notability criteria.
- It is advisable for all newcomers to spend time learning the basics of editing before rushing in to try to create a new article. It’s the hardest task anyone can perform here, and few new editors are successful first time. But please see WO:YFA and WO:AFC. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Shema12345 on Talk:Honda Stepwgn (18:35, 7 February 2024)
Hi are you a Honda manufacturer --Shema12345 (talk) 18:35, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Shema12345 That’s a weird question to ask. No! Nick Moyes (talk) 03:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Kohan-bot (17:06, 9 February 2024)
Hello mentor, I always been curious about the points I get from editing Wikipedia articles, I just want to know what these points mean to me! Does it a kind of appreciation? If so, than why don't show total points? --Kohan-bot (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi, Kohan-bot. I'm not quite sure what "points" you're referring to. Do you mean the numbers in red and green that you see when looking at your list of past edits? If so, these are just the number of bytes your saved edit either added (green text) or removed (red text) from the article.
- Errm, I need to point out a problem with your username. Unfortunately, we prohibit anyone using a name that could suggest it is an automated bot account (unless it is actually a functioning bot - orf which there are many doing useful service on Wikipedia). Please consider requesting a name change (see WP:RENAME) before an admin like me comes along and 'soft-blocks your account, which will simply force your hand. If that happens, please don't take it personally, but it is a policy that we need to avoid confusing usernames. see WP:MISLEADNAME for an explanation. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
- Oops, too late! i see UtherSRG has just this second 'soft-blocked' you. Don't panic - just follow the instructions on your talk page. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
How do I start a page about someone
cant seem to find how to start a page about someone Nick pashley 1 (talk) 10:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Nick pashley 1. Creating a new page is an extremely hard task - especially for a brand new editor like yourself. It's always best to learn a biut more about Wikipedia by making small improvements to existing articles first. Maybe fix grammar and spelling, add the odd citation or wikilink.
- Any new article must be about a topic that meets our Notability Criteria. For people, see WP:NBIO for how these criteria must be met and WP:BLP for the important way of handling factual statements about living or recently deceased people. If you can't find independent sources that talk about this person in some detail, then you are stuck, and there can't be an article about them.
- What you would do is create a Draft article, work on it until it's of encyclopaedic quality, and you're confident you've demonstrated 'Notability'. Then you'd submit it for review and get useful feedback from a reviewer. There's a huge backlog at present, so it could take up anything up to a couple of months for a volunteer to do the review.
- You can find a 'wizard' tool to help you create a draft article at our Articles for Creation page.
- You should read and work through any links to other pages at Your First Article.
- Should you know or are being paid by this person to create an article, then you would need to declare your Conflict of Interest - so please see that link for details how to do this. We don't mind anyone having a COI, but we do need openness so that we are aware of it. Undeclared paid editing is not allowed, so see WP:PAID if you are being remunerated to do this.
- To learn how to edit, follow the link in the blue button in the welcome message I see has been left on your userpage. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:35, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Provident Estate Dubai (07:35, 12 February 2024)
i want to write an article --Provident Estate Dubai (talk) 07:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Tennesi14 on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images (18:22, 12 February 2024)
Hello, how do you create a citation? --Tennesi14 (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi there, @Tennesi14. A citation is another word for a reference that supports a factual statement. So, I’m unclear why you linked to the images page of our Manual of Style.
- Anyway, I will give you two links on how to do this, depending on which of our two editing tools you’ve opted to use. (But you can easily switch back and forth between them by clicking the dark, slanted pencil icon)
- For adding citations with our powerful Source Editor, please see WP:REFBEGIN.
- For our simpler, more ‘WISYWYG’ Visual Editor, please follow guidance via this shortcut: WP:REFBEGINVE.
- I‘ll also leave a welcome message on your own talk page with some very useful links about learning to edit. Regards , Nick Moyes (talk) 21:57, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-07
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [10][11][12] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [13][14]
Problems
- There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [15][16]
As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[17] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [18]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Minor but annoying mystery
I'd appreciate the help of a wise and crafty Wikipedian at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk#19:09,_12_February_2024_review_of_submission_by_Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Done
Question from Bosren (02:11, 15 February 2024)
Hi, May I ask what are the rules and regulation when posting an article? --Bosren (talk) 02:11, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hi again, Bosren.
- If you're thinking of creating a brand new article (a very hard task - especially for a brand new editor), there's good advice at THIS PAGE.
- Just always remember that this is an encyclopaedia, not an advertising site, and as such all articles should:
- about Notable subjects (as defined by Wikipedia). They MUST meet our notability criteria, or they will be liable for deletion. (see WP:GNG, and WP:NBIO for people and WP:NCORP for companies. There are other notability criteria for various other topics, of course, such as this and this)
- be based up reliable, published sources not connected to the subject (see WP:RS)
- be written in a neutral tone of voice, and written in your own words (see WP:NPOV)
- have factual statements with citations that can be verified by anyone, anywhere in the world with access to good library (see WP:V
- be edited by users not connected to the subject. If they are connected, this fact must be made clear (see WP:COI and WP:PAID and this policy on undeclared paid editing).
- Finally, I'd say it is advisable to prepare a 'draft' article before putting it into the encyclopaedia. That way, you can work on it and improve it until it meets our notability criteria and other requirements for formatting, sourcing etc. It is best to use the article creation process, available HERE.
- Please let me know if you find this reply helpful. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Madiraju kanakadurga (03:57, 16 February 2024)
hello, how do I create my Wikipedia page and write an article in Telugu? how can I know that the same article was uploaded on the Wikipedia page? --Madiraju kanakadurga (talk) 03:57, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- You can create a short userpage which explains your interests in editing Wikipedia, and a little bit about you, by clicking the "Create" tab, typing your text, then clicking 'publish'. But don't create a CV or Profile page about yourself as you might do on LinkedIn, or it will be disallowed. Every single edit we make here is viewable online, so that's why it's called 'Publish, but that's not the same as actually publishing an encyclopaedia article into the main part of Wikipedia. See THIS GUIDANCE for creating an article in English, here. But, be aware: it's a very difficult task for any newcomer to successfully create an article from scratch without first learning the basics of editing and improving existing articles. You wouldn't get into a car for the very first time and set off up a motorway at top speed. So please don't do the equivalent on Wikipedia without first learning the controls and the rules of the road!
- Because this is English Wikipedia, you cannot create articles or communicate in any other language than English. But your account will also work when you go to Telugu Wikipedia. See HERE
- I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:28, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from MykoChan123 (14:50, 19 February 2024)
how do i start ? --MykoChan123 (talk) 14:50, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
- @MykoChan123 Welcome to Wikipedia! I have left a welcome message for you on your talk page. It contains a link to getting started with editing. It’s a huge learning curve at the start - so take it slowly to begin with and practice making small edits to gain a better understanding of how things work here.
- Was there something in particular that you wanted to work on? Regards from the UK. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-08
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [19]
- There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
- Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
- The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [20]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [21][22]
Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
- The CSS
filter
property can now be used in HTMLstyle
attributes in wikitext. [23]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Allimardan (07:42, 21 February 2024)
Hi, I'd like to have a new article written up on the founding story of an E-commerce Platform in the Capital City of Zambia Lusaka called Nilandi.com --Allimardan (talk) 07:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Allimardan Does this business meet our Notability Criteria for companies? It would need to have been written about in detail and in depth by at least three independent sources, such as books, magazines our mainstream newspapers. See WP:NCORP for our criteria.
- bear in mind that Wikipedia is not here to help you promote your business. If the world at large hasn’t taken notice of this business then, along with millions of others, it will not deserve its own article. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Bosren (02:10, 23 February 2024)
Hi, May I ask if publishing article for an agency or company is possible here? --Bosren (talk) 02:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Bosren. The answer is "it depends"! So please read on. . .
- Firstly, If you are being paid to create an article (i.e. you're an employee or a freelancer) you are obliged to declare who is paying you, and what they're wanting you to write about. Instructions for making that declaration are found at WP:PAID. Paid editors are not permitted to take payment without making such a statement, or their editing rights will be withdrawn. Even if not paid, you may still have a CONFLICT OF INTEREST that you may need to declare if you know the owners, once worked for them, or are a client etc etc). See WP:COI for how to declare such a conflict.
- Secondly, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of notable things, not a place to promote one's favourite local business (of which there are millions around the planet, very few of which are 'notable'). See WP:PROMOTION.
- Wikipedia uses a very specific definition of NOTABILITY, and for businesses you can read what this is at WP:NCORP. If you cannot demonstrate that three or more independent sources have written about a business in detail and in depth, then there cannot be an article about that business, and you would be wasting your time trying. Press releases, company websites and insider business newsletters are not counted, whereas mainstream national media and properly published books are acceptable sources.
- I hope this gives some clarity on what's allowed here, and what is not. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Teahouse answer on alderflies
Greetings! I'd like to thank you for your reply to question on the Teahouse a week back.
I have considered re-writing the bulleted list using the clade template but since I lack the proper experience and the article isn't —in my view— consulted enough, I think it best to leave the Classification subsection as is for the time being. Bronzeman2342 (talk) 02:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Bronzeman2342 I can’t disagree with that! Nick Moyes (talk) 12:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from James Boswell 2nd on Wikipedia:Teahouse (00:12, 26 February 2024)
Hello Nick Moyes. I want to try to improve the article "Dale C. Allison, Jr." I am completely new to Wiki and am having difficulty getting started. --James Boswell 2nd (talk) 00:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- @James Boswell 2nd I have left a Welcome message on your talk page, containing a valuable link to getting started with editing.
- I noticed on the page you mentioned a whole section of unsourced biographical information about his early life. Finding published evidence to support these statements would be very helpful. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 07:03, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Question from Pinkklemonade (05:26, 26 February 2024)
hi! i was wondering, do i have to make a wikipedia page off of someone whos well known? i think it would be fun to make an article of myself, especially because im an aspiring artist, but im not sure if im allowed to. --Pinkklemonade (talk) 05:26, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Pinkklemonade No, absolutely not - sorry. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of Notable things. It’s not like LinkedIn, which lets anyone create a profile page about themselves. In essence, we need evidence that the world at large has taken notice of you. Our Notability Criteria have to be met before a page about someone is accepted. See WP:NBIO and WP:NARTIST.
- New users are far better off learning how Wikipedia operates by editing existing pages. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 06:44, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- kys you hurt my feelings Pinkklemonade (talk) 03:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Pinkklemonade Tough - that's simply how Wikipedia works.
- . . . and if you ever use offensive words, slang or acronyms against other editors again, you could find yourself being blocked from editing! You have been warned! Nick Moyes (talk) 08:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- kys you hurt my feelings Pinkklemonade (talk) 03:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).
- Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
- Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.
- The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)
- The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ*ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
- Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.
Question from Ineffablericeman on User:Completelyineffablebengali (17:08, 3 March 2024)
I want to update my school on it's academisation but I don't really know how to edit it without getting banned --Ineffablericeman (talk) 17:08, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Ineffablericeman Before answering you, could you explain why you're linking in a second account (Completelyineffablebengali) to this question? You are not permitted to operate two accounts at once, except under special circumstances.
- The term " academisation" suggest a process your school has gone through to convert it from one operating sytem to another. Is that right? Well, the answer is that you can add a statement to a Wikipedia article, providing you can support it with a citation (inline reference) to a published source. As this sounds like a relatively minor fact, we would normally accept a reference to the school's own website or other publications where it is clear that "academisation" has taken place, and when. If you can't find a source, then do not add stuff that you "happen to know", as we need all articles to be verifiable by other people with access to those publications or websites.
- Nobody is going to 'block' you from editing for making an edit in all good faith, even if it ends up being reverted. We only block editors who are either acting as a vandal by intentionally disrupting articles, or who refuse to listen to the advice or follow policies they have had pointed out to them.
- Does this help? Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-10
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The
Special:Book
page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [24] - Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
- Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The
Gadget
andGadget_definition
namespaces andgadgets-definition-edit
user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [25]- A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [26]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [27][28]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [29]
- The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add
?useparsoid=1
to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Robiinsingh (14:14, 6 March 2024)
Hello Nick, I want to create a page for a Brand which is dominating in Offline market of Government Competitive Exams preparation in India and it is also growing in online market also. The name of the brand is Agrawal Examcart. Can you help me or mentor me to create the same. --Robiinsingh (talk) 14:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Robiinsingh. Sorry for the delay in replying. Welcome to Wikipedia.
- Firstly, because this is an encyclopaedia of NOTABLE THINGS, it’s only possible to create an article if you can base it on the content of independent, published sources. That means books, magazine articles, newspapers or quality news websites. Can you find these? Anything else would be purely WP:PROMOTION, which we do not permit. It absolutely must meet our Notability criteria for businesses.
- Draft articles can be started at ARTICLES FOR CREATION, then submitted for review and feedback.
- See further guidance at YOUR FIRST ARTICLE.
- It is extremely hard for a total newcomer to successfully create a new article, so please spend a few weeks learning how to edit, how to add citations, and how Wikipedia works in general before you dive into article creation. I will leave a link on your talk page to our pages teaching you the basics of editing.
- Finally, if you are connected in any way with this topic, you must declare your Conflict of interest on your userpage. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:17, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thank You @Nick Moyes Robiinsingh (talk) 00:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Bosren (04:44, 7 March 2024)
How to be able to edit Medium Editing? --Bosren (talk) 04:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Bosren Sorry, but I do not understand your question. What is "Medium Editing". I am not familiar with that word as either a term or as an article page.
- I do need to ask: are you being paid to create Wikipedia articles? Your deleted contributions suggests to me that you are, and yet you have not declared any connection to these companies you are trying to promote here. Our policy is that undeclared paid editing is not permitted, and editing rights may be withdrawn until clarity is provided. You MUST respond to the post on your user talk page asking you to declare one way or the other, please, before you make any further edits to draft articles. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Nice!
Looks lovely! Well done. Cheers, DBaK (talk) 00:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Bosren (11:09, 11 March 2024)
May I ask? What if, I don't have resources in the article that I am planning to publish? --Bosren (talk) 11:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Bosren. If by that you mean "what if I don't have any references to cite as sources for what I want to publish?", then the answer is your draft article will not be published. It's as simple as that. Everything you add to Wikipedia must be based upon what published sources say, albeit written in your own words. You cannot simply add content based upon either your personal knowledge or your imagination, nor what the topic says about itself. See THIS PAGE to understand what Reliable Sources mean. Those sources must be sufficient to demonstrate that the topic is NOTABLE.
- As you seem to be writing a string of rapidly-deleted articles about businesses, I must ask you once again to state categorically whether or not you are being paid to create them? If so, please see WP:PAID to understand your obligations to declare that you are receiving money or have some other Conflict of Interest.
- I am at the point of removing your editing rights if you fail to answer this question, either here on my talk page, or on your own.
- We require clarity, one way or another, and you should stop editing until you have answered this question. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:56, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Can’t get back into a TH thread you and I were in
Nick, you made a reply to a TH message of mine (" Quick question…") and I was responding to it on my phone when something happened — not sure what— and now I can't get back into it to finish the reply, or start again on it.
I see a downward-facing arrow on the message title (in the list of titles) that won't turn upward no matter what I do.
Interestingly, I can read other messages … but as I recall, I can't reply to them, either.
I seem to be running into some weird Wiki situations recently!
Augnablik (talk) 18:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Augnablik I've also lost phone edits when my phone has been inactive for a while and has shut down. It doesn't seem to cache content like a desktop does.
- The downwards/upwards-pointing arrows are "expand this thread" or "collapse this thread" button. I'm not sure why you're unable to activate them. As suggested before, switch to "Desktop mode" and life on a mobile gets easier. (Tiny link at the very, very bottom of each page). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
- I will switch from now on, but meanwhile what do I do to get out of this frozen situation? Augnablik (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Augnablik All I can suggest is turning your device off and starting from a fresh reboot. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:43, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
- I will switch from now on, but meanwhile what do I do to get out of this frozen situation? Augnablik (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from UV Rose (20:40, 11 March 2024)
Hello, can you help with editing this Wikipedia page by adding sources ? --UV Rose (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
- @UV Rose Can you link to both the article and the source you'd like to add? I might then be able to guide you better.
- We have guidance on adding citations at WP:REFBEGIN if you're using our 'Source Editor' and at WP:REFBEGINVE if you're using Visual Editor. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:57, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-11
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [30][31]
- After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [32]
- The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [33]
- Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [34]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [35][36]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Pottervilles (15:01, 12 March 2024)
Hi, how do I create an article on a biography including a template. --Pottervilles (talk) 15:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Pottervilles. Welcome to Wikipedia. Firstly, the person must be notable, as defined by Wikipedia. i.e. the world at large has taken notice of them. Our criteria for notable people can be read at WP:NBIO. Without independent published sources that talk about that person, there can be no article about them. Templates are not essential items, but
{{Infobox person}}
would provide a suitable summary template. - Everything must be written in your own words (not copy pasted), and must be neutral in tone. This is an encyclopedia, after all, not a promotional website for people's CVs.
- If you know the person in some way, you must declare any CONFLICT OF INTEREST on your userpage. You are also advised to learn the basics of editing existing articles before rushing in with the incredibly difficult task of creating a brand new article as a complete newcomer.
- Then, once you're ready, and know how to add citations to the sources you base your article on, you can read more at YOUR FIRST ARTICLE. It's best to start a draft at ARTICLES FOR CREATION and submit the draft for review and feedback. See WP:REFBEGIN or WP:REFBEGINVE for guidance on how to use either of out two editing tools to add references to support any article text.
- Let me know how you get on. (I've left a welcome message with some useful links on your user talk page). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Bala Mohammed Idris (09:27, 18 March 2024)
Hello, how do I create a citation? --Bala Mohammed Idris (talk) 09:27, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Bala Mohammed Idris You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:
- Visual Editing: WP:REFBEGINVE
- Source Editing: WP:REFBEGIN
- Hope this helps. Regards Nick Moyes (talk) 16:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-12
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [37]
IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [38]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [39][40][41]
- Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [42]
Problems
- RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [43]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [44][45]
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [46][47]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Hello
Greetings! So I was confused about there situation, and I edited the page a bit, but I removed my edits so as not to seem as causing an edit war or a disruptive edit. However, another user suggested that I could make a common names sections for the names that aren’t on the header. Would that be alright?
The only issue is significant backlash and hostility from one user. Anyway, please let me know what options I can take, I feel that I should have a voice in this case at the very least. Firekong1 (talk) 19:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
- I just want to check with you because another wikipedian suggested that I could name a common name section in the article, if you get this please let me know. Firekong1 (talk) 15:35, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Firekong1 Sorry - I overlooked replying to this post from you. In general, and providing you can demonstrate that a 'common English name' is genuinely in common use by being able to show a number of high quality sources that haven't simply misinterpreted a name, then I don't have a problem with that. In the end, it's down to any consensus being determined on an article's talk page. I wouldn't want to see such a section added just to get around a consensus view that one extra, obscure name isn't needed. Such a section might look at etymology - and Grigson's 'Dictionary of English plant Names' - would be a brilliant source for a section on non-scientific names. Maybe there's something equivalent in the animal world, I don't know?
- However, Wikipedia, because of its popularity, does have the ability to promulgate false information if what's added is taken from poor sources. So, it's a case of being sensible, and not trying to disrupt a page to make a point because one happens to have found an unusual name used in a single publication if it's not actually used anywhere else. (I think, from memory, the example of "Eurasian marten" might be one such) Equally, we don't want unnecessary sections listing non-English names, either. Hope this helps a bit. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:21, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
- No worries, I just wanted to make sure you got the message.
- I will keep that in mind. But I was told by Chidgk1 that I could make a binomial name section as an alternative. Firekong1 (talk) 22:18, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Firekong1 What do you mean a "binomial name section"? Are you referring to synonyms of scientific names? If so, these are best included in the species infobox. Any reason why they shouldn't be? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
- My apologies, I meant to say vernacular name. I believe that both scientific names and common names should be mentioned in the articles since some names (Iranian leopard, Turkish leopard) are occasionally used by some sources (such sources are even listed in the article).
- Also, I used the name "European marten", not "Eurasian marten". But I understand that the European pine marten page will not have its common name changed for now. Firekong1 (talk) 01:14, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Firekong1 What do you mean a "binomial name section"? Are you referring to synonyms of scientific names? If so, these are best included in the species infobox. Any reason why they shouldn't be? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Chrisdlink85 (18:10, 20 March 2024)
Hi Nick, I'm pretty new to Wikipedia. I want to create a page for our company, which has been in business for 8 years now. It gets over 6M visitors each year asking about plants and to purchase plants. Our site is called plantaddicts.com and we've been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart, Parada, HGTV, & Bob Vila. We're one of the largest plant websites in the United States now. In the past I know Wikipedia didn't want to create pages just for any website out there. But I think our website has grown large enough to warrant it's own page on Wikipedia now.
I was wondering what your thoughts are on this? And if you could provide any guidance on what I should do?
Thanks so much!
Chris --Chrisdlink85 (talk) 18:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Chrisdlink85 I'm just about to head out to listen to a talk about using insects to determine the time of death of murder suspects (!). I'll probably have to answer you tomorrow, now. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Chrisdlink85 As you are intimately connected with the company, you have what we call a [[WP{:COI|CONFLICT OF INTEREST]], so should not really be the person trying to create this article. If you were to try, you would need to make an obligatory declaration on your userpage. Instructions at WP:PAID.
- But, most important, is the need for every topic to meet Wikipedia's NOTABILITY critieria. In this instance, it would be WP:NCORP that you should read. There would need to be detailed, in-depth, and independent coverage of the business/website - not advertising copy. Perhaps you could supply me with links to the best three sources that you would consider using. I can give you feedback on them if they're online.
- Any attempt to make an article must be encyclopedic in nature, and not done for PROMOTION (we block editors who abuse Wikipedia for their own interests!), and should be prepared as a DRAFT, and submitted for review and feedback when it's ready. You can find details of how a draft is started at WP:AFC, but you should read THIS first. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
![]() | |
Five years! |
---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Question from Cyambao (20:56, 28 March 2024)
hi how do i create a citetation --Cyambao (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, Cyambao. It's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, and you can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:
- Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE
- Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN
- I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! I will also leave a welcome message on your talk page with a useful link to follow to getting started with editing. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
- ok thank you Cyambao (talk) 17:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/ANEWSicon.png/150px-ANEWSicon.png)
- An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
- An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
- Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
Tech News: 2024-14
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [48]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [49][50]
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024
Hello Nick Moyes,
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/NPP_unreviewed_article_statistics_as_of_April_2%2C_2024.svg/400px-NPP_unreviewed_article_statistics_as_of_April_2%2C_2024.svg.png)
Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.
Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.
Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.
It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!
2023 Awards
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/New_page_reviewer_of_the_year_cup.svg/74px-New_page_reviewer_of_the_year_cup.svg.png)
Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.
Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.
Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from Trulyvedic (17:59, 3 April 2024)
Hello How to I edit the information box on wikipedia page which has summary of details. I am able to edit current categories but not able to add a new detail. --Trulyvedic (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Trulyvedic Providing you base added content on RELIABLE SOURCES and add them as a CITATION, you may find it easiest to use our Source Editor, rather than Visual Editor. You can switch between them using the sloping grey pencil icon - usually on the upper right of the editing screen. Hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Hello from Colman2000
Hi Nick. Just wanted to check up on one of my favorite editors on Wikipedia. How have things been going for you? I have been creating a lot of new articles on Wikipedia, expanding existing articles, and correcting grammar and spelling errors that I see on articles. Hope to hear from you soon! Kind regards from Aloha, Oregon, United States, Colman2000 (talk) 18:43, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-15
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [51][52]
- Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [53]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [54][55]
- New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [56]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from Crosenow (15:50, 12 April 2024)
Hello, I wrote an article about a Neurologist Hans O. Lüders. Could you review the page so that it can be published? Thank you, Caroline --Crosenow (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Crosenow Thank you for your question. I see your draft is currently in the review process for a second time, so there is nothing I need to do in that regard other than let our volunteers do their work in reviewing articles. This can take 2 or 3 months.
- The content appears to be factually correct, though written as if it were more of a CV or LinkedIn profile, than a biographical encyclopaedia article based on sources unrelated to the subject. I sense you may well have a connection to the subject. This is not an issue in itself, unless you fail to disclose it on your userpage. If you do know, or are related to this person, please read how to make clear your connection by reading guidance at WP:DISCLOSE.
- Our notability criteria for academics can be found at WP:NPROF. Clearly, he is an eminent physician, but there may be some uncertainty about whether he meets Wikipedia's notability. I would advise (after declaring any WP:COI you may have) that you focus on showing, in simple terms, the contribution he has made to medical science. Maybe as author of key textbooks used in teaching; media coverage of his medical achievements; biographies written by other people in prestigious magazines etc; winner of notable awards (i.e. those which already have coverage here on Wikipedia.)
- If you read WP:LEAD, you will see that it should simply summarise the reasons for notability without getting too technical. If you could simplify the lead, whilst emphasising reasons for notability, I think you may stand a chance of seeing this through into the main encyclopaedia. I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for your advice! I will make the proper changes and disclosures.
- Regards from Germany, Crosenow Crosenow (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
On Removing Block Notices
Hello! I saw on User Talk:Harishsk2022, you instructed them not to remove the block notice. I was under the impression that, per WP:NOTWALLOFSHAME, removing the block notice is allowed, just not declined unblock requests (for active blocks). In this particular case, the user removed both, and doesn't seem inclined to listen, so I doubt it makes a difference, but for my use in the future, is removing the notice also prohibited? I don't want to give out bad advice to other users, after all! Thanks in advance for your time. EducatedRedneck (talk) 16:16, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
- @EducatedRedneck You are right. But the user appears to have a very rudimentary command of English. It should really only be the Review Decline notice that needs to be left in place for the duration of the block. But I wanted to keep it extremely simple for them to understand, as they ignored 331dot's more detailed - and correct - advice. The link you provided above is certainly correct, and a useful reminder for me, too. I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to question my notice. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
- Okay, whew, thank you! I was worried I'd gotten mixed up. Agreed that keeping it simple in that case is better, and thank you for helping me check my assumptions; I really appreciate it! EducatedRedneck (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive
New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | ![]() |
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You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Editor Concern
Hello!
I've come across the editor Repertoire18, and am concerned their edits seem to me to consistently promote an anti-West, pro-China POV. I was wondering if you had any advice for determining when editors are acting in good faith or not with regards to POV— I hope to follow WP:AGF, and acknowledge that biased editors can improve the balance of articles. Would it be proper for me to politely ask them about it on their talk page, or to just not worry about it except on pages I follow? I also acknowledge that I first came across this editor on a subject that I feel strongly about, which may color my judgement. Thanks for your help! Placeholderer (talk) 16:27, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Placeholderer Interesting question! People always bring their own biases and interests when editing. That's why it's important that a balance of good, reliable sources is found on which to base content on.
- I see the user has deleted previous warnings about adding commentary or non-neutral content. That makes no difference, so any future warning can be given at the next level up, even though they've curiously just left one low-level warning notice on their page. Crafty! I always look through a user's talk page for blanking, and take a look at any past warnings. Although that's permitted, it does indicate to me the level of problems they might be causing, and my response to them. I use WP:Twinkle to automate the templating of other users.
- Asking a user politely on their talk page is a good, non-inflammatory way of engaging with concerns. Asking them to leave better edit summaries may also be worthwhile, as this helps others to understand the reasoning behind a content change.
- It's your choice whether you concern yourself only with articles you're directly interested in, or whether you worry more about ensuring an editor follow Wikipedia's norms across all their editing. I tend to find poor editing comes to my attention in one place that I especially care about, but that I when I investigate their other edits I often then find a pattern of edits that are (shall we say...) not as good as they ought to be!
- It's acceptable to have your attention drawn to an editor's activities by one problem and for you to then look into other edits. But be aware of not WP:HOUNDING them by checking and criticising every they then make for no good reason.
- Always try to base any discussion over your concerns by including a link on their talk page to a WP:DIFF or two, as this helps you and them understand what you're concerned about, and why. Add their userpage to your Watchlist for a month or two and keep half an eye open for other warnings they may have been left. You can simply revert uncited additions if they're contentious (and say 'citations are needed'); revert and warn them about leaving commentaries in articles; warn and report for vandalism, or collate evidence of bad edits and eventually you could report them to WP:ANI for others to look into their editing. But engaging in a friendly way first is always a very mature approach. I hope this waffly answer is of some use. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [57]
- You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [58][59]
Future changes
- This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [60]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from Timparty12 on User:Timparty12/sandbox (04:11, 23 April 2024)
Hello there, On my sandbox article page, I've made this YouTube "girly" series about "The Great Eight Girls" and I know it's only on YouTube, but I was just wondering to leave this article here to make this go popular as possible? --Timparty12 (talk) 04:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Timparty12 Hi Tim, and thanks for your question. Unfortunately, that's not how Wikipedia operates. It isn't here to help things get well-known; it's only interested in covering subjects that are already well-known. This is called NOTABILITY, and means that we can only have articles on Wikiepdia about topics already described and written about in detail and in depth by RELIABLE SOURCES. Simply 'existing' isn't sufficient. Everything written here must be based upon properly published sources that are not user-generated. i.e. we don't accept IMDB, blogs, personal websites etc. Unless you can find this series has been covered in mainstream media, then I'm afraid you would be wasting your time trying to promote it here. Do please read this guidance about creating your first article. It is always best to spend time learning how Wikipedia works by making many smaller edits to existing articles than rushing in trying to create a new page straight away. I hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- I find everything to be struggling at this point, and if you wanna know this source, It's ONLY on YouTube. I know It may be some kind of un-scorce, but this little, big franchise could work someday. :) Timparty12 (talk) 09:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Timparty12 With a paltry 300 views per episode in a year, you're simply wasting your time here. Maybe it's TOOSOON.
- Put simply: Wikipedia is not here for advertising or PROMOTION. There are plenty of places where that can happen, but not here. (Please read the links). Nick Moyes (talk) 09:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- It's okay at least I've tried having fun with the page I've used. :) but Thanks for telling me for some information. Timparty12 (talk) 09:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- I also took pictures and video just in case it's removed, but please DON'T Remove the articles. Timparty12 (talk) 09:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- @Timparty12 As far as I'm concerned, you can keep what's in your sandbox as I would simply regard it as a place where you can learn and experiment with editing techniques. It's not an article, and is not indexed by Google. However, abandoned drafts are deleted after 6 months, and my firm advice is not to attempt to develop it as it would be liable for deletion per WP:NOTWEBHOST.
- I assume you created these little videos yourself as a bit of fun? Be aware that whenever an editor tries to write about something they are connected with, they need to declare a 'conflict of interest' before proceeding. See WP:COI for more details. But, in this instance, simply do not attempt to develop this any further, as it will then be liable for deletion as we're not a free hosting service, and editors who try to use Wikipedia for their own purposes (rather than helping to build an encyclopaedia of notable things) tend to have their editing privileges revoked, per WP:NOTHERE. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- I find everything to be struggling at this point, and if you wanna know this source, It's ONLY on YouTube. I know It may be some kind of un-scorce, but this little, big franchise could work someday. :) Timparty12 (talk) 09:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from LeonaLeeSykes (16:47, 23 April 2024)
Hello. How do I create a citation? Thank you. --LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 16:47, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, @LeonaLeeSykes. It's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, and you can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:
- Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE
- Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN
- Whichever way you do it, the important thing to appreciate is that you add each citation within the article text (immediately after the statement you want to support), but a special template in the 'References' section then displays all the citations together within that section, and with just a number appearing inline within the article text. Both of our editing tools also let you reuse the same citation more than once within an article, yet the entry for that citation is only shown once in the Reference section. Clever stuff! See WP:REFNAME for naming and reusing a citation with Source Editor.
- I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! Regards from the UK.
- Hello, @LeonaLeeSykes. It's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, and you can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:
- Nick Moyes (talk) 18:29, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you Nick. I would like to use the official Coroner's Report and one of the online newspapers which has a picture of most of the first page of the report so I should be able to use the citation on both.
- Regards from Cape Town, South Africa. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 01:47, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- The Burj Khalifa page is semi-protected. Would I be able to make these additions? LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 01:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- @LeonaLeeSykes You're nearly able to. Your account is old enough, but needs to have made 10 or more edits. You've made nine so far! (See HERE).
- Do remember to preview any edits you make before you publish them, or maybe even try adding a citation on a less well-monitored page, or perhaps even in your sandbox. But it sounds like you may have a good source for whatever you want to add. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for all your assistance Nick. It is much appreciated. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- ...and that's your tenth edit. You are now 'autoconfirmed'! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you Nick. You're a great mentor. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Nick. I'm battling to add the Coroner's Report and news article to the Burj Khalifa page but hopefully by the end of the day it will be done.
- On another matter, on the WikiAlpha page there is something on my daughter's death, but the title is Laura Vanessa Sykes. How can I change it to her correct name which is Laura Vanessa Nunes? LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 14:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you Nick. You're a great mentor. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- ...and that's your tenth edit. You are now 'autoconfirmed'! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for all your assistance Nick. It is much appreciated. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
- Do remember to preview any edits you make before you publish them, or maybe even try adding a citation on a less well-monitored page, or perhaps even in your sandbox. But it sounds like you may have a good source for whatever you want to add. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, April 2024
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg/220px-Growth_team_logo_-_Icon_only.svg.png)
The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Community Configuration
Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig
. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
Experiment Results
Add a Image experiment analysis results
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
- The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
- The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
- The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
- A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
Personalized praise experiment results
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)
English donors encouraged to try editing
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)
Future work
Annual Plan
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from LizC1 (14:13, 26 April 2024)
I have collected a number of sources. Usually, Wikipedia puts these below the article and numbers them in the article with hyperlinks. How do you do that? Or does an editor look at it later and 'sort it out'? --LizC1 (talk) 14:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
- @LizC1 As you know, it's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. Now that you’ve found some, you can choose to use either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, butvyou can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:
- Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE
- Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN
- Whichever way you do it, the important thing to appreciate is that you add each citation ‘’within’’ the article text (immediately after the statement you want to support), but a special template in the 'References' section then displays all the citations together within that section, and with just a number appearing inline within the article text.
- Both of our editing tools also let you reuse the same citation more than once within an article, yet the entry for that citation is only shown once in the Reference section. Clever stuff! See WP:REFNAME for naming and reusing a citation with Source Editor.
- I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! Regards from the UK.
- Nick Moyes (talk) 17:30, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from Hukam Gora on User:Hukam Gora (02:37, 28 April 2024)
How i can add photo on new page/ information about hukam gora --Hukam Gora (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hello, @Hukam Gora. Welcome to Wikipedia. It's not appropriate to add a photo of yourself to Wikipedia. As a new user, please focus instead on improving this encyclopaedia of notable subjects, rather than trying to create a 'profile page' about yourself. It would probably be deleted if you were to try, as your userpage is there just for you to say a little about yourself, your experience and interests in editing Wikipedia. Anything else is not appropriate. You may use LinkedIn to promote yourself, but not Wikipedia. More information can be found at WP:USERPAGE.
- I have left you a welcome message on your talk page with useful links to help you learn the basics of editing. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:44, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).
- Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.
- Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
- The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.
- This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
How Far to Assume Good Faith
Hello! I've been trying to engage an editor about problems with an article they mostly wrote themselves that seems explicitly POV and reliant on sources affiliated with the subject. The user has shown a complete lack of interest in responding to concerns from myself and another editor, in particular having nominated and accepted their own article for a GA review. Despite the communicated concerns about the article, they took it upon themself to remove a CN flag. I can't help but suspect the user has a COI— their user page reads like a promotion of their services. Is this an appropriate situation to report someone to WP:ANI? Thanks! Placeholderer (talk) 14:04, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
- I recognize that the last several questions I've asked you are variants of the same thing— I just don't feel experienced enough to escalate an issue without checking with someone else first Placeholderer (talk) 15:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
- @Placeholderer I’m really sorry, I’m away on holiday all week and am unable to look at this in enough detail to be helpful. You could either seek input at the Teahouse, or ask at WP:COIN. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:31, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-19
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
![Screenshot of the visual improvements made on talk pages](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Talk_pages_default_look_%28April_2023%29.jpg/220px-Talk_pages_default_look_%28April_2023%29.jpg)
- The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [61][62]
Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the
SiteAdminHelper
. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [63]Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [64]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [65][66]
- When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [67]
Future changes
- A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
- Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [68]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-20
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word
__EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__
to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [69] - If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [70]
- Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the
alt=
attribute. This is identical in usage to thealt=
attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [71] - The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [72]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [73][74]
The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [75]
Future changes
- In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [76]
Two columns of the
pagelinks
database table (pl_namespace
andpl_title
) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the newlinktarget
table instead (lt_namespace
andlt_title
). In your existing SQL queries:- Replace
JOIN pagelinks
withJOIN linktarget
andpl_
withlt_
in theON
statement - Below that add
JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
- See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [77][78]
- Replace
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (17:05, 14 May 2024)
Hello Mentor my names elizabeth but u can call me eli need help how do i create a artical --ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (talk) 17:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Eli. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of 'Notable Topics'. Not everything in this world is regarded by Wikipedia as WP:NOTABLE (that's why there isn't a page here about me. LOL!)
- If people unconnected with the topic have not written about it in detail and in depth, then there can never be an article about it here. So, your creation of Draft:Elizabeth Afton (Fnaf) falls way outside what's acceptable for an encyclopaedia, so please don't try that again as that's not what Wikipedia is for. I think someone has already explained that article talk pages are about discussing ways of improving an article, not just random observations or unrelated posts.
- Everything added here must be based on published books, magazines, newspapers, scientific journals or reliably published online websites or mainstream news outlets. There is no place for content based on personal blogs, private websites, self-published vanity books or social media, nor are we interested in what any subject says about themselves. People should look to other social media platforms if they simply want to write about themselves.
- So, having said that, could I ask you what sort of article you might hope to publish in this Encyclopaedia? And can you link to any RELIABLE SOURCES that talk about it? You might wish to read this page for guidance on creating your first article. Come back if you need further help. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from DocLara (20:22, 14 May 2024)
Hi Nick, I made a change on the french wikipedia page about “mathématicien” (removed a paragraph that is factually false and whose grammar is wrong too) but the paragraph was put back (and I got kind of accused of degrading wikipedia). What should I do (apart from sticking to the English side which seems much better)? --DocLara (talk) 20:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
- @DocLara Whilst I don't frequent fr.wiki, nor understand its processes, I would tend to agree with you that your edit did attempt to resolve poor grammar and possibly an incorrect statement. But my French (and use of Google Translate) may not give me the best view of the subject, and I did think the message left for you sounded rather harsh. (We get similar complaints about our templated messages here too, of course!)
- It is, however, very common for new editors to have the 'good faith' edits reverted if they didn't go about things as well as they might - especially when made to very popular pages with high visitor numbers. But don't be dismayed. What I would advise here on en.wiki (and also for you on fr.wiki) is to raise your concerns on the article's Talk Page. Here you can expand your concerns about the statement, suggest better wording, and suggest alternative or additional citations especially if they provide a counter view of the statement.
- We see a lot of removal of cited paragrpahs when someone believes it is incorreect. That can esaily be interpreted as WP:VANDALISM even when it's not. A far better way is to attempt to reword and improve upon the cited statement, plus offering a counter interpretation if there is one. Bear in mind that, whilst we really welcome experts in their field, Wikipedias of all language don't want edits based on what individuals know, but instead want to see edits based on reliably published sources. See WP:RS here on en.wiki for what that means to us.
- My concerns over the original statement you removed would have been that there was statement taken as a direct quote from the source, and little understanding imparted by the numbers at the end of the sentence. There were how many qualified mathematicians when exactly? Without knowing that, the sentence is quite meaningless. So it's ripe for improvement.
- Now, when I see any sentence that begins "According to person X...", I would expect to see an exact quote from person X and a citation to let me verify that statement. It needs to be letter perfect, including any typos in the original source. Of course, it might not be a mainstream view (which is why it's OK to say "according to". But that would enable you to then add, "However, other academics believe that xxxx is the case", and to offer appropriate citations (one citation if one person published their disagreement, or multiple citations if you can show the original quoted source may well be viewed as incorrect by multiple experts. That then gives two different interpretations of which mathematicians were the last to have a full grasp of the entire branch of mathematics (which I assume was the intended meaning of the statement.
- Now, you can go about addressing this on fr.wiki in one or more ways. Firstly, it's quite possible that the editor {{User:Ariel Provost]] leaving you the warning did not see your response as you did not directly 'ping' them. I assume French wiki has the equivalent of WP:PING which would send them an alert notification. However, they were not the reverting editor User:Kikuyu3 was. So you could, if you wished, go first to their talk page and apologise for causing apparent harm to the page, but then explain your intentions were well-meaning and expand upon your concerns and recommendations for improved wording and additions. Support everything with recommended wording and citations to support it, and ask them what they feel is best. If you feel the cited author is actually an unreliable and discredited source in that particular field, we would need to see links to good sources which demonstrate they've publish nonsense in a discredited work. You personal opinions of that author are not relevant of of interest to Wikipedia (good published sources are) even if you are the world's expert in that field. There is no rush on Wikipedia, so wait some while for a reply (days not hours!).
- If you still believe this important article contains an error, I would advise posting your concerns on the article talk page and letting a discussion ensue. We work by reasoned arguments and consensus here, so I am confident you will be able to win over editors if you explain your concerns and offer well-written alternative text. Gaining consensus can take a few weeks. On en.wiki it might be OK if your concerns gained no response to then make the edit your proposed after about 10 days per WP:BEBOLD, ensuring your edit summary clearly referred to the talk page discussion you had earlier posted. Something like "Rewording paragraph per tlak page discussion which elicited no response (or per consensus)"
- Please bear in mind that the approach outlined above is based on my experience as an administrator here on English Wikipedia. And the policies and pages I have linked to relate to en.wiki. Ways of doing things could be different on French Wikipedia - but somehow I doubt it. We all care about making improvements to articles - so go for it, and don't be down-heartened. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Bonjour bonjour Nick Moyes, user:DocLara and user:Ariel Provost. First, many thanks to you, Nick, for your ping, and very clear and wise comments. @DocLara, I assume you are complaining about my revert of your removal on the page fr:Mathématicien. So now, DocLara, you know which are the many appropriate places where to discuss this matter. In fact, this complain placed here seems to me very unusual. So I'd rather not comment any more. See you on french pages, with appropriate pings. Cordialement, et Hop ! Kikuyu3 (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- @Kikuyu3 Merci beaucoup! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, @Kikuyu3, I should add that the question came about as a result of our Mentorship program, in which every editor on en.wiki is assigned an experienced editor to whom they can directly ask questions and seek advice. That was the reason.
- Oh, and @DocLara, please could I ask you to convert the text on your Userpage from French into English? Because this is English Wikipedia we do really expect all content to be in English. I assume it would be fine to have what your wrote about your first experience of an Editathon on your user page on French Wikipedia, too, though. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:07, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- @Kikuyu3 Merci beaucoup! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Bonjour bonjour Nick Moyes, user:DocLara and user:Ariel Provost. First, many thanks to you, Nick, for your ping, and very clear and wise comments. @DocLara, I assume you are complaining about my revert of your removal on the page fr:Mathématicien. So now, DocLara, you know which are the many appropriate places where to discuss this matter. In fact, this complain placed here seems to me very unusual. So I'd rather not comment any more. See you on french pages, with appropriate pings. Cordialement, et Hop ! Kikuyu3 (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Mail-message-new.svg/40px-Mail-message-new.svg.png)
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. at any time by removing the
Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Clovermoss. I'm very happy to hear from you, but it will be a while before I can reply. I have easily a week's worth of messages and commitments I need to catch up on right now. Please bear with me. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
- I can easily bear with the wait. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from Nkambule3 (15:03, 19 May 2024)
How do I create a page --Nkambule3 (talk) 15:03, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
- @Nkambule3 Thank you for your question. Could you tell me what sort of page you want to create? This is an encyclopaedia of notable topics (see HERE). It is not a place for you to promote your views or campaign on issues dear to your heart (see WP:NOTSOAPBOX). For that reason, your second post to may talk page called "Why men abuse women" is way outside the realms of what we do here.
- There will be many pages here already about abuse of women, such as Violence against women, and you are free to contribute to these. But you must NOT add your personal opinions to any article. That is not how we work. All factual statements liable to be challenged must be supported with citations to reliably published sources such as books, research journals and mainstream news websites. Blogs and privately published websites are not accepted here as sources.
- Please read THIS GUIDANCE for creating your first article. Be aware that making a new page is extremely challenging - especially for a new editor with no experience. So my advice is to gain a fair bit of editing experience by working to improve existing articles first. I will leave you a welcome message with some useful links on your talk page to help you. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 08:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Why men abuse woman
This thing is really painful seeing other men abusing other women.women are people who make the world a better place, as a woman writing this l say enough is enough we can't sit and do nothing while men's abuse woman, every woman who is in a abusive relationship l say you don't need a men to be happy what you need to do is to walk away and go to police station and report that men who is abusing you, No men has a right to lay hands on a woman
Enough is enough
The struggle must end
Women needs to live a happy life
We can't stand and watch men killing our mothers and sisters.
Police officers must do their work
We're tired seeing woman die like fleas.
Enough is enough
Made by Nkambule3. Nkambule3 (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2024 (UTC)