User talk:WereSpielChequers

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• Welcome to my talk page. If you just want to make a short comment why not put it in my guestbook. If you want to add something to one of the existing topics go ahead, Or click here to start a new topic.

dbpedia

Following our conversation in the pub, here is the source of the query for people with a birth date after their death date. You can simply paste it into dbpedia.org/sparql. The URL to SPARQL results are copy-and-pasteable, so that query is [1].

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

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

PC

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

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

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

Thanks

Thanks for your comments on User_talk:Homunq/WP_voting_systems#Strong_Oppose. I think you've misunderstood how the proposed voting system works, though. Could you respond to [2] and [3] over there? Homunq (talk) 15:30, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

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

Wikimedia Medicine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PC RfC

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

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

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

Question about Edit conflict

Hi,

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

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

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

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

A request

Hey,

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

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

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

How to report dbpedia.org parsing issues

Great work on sorting out issues located through dbpedia.org

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

For-profit projects managed from within Wikipedia

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

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

Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

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

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

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

DYKers going for some sort of prize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations

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

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

This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.

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

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

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

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

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

A barnstar for you!

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

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

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

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

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

AFT5 newsletter

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

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

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

Books!

Hi there,

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

Talkback: WP:NOUSERS

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia should not have users.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 02:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the contribution

Appreciate your contribution of Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka to improve the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.245.172.31 (talk) 10:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome, not an easy page there and as a Brit I'm a bit cautious at involving myself - presumably this is one of those conflicts with roots in the British Imperial system? ϢereSpielChequers 10:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram opened

An arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 24, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, (X! · talk)  · @811  ·  18:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

User talk:Dougweller/reversion

I'm not sure what you meant by your post there. I presume it refers to something I did during this period:[4]. Thanks. Oh - how did you get to that page? Dougweller (talk) 17:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Doug, I got there from your current talkpage which links to it at the top in "Coming here to ask why I reverted your edit? Read this page first...", So I assumed it was a currently applicable statement. I was commenting on the points in that page not on any specific use of them. ϢereSpielChequers 05:43, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand now. I'll be revising it now that you've pointed it out. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 16:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome, I thought it might be a little out of date:) ϢereSpielChequers 01:39, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Request to stalkers

Feedback and collaboration would be welcome at User:WereSpielChequers/BotEditSummary ϢereSpielChequers 05:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

ipblock-exempt

Hey, how's it going? I was wondering whether you'd mind adding ipblock-exempt to my account? I regularly look at wikipedia on my phone and, while I don't make any major edits when I do, it gets very frustrating when I try to edit an article and it says "this IP address is currently blocked from editing". Most of the IPs my phone carrier uses seem to be blocked. Thanks in advance, — Oli <sup>OR</sup> Pyfan! 05:03, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Oli, congratulations on being the first to ever ask me for that userright! I had some interesting reading about what was involved, and I've decided that it is probably best to refer you to someone more experienced with these and because they will need to know the offending IP address someone who has gone through the vetting to be a check user. Check Wikipedia_talk:IP_block_exemption#Query or email User:Deskana has offered to help, so Email them or the functionaries list. ϢereSpielChequers 14:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Courtesy note

I've linked to a mailing list post of yours here. Andreas JN466 02:05, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey all; another newsletter.

• If you're not already aware, a Request for Comment on the future of the Article Feedback Tool on the English-language Wikipedia is open; any and all comments, regardless of opinion and perspective, are welcome.
• Our final round of hand-coding is complete, and the results can be found here; thanks to everyone who took part!
• We've made test deployments to the German and French-language projects; if you are aware of any other projects that might like to test out or use the tool, please let me know :).
• Developers continue to work on the upgraded version of the feedback page that was discussed during our last office hours session, with a prototype ready for you to play around with in a few weeks.

That's all for now! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Might need some salt

One of the greatest persons this world had ever seen is back. Might need some salt this time around. The-Pope (talk) 10:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Done, thanks. We really ought to get you your own mop sometime, remember me if you ever want a nominator. ϢereSpielChequers 10:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on the AFT5 Request for Comment

Hey WereSpielChequers - this is to notify you that there is a discussion starting on the Article Feedback RfC talkpage that has ramifications for the RfC itself. Your input is much appreciated :). Thanks! and apologies if I've missed anyone Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}}

Talkback

{{talkback}} GregJackP Boomer! 13:53, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

{{talkback}} GregJackP Boomer! 00:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Article protection

Hi. Is there a reason you protected Alan Faena indefinitely? —Emufarmers<sup>(T/C)</sup> 13:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there were some IP vandalisms in 2011 including one serious enough to be revision deleted. As it is a Biography of a Living Person that seems like good enough reason to semi protect it. Do you think it time to change that? We now have pending changes so I could reduce the protection to just that. ϢereSpielChequers 13:26, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I see a grand total of 4 instances of possible vandalism in 2 years; indefinite semi-protection doesn't seem proportionate. Pending changes also doesn't seem particularly justified, but since it really ought to be applied to most BLPs, this is as good a place as any to start. :-) —Emufarmers<sup>(T/C)</sup> 14:30, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The article has only been in existence for four years and I semi protected it in 2011 less than two years after creation. The lobster pot nature of semi protection is that we cannot now know whether what I did was needed and worked or whether the vandalism was merely coincidental. Unfortunately I can't show you the content of the vandalism that was revision deleted, but in my opinion it tipped the scales sufficiently to justify semi protection. However we now have PC available, and if you are prepared to watchlist the article I would be prepared to try PC. But please contact an admin if future IP vandalism needs revision deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 15:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me. —Emufarmers<sup>(T/C)</sup> 19:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

How are you my friend?

Hope all is well, we haven't spoken in a while. :) ceranthor 00:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I responded to your comments. ceranthor 00:43, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I'm very very good thanks. Hope life is treating you well. ϢereSpielChequers 01:05, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! Life is fine. ceranthor 12:10, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I deleted that problematic sentence - let me know if it's still confusing. ceranthor 15:09, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

A poke towards a question

This is just a wee poke towards Wikipedia:Bot_requests#.28Both_of_the_above_tasks.29 =] ·Add§hore· <sup>Talk To Me!</sup> 16:23, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Notification of discussion

A few months ago, you participated in a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Did you know about Gibraltar-related DYKs on the Main Page. I am proposing that the temporary restrictions on such DYKs, which were imposed in September 2012, should be lifted and have set out a case for doing so at Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Gibraltar-related DYKs. If you have a view on this, please comment at that page. Prioryman (talk) 21:55, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Hullo!

Hello, WereSpielChequers. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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Filter

Hey. Regarding this comment and this discussion:

I don't know. I'm having qualms about the whole filter thing, at least for en.Wikipedia. I think a "hide" button on every image (to create a reader-generated offensiveness rating system) would work - but I'm thinking the intrusiveness of "hide" on every image on en.Wikipedia is too high a price to pay, considering the relative lack of problem we have here. Is the offense caused to Muslims on en.Wikipedia by images of Muhammad, or Mormons by images of sacred garments, or prudes by penises worth it? I'm thinking not. And I can't see myself signing up to a filter where a self-selected group of volunteers decides how offensive an image is (the alternative to this reader-generated rating system).

That said, I do think Commons might use such a system - since they're all about visual media and they do have porn in categories where the unwary will stumble across it. But I don't know if I can be arsed trying to argue for it on Commons.

On Commons, I'd propose "report this image" on every thumbnail in a search result. Then, when the ratio of the number of reports to the number of views breaks a certain threshold, visitors who have selected the filtered search option, when searching, say, for electric toothbrush, will be presented with a blank place-holder, a "view this image" button and a warning such as "this image may offend some viewers" where they would previously have been presented with the controversial image.

(My preferred option is for the reader who chooses to filter their search results to be offered a slider, from "no filtering" to "strict filtering", because that would avoid the need for any gatekeepers to select a yes/no filter threshold, but that's a bit complex to explain to people new to the concept.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, I share you distaste for some sort of overreaction such as blanking images by default, though that would be a very useful option for people with slow connections. However we have a global mission, and I fully support the idea of making our content available to all, and if that means finding some way to address the concerns of hundreds of millions of people then I for one would be uncomfortable simply dismissing the concerns of Moslems or other religions. There is of course the argument that image filtering is the first step on a slippery slope that could lead to censorship of articles on religion, sex, evolution and cosmology. However I see a sharp divide between the illustration of information and the information itself, and I'm prepared to compromise on one and not the other.

I share your distaste for a filtering system where people with different prejudices than me decide what I can see, whether that is a self appointed panel of censors or all readers, and I agree with you that if we have a system it needs to vary by user in some way. But I disagree that we simply have a choice between self appointed censors and a reader generated rating. Can I suggest that you have another look at meta: Controversial content/Brainstorming/personal private filters? I think you might find it gets a balance between functionality for those who choose to use it, and not placing an undue burden on our fellow volunteers. More importantly it is designed to be a filter that avoids almost all the objections of those who don't want filters, and achieves what I'd like which is that the images which I see are filtered according to the tastes of people who have similar prejudices to me. OK there is still the position that Fae took, that a filter is antithetical to our scope and a misuse of the funds that we've had given to us. But I think he's reconsidered that and I'm not aware if anyone still takes that line. ϢereSpielChequers 12:12, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've been too busy and exhausted to pay due attention. I've just read through your proposal again and will think about it for a bit and re-read, then get back. Catch you later. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Gibensu

The article is complete nonsense. Google Translate is by no means totally reliable, but it seems to do the trick here.

"Gibensu, consisting of two people in Turkey, almost 9 year based on friendship, best friends, which is the acronym for this group. Gibensu'nun the expansion; Gibensu'nun have Gi Mystery,-Bensu Bengi Water is the abbreviation for the.

HISTORY

This friendship is based on the year of 2009. And the way a friendship will stay alive all the time yaşansada problems. Despite the Mystery of people trying to get together eliminated. And continue to deal with them. In addition, this friendship Adana, Tarsus and Mersin are renowned for."

But if you think this is an article that Wikipedia needs then fair enough. TheClown90 (talk) 22:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi TheClown90, just because I declined a speedy deletion and filed the article for translation doesn't mean I consider it to be an article we need, rather it is an article that isn't in English, and I posted it on the translation noticeboard. Oh and by the way neither A1 or A3 are tags to be used in the first few minutes of an articles creation as they risk driving away the editor before they've had a chance to expand the article they started. ϢereSpielChequers 22:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Sheetal Prashad Pal

It has to be a credible assertion of importance. Given that no hits for Sheetal Prashad Pal come up on a Google search, I deemed it not credible without further evidence. Anyone can create a page saying someone is "prominent" but without any evidence of prominence, the claim can't be considered credible and the article should be deleted. Harry the Dog WOOF 15:33, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

It does indeed need to be a credible assertion, but the test for that does not involve Google searches. If you've tried to source an article and failed then it is best to prod it, a prod rationale of "I've looked using Google and can't find anything" will usually result in deletion, if anyone challenges that prod then an AFD would almost guarantee deletion - though with people of that era and part of the world there may well be offline sources which would establish notability. So if an article says someone is a prominent X and X is something for which there probably are prominent people who are notable then A7 does not apply. Please remember that speedy deletion only bypasses AFD for some tightly defined circumstances, and if you find yourself looking for sources then it is unlikely that speedy deletion will apply. ϢereSpielChequers 15:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

OK,I've got it. All that is required for an assertion to be credible is for the creator of the article to claim that someone is prominent. Harry the Dog WOOF 15:53, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Pretty close, but remember that sometimes they are claiming them to be prominent for something that is of itself not notable; and sometimes the claim is simply not credible. So however prominent someone says a particular pet dog is it is only credibly prominent if it is known for something else - like being the First Dog. And while logic tells us that there must be (or have been) one girl in this world who is the most beautiful girl in the world, any such claim lacks credibility unless you also have something like they are a Miss World, top of some magazine's hottest babe's list or endorsed by the Gods. So we delete per A7 "My girlfriend is the most beautiful girl in the world" type articles every day. ϢereSpielChequers 16:08, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Contours

Ta. After the second fight over up or down hadn't reached consensus (or even the right answer!), I called for quiet and held up a small eroded sandstone pebble. They agreed that from the side it looked like a very small hill. I put it on the table. They agreed the eroded layers resembled contour lines. Then little light bulbs started to go on, and they realised what a contour line really was when it wasn't being recited parrot fashion. The course went a lot better after that, as they realised that they weren't just being told things they'd already knew about from school. Peridon (talk) 18:08, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

As a 17 year old studying geology we did a field trip and looked at rocks in cuttings, but I think I learned about contours the hard way walking up and down mountains. I wonder if GPS and similar newfangled stuff have changed teenagers relationships with maps? ϢereSpielChequers 21:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

New Article Feedback version available for testing

Hey all.

As promised, we've built a set of improvements to the Article Feedback Tool, which can be tested through the links here. Please do take the opportunity to play around with it, let me know of any bugs, and see what you think :).

A final reminder that the Request for Comment on whether AFT5 should be turned on on Wikipedia (and how) is soon to close; for those of you who have not submitted an opinion or !voted, it can be found here.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail!

{{you've got mail}} Go Phightins! 00:47, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

{{you've got mail}} ~TheGeneralUser (talk) 10:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

{{You've got mail}}

{{You've got mail}}

A favour?

Could you (being uninvolved) please look into Luis Moreno Fernández? I've replaced a prod BLP previously and it's gone again, without what I consider as a reliable source as a ref. Two external links are to the same profile, which I don't consider independent. I reckon the subject's notable, but I can't get replies when I've explained what's needed. I'm feeling like giving 24, but don't think I ought to... Peridon (talk) 19:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned the BLPprod came in to prevent unsourced negative stuff, and that's the stuff I try to delete. The editor in this case seem to be having trouble understanding neutral sourcing, but it's worth giving them a bit of slack. The risk we have on this one is that the bio will be biased towards the subject as the sources are probably under their control. One of the two fields involved is alien to me and the other I consciously try to avoid, but perhaps Google scholar could help? ϢereSpielChequers 20:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Lucien Jayasuriya

Hi, you kindly ruled that my effort on Lucian jayasuriya (misspelled as Lucien Jayasuriya by me as not being one for speedy deletion. however on looking at the talk page of the user asking for AFD it appears to be labelled a sock puppet. Is this afd valid or will it be removed? should I participate in the debate on the afd page if the person asking was a sock puppet? Many thanks for your assistance Liannalianna (talk) 19:34, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, the sockpuppetry seems to be primarily about copyright violations, if it was dubious AFDs then I'd suggest waiting for the AFD to be closed, but in these circumstances you are best off joining the discussion. If you are in a position to get hold of some off line or Sinhalese sources that cover other important things that he has been up to then that would be a very useful contribution. Just add them to the article and then explain what you've done in the AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 20:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Cleanup

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You are invited to join WikiProject Cleanup, a WikiProject and resource for Wikipedia cleanup listings, information and discussion. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000(talk) 16:29, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at TEB728's talk page.
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Thanks

Thank you for deleting Ulan Butong. I attempted to create a page,created it at the wrong address (seriously) , and then found myself unable to delete the page. Sorry for any inconvenience.Rwenonah (talk) 23:19, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome! We all need to do that sort of deletion now and then. By strange coincidence I recently started a discussion about enabling everyone to delete such pages themselves. ϢereSpielChequers 23:31, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

E-mail-s

Did you ever get my email? Sorry if so! Gareth E Kegg (talk) 23:30, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 1

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Diana Hayden, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Hyderabad (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at WilliamJE's talk page.
Message added 15:44, 2 March 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

...William 15:44, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Oxford

Due to the trains, I'll be in the room two hours early today, so if you come ahead if time, you won't be alone. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

WT:Requests_for_adminship/2013_RfC/2#Unbundling_U1_and_G7

Just as a personal note ... I'm glad to hear that it's doable (I suspected it would be), and I have no problem with you being the one to ask ... my response isn't intended to put the brakes on. I just know that devs require tending loving care for best results :) So I'd prefer to see more discussion before anyone goes to them with anything. - Dank (push to talk) 13:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

My new essay

I've finally posted the first draft of User:WereSpielChequers/Going off the boil feedback from watchers of this page would be most welcome. ϢereSpielChequers 01:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

In a cleaned-up form, that could be an interesting Signpost op-ed, if you wanted the additional feedback and comments. :-) Ed <sup>[talk] [majestic titan]</sup> 07:15, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

That would be good, it might be ready in a week. ϢereSpielChequers 14:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Oxford Meetup 4

Thank you for attending the third Oxford Meetup, and it was a pleasure meeting you. We hope to keep this as a regular event, every two months, on the first Sunday of the month (in order not to clash with London [second Sunday]). A page has been created about the fourth Oxford Meetup; please sign up if you think that you are able to attend - if the date or venue are unsuitable, please comment at its discussion page.

Please spread the word to anybody else who you think might be interested. The next UK meetup is London, 10 March 2013. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Pleasure was mutual, may come again at some point though London is my easiest venue. ϢereSpielChequers 23:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, just a reminder (because some people haven't seen the geonotice) that the fifth Oxford Meetup is this Sunday. Are you able to attend? It would be great if you could come. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Found advert

Hi Were - I thought you'ld be interested o know I've found an ad on the Cambrian explosion article. Hover over the word "present" in the sentence"All present phyla appeared within the first 20 million years of the period". Is Wiki advertising now? I tried to edit but cannot find it.

Regards - Mark<sup>Dask</sup> 14:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This sounds like Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 107#advertisements on Wikipedia. Other similar threads exist in the WP:VPT archives. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys, I can't replicate that in Chrome or indeed Firefox. I'm absolutely sure it isn't a Wikipedia feature, my guess is malware or a browser feature. ϢereSpielChequers 23:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks both. I just checked the article again - no ad. I am/was using chrome when it showed, but have since cleaned out cookies so probs yeah it was just on my comp.

Thanks again Mark<sup>Dask</sup> 05:43, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

CSD templates

Could you check the edit history before you tag user talk pages with templates? I tagged Dhriti Pati Sarkar with WP:CSD#G4 (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dhriti Pati Sarkar) before Mike Rosoft contested and replaced it with a WP:CSD#A7. Thanks. Funny <sup>Pika!</sup> 14:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Strange. What seems to have happened was that you tagged it both A7 and G4. You then removed the A7 with a blank edit summary and Mike replaced the G4 with A7 with an edit summary "Different person with the same name" and I declined the A7. Not ideal on my part but considering the edit summaries somewhat understandable. ϢereSpielChequers 21:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Abt Kathmandu Healthcare section

Hi, I have reverted your deletion in the section mentioned above. I would like to request you to discuss such a drastic change (in discussion page) when you are editing the page for the first time. I am a doctor located in Kathmandu (and not related to Tilganga). I have never known of anything from this city that has made it as big as the SICS technique. You can fact check it, change the language, or even delete it altogether, but please discuss it beforehand. Thank you.--Eukesh (talk) 05:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, there. I read your edit note on the article and made few changes. Please have a look. Plus, if you disagree with the way the page is, you can always discuss it in the talk page. Thank you. --Eukesh (talk) 09:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Re: User talk:Tyrol5/Op-ed

Hi, WSC! My apologies on the very much delayed response. I was travelling during the second half of last week and into early this week. This, combined with RL responsibilities, barred me from giving your comments the full and thoughtful reply they deserved. I appreciate you stopping by and commenting. I've left some thoughts and observations in response here. Thanks again. Tyrol5 [Talk] 23:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Precious

native tongue as tool
Thank you for using the tool of your native tongue, for the wisdom to ignore "your" articles after you finished them, and for not ignoring people, as one of the adiminz: you support others to be one in "fair and consistent" voting and make efforts to reform the process, and you trust editors to rights such as roll back, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (3 May 2009, 14 October 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thankyou very much. ϢereSpielChequers 13:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

We'd like your opinion

A question for people who commented in the RfC at "Probationary Period" and "Not Unless". (Or feel free to reply on my talk page, if you prefer.) - Dank (push to talk) 19:26, 22 March 2013 (UTC) Hello. You have a new message at Gilderien's talk page.

Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
Message added 18:52, 30 March 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Islamic Green for speedy deletion

Thanks WereSpielChequers, I think I've put the wrong template there. Article for deletion is right template. Thanks again --FreemesM <sup>(talk)</sup> 11:51, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

CSD declined of Janome

So I'm really just looking for some consistency here. the Janome page seems to be written by PR people, with no secondary sources. I wasn't able to find any with a cursory google search. a fair number of press releases and blogs, but no secondary sources. The same with the other ones I nominated last night. The stub I created for Juki was intended to add to that, and it was CSD'd on these grounds. At the same time, there is no way I will do something I see as untoward like summarize things from the Juki website or use PR language like "industry leading". But Juki machines are quite widely used within the apparel manufacturing industry, to the point where "industry leading" would not exactly be a stretch. When Juki was successfully CSD'd, i nominated the other sewing machine manufacturer pages that i thought had similar problem. in part i'm looking for consistency in application of these policies. I do think that our coverage of these topics is sorely lacking. Interested in any thoughts or suggestions you might have. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 18:08, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi UseTheCommandLine, as a community I don't think we are entirely consistent in the way we treat new articles. Individuals are usually consistent with themselves but not necessarily with each other, I'm quite strict and literal when I interpret the speedy deletion criteria, there are other admins who will stretch the speedy deletion criteria to delete articles that they re confident will get deleted by AFD. But in this case you simply tagged the article as A7, and that doesn't reflect the work you did to try and source it. If you had prodded it or AFD'd it with a rationale of "Says its industry leading but I couldn't find a secondary source using Google" then it would be unlikely to survive unless someone with access to relevant offline sources weighed in to save it- I suspect that it is the sort of company that might be underreported on the Internet. As for Juki I don't see any assertion of importance or significance other than it is a Japanese manufacturer of sewing machines. Personally I would have given it rather longer than half an hour, but if I'd seen that CSD tag I wouldn't have declined it. If Juki had won particular awards, had innovative or leading products or anything else that lead to secondary coverage then IMHO it should survive CSD and probably AFD, but such sources might well be in Japanese or offline in women's magazines.

As for improving our coverage in that area, you could check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Textile Arts. Currently it is inactive, but there are many inactive WikProjects that have people watchlisting them who will look in if someone starts posting there, and even if it is inactive it might have some sources listed that you could check out. You could also try ja:Wikipedia:大使館 which if I've got it right is the Japanese wiki's embassy - a query there might find a Japanese source for a Japanese company. Hope that helps ϢereSpielChequers 21:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Veljko Batrović

Yep, now meets WP:NFOOTBALL - I have added a better source, cleaned up a bit and updated, and tagged for improvement. GiantSnowman 11:23, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Giant Snowman. ϢereSpielChequers 20:52, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Reward for those involved in April's First pranks

Hello WereSpielChequers, Eduemoni has given you a shining smiling star! You see, these things promote WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day better. Spread the Shining Smiling Star whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy! Eduemoni↑talk↓ 03:01, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Eduemoni. ϢereSpielChequers 20:52, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

Yeah so your April Fools thing about the aliens is awesome. (In the event that this is not an April Fool's prank and an actual suggestion by actual extraterrestrials, I wholeheartedly approve.) Gupdoo3 (talk) 21:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, if pushed I'd have to admit to not being entirely sure. My 2009 effort was definitely an April Fool, but my mind is now sufficiently muzzy about the events of that day that I can't be sure whether 2013 was me doing an April Fool or Extraterrestrials temporarily taking over my mind to communicate a genuine if somewhat unfortunately timed offer to this planet. ϢereSpielChequers 20:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

RevisionDelete request

Hi! I saw your name listed at Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to handle RevisionDelete requests. In my opinion, all the edits at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/SuperAppletart%26ViralVideoify except the first one should be revision deleted per Wikipedia:Revision deletion: "Purely disruptive material that is of little or no relevance or merit to the project. This includes allegations, harassment ... and links to web pages that disparage or threaten some person or entity and serve no other valid purpose." --Guy Macon (talk) 08:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Done, thanks ϢereSpielChequers 21:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It appears that the spammy Youtube links are still visible on three of the edits.[5][6][7] I have no idea what he thought posting to the sandbox would accomplish, but we probably should Wikipedia:Deny recognition for those three posts as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:26, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Deny recognition doesn't require that we revision delete spam or vandalism, if we tried to do that we'd quickly be buried and only admins would be able to counter vandalism. Assuming that the edit summary was referring to a real person it was right to revdelete those, but spammy youtube links can simply be reverted. Cheers. ϢereSpielChequers 22:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 00:40, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Breakfast

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You are invited to join WikiProject Breakfast, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of breakfast-related topics. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000(talk) 18:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but sadly I rarely have time for breakfast. ϢereSpielChequers 21:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Argh

Hi WSC. I honestly haven't forgotten about User:WereSpielChequers/Going off the boil, and will get my thought into text ASAP. I seem to be very often pulled into things (or I jump into things) that I didn't really have an intention of involving myself with. I did add a link to the page, and will get back to you soon. Very sorry I haven't been more timely with this. — Ched :  ?  21:30, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I noticed the linking, your feedback would be appreciated but only if you have time. ϢereSpielChequers 21:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} ♥ Solarra ♥ <sup>♪ Talk ♪</sup> ߷ <sub>♀ Contribs ♀</sub> 11:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

• Hi WSC, I wasn't going to override your decision, though I agree that the assertion of importance wasn't/isn't exactly credible. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 15:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
• WSC, please reconsider and speedy delete Božidar Bobby Gabershek, or allow Drmies to do it. Per WP:SPEEDY regarding A7, "The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible." Clearly, the claim that Gabershek is a "A highly distinguished martial artist" is not credible, not to mention the fact that it's a huge violation of WP:PEACOCK. Two editors did a thorough search to try and find even one reliable source and came up completely empty. The article is simply a promotional fan page. At one point, it had the name of Gabershek's company in the article five times! Now it's down to three. :p Please delete the article. Even the article's frustrated creator has said "Just delete the page". Thanks. --76.189.111.2 (talk) 16:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There are many many highly distinguished people whose careers are not covered on the Internet. I have reassured the author that offline and non-English sources are acceptable here, perhaps we can persuade him to stay and for he or others to provide sources. Perhaps an AFD debate would determine that this chap merits an article, perhaps it wouldn't. I have no strong opinions either way and no intention of participating in the AFD. I just believe that this is a sport where it is possible for people to be so distinguished that they merit an article here, so such an article merits a proper AFD discussion rather than a speedy deletion. The fact that people have tried to find a source and failed would mean that this would be an uncontentious prod or AFD, but if you need to check for sources then it isn't an A7 candidate. ϢereSpielChequers 17:50, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I posted the following in the other discussion, but I'll re-post here for your convenience:
Chequers, you seem like a great guy (I assume), but I think your reasoning is quite a stretch in this instance. The article is obviously just puffy, promotional nonsense with absolutely nothing to back any of it up. Even admin Drmies looked at it and concluded right away that A7 applies because the assertion ("A highly distinguished martial artist") is pure hype and has no credibility. Even the article's creator, who added it just hours ago, gave up and said to delete the article. So, frankly and with all due respect, I think it is ridiculous that the article still exists. I urge you to look at it again and do the right thing, rather than delaying the inevitable. Please ask yourself one question: Would the article have a snowball's chance in hell of being saved at AfD? Be honest. ;) In any case, I appreciate your response. --76.189.111.2 (talk) 18:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I declined a speedy deletion tag, I didn't vote Keep in an AFD debate, there is an important difference. If we made "in my judgement as an Admin it would be deleted at AFD" a valid speedy deletion tag then your question would be relevant. But I'm not sure that I'd want to be an admin in such circumstances. The original author is now convinced that we aren't interested in non-English or non-internet sources, and I hope that we can reassure him and persuade him to stay. Judging by his assertion on his user talkpage that the chap is important to the Yugoslavian history of the sport then the article does have slightly more than a snowball's chance in hell. But it would need someone with the interest in the subject and probably the language to source it sufficiently to rescue the article. I'm not volunteering for that, and I wouldn't have batted an eye if the article had been prodded or taken to AFD with a rationale of "unsuccessfully tried to source it". As for the assertion ("A highly distinguished martial artist") - IMHO there are such people, I have no personal interest in sport and am happy to leave it to others to determine which Martial Artists survive AFD and which don't. If the article had said ("A highly distinguished teenage aspiring martial artist") then I'd have deleted it A7, just as I have deleted thousands of articles that do meet the speedy deletion criteria, including ones on the "most beautiful girls in the world" and various unsigned bands that will be the next big thing in xxxxxx providing they can recruit a drummer and find an agent. Hope that helps. ϢereSpielChequers 19:13, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Although I disagree with the decline, I have a lot of respect for you. Wikipedia is lucky to have an admin who puts such careful and reasoned thought into his decision-making, and treats others with patience, respect, and professionalism. For the record, I don't think a bio should ever be approved if it has zero sources. 76.189.111.2 (talk) 19:44, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

IP, that's why God gave us BLP PROD, a couple of years ago. So it'll be gone in a week anyway, if nothing is added. For the record, I did not say "total hype"--for all I know the guy lives in my neighborhood, and he has guns. Drmies (talk) 20:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

@IP, thanks, though in my book replacing an A7 tag with a BLPprod is just correcting the method of deletion rather than declining a deletion. @Drmies, It wasn't God that created BLPprod, a compromise like that could only come from evolution and compromise. Hence the truly messy bit about even the crappiest source sufficing to avoid a tag but a reliable source being required to remove one. I think I was channelling Lloyd George and his wonderfully messy compromise over Ireland when we got the BLPprods going, and that was possibly the most inelegant policy change I've ever supported. But in this case it is a straightforward source it or it goes, and whilst there are people who rescue BLPprods doing so with offline sources in SerboCroat is a challenge - if the chap who started the article pulls that off then he will be a real asset. ϢereSpielChequers 22:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Drmies, I didn't mean to mischaracterize your meaning. You opined that "A7 applies" and that the assertion "isn't exactly credible". I just summarized that as meaning the assertion was "pure hype". :p I mean, let's be serious, the term "highly distinguished" is a blatant violation of peacocking, particularly when there are zip, zero, zilch sources to back it up. In fact, for a few moments I was actually wondering if Gabershek even existed, or if that photo was even him. But I just said to myself, "AGF". Haha. In any case, I think you and Chequers should be a comedy team; Chequers will play the straight man and you will definitely be the comedic foil. 76.189.111.2 (talk) 23:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WereSpielChequers. You have new messages at Solarra's talk page.
Message added 17:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

♥ Solarra ♥ <sup>♪ Talk ♪</sup> ߷ <sub>♀ Contribs ♀</sub> 17:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For patience in teaching a fellow Wikipedian the ins and outs of WP:SPEEDY ♥ Solarra ♥ ♪ Talk ♪ ߷ ♀ Contribs ♀ 17:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Your input and guidance would be appreciated

Hi WSC! :) If possible, can you please comment in a disucssion I'm having on admin Drmies' talk page. I think I may have stumped him, so he's looking for input from others to help us on this matter. Thanks! --76.189.111.2 (talk) 03:50, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for thinking of me, but I'm one of the organisers of this weekend's GLAM Wiki conference, so unless I get stuck on cloakroom duties for a quiet afternoon I'm not going to be able to get involved in that. ϢereSpielChequers 06:00, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

No problem. Another admin already resolved it. Thanks and have a great time! --76.189.111.2 (talk) 08:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Share the cookies

	Here's a plate full of cookies to share!
	Hi WereSpielChequers, here are some delicious cookies to help brighten your day! However, there are too many cookies here for one person to eat all at once, so please share these cookies with at least two other editors by copying {{subst:Sharethecookies}} to their talk pages. Enjoy! AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 19:12, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

?

Thank you for your attention. but I'm starting ... still do not know what are the benefits of wikipedia. or being a wikipedian. About graduations are long?

~ ~ ~ ~ (~ ~ ~ ~) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GinDePietro (talk • contribs) 23:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Re: Boil

Hi, would you mind if User:Tony1 and I try to copyedit, format, and reduce the length of your piece? Nothing against it (I personally love it), but we've found that having too long of an article diminishes reader interest and lowers the amount of true critical discussion that it generates. You are of course free to reduce it as well, or object if we remove a particularly pertinent point. Ed <sup>[talk] [majestic titan]</sup> 21:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Copy editing and formatting would be very welcome, truncation makes me nervous. How many words are you proposing to reduce it by? ϢereSpielChequers 21:38, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

We were hoping to bring it down by a quarter at most, so I suppose what we are asking is that you take out two, maybe three, of your weakest arguments. If you can't, we'll make it work regardless. :-) Ed <sup>[talk] [majestic titan]</sup> 22:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I've just trimmed 3% and I only got halfway through. I can't guarantee 25% but it gives me a target. ϢereSpielChequers 22:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much. If you've gotten it down to a point where you aren't comfortable cutting it any further, that's fine. Ed <sup>[talk] [majestic titan]</sup> 22:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Ping

[8] --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Cheers mate

Hello, just wanted to thank you for your time, energy and post on my page. Really appreciate, cheers mate (SavageHennry (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC))

Question on BLPs

Sorry to bother you. I noticed you were online and know you're an admin - I hope you don't mind me asking you a question in case you knew the answer. Since all content which is not sourced on BLP must be deleted immediately and without discussion according to WP:BLP, what happens if the article has no sources whatsoever and was created before BLP PROD came along? Would good practice be to blank the page, tag for speedy deletion under no content, and contact the contributor(s) to discuss the article or what exactly? The precise article in question is Robert Tepper. In his case I can't actually find anything reliable on him at all... Thanks for the help in advance. Jay <sub>Σεβαστός</sub><sup>discuss</sup> 22:36, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jay, the key phrase here is "Contentious material about living persons (or in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." This can leave people wondering, how can something neutral be contentious? Some people emphasis the last part of that phrase, others the first part. My understanding of it is that whether you regard someone being Gay as negative, positive or just neutral, it is rather more likely to be contentious than them being a basketball player. As an example I recently went through a bunch of articles that contained the word fist, and in several cases blanked unsourced stuff that was contentious. I'm not bothered with players of some Irish game where they can hit the ball with their fist, but if sportsmen start hitting each other they should have a reliable source. ϢereSpielChequers 22:55, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful reply. Since "challenged or likely to be challenged" and "or just questionable" seems to be a very low threshold which allows a more liberal or less liberal enactment by what the editor challenges and does not challenge, questions and does not question, I usually take the more stringent approach and remove most unsourced content on BLPs, especially if it has been around for a while and the author does not intend to add sources. But let's say that I do challenge and question everything in the BLP which is unsourced - should I blank the page first, and CSD or leave the bare minimum (.... is a journalist working for the BBC born XXXX) which is very unlikely to be contentious and then search for sources before deciding what to do? Jay <sub>Σεβαστός</sub><sup>discuss</sup> 23:21, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I suspect we are at opposite extremes as to the interpretation of that. I was involved in the big cleanup of unreferenced BLPs that took place a couple of years ago when BLPprod came in, a number of people put a lot of time into getting our sixty thousand known and an unknown number of unidentified unreferenced BLPs upto the new de facto minimum. My experience of that trawl was that it was a huge distraction, and that very few of those articles were contentious or inaccurate, just unsourced. Hence far more useful to trawl for potentially contentious stuff - I've recently been looking at articles containing the word fist and blanked a number of unsourced BLP violations. I'm conscious of a number of searches that are worth doing, Mafiosi being one I decided to leave to people who edit anonymously and can't be tracked down. The community rejected the blanking and CSDing of uncontentious unreferenced BLPs in favour of the BLPprod compromise. Blanking is fine for G10s and copyvio but in doing so for old unsourced stuff, especially stuff written before current sourcing standards came in, you will be getting rid of a lot of accurate material. If you try to source things and fail then prod or AFD is rarely contentious, and if something has already been up for years then another week is unlikely to make a difference. It seems to me that you want to take a very strict, conservative position on BLP information, and to treat almost any uncited or poorly cited personal information as contentious. If you are going to do that my recommendation would be to do so in the context of a search for things that are contentious. I'm very conservative in my approach to BLP information that is really contentious and whilst I'm well aware from the number of things that have sourced and replaced that in the vast majority of such cases I am removing accurate information that would easily be sourced, people really don't give you grief if you are being very cautious and conservative re BLP info that is genuinely contentious. ϢereSpielChequers 06:08, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed reply. Yes, I think I am indeed advocating quite a strict interpretation. I do think that consensus allows such an interpretation: "any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed. Whether and how quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article." I also do always remember this from our founder: [9]. Since ultimately it would be OK to remove anything uncited (I could "challenge" just about anything) I see BLPs as requiring a more rapid response and BoD (or lack of benefit of doubt whatever way you see it) tending always towards questioning and removing the information. I do also fully accept and respect your interpretation to be less stringent with things as being contentious. In particular I thank you answering my original question about removal of all content followed by CSD and will be sure only to go ahead with it where all the content is very contentious and so would completely fail WP:BLP. I also will take your excellent advice on directing my efforts at BLPs which contain the most contentious details as a better use of my time! Jay <sub>Σεβαστός</sub><sup>discuss</sup> 11:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Hi WSC. As I am out of touch a lot lately, could you please point me to the discussion where consensus war reached to reduce the threshold from 50 to 30 articles? Cheers, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

A1

Hi, I notice you declined the speedy on Vivestad. However, I cannot identify the subject of the article - you added categories related to wooden churches, but before you placed them, if I had had to guess at the subject, I would have said a village, rather than the church itself, but it could be anything, a period of time, a town, a county, a church, even an architectural style.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 12:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Did you try What links here? As often, a useful way to track stuff down. ϢereSpielChequers 12:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I just did, which gives List of villages in Vestfold, which definitely suggests the article is not about the church.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 12:21, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep but it gives a pretty big clue as to where it is. The commons page for the image links to the monument database for Norway. The Norwegian Wiki also has an article for the village which could be translated. ϢereSpielChequers 12:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Protection Policy

You took part in a previous discussion on the protection policy talk page about the reference to "uncontroversial" edits. A survey is now in progress on that page in response to a request for comments. You may want to visit that talk page again and provide your input to try to obtain consensus. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:49, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Minor assist please

Hi Were - I've been away from wikipedia for a while, want to archive my posts but forgotten how. You won't remember me but you elevated me to Reviewer status so you're the man to assist. If you could pop on my talk page and archive my stuff I will be most grateful. And PS lol - I'm back Mark<sup>Dask</sup> 11:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Welcome back! and done a year for you. ϢereSpielChequers 17:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Were - glad to bee back - and your courtesy in the matter of my request is no surprise. Mark<sup>Dask</sup> 23:55, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

ANI

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Thank You!

	Level Headed Insighful Reflection
	Your Going off the boil? essay is, IMHO, one of Wikipedia's finest examples of the Wiki on the Wiki. Thanks again : } Kevjonesin (talk) 11:55, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated. ϢereSpielChequers 06:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Follow up on dedicated admin accounts

That thread got kind of long and I think you were the only one very interested in discussing my idea. I'm sure you are familiar with the security concept that you should use an account with minimal access whenever possible, such as not doing normal user tasks as root on a unix-style system. To combat your technical criticism, what if it were possible to modify the software so that it were easier to go in and out of "admin mode"?

Regarding the idea that it's giving up on the "no big deal" concept, that's true to some extent. Like I said in my initial post, it's a compromise from both camps, the no big deal camp and the big deal camp.

The gain is that by seeing that most actions of "admins" are actually still done as a regular editor explicitly not claiming any extra status for the action, the perception of admin status as a big deal will be diluted. What we lose in exchange for that is the hassle of changing accounts/permission levels, and the acknowledgement that admin actions are kind of a medium sized deal. Gigs (talk) 16:52, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

It's sad when the only response is from a critic, and yes there is a theory that one can achieve better security by having special permissions that are on a separate account that is only logged into in emergencies. I'm not a fan of that system, though I accept it might make sense for things like controlling nukes. For general use it detaches responsibilities from main accounts and risks having a shared sys admin account. I doubt that the latter applies to us, but the former risk does apply. I don't want admin accounts hidden on separate logs to everything else. I think we already have too many complications with extra accounts, and I say that as someone with a (WMUK) work account and other declared socks. I've now pretty much stopped using my low security account for internet cafes as secure login and IP editing make it redundant. But having yet another class of accounts doesn't strike me as wise. For us there is the additional argument re transparency - your proposal would lead to numerous incidents where actions were less well scrutinised because there were two accounts to look through. I see this leading to all sorts of bizarre arguments as to whether something should have been done under one account or another, and even excess disclosure. For example the next thread after this is telling me that I have an email. If I had to do admin actions under a separate admin account then would responding to that tell people whether the query was to me as an admin or as an editor? I can see many disadvantages to this proposal - no advantages as I'm not aware of any incidents where this would have prevented an accidental block or deletion.

I'm not convinced that the idea would be improved if it were made easier to shift in and out of admin mode. You'd still have people saying that something was done under the wrong mode, many good ideas languishing unimplemented so you'd also have people criticising the investment in creating said modes. Remember we have a limited budget and capacity for software changes, and each time we choose something other than say improving the way we handle edit conflicts you will have people like me saying that it would have been better to do some bigger win things like changing the software to halve the number of our edit conflicts.

However I do agree with the idea that taking a contentious power away from admins would make RFA less contentious. I see most of the contention as being about blocking and deleting. Deleting because we give admins to much discretion re deletion and when overly deletionist admins slip through we have problems; Blocking (and unblocking) because of the longstanding issues about incivility and vested contributors. Realistically we need to do too many deletions to restrict which admins can do them, but blocking and unblocking the regulars is much rarer. I'm pretty sure we could upbundle the blocking and unblocking of accounts with >100 edits to the crats without overloading them, and that should make a RFA a much less toxic place. ϢereSpielChequers 06:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Not a bad suggestion, but I'd say it should be more like > 1000 edits. One problem with that suggestion is that it goes back to the whole reason RfA standards were raised in the first place way way back when, that trolls figured out it was pretty easy to get admin if you made 1000 edits and kept your head down (per the old article that was on ED). The serious troll would just make 100/1000 pointless edits before going berserk. Gigs (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

BTW- I'm not sad that the only response was you, I always enjoy discussing this kind of thing with you even when we don't agree. Gigs (talk) 16:13, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it may have been higher, maybe even a thousand when I first floated the idea. But think about trolling, the line between trolling and being awkward and or contentious is somewhat grey, I'd be very cautious about judging between trolls and the awkward. vandalism is hyper common and pretty straightforward to identify and block for, but trolling is more awkward and somewhat rarer, I'd prefer to restrict troll blocking to fewer highly trusted editors such as crats. That's why I'd set the threshold as low as possible, 100 is about the right level, few vandals can get to that point, anything else should require a judgement call re blocking. ϢereSpielChequers 16:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

It could work, as long as there's an emergency clause allowing a short term block of a regular by any admin to stop ongoing severe disruption, with a follow up drama board discussion, similar to the policy on blocking admins. Gigs (talk) 16:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate that sometimes there wouldn't be a crat around to deal with an incident. However a steward or global sysop could step in if we had a rogue editor who had to be blocked urgently to stop a vandalism spree. But that wouldn't be an annual event. Otherwise my thinking is that the tools would have to be programmatically restricted, otherwise people would make "good" blocks citing IAR. So my view is that either you upbundle or you don't. A rule based restriction would breakdown. ϢereSpielChequers 17:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Email

 Done

Please check your inbox. Rivertorch (talk) 06:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. ϢereSpielChequers 06:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

EngVar

Hi. Thanks for your continued attention to the page about younger administrators (assuming we still have any).

As a minor point which I don't plan to pursue further, while I'm familiar with the principle of WP:ENGVAR, I think that any younger American editors reading the page might actually be confused at first by the spelling "paedophile" as opposed to "pedophile." I fear that knowledge of the alternate "ae" or ligature spellings is rapidly dying out here, especially with respect to less common words for which people aren't used to seeing variations. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:28, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi NYB, I suspect that a lot of US based readers are surprised by non US spellings of English, it may even contribute to our relatively low US editorship compared to here in the UK. My preferred solution would be to make different spelling styles, along with AD/BC v CE/BCE and even metric v non metric measures display choices. We have the technology to do it, and whilst there would be a lot of work involved, I think we'd stop biting a trickle of goodfaith newbies who just aren't familiar with those other variants. It could also lead to dramatically better machine translation if we had hidden templates which showed the true meaning of ambiguous words like muffler, exhaust, bonnet, pants and so forth. ϢereSpielChequers 20:46, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Nod. And I remember myself reaching for the British-American dictionary the first time one of my ArbCom colleagues opined that a pending request was outwith our remit... Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:34, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

AGK I presume; that is Scots, probably mostly used by lawyers. Johnbod (talk) 12:02, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) There was a relevant discussion earlier this month at WP:VPT. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:07, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Pity I missed that, yes there are words which can only be converted by dint of a human being saying which meaning of pants, match, scores or football applies. But once that has been done the machine translation from Wikipedia to any other language will be much more accurate, and lots of our readers are using such translators. More importantly all the newbies who we currently warn of from doing engvar translations we could be enlisting to go through words such as bonnet and say when they are headware, a chili pepper or the part of the car that Americans call the hood. Now that it is technically feasible I think we will take a while to explore all the pitfalls and build consensus. Most importantly we need to survey our readers, am I correct in thinking that this would be appreciated by hundreds of millions of them or are the numbers far less than that? ϢereSpielChequers 05:35, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

A Badge for you!

	Great Answer Badge
	Awarded to those who have given a great answer on the Teahouse Question Forum. A good answer is one that fits in with the Teahouse expectations of proper conduct: polite, patient, simple, relies on explanations not links, and leaves a talkback notification. Earn more badges at: Teahouse Badges
Thanks for the great answer to my question! Matty.007 10:39, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Conte di Cavour-class battleship FAC

You took a look at this earlier and made one brief comment. I wonder if you could be kind as to read it a bit more thoroughly and offer a few more comments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:27, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry your article was promoted before I got back to it. ϢereSpielChequers 17:18, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Oxford Meetup 6

Thank you for attending the fifth Oxford Meetup, and it was a pleasure meeting you. I intended to send this message on Monday, but I've been a bit busy, sorry.

Several of us would like to continue with the monthly plan, since trying to make a two-monthly cycle fit into the University terms doesn't work very well. A page has been created about the sixth Oxford Meetup; please sign up if you think that you are able to attend - if the date or venue are unsuitable, please comment at its discussion page.

Please spread the word to anybody else who you think might be interested. The next UK meetups are at: London, 16 June; Manchester, 22 June; and Coventry, 7 July. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:14, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi, it was pointed out to me that 7 July 2013 collides with Coventry 8, who have a prior claim to the date. Since nobody has (yet) claimed 14 July for any UK meetups, I have decided that Oxford 6 should be held on 14 July 2013, and not 7 July as previously advertised. In this way, those who wish to attend both may do so. I hope the revised Oxford date is convenient for you; and if it isn't, why not give Coventry a try? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:45, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm afraid that is the second Sunday so it clashes with London. ϢereSpielChequers 16:53, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 7

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VE

Do you know if they are going to replace the current editor with VE? (see comments here) --Tito Dutta  (talk • contributions • email) 23:39, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I think we will be able to opt out, but judging from the user testing I'm not convinced that they will get it to work. I joined in the user testing for a while but the bugs overwhelmed the bug fixers to the extent that five of the reports I made would up archived without response. That doesn't inspire confidence. I've been waiting for the visual editor for years, I'm really keen that we implement one, and very upset that the current project is in such a mess. ϢereSpielChequers 07:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Try this

Can you just try my script? It's bug free. What it does is change the appearance of links, with a special color and underlines it, zooms in a little bit to make things look neat. Here's it: importScript('User:Andrew Stiff/hover.css') Andrew Stiff (talk) 08:05, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

London 70

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Wikimeet_16_June_2013.JPG Philafrenzy (talk) 20:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Phil Rice

The article Phil Rice has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this newly created biography of a living person will be deleted unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article. The nominator also raised the following concern:

All biographies of living people created after March 18, 2010, must have references.

If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within ten days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 23:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I didn't create the article so am somewhat offended to receive this template, as I suspect are the half a dozen others who've edited that article. Especially as the person who prodded it first removed the links, instead of checking back in the history for a sourced version. Now admittedly the only sources I've found are a couple of regional newspapers, but it isn't BLPprod material, though I'm tempted to AFD it and am suspicious that a platinum selling songwriter would be so hard to source.. ϢereSpielChequers 07:34, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Wrong page

Hi WSC. I don't know if you even noticed, but I erroneously edited one of your sub pages. I've removed what I wrote - nothing egregious in any way at all and nothing important or secret, but notes to myself rally. It happened because I edited something in one of my sub pages that had a graph of yours transcluded to it. I inadvertently clicked the wrong 'edit' tab and started editing your page with the transcluded graph and saved it. Appologies. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:25, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries. I always assume that an instantly self reverted edit is one that hasn't happened. ϢereSpielChequers 11:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Very pleased

to see you've become a member of our UK staff - I know you'll be a valuable asset. Dougweller (talk) 09:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very kind of you to say that. ϢereSpielChequers 11:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

• Congrats from me as well. Not that it helps me here in the US, but I'm always glad to see people I respect have good experiences. — Ched :  ?  14:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hiring

Hi, Would it be possible to ask/hire you to edit a certain article? It is already done previously, but it only needs some updates. I will leave my contact details once you have replied. Cheers

It's certainly possible to ask, and if it relates to Easter Island, the Magonid era of Carthage, Georgian pre-christian history or is an English hillfort then as a Wikipedian volunteer I may well be interested. But wide though those interests are, I suspect they only encompass a tiny fraction of human knowledge and the odds are slim that the article you are interested in happens to fit that list. Ask/hire implies that you might possibly have a conflict of interest in the subject, if so I would suggest simply going to the discussion page of the article and adding a comment at the bottom of the page explaining what you'd like changed and the source of that information. Providing the source is independent and reliable then somebody is likely to make the change or explain why we don't think it appropriate. If you put a note on the discussion page and don't get any response after a week or so then I'd suggest adding {{helpme}} and that will get someone along PDQ (look for a tab marked discussion at the top of the article). Hope that helps. ϢereSpielChequers 19:35, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Editor @ ar.wiki

Hello. I would like to inform you that I have granted you editor flag at the Arabic Wikipedia, all your edits there will be automatically marked as patrolled. Best regards.--Avocato (talk) 04:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm both greatly honoured and slightly troubled. Since I don't actually speak a word of Arabic it would probably be much safer if all the edits I make in Arabic were checked by someone who actually speaks Arabic. ϢereSpielChequers 17:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

GLAMWiki Hangout

Hi there, you signed up to present during the GLAMout today. We are doing the GLAMWiki Hangout (glam out) on Google Hangouts. For me to add you, you need to add me to your Google Plus circles. I'm mproffitt at g-mail dot xom (hopefully you can work that out). If you only want to watch and not present, just look for the link on the GLAMOut page. Merrilee (talk) 18:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Hi WSC. How can I found out who is going to Wikimania from the UK chapter? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, I don't think there is one single list. but if you want to meet someone about a specific topic I can to set something up. Otherwise I'd suggest looking at the signup list. ϢereSpielChequers 18:48, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm more concerned with finding nice people to have dinner with in the evening ;) Joking aside, the usual chapter & meet up attendees generally have the same topics at heart so I was just wondering who will be going. I can't find a copmprehensive sign up list anywhere, so perhaps i won'rt know until I get there. If you do know of anyone, do ask them to look out for me. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Try this list. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:39, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm on that list myself, but there seems to be an overwhelming number of Americans (understandable), Germans, and Italians - not that I've got anything against them and I would love to meet them (again), and I also speak all their languages, but I was rather surprised at only 9 entries from the UK. Not that everyone will bother to put themselves on that list. It's not mandatory. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You know some of the UK people going from your time on the scholarship committee. If you're looking for dinner companion, then count me in! :) KTC (talk) 21:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good :) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

minor edit messages

Hiya, I've started a proposal to change one of your interface messages. ;-) See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Three different minor_edit messages. --John Vandenberg <sup>(chat)</sup> 09:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Reconsider

Since you mentioned the oppose rationale, i thought you'd be interested in reading my oppose in WP:Requests for adminship/Adjwilley. Pass a Method talk 01:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I really detest opposes at RFA that are not diff supported. ϢereSpielChequers 08:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}}

DYK-Good Article Request for Comment

Commented there. thanks. ϢereSpielChequers 07:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Apologies

I am sorry that your expectation of a personal response to every single message you posted at VisualEditor/Feedback was not met. All of your messages were all read, even if you were unaware of it. Thank you for posting the useful feedback. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi WhatAmIdoing, and thanks for the apology. Actually I wasn't expecting a response to every message I posted there, just to the bug reports. And I appreciate that when a project is so far from ready that extra testers just mean many more people spotting the same obvious bugs then it isn't the developers fault if something comes out of beta testing too soon. Or if the testers feel their time is wasted because the devs are too busy fixing known bugs to comment on new bug reports. I suppose part of the issue here is that my experience of user testing is with colleagues whose time has to be treated as valuable, and it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask them to test something with known bugs not yet fixed, or at least not without warning them of known problems. Or to insult them by ignoring their feedback. ϢereSpielChequers 17:12, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Your feedback wasn't ignored: it was actually read and acted on. It just looked like nobody cared. This is unfortunately a case of appearances being deceiving by making the situation look worse than it actually was. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd agree that appearances look bad. It may well be that all of the bug reports that I made simply needed a response along the lines of "already reported as bug *****", but the other aspect that leaves me and I expect others feeling ignored is the way this was rolled out despite us pointing out that it had failed beta testing and wasn't ready for rollout. But instead we've disrupted the editing of thousands of editors, got them to try slow buggy software and then when they report that the best they can be told is that we've known about that for months and are doing a major rewrite to address that. Of course once that rewrite comes out then it will need a fresh round of testing, good luck on recruiting volunteers for that. ϢereSpielChequers 10:01, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Thank you for helping me! Margaretwmiller (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. Thanks for the beer. ϢereSpielChequers 17:32, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Buckethead (disambiguation)

Hi WSC, I found one other one so thanks for saving it. I left a comment for you at Talk:Buckethead (disambiguation) Widefox; talk 13:55, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Harriet Law

I'm over at Wikimania (where it's 01:30 and I should really go to bed) but I thought I'd do a bit on the Conway Hall editathon remotely. I found a red link but now see that it wasn't actually a free topic and so I've been wasting my time duplicating the work of another editor - tsk. I abhor sandboxes, user pages, incubators, AFC, &c. for this reason. Articles under development should all be in mainspace so it's clear who's working upon them. Andrew Davidson (talk) 17:39, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, I rather agree with you re sandboxes, but sadly some people have been scared off mainspace by our deletionism problem. Anyway, thanks for your work on this. I was making the tea and sorting out IT problems for 6 tables of editors last night, and am now tring t sort some loose ends. I think there was a bit of overlap between the two versions, but yours was referenced. Hope you enjoy HK ϢereSpielChequers 18:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

• I'm back now and have picked this up again as it's heading for DYK. Reviewing the sources, I find that the userspace draft which was merged into the history contains too much cut/paste from the uncredited source Harriet Law (1831-1897). For example, the entire paragraph starting "In 1859 she became a salaried lecturer for the secular movement." seems to be a straight copy. Perhaps the editor meant to rework this in his userspace but we shouldn't have this in mainspace. I have edited the latest draft to remove the copyvio but please can you revdel some of the history such as the userspace version as we shouldn't be giving credit for such work. Andrew Davidson (talk) 16:06, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Good spot. Have referred the contributor to OTRS. ϢereSpielChequers 05:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Moving Georgia

Hi WereSpielChequers, this discussion might be of interest to you. Best Regards -- Marek.69 <sup>talk</sup> 00:16, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, will comment there. ϢereSpielChequers 05:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC Reviewer permission

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC Reviewer permission. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Template:Z48

Thanks, will comment there. ϢereSpielChequers 05:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool update

Hey WereSpielChequers. I'm contacting you because you're involved in the Article Feedback Tool in some way, either as a previous newsletter recipient or as an active user of the system. As you might have heard, a user recently anonymously disabled the feedback tool on 2,000 pages. We were unable to track or prevent this due to the lack of logging feature in AFT5. We're deeply sorry for this, as we know that quite a few users found the software very useful, and were using it on their articles.

We've now re-released the software, with the addition of a logging feature and restrictions on the ability to disable. Obviously, we're not going to automatically re-enable it on each article—we don't want to create a situation where it was enabled by users who have now moved on, and feedback would sit there unattended—but if you're interested in enabling it for your articles, it's pretty simple to do. Just go to the article you want to enable it on, click the "request feedback" link in the toolbox in the sidebar, and AFT5 will be enabled for that article.

Again, we're very sorry about this issue; hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after this :). If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) 22:06, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Turkey Cafe

See [10] - can you tell Kristine. She hasn't edited for a couple of weeks. Ta Johnbod (talk) 12:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Bonded Neo

The Bonded Neo article is rife with gratuitous capitalization, not the least of which is "Neo" and "Bonded Neo". I can find no indication that this is trademarked, so it does not appear to be a proper noun, and should not be capitalized. However, a few years back you took a different view "(moved Bonded neo to Bonded Neo: caps plz)" with no explanation. I can't move the article now, and would like to find out what drove that choice before I go looking for an admin to reverse it. Cheers! Chris the speller <sup>yack</sup> 15:49, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris and welcome to my talkpage. I don't agree that a business name needs to be trademarked to be a business name, and I've no experience with Chinese trademarks. I assume from the edit summary that I would have checked the link on the page to see what they called themselves and then moved it. Looking at the link on that page I can see a prominent use of Neo and if the site had that when I moved it that would explain why at the time I thought Neo was correct. However I'd agree that they don't seem to be consistent now, and I can't remember whether their website was consistent when I did the move. So if you think that Neo is incorrect then file a requested move on it and we can debate the matter on the talkpage. From a cursory search I think it probably is Neo rather than neo, but the test that matters is how reliable sources refer to them, if they predominately use neo then I'd not object to a requested move. ϢereSpielChequers 19:35, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The link you provide goes to a web site in broken English that lists "Horseshoe Magnets" and other generic terms capitalized. The external web page in the article (a different company) uses mostly 'neo', when it does not appear in a heading (title case). This is apparently a generic term. Since you're an admin, can't you just fix it? Chris the speller <sup>yack</sup> 21:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

If you think that neo would be a better name then file a requested move and make your case. - An uninvolved admin will then make a call. ϢereSpielChequers 15:34, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Meta:Wikimania project domain

Hey there! I'm trying to refuel your proposal: 1, 2, 3, 4. Just letting you know. :) I've also posted it on some mailing lists... Rehman 13:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

As you previously participated in related discussions you are invited to comment at the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013

by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter

Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 20:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Nominate an editor

At Editor Cerebellum's talk page you said, "Every now and then some of us go on trawls of editors who have contributed over 50 articles and it never ceases to amaze me how many neglected colleagues we encounter in the process.' WP:WER/Editor of the Week is looking for exactly that type of editor. We endeavor to give the Under the Radar type editors the credit they deserve. Your nominations would be gladly received. ```Buster Seven Talk 00:26, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Buster, that's an interesting thought. I like to think that the note I leave when I tell people I've appointed them autopatroller is itself a nice note to get. However it would be good if you guys had a look a few months later and rewarded the ones who still edit. Looking at my log i is now over a year since I last did a trawl and appointed some article creators to be autopatrollers. If you fancy going through those I did then and looking at their latest efforts i'm sure you will find several who would appreciate editor of the week or some other acknowledgement. ϢereSpielChequers 20:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

You've got email.

{{You've got mail}} --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

replied 134.247.61.190 (talk) 15:57, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

RevDel request

Hi, I'm not really familiar with this aspect of the 'pedia but does this edit need to be revdel'd? If so, please and thanks Jebus989<sup>✰</sup> 10:57, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Yup, good spot. ϢereSpielChequers 11:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

User 39.50.153.21 (talk) continued to make similar edits and got blocked for it, so I've zapped the others too. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Happy Editing

Hello WereSpielChequers, Eduemoni has given you a shining smiling star! You see, these things promote WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day better. Spread the Shining Smiling Star whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy! Eduemoni↑talk↓ 13:12, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much. ϢereSpielChequers 13:14, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Your comments

Hi, ϢereSpielChequers,
I was interested in your comments in the Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#What we don't know (and seem unable to figure out) thread. What exactly happened in early 2008 that you are referring to? What was the impact?
Thanks, in advance, for any insight you can provide. Liz <sup>Read! Talk!</sup> 21:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Liz, Rollback was unbundled in early 2008. For my money this was the biggest single change to RFA since it moved from Email to being on Wiki. At the time you needed Rollback to use Huggle, and Huggle was the main tool for semiautomated vandalfighting. After that point people ceased to be able to make admin simply for being a good vandalfighter, and there was a seachange in RFA's de facto criteria and in the number of RFAs. I suspect that we also pretty much stopped appointing teenage boys as admins at that point. ϢereSpielChequers 12:34, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

'Crat activity

In parallel to your concerns about our ageing pool of admins, I created this. Feel free to comment on its tp. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Anti vandalism

Over the past couple of days I have stopped several rampant vandals on a spree dead in their tracks. In the past you have mentioned several times that there may be a case for extending the use of the blocking tool to sufficiently qualified vandalism fighters under special circumstances. Whether I am in favour or not of such an unbundling or the creation of yet more users rights, I feel the time may just be right to make a formal RfC proposal. I'd be happy to do this and then just sit back and let the RfC run its course, or you can do it, or we could do it together, but the RfC statement/proposal would have to be very carefully worded to prevent the discussion going off the rails as most RfC have a tendency to do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, will think about this. But I won't be free to take this on this fortnight. 91.221.145.48 (talk) 06:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Not that it matters much where you are at the moment but you probably inadvertently made a bunch of edits today without logging in. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:07, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually that was quite deliberate. I was in an airport departure lounge using a free WiFi connection, so for security reasons I just edited as an IP. As per previous experiences and my general observations, and directly contrary to the myth, my edits all seem to have stuck. I think that an RFC on unbundling a limited unblock needs to achieve the following in order to break previous logjams:

1. Some statistical analysis showing whether we now need to do this. Several examples from yourself would be good. But perhaps we could get ScottyWong or some other programmer to produce an analysis of AIV reports and admin actions over time showing whether the average admin response time at AIV was slipping and how bad it sometimes gets. If such a report shows that we no longer have sufficient active admins at certain times of the day then an RFC would be worthwhile, as indeed would be a call for candidates. Of course it could show that we haven't yet hit real problems and that the occasional long AIV gaps are no worse now than in 05, 07, 09 or 11. I would be surprised and slightly reassured at such a result, and would suggest rerunning the report every quarter until either the drought ended or there was a strong enough case to support an RFC.
2. A solution to the disequilibrium problem - whereby someone with this right gets involved in an incident in which both a newbie and a regular merit a block but they can only sanction the one who can't have been expected to know better. This was one of the strongest arguments against this in the past, I think the best response is to say, this should be rare, and I would advise that rather than block the newbie they should defer the whole incident to a full admin.
3. We need a name that doesn't hint either at this being admin lite or uses something officious sounding like vandalfighter. It may sound silly but the wrong name can torpedo this sort of proposal. In absence of a good name for this I would suggest we start an RFC where the name and the role are different sections of the debate. ϢereSpielChequers 12:02, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

In hindsight, you're probably right about response time to AIV not being particularly long. I don't systematically work at AIV by any means and I usually come to it through pages cropping up on my watchlist. When I do go there, I haven't noticed any particular problems, in fact right at this moment AIV is empty. At the end of the day, those vandals on a 1-edit-per-minute spree will soon get reported and blocked sooner or later and their edits will be reverted. Scottywong who has been a great help in the past with providing stats for us is in semi retirement and does not have time. The idea I had was just a thought knowing that in the past you had been a fairly strong proponent of unbundling this tool for anti vandalism purposes. I'll keep an eye on things though, and if it gets out of hand I'll come back to it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:39, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about Scottywong, I will see if I can find someone else. I honestly don't know whether or not AIV yet has sufficiently frequent backlogs to justify this unbundling. But AIV is fundamentally different to other areas such as CSD. CSD could operate OK even if most of the time it had a growing backlog and was dependent on the US evening to clear a daily backlog. If AIV was regularly getting half hour gaps between AIV reports and blocks, with vandals on a spree for half an hour after even if it was only happening a couple of times a week, it would be unacceptable. That might involve as few as 1% of accurate AIV reports, but it would be demoralising for the patrollers and risky in terms of publicity. That's why I believe that AIV is our canary in the coal mine when it comes to admin shortages. ϢereSpielChequers 15:53, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

When I do go to the AIV page (about 3 or 4 times a week), I'm always surprised at the relatively high number of inappropriate reports. ClueBot has a much better record of false positives. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I haven't studied the phenomena properly, but I get the impression as with NPP newbies start with a high error rate, but unlike NPP they get the hang of when to do it properly. However I worry at the increasing treatment of unsourced addition of info as vandalism. Is that what you are seeing at AIV? ϢereSpielChequers 07:27, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. It seems to be more like cases of insufficient warnings or no vandalism since the last warning - that kind of thing, but I'll pay more attention in the future to see what the trend is. BTW: see WT:NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, reassuring that people still get the difference between vandalism and goodfaith stuff, even if they are being more ruthless reverting it. I don't suppose you can remind me where the stat came from about admins v non admins !voting at RFA? I spent an hour or so looking for it yesterday. I think it was part of what Scotty did in 2011. ϢereSpielChequers 06:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

We created a huge amount of tables and stats here, and there are more tables and extrapolations on its talk page. The big table (which I asked Scotty to make) at 'How they voted' is IMO, where most of the info can be extrapolated, but because RfA voters are so transient, and because that table is now nearly 3 years old, it desperately needs updating - not that the actual trends in it are likely to have changed much. There is also a recent thread at WT:NPP I would like you to take a look at if you have a moment. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello from CarbonWHO

Hi WereSpielChequers,

Thanks for guiding me on this Wikipedia sphere : )

I actually have a question needing some hints from you. On my first page created the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department, I created two new tags as Building Energy Code and Energy Audit Code. I wanted to produce that two pages, as I hate those "page does not exist" message. But the info with me on the two subjects are all in PDF files. I don't like linking too many PDF on a wikipage. But I don't have time to digest and summarize those highly-technical files. Can I just copy some essence content from the files, as a starter for the two pages, and let other people enhance them over time?

CarbonWHO (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi CarbonWHO, you are very welcome. Firstly don't worry about whether a source you use as a reference is a pdf or any other format, what matters is whether it can be treated as a wp:reliable Source. So look for independence, neutrality and authoritiveness - has it been peer reviewed is more important than whether it is a pdf or what language it is in. As for starting articles small, I do that myself sometimes, just make sure you have one, better two really good sources and then you can start an article with a paragraph. However you need to look around first as there may be something we already have that just needs a HongKong section, or needs something added to it. I know little about the subject that you are writing about, but you may find that if you just want to add a sentence then you can add it to the existing article Building code, and Building Energy Code and Energy Audit Code only need spinning out as separate articles when they've grown a bit. Oh and I'd be careful about the phrase "copy some essence content" as we don't copy stuff from other sites unless they have a compatible license and we go through some legal hoops. Better to say "write something that sums up the essence of those sources" which is what I assume you meant. ϢereSpielChequers 09:57, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Seth Gamble

This article was barely edited before protection, and has been still barely edited since. Lower to PC? --George Ho (talk) 01:14, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Giovanni Carmazzi

This article has been barely edited before and after semi-protection. Lower to pending changes? --George Ho (talk) 01:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

In both cases I consider that semi protection has worked to protect these articles from IP edits that added controversial unsourced material. However we do now have pending changes, so if you are willing to watchlist these articles I am willing to move them to lower the protection to PC. ϢereSpielChequers 08:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

We already have Special:PendingChanges. No need, but you can watchlist them. George Ho (talk) 08:30, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, how long must I watchlist them for future changes? George Ho (talk) 01:19, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

When you start thinking how long then hopefully you will realise why I put the indefinite semi-protection on them. There are people who are in the news for some transitory thing and where temporary protection suffices. Othertimes when we don't know why someone has become a target our best option is to protect indefinitely - in these two cases that seems to have worked and on reflection I think it best to leave as is. ϢereSpielChequers 07:08, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Ignore WP:PP and enable level-two pending changes perhaps per WP:IAR? George Ho (talk) 09:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Ignore all rules is a great rule for unforeseen circumstances. However this is a foreseen circumstance. There is a clear consensus in the community against using level 2 pending changes even for BLPs, and semi-protection exists as an approved alternative. Now I can foresee a situation arising where legit IP editors wanted to improve an article and were making good suggestions on the talkpage. But that isn't happening here. ϢereSpielChequers 11:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Giovanni Carmazzi could probably be deleted at AfD. Doesn't pass athletic SNG and I don't think the small Brady controversy raises his level of coverage enough to meet the GNG. Gigs (talk) 16:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I defer to your or frankly anyone's knowledge of sports in the colonies:). So I wouldn't try to defend it if someone filed an AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 17:17, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} JMHamo (talk) 12:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi <sup>t | c</sup> 15:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 17

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thanks ... and asks about the English wikipedia

Thank you! a question whether the English pages have the correct information right?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exequiel333 (talk • contribs) 17:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Exeqiel, Which pages are you talking about? we have 4,400,000 articles, I suspect a large proportion are fairly accurate. As to the articles you have edited, I can run a quick eye over to see if they read correctly in English, but they aren't in a subject which I know well enough to check. "Juice only 4 games before he returned to Racing and demonstrate its good staff marking to rivals" Doesn't make sense to me, are you sure you mean juice rather than just? As for "In his last years with the club almost down but managed to get the goal in which your computer is safe." I'm not sure what the computer connection is to football. ϢereSpielChequers 17:29, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy...

	Best wishes
	for the holidays and 2014 from a warmer place than where you probably are ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:04, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

oops Victuallers (talk) 11:52, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

		Holiday Cheer
		Victuallers talkback is wishing WSC Season's Greetings! Thanks, this is just to celebrate the holiday season and promote WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone with whom you had disagreements in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings. - Vic/Roger inspired by this - you could do the same

Merry Christmas! :-)

Happy Yuletides!

Merry Yuletides to you! (And a happy new year!)

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

Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hi WereSpielChequers, Wishing you a very Happy and Wonderful Merry Christmas! Hope you are having a great time with family and friends :-) Best wishes. ~TheGeneralUser (talk) 19:48, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks GeneralUser ϢereSpielChequers 19:52, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours. ```Buster Seven Talk 19:04, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Buster! ϢereSpielChequers 19:53, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

A question

Hi, and thanks for your copyediting on SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm. I had a question about this edit though - I was under the impression that you shouldn't start a sentence with a numeral. Am I mistaken about that, or are years different because you wouldn't spell out "eighteen ninety-five"? Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 00:27, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Parsecboy, I'm not aware of such a rule, though that doesn't mean there isn't such a rule. But if there is such a rule I would hope that starting a sentence with a year was one of those allowed exceptions. ϢereSpielChequers 23:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. There are plenty of those erroneous grammar "rules" that float around - maybe that's one of them. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 13:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy New Year WereSpielChequers!

	Happy New Year!
	Hello WereSpielChequers: Thanks for all of your contributions to improve the encyclopedia for Wikipedia's readers, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, Northamerica1000(talk) 05:49, 1 January 2014 (UTC) Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2014}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

Mangers ?!

Thank you for correcting this error of mine. I enjoyed all the hay references ! Neonblak <sup>talk</sup> - 18:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

You're very welcome. This has been my most fertile hunting ground since I started reducing the amount of staring in Bollywood. It is also my second secularisation of the pedia, the first being an assortment of calvary regiments, charges, horses and troops. ϢereSpielChequers 19:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Agent unprejudiced ???

I can’t find any ” Agent unprejudiced ” in the Swedish Wikipedia. POV and Fake? 90.229.221.26 (talk) 11:55, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi. I categorised the article to bring it to the attention of anyone interested in the topic, not because I know anything about Swedish pop culture. However I wouldn't assume an article was fake because it first appeared on the English language Wikipedia before the language that seems most relevant. A very quick Google search seems to come up with lots of stuff in Swedish, but I'm not convinced that my quick search found anything I'd be sure was reliable. POV yes, as much as most new articles about pop culture topics by newbies. My own focus is more about keeping out the negative POV stuff, articles like this I tend to categorise and leave to those interested in the topic. If you Google him and fail to find a reliable source then I would think a prod would have a good chance of success, if not AFD will kill or cure. ϢereSpielChequers 12:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Googled on “Hjalmar Carlos Högberg” and “Agent unprejudiced” and found out this:

• “Agent unprejudiced (Hjalmar Carlos Högberg) is a Swedish singer and former model from Stockholm”. Can’t find anything about modeling.
• “He was first seen 1999 in the television movie "Rasten" by Babak Najafi that did the movie Snabba Cash 2”. Can’t find any connection between Babak Najafi and the movie “Easy money”. There is another movie called “Snabba Cash 2” that Babak Najafi had directed.
• “He started as a singer with the underground hit "How can you?" in 2007 and was signed to the record label Soundlab”. Can’t find any record label named “Soundlab”. The only person “signed” to this “label” is “Agent unprejudiced”.
• “The single was heard by many Swedish music lovers and the song told people how they can best understand a person with Asperger syndrome”. “Heard by many Swedish music lovers”??? I have been listening a lot to Swedish music but I never heard about this guy.
• “At the time Agent unprejudiced was working at an Swedish Institution that had many Asperger diagnostic people”. Can’t find anything about this.
• “In 2009 he entered media for full work and made a movie that never reached television or the dvd-market”. And? Is this interesting for Wikipedia? Made a DVD/movie that never has been relisted? Can’t find this DVD/movie anywhere.
• “In late 2011 he returned to the record-studio and later the single "Golden chance" was released and reached a bigger audience then the previous one but this time the message was deeper”. “Reached a bigger audience”?????? What audience???? Can’t find anything about this or any audience at all.
• “When the single and video was released it saved some Swedish people from committing suicide and the Swedish popqueen La Camilla from the glamour group Army of Lovers thanked him in front of cameras and journalists”. Can’t find anything about this. Maybe it’s better to ask La Camilla directly about this.

There is no reference or substance at all in this article so I suggest PROD and if there is no one who disagree AFD after one week.90.229.221.26 (talk) 18:57, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Beatrix Potter now out of copyright

Can we do a mass move of the large number of images in Category:Out_of_copyright_in_2014 to Commons? Johnbod (talk) 15:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I make that 126 images so yes its great that they can be moved but probably most efficient to use whatever the normal tool is for wiki 2 commons. Is there a bot that does that? ϢereSpielChequers 19:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

All caps edit summary

You posted to User talk:Dougweller/reversion about this - I never seem to notice changes on that page, sorry (although others get there thinking it's my talk page, ignore everything else on the page and post). I've removed that on your advice. Dougweller (talk) 10:53, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Doug, it would be really good if someone could write a mixcasing routine. My suspicion is that the rise of the mobile phone is going to force us to reappraise our attitude to All caps edits. There is already an obvious pattern in that they are predominately from African and India. This could become a global south issue, as well as about being open to newbies. ϢereSpielChequers 05:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that, although it's obvious once you mention it. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 16:19, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly

Hi WSC, we're recording an episode of the podcast tomorrow (Thursday) evening East coast US time of 8pm, which I know is pretty tough for someone in Europe. If this time doesn't work, we're still trying to find at least one episode we can record earlier to get folks like you involved. Thanks. -- Fuzheado | Talk 21:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but not practical tonight, I've emailed you. That would be midnight in the UK and 1 am in Europe, not ideal especially on a Thursday as Friday is a working day. Have you considered Sunday? Quite a long time when people are potentially available 3pm East coast might work for all but the Aussies. ϢereSpielChequers 05:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Mixcase

I think I could write some module to help with your mixcase problem ... except, I have absolutely no idea what you meant. Looking at the all caps heading above maybe I have a guess now, but if you want, let me know (or post to WP:Lua requests if you want) what you're looking for in particular. I'm afraid I'm not thrilled by the idea of trying to use the internet over a phone keyboard, so be very basic about the explanation. :) (Incidentally, do you know if typing "{" and "|" is possible for phone users? Because that could severely reduce the options) Wnt (talk) 21:51, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Wnt, thanks for picking up on that. I'm not thrilled about editing by mobile either, my couple of experiments have been disastrous - its even worse than using microsoft which is the malware I'm having to use this fortnight. But there is a revolution going on in the world with dramatic growth of smartphone based internet use. The mobile internet is largely a broadcast medium for Wikipedia hence our editorship stabilising whilst our readership is rapidly growing, but occasionally these people will try and edit. If they succeed they sometimes do so in all caps either because that is the culture of txting and phone use, or even because they haven't mastered the use of lower case letters on a mobile. So sometimes I come across articles with A SENTENCE IN CAPITALS. EVEN A WHOLE PARAGRAPH ABOUT SOME TEMPLE. What I'd like to do is highlight the affected bit and have almost all the uppercase letters replaced with lower case ones. Exceptions being the first letter after a semicolon or full stop, and ideally the O and first letter after the apostrophe in O'Connor and similar Irish style names, and the M and the letter after the Mc or Mac in Scottish style names such as MacDonald and McRae. That would still need a bit of tarting up as there are bound to be names within it, but it would save me and I believe others a lot of time if we could highlight a section such as A SENTENCE IN CAPITALS. EVEN A WHOLE PARAGRAPH ABOUT SOME TEMPLE. and get a sentence in capitals. Even a whole paragraph about some temple. I suspect that an edit summary of No SHOUTING plz would deter anyone who simply does this for emphasis, and if my theory is wrong and the people who are doing this are doing so deliberately then mixcasing it sends them a useful message. I don't know whether all mobile phone users have access to all the symbols you need for wiki markup, I suspect it depends on operating system. ϢereSpielChequers 05:54, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I think the stigmatization of all-caps text is excessive, but definitely we need articles to be better written. The problem I have with making a template is that someone who can't be bothered to figure out lower case on a phone is supposed to type something like {{subst:lct| ... }} around every edit, which seems ... optimistic. I can write something but I don't expect they'll ever hear about it, let alone use it. Even if they or someone else do use it, there's the problem that the subst: isn't done until they save, which means that two edits are needed if the template isn't absolutely correct on every letter.

Another option would be a bot to look for all-caps sentences, but that's something of a different matter - all it should be permitted to do is look, because there are instances where any automated approach would lead to trouble.

Thinking about it, what you're describing is more a user script to call from Common.js that would allow you to find-and-fix all caps sentences. I do know Javascript, but I haven't used it much in the context of Wikipedia yet. I should fool around with this but it's harder for me to make promises. Wnt (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh I'm under no illusions that the mobile phone users would use this themselves, though I'm hoping that some would notice the fixes on their watchlists and learn, I'm pretty sure that has happened with some of the easily confused words that I fix. I'm more thinking of something that I could use to fix ones that I come across. However a script based thing that let people search for all caps things and assist with fixing them would be great. But I expect it would need some hefty safe phrase and safe page functionality. Otherwise it would get bogged down in NATO, ICBMs and so forth. ϢereSpielChequers 17:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

As for not wanting to stigmatise contributors who use ALL CAPS, I'd like to have this tool so that more of their contributions get mixcased and accepted rather than simply rejected. ϢereSpielChequers 10:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Reliability

I think you and I are pretty much pointed in the same direction on that issue. Have I convinced you that our medical FAs should be fact-checked by experts and locked between reviews? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, or at least a very similar direction. Though you sometimes seem focusesd on the end point and I on the next steps in what I believe is the right direction. Re the matter in hand I think there are four interrelated elements here:

1. As someone else asserted on Jimmy's talkpage not every WikiProject Medicine article actually contains the sort of material that would lead to people incorrectly self diagnosing. Assuming that's correct, and Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany is one of the 58 FAs in question, then I think that any special protection for medical articles needs to be narrowly rather than broadly construed. The community would be much warmer to a proposal that was clearly targetted at articles that people might be consulting when they self diagnose.
2. Fact checking by experts is great, but mixing paid and unpaid work is contentious for many reasons and may even be counter-productive as once you start paying some editors it may be difficult to get others to work for free. I'd suggest that we go much further down the path of encouraging this sort of thing before giving up on the voluntary model.
3. Locking articles is contentious, not only do you lock out damage you also lock out improvements. I think that instead we could build on our existing models of pending changes.
4. Empowering subject experts is also tricky - people will hark back to a former competitor of our who put a homeopath in charge of "the healing arts". My view is that first we need to establish a group of trusted credentialled experts, and then we can persuade the community to give them some extra status. Wiki Project Medicine may actually be at the early stages of this with its widely accepted tighter rules about medical sourcing.

If you want the vision thing, where I'd like to see us wind up is with the academic community seeing wikiwork as part of its duty and method of evaluating academic effort. So just as currently a degree or masters degree would be awarded for someone demonstrating mastery of their subject by writing an essays or thesis, so in the future I would like to see degrees awarded for people who review a text against the latest research and updating and indeed correcting it. So an ever improving Wikipedia would be in part a byproduct of the academic process. If we get to that point, and I fail to see why grad students or their assessors would prefer to continue with the current method where few little PhD work has any substantial audience, then I think I can see the day when certain WikiProjects do get to "own" topics where only their designated editors can approve edits; When the higher the quality rating an article has the better the quality is; But hopefully there will still be roles in the project for people like me. ϢereSpielChequers 10:08, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

1. Yep. We only need to fret over content that contains safety, efficacy, epidemiology, biological mechanism, etc. assertions.
2. Sorry, too long. We need something big and structural involving deep commitment from the learned societies and the relevant charities. Editors and reviewers are different beasts. I'm not saying we involve paid editors. I think that if we offer stringent peer-review and locking between reviews, we'll have no shortage of experts contributing - every expert I've tried to recruit as an editor (or reviewer) has commented on the futility of investing time in something that could be messed up by Randy.
3. It all depends who's doing the reviewing. If you could recruit the topic's most learned and revered scholars to patrol an article, then I guess that would work. But that would be very expensive using my paid reviewer model, and I think we have to pay them to get the best. (I had in mind paying them for 4 reviews a year on the average article.) - It's essentially the same thing, but with my model editors have to wait a bit longer for a reviewer to OK their edit.
4. We don't need to give anyone extra status. I'm talking about articles written as today by mostly anonymous editors. The fact-checking being done by named expert reviewers is a new, adjunct not elevated, role. The article remains on Wikipedia open to live editing if it fails expert review - it just doesn't get locked with the "reliable" stamp (or the Quality mark).

Personally, I think the "anyone can edit" ethos is the engine of this place, and can't imagine that changing. But I can imagine experts becoming so involved with editing here that there will just be no real need for you and me to be editing topics in which we have no expertise. Are you interested in taking this on? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	Your comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales: "I celebrated Xmas by trawling through a subset of our articles that contained the word manger and secularising over a hundred of them.". This is the first time I have ever laughed out loud at Wikipedia - keep it up! :) Acather96 (click here to contact me) 21:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Ta muchly. I do rather enjoy the way that particular typos seem to be associated with particular topics. The calvary cavalry confusions were kind of predictable as was my role in the abolition of the Olympic sport of synchronsised ventriloquism. But posses has brought me to a startling number of edits in horror and manga articles, staring has given me enough Bollywood edits for an honorary membership of that Wikiproject, as for preform, I'm beginning to suspect that there is a new meaning to the word Preform - the singing of a rock or pop song in a sports stadium. As for sports contracts I rather worry I may have misconstrued the process, perhaps some sportsmen nowadays are indeed singed to new clubs in some sort of branding process. ϢereSpielChequers 10:31, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

I appreciate your support in the RFA and your recent response to Hegvald. Unsure why someone didn't close the RFA on Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, it led to some earlier vandalism and additional comments. Any idea what is happening with the close? Cindy(talk) 11:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Cindy, you're welcome, the close just has to wait for an uninvolved crat to be around, looks like it has now happened. Guess we don't have as many very active crats as we once had, comments and even !votes are welcome until the formal close though the chance of a big change in one that was as clear as your's was after 7 days is pretty minimal. ϢereSpielChequers 19:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I created a table recently (as WSC knows) that outlined 'crat activity. There is a lot that could be extrapolated from that table but although I kept it simple for fear of upsetting some of them, one crat did respond quite negatively to it with a borderline PA. It seems that 'crats are an endangered species and while some have very high edit counts, those appear to be mainly due to the high number of semi-auto edits created by user name changes. Apart from new 'crats testing their wings there appears to be very few who are online regularly enough to provide prompt closures to uncontentious RfAs. Perhaps the aging corps of 'crats does need some new blood. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:50, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

A well-earned barnstar

		The Barnstar of Integrity
		For being amongst our most reasonable editors and administrators. I have always observed fairness, stellar judgment and great work from you. Thank you. Acalamari 14:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I'm deeply honoured. ϢereSpielChequers 19:30, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 18

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Value of guestbook barnstars

Thank you for explaining to me about the value of barnstars (albeit in an edit summary). I guess I shouldn't give them out to people just because they signed my guestbook—it probably has to be a bigger accomplishment. Anyway, many thanks for signing my guestbook. Epicgenius (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	NIce to arrive at this page and see that some users do in fact have a sense of humour and are not afraid to use it. When will we be seeing you on Live at the Apollo ? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:36, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Kastellorizo Attacks

The entire page is fabricated. There is less said on the Rhodes page which deserves far more to be said historically, culturally than this island. All reasons for my edits are on the talk page for the article. Read them before you revert again. Biased POV author who comes as an immigrant from the island without history qualifications is the primary source of the fabricated history of the island. Also the island is not allowed to have an official flag, no island is allowed in Greece. The fact it has some masonic logo is ridiculous.