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Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.144.96.24 (talk) 22:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply] 

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.   Thank you. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.14.25.33 (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Merry Christmas!

BOZ (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. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. If you don't like Christmas or just don't celebrate it in any of its forms, then please accept a generic "Happy Holidays". If you celebrate no holidays at this time of year, then hopefully you will be satisfied with an even more generic "Season's Greetings".  :) BOZ (talk) 18:53, 24 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 December 2015

Paolo Petrocelli

Hi Bilby! Thank you for your clarification on the Paolo Petrocelli article. Your proposition for the article to be independently checked sounds right to me, the issue is that the COI notice has been there since August 2015, and nobody has checked it since! Can you please advice on how we may get the article reviewed by other editors now that I've tried to abide it to Wikipedia's requirements? - Japancolours (talk) 07:10, 27 January 2016

Alexia Parks

I noticed you deleted the Alexia Parks article under WP:G5. As you know, G5 applies to pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and "that have no substantial edits by others". I had no idea this article had been created by a banned user, and made significant improvements to the article yesterday. Also, the article's creator, Coreyeymmote (talk · contribs), doesn't appear to be banned? Are you in error? Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 02:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! The Coreyeymmote account was a sock created by User:LogAntiLog, who has been creating large numbers of accounts to engage in paid and promotional editing over an extended period. The Alexia Parks article was the result of paid editing in violation of the existing block on the master account. I did look at your edits, but as all were tagged as minor copyedits, I didn't feel that they reached the level of substantial. I also noticed that you had raised concerns about the coverage of the subject, which I took into consideration. - Bilby (talk) 03:01, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I looked over the sources before making my edits. The article likely would have made it through an AfD. I hate paid editing as much as the rest, but the article had merit. Magnolia677 (talk) 03:38, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I should have been clearer. Could you please revert your deletion of Alexia Parks. I had made significant improvements to the article before you deleted it. Thank again. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that the edits were significant - they were marked as minor by you. However, I'll have a look - if the sources are enough to warrant reverting I will, but my feeling is that I'll have to send it to AfD. I'm a bit caught up at the moment, but I'll be able to look at this over the next couple of days or so. - Bilby (talk) 21:01, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No rush. I came across the article when it was added as a link to a city article. I felt it was worth improving and made several edits. I'd hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 21:27, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 06 January 2016

The Signpost: 13 January 2016

User: NihartouJason

Hi I would like to draw your attention to the user contributions - NihartouJasonyu. I think he's one of the side of previous wars in article Frederick Achom. he sent the same messages to 14 users to discussion page. I worry about that, because I'm a little upgrated Achom's page, and it's was deleted. by the way, page was nominated for the deletion today (19.01). it's like vandalism: contributions only about Frederick and deletion section in AppyParking: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=AppyParking&diff=700414338&oldid=693803491 thanks.--27century (talk) 16:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I have done everything according to wikipedia's policy. Whatever changes were made to the page were first discussed on the article's talk page and whatever changes I made the reasons for them are given here Talk:Frederick_Achom/sandbox. I even asked admin User:Jeff_G. to check my work once, only after he went through it, I ported the page to the main article space. Also the deletion tag was put by another admin User:Mdann52 which was resolved because I had written a much neutral article. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Frederick_Achom Thank You NihartouJason (talk) 05:44, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I am not an admin here.   — Jeff G. ツ (talk) 06:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 January 2016

The Signpost: 27 January 2016

The Signpost: 03 February 2016

The Signpost: 10 February 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:28, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What is your evidence that scholarship - a merit-based award - is not overwhelmingly a U.S. phenomenon?

deisenbe (talk) 22:28, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, what you wrote was that scholarships are unique to the US. This is false. I'd also need a source before I accepted "overwhelmingly", as this seems like a very strong claim given the huge numbers of scholarships available around the world. - Bilby (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What is your evidence that there are "huge numbers" of scholarships - merit-based awards - around the world? I worked for 2004-2010 full time in college financial aid (see Edifi), have traveled abroad extensively, including during this period, and speak several foreign languages. It's news to me. There are other kinds of financial aid available, but those are mostly grants (need-based awards). A bursary (U.K.) is a grant, not a scholarship. deisenbe (talk) 12:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm finding this to be an odd discussion. Scholarships are common outside of the US - a quick search will turn up thousands in the UK, Europe and Australia. Not to mention places such as China, South-East Asia, and Africa. But if you can turn up a source saying hat scholarships are unique to the US, I'll be interested to see what it has to say. - Bilby (talk) 12:52, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well I went to google and searched for scholarships England, France, and Italy. What is clear is that the word scholarship is used differently outside the U.S., and is used there to mean what in the U.S.are called grants. I also went to a portal, http://becas.universia.es, that claims to have in one place information on all the schokarships available in Spain. At the undergraduate level there were a total of five, four for study abroad and one that is arguably a scholarship as the word is used in the U.S. (a merit-based award), for music students from a particular province.
I'm going to copy this to the talk page of the article. deisenbe (talk) 13:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 February 2016

Precious anniversary

Four years ago ...
reviewing eyes
... you were recipient
no. 31 of Precious,
a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:13, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 February 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:04, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #1—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?
Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features.
Screenshot showing a pop-up menu for column operations in a table
If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.

Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.

Recent changes

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.

Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.

The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:

  • Remember my last editor,
  • Always give me the visual editor if possible,
  • Always give me the source editor, and
  • Show me both editor tabs.  (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)

The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.

Let's work together

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!

– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist

Hi Bilby! I know you are technically savvy and watch a large number of articles, so maybe you have a neat solution to this problem: if an article I'm watching is edited by someone and shortly afterwards by a bot (quite frequent at the moment), the fact of the human edit is masked — I get no notification. Unless I also watch for bot edits and check each occurrence; soul-destroying and usually fruitless. Doug butler (talk) 22:12, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in Education: [March 2016]

Arab World Education Program at WISE Doha 2015

By Walaa Abdel Manaem (Wikipedia Education Program Egypt) & (Egypt Wikimedians user group)

Walaa with Mr. Rashid El Telwaty and Ms. Suad Alhalwachi
Walaa with Dr. Sherifa Atallah
Walaa with Mr. Rashid El Telwaty, Ms. Bonnie Chiu, Mr. Jake and Ms. Naadiya Moosajee.

Snippet: Education Leaders at WISE Doha 2015 introducing Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt to WISE Conference attendees, as an example of a program in the Arab World, to share their experience to inspire other universities and institutions starting new programs in the area.

WISE 2015 Sessions and Plenaries were designed around three main pillars such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals; education and the economy; fostering innovation in education systems. Each pillar examined a variety of key topics including: the linkages between education, employment, and entrepreneurship; education reform and innovation in the MENA region and Qatar; emerging models of education financing, attracting, rewarding and retaining quality teachers; and the importance of investing in early childhood development.

Representatives of Wikipedia Education Program Walaa Abdel Manaem and Reem Al-Kashif participated in WISE Doha 2015 in Qatar, the annual World Innovation Summit for Education is the premier international platform dedicated to innovation and creative action in education where top decision-makers share insights with on-the-ground practitioners and collaborate to rethink education. Also, WISE 2015 was the first global education conference following the ratification of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015. Contributions ranged from Arabic Brochure of Editing Wikipedia for students in WEP in Egypt and everybody who would like to edit Wikipedia without ‎problems, The Arabic version of Welcome to Wikipedia reference guideline, PDF of brochure handed out during Arabic Wikipedia Convening, Doha, Qatar, 2011 and Introduction to Wikipedia. These contributions are related to show a case study of Wikipedia Education program in Egypt and how it worked since February 2012 till the November 2015, as the seventh edition ended last October. All discussions were about the program's mechanism and what were the motivations keeping it going. The program helped increasing gender diversity and supported the featured content on Arabic Wikipedia. Wikipedia Education Program, like any other initiative, has achievements and dark sides, for that reason, the representatives had to locate both of them and how they influence the Arabic community and how the community interact with this phenomenon.


Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt here.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education program in the Arab World here (in Arabic).

Wikipedia in Higher Education in Israel: A new for-credit elective course focusing on contributing to Wikipedia at Tel Aviv University

By Shani Evenstein (WMIL)

Amir explains about the new translation tool to students

Snippet: A first-of-its-kind, for-credit, elective course that focuses on contributing to Wikipedia has opened at Tel Aviv University and is now available to all B.A. students on campus

On October 19th a new for-credit elective course called "Wikipedia: Skills for producing and consuming knowledge"[1] has opened at Tel Aviv University (TAU). The semester-long course (13 weeks) is available to all B.A. students on campus and this semester about 50 students from various disciplines are taking part in this first-of-its-kind course in Israel.

Working in small groups to correct copyrights and Non-NPOV violations

The course draws from "flipped classroom" concepts and uses "blended learning" methods, which practically means combining in-class lectures, workshops and small-group activities, as well as online individual learning. Both the Moodle learning management system (LMS) and the Wikipedia Education Extension are used to monitor the students' work and progress throughout the course.

The course has 2 main assignments - expanding an existing stub, as well as writing a new article, in the hopes that the content added during the course will assist not only the students themselves, but also future generations of learners as well as the general public. Though the course focuses on adding quality content to Wikipedia, it also aims to help students sharpen their academic skills and their 21st century skills, highlighting collaborative learning, joint online research and interdisciplinary collaborations in the process of constructing knowledge.

This course was initiated and is led by Shani Evenstein, an educator, Wikimedian and member of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative, in collaboration with the Orange Institute for Internet Studies, as well as the School of Education at TAU. The syllabus for the new course builds on the success of Wiki-Med, a for-credit elective course, which was designed in 2013 and is led by Evenstein at the Sackler school of Medicine for the third consecutive year. While Wiki-med is focused on contributing medical content to Wikipedia and is only available to Medical Students on campus, the new course is designed to accommodate students from different academic disciplines and varying backgrounds.

The course was chosen to be part of TAU's cross-discipline elective courses system ("Kelim Shluvim") and was approved by the Vice-Rector, who heads the program. In that, the course marks an important precedent in the collaboration between Academia and the Wikipedia Education Program, as it is the first time a higher institution acknowledges the importance of a course focusing on Wikipedia on a university level, offering it to all students, rather than a faculty level or individual lecturers as mostly practiced. It is our hope that other higher education institutions will follow this example and offer similar courses to students both in Israel and around the world.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Israel here.

References

  1. ^ Link to the course page at the TAU website (in Hebrew) - http://www2.tau.ac.il/yedion/syllabus.asp?course=1880180101&year=2015

The collaborative production in open educational environments: Is Wikipedia an answer?

By Melina Masnatta, Wikimedia Argentina

Snippet: University professors become Wikipedians in an online course during just a week.

How to be a Wikipedian in a week (educactional MOOC for university professors)

Educators with different profiles and from different latin america countries, but most of them professors at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) from different faculties, have just participated in the online training and free course "Educational scenarios with technology. Among the real and the possible" organized by the Center for Innovation in Technology and Pedagogy (CITEP) of this university.

Different educational activities were carried out simultaneously. During the week and under the topic “Open movement”, Wikimedia Argentina participated with three different proposals: starting with an interview of Patricio Lorente accompanied with a short text to know more about the movement. To make an immersive experience we designed " Knowing Wikipedia by first-hand or Wikipedia in the first person" to work directly on the platform translating articles from english to spanish from a list created especially for that purpose. Along with this specific proposal, educators participated in a videoconference with Galileo Vidoni (available in Spanish), where participants could talk and learn more about how are the first steps to become a Wikipedian and the importance of the movement at the local and regional level.

A professor´s educational experience with Wikipedia explained with a tweet. He said: "I´m translating, enjoying and learning with Wikipedia". Know more experiences on Storify.

With only seven days and without being mandatory, different educators discovered how to edit on Wikipedia, indeed many of them mentioned that they had it as a pending to learn and participate on the free encyclopedia, but never had the time or the real chance. The enthusiasm was also present on social networks, where they shared the experience with the hashtag #escenariostec.

The result

More than 100 educators got involved and exchanged their experience in an online forum with more of 280 messages that reflected their learning process while experiencing with the activity. 80 of them were new users, and they created 61 new articles in spanish. An important fact: 78 of them were women, which means that working with educators is a key issue to continue closing the digital gender gap.

Finally from CITEP, they shared the following insights regarding the question that ran through all the activities that took place during the week dedicated to the open movement. Some thoughts can be sum up as follows:

The collaborative production in open environments: chaos or construction? (...) For the teacher also means accepting new challenges: encourage students to produce knowledge in an environment of divergent nature, it requires permanent operations and convergence. In a space that fosters interventions unmarked, the teacher needs to frame depending on the purpose of education and teaching purposes. (…) Wikipedia is the best example of the challenges posed by the digital era in the educational field, it forces us to rethink the relationship between technology and the production of knowledge and allows us to confirm that the collaborative work does not lead to chaos, if not to the construction. (. ..) [Authors: Angeles Solectic and Miri Latorre]

We share some of the voices of the protagonists in social networks with storify (available in Spanish). Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina here.

Collaboration with Masaryk University turns official

By Vojtěch Dostál (Wikimedia Czech Republic)

Masaryk University employees are being trained in using and editing Wikipedia
Marek Blahuš, Wikipedian in residence at Masaryk University

Snippet: The second largest university in the Czech Republic has employed a Wikipedian in residence, leading to a boom of Wikimedia activities in the city of Brno.

Collaboration between Wikipedia and Czech institutions has always been a priority for Wikimedia Czech Republic, but the year 2015 has taken this to another level. First, an official memorandum of collaboration with the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) was signed in May 2015, to be followed by official collaboration with Masaryk University in Brno (the second largest city and university in the Czech Republic), which was contracted in November 2015. In fact, Wikimedia activities in Brno have been blooming for several years now, mainly as a result of the community's own development, but aided substantially by the external interest in Wikipedia by Masaryk University alumni society, demonstrated as early as March 2013.

In February 2015, the university employed one of the most experienced Czech Wikipedians – Marek Blahuš (Blahma) – who was appointed to become the university's first "Wikipedian in residence". Marek Blahuš has been in the center of the Wikimedia community in Brno for about two years, organizing regular Wikipedia meetups, the 2014 edition of the annual WikiConference (more in English here) and creating the Czech-Slovak Wikipedia translation tool, which has famously led to the creation of >9000 articles on Czech and Slovak Wikipedias (more in English here). His current work as Wikipedian in residence is funded by Masaryk University and runs under the patronage of Wikimedia Czech Republic as well as Masaryk University's rector Mikuláš Bek.

Since February, Wikipedia has taken a prominent role within Masaryk University. Marek Blahuš started a "Masaryk University Wikipedians team", gathering local Wikipedians and facilitating contacts with the university, aided by his status of a graduate and current employee in its language center. Articles about Masaryk University alumni and faculties have been identified and improved after consultations with Masaryk University archives and libraries which provided helpful resources. Wikipedia citation templates can now be directly generated from the university's on-line archive of theses. In September, a public conference called "Masaryk University Is Getting High on Wikipedia" took place on university grounds, featuring the experienced Wikipedian Jan Sokol (Sokoljan), who is a philosopher, university teacher and a former presidential candidate. The talks focused on the use of Wikipedia in university education, in line with the successful Czech "Students Write Wikipedia" program. One of the teachers, Jiří Rambousek, expressed his desire to organize a Wikipedia Club as a regular meetup where articles would be improved in a collaborative effort and new editors introduced to Wikipedia.

The program is actively preparing for 2016 when we expect Wikimedia Czech Republic to take a more active role in overseeing the initiatives as well as the creation of a position of a "Wikipedian in Brno" – person officially in charge of the wide array of Wikimedia activities happening in the city. The chapter's annual plan includes initiatives to increase the number of university courses which incorporate Wikipedia into the curriculum, public presentations of Wikipedia at various events, scanning and uploading of images from institutional and personal archives, and much more. Let's wish that our plans come true!

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in the Czech Republic here.

Wiki expeditions, animation clips about alebrijes and more at the Tec de Monterrey in Mexico

By Leigh Thelmadatter (Wiki Learning-Tec de Monterrey)

Group photo of Reto Wikimedia participants at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus

Snippet: Student participation is more than just text!

For the Fall 2015 Wiki Learning-Tec de Monterrey held two wiki expeditions in Mexico City and began a collaboration with the Museo de Arte Popular. We also received our first grant!

Wiki expeditions

The 32-campus Tec de Monterrey system has each semester an event called "Semana i" (i Week), when students forego normal classes for an entire week to work on challenging projects called "retos." For the Mexico City and Santa Fe campuses, one option for students was to work with Wikimedia, with the aptly named projects "Reto Wikimedia." Both campuses opted to do wiki-expeditions to different parts of Mexico City. The Mexico City campus had the larger group with almost 90 students registered, who covered the two southern boroughs of Xochimilco and Tlalpan. The Santa Fe group had 35 participants, and covered the San Ángel neighborhood found not far from this campus.

Both campus took photos of landmarks with the Mexico City campus also focusing on photos of everyday life in the south of the city. The Mexico City campus tallied 5264 photos, 8 videos and 36 articles, including articles related to the area into French, Swedish and Danish. The Santa Fe group tallied 605 photos, and ten articles in Spanish on landmarks in San Ángel.

In addition, the Mexico City campus had a special speaker the borough chronicler of Xochmilco, Sebastián Flores Farfán. A short montage video of the event is in the works.

Some student photos:

Some video clips of the event:

Animation about alebrijes

Wikiservicio, students working with Wikimedia for their community service requirement, added a new component. To attract more students and encourage more students to do all of their community service hours with Wikimedia, a collaboration was set up with the Museo de Arte Popular (MAP)... the first of many we hope! Six students from the digital art and animation major (see last newsletter) have continued working with Wikimedia, but focusing their efforts in creating short animation clips in relation to the mission of promoting and preserving Mexican folk art. One clip has been completed and can be see to the right of this text. So far, the video has subtitles in English, German, French and Punjabi. A second clip is nearing completion at the time of this writing.

Classes and Wikimetrics

Fifteen students completed work with Wikiservicio doing translations, writing new articles and doing photography projects. As of this date, 7 have indicated interest in working with Wikiservicio on campus and another six with MAP.

Five university level classes and one high school class on the Mexico City (South) campus have had projects, all in writing and translation, with some video work.

Wikimetrics for the semester are:

According to Wikimetrics tool....

  • 9,589,918 bytes to Spanish Wikipedia
  • 3,098 edits to the mainspace of Spanish Wikipedia
  • 367 pages created in the mainspace of Spanish Wikipedia

Manual count

  • 302 student and teacher participants
  • 281 Spanish Wikipedia articles created or expanded
  • 6,057 photographs
  • 10 videos
  • 9 articles in English Wikipedia
  • 2 articles in French Wikipedia
  • 1 article in Swedish Wikipedia
  • 1 article in Danish Wikipedia

First grant Wiki Learning received its first grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. The long-term goal of this grant is to establish a system for financing Wiki Learning. The grant, which totals a modest 12,500 Mexican pesos, will be used for swag, such as t shirts, stickers, buttons, etc, especially for Semana i activities and promotion of wiki activities to other campus. The money will also be used for incidental travel expenses, especially for projects needing to move expensive camera equipment.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Mexico here.

Wikimedia Argentina, about the global and local in the digital and academic communities

By Christian Cariño (Wikimedia México) and Melina Masnatta (Wikimedia Argentina)

Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina

Snippet: Aprender para Educar writes about Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina.

The digital free magazine Aprender para Educar (Learning to educate) of the National Technological University (UTN) is recognized in the community of education and technology in Argentina to write about innovation issues in Spanish, which is not common in the academic dissemination and teacher training field.

Cristina Velazquez, general editor of the magazine invited Wikimedia Argentina to write an article that generally describes their activities in the Education Program, after reading the proposal she decided to publish it as the main article of the 12th edition.

To describe the education program, WMAR wrote two notes completing one another, as doing a zoom: from the local to the global and from the global to the local, showing how a movement of this magnitude does not stand alone, it is part of a huge network.

Melina Masnatta, education manager in WMAR and Patricio Lorente, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees wrote those two notes.The first one focuses on the Education Program, implementation, challenges and obstacles that they had at the beginning, plans to integrate it into the classrooms in Argentina and how different Wikimedia Projects are also relevant in education. The most important thing, Melina adds, is to strengthen the values that inspire them, show how the free culture give meaning to education in general and digital culture in particular.

Meanwhile in the second part, Lorente focuses on the global movement, the community pillars, the agenda of today's challenges and the effort of their volunteers as protagonists. It is not easy show the world what drives us and why we work as volunteers in different countries. In education very few people understand the value of building free knowledge. There is still a great prejudice or negative perceptions of Wikipedia in the classroom because teachers ignore how Wikipedia is built.

Everybody reads Wikipedia, but few people edit it. We can change this fact by spreading in spaces such as the Journal of the UTN and inviting more people to collaborate and be the protagonist of this huge collective work for humanity.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina here.

Online ambassador played a prominent role in helping Egyptian students to nominate their excellent content

By Walaa Abdel Manaem (Wikipedia Education Program Egypt) & (Egypt Wikimedians user group)

Bassem Fleifel

Snippet: Online ambassador helped spanish students course in Cairo University to nominate their articles, scoring an exceptional record of WEP excellent content.

Bassem Fleifel, an online ambassador of Cairo university spanish course, played a prominent role to help all students to encourage them to nominate their excellent content to be a featured and good articles in Arabic Wikipedia. Those articles are History of bread (Featured article); Walt Disney; Daniel Radcliffe; Al-Andalus; Poet in New York; and Popol Vuh.

The seventh term, the program started in Cairo University with promoting posts on Wikipedia and social media websites to help new participants understand the general idea of the program as well as holding meetings with professors from the departments of History, chinese, English language and Spanish language. Walaa Abdel Manaem (program leader in Cairo University) and Bassem Fleifel (online ambassador) have held some workshops in campus and online for the whole students to teach them "How to edit Wikipedia". On the other hand, Prof. Abeer Abdel-Hafiz has exerted great efforts with her students in addition to introducing Walaa to new classes of senior students for whom she has organized general seminars about Wikipedia and the education program. At the same time Walaa was assigning her Spanish department students of the first and second year to edit Wikipedia.

This term, Prof. Abeer let the chance to her students to choose any articles they would like to translate from the Spanish Wikipedia to the Arabic Wikipedia or working on articles about history. They already have chosen some articles to translate with the target of nominating them to be a featured and good articles.

Most of students worked on articles about different topics like history, writers, actors, history of food and drink, mayan literature, islam and politics, etc. This course itself achieved an exceptional record of Wikipedia Education program excellent content and the best term ever in the history of WEP in Egypt in general and in the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University in specific. Walaa has held 2 online webinars to follow up with her students in addition to the workshops held at the campus. Regarding numbers, 38 students joined this course, of which 35 are female and 3 are male students. They worked on 1748 articles adding more than 12,282,943 million bytes to the article namespace on the Arabic Wikipedia, with the help of the online ambassador, who also participated as a student.

See the course page of this group on the Arabic Wikipedia here.

Full statistics of WEP in Egypt the first term in 2012 till the seventh term in 2015 which include numbers of created articles, featured and good articles, featured portals and lists.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt here.

Norwegian Masters students in History and Archeology twists their brains on Wikipedia

By Jorid Martinsen (Wikimedia Norge)

Jorid Martinsen teaching students at the University of Oslo about Wikipedia.

Snippet: This fall masters students in History and Archeology at the University of Oslo take on the task of Wikipedia editing as one of the main parts in a subject on communication of History.

The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest higher education institution, and it is the first time Wikimedia Norway collaborates with this University in forming and using Wikipedia editing as a integrated part of higher education. The collaboration started by Wikimedia Norway contacting assistant professor John McNicol, who already had gotten some media attention on his eagerness to make students skilled in knowledge sharing.

Starting off with a two hour lecture on the secret world of Wikipedia and a two hour editing workshop in mid-September, and in October the students will evaluate the life of their articles. Has there been many additional edits on their articles? Discussions? Request to delete everything? For Wikimedia Norge it is fun to see the students both engaging in Wikipedia editing and using the ways of Wikipedia to discuss how knowledge is formed.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Norway here.

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This Month in Education: [March 2016]


We apologize for an earlier distribution that mistakenly took on the older content. We hope you enjoy the newest issue of the newsletter we are sharing now.--Sailesh Patnaik (Distribution leader) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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AN/I input request

Hi, There is an AN/I in which my attempts to get admin involvement at [WP:Brian Martin (social scientist)] are being portrayed as disruption. I see that you edited at Brian Martin. [1] Well actually I see you've edited a lot more than that one.

Will you please post your evaluation of the article to the ANI/I https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&action=edit&section=32 AN/I:WP:Brian Martin (social scientist) : other editor is feeling stalked/harassed. And is also attacking me. SmithBlue (talk) 10:36, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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A barnstar for you!

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
For The Dresden Files (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Good job. Guy (Help!) 10:03, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice

How to switch between editing environments
Part of the toolbar in the visual editor
Click the [[ ]] to switch to the wikitext editor.
Part of the toolbar in the wikitext editor
Click the pencil icon to switch to the visual editor.

The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.

You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.

There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 April 2016

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William J. Kelly and Lauraglaw

I think that I know the answer to this, and we are both experienced neutral editors (although you have the mop and I don't), but I am asking anyway. It appears that you twice deleted William J. Kelly as the creation of a blocked or banned user. User Lauraglaw has said at the Teahouse (not pinging her on purpose because I have pinged her on her own page), essentially, that it was very important to her to get the above article and to make sure it was neutral and well-sourced, so she hired a paid editor for the purpose. What I am assuming, based on the deletion history (and I can't see the deleted articles), is that the paid editor was already blocked for being a paid editor, and that they created the article twice, each time using a sockpuppet, and each time it was deleted. (We know that articles can only be created by registered users, so it wasn't created logged out, so an article is only created by a blocked or banned user (already blocked or banned) if it was created by a sockpuppet.) Is that correct? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Now the only missing piece, looking at it from my side, is why Lauraglaw found it so important to get the article created that she was willing to pay a paid editor to write it. (You and I know that paying someone to write an article so that it will be neutral and well-sourced is nonsense. Paid editors write non-neutral articles, either obviously non-neutral, or, if they are smart, subtly non-neutral.) I have asked her to make the conflict of interest disclosure. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The account which created the article was a User:LogAntiLog sock, who has been doing paid editing for some time. LogAntiLog was running a sockfarm to prevent his edits from being detected, and then continued to do so after being blocked. He continues to take jobs on some of the freelance websites, and this was presumably one of those. Unfortunately, while I don';t know the situation as to this particular arrangement, a number of blocked and banned editors do this, are I presume that they aren't explaining to their clients what their situation is on Wikipedia.
It looks like the subject is running for Mayor, which might explain his wish to have an article. Although the sourcing on the last one was week, and it might have been tight at AfD (especially as at lease one reference seems to be false, and a few are very questionable), I don't have a problem with a new version if they someone can solve the sourcing issues. - Bilby (talk) 02:32, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Do you know where the subject is running for Mayor of? Presumably it isn't a large city, or they would likely be able to satisfy general notability guidelines with press coverage of their campaign. It also clarifies the statement that they wanted to article to be neutral and well-sourced, which means not what it says, but that they wanted the article to look neutral and well-sourced while being promotional (rather than being such promotional hooey that it would get G11). So it is as I thought, that we have a banned paid editor who is socking. I had not heard of LogAntiLog, but with more than 12,000 sockmasters, I wouldn't know of most of them. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Chicago, I think, although the election seems not to have started yet. There's bit online about them from previous efforts, but not much - it looks like they may have been a bit on the fringe of the elections, and didn't get media attention. Perhaps there will be more this time. I'll look around and see what I can find. - Bilby (talk) 02:37, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Visibility Changes

Is there any simple way to find the number of visibility changes that have been made to a page? Thanks! MarkBernstein (talk) 17:05, 23 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I know of, I'm afraid. Visibility changes are logged, though, so the page log will show them. However, if there's been a lot of visibility changes there is also a lot of protection changes, so the log gets hard to read very quickly. - Bilby (talk) 02:43, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page watcher) This[2] may be that which is sought. There is likely a way to filter to show only the revdels. Not sure if oversights show in the list. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 03:20, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'd like to know whether this includes or excludes Oversight actions, MarkBernstein (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You can look at the log for the page and select the option for "Deletion log" (like this for this page). An admin/CUers can see which rev deletions have been suppressed/oversighted from those which haven't but they need to look at each edit to see. For example, on the original Zoe Quinn article, there are many rev deletions, some of which were later oversighted but not all were. So, yes, the deletion log includes Oversight actions but they are not distinguishable from normal rev deletions to regular admins. So, to know how many edits were oversighted, an editor who have to find an admin/CUer who'd be willing to check for them and give them a number. Also, as far as I can see, an edit that has been suppressed does not reveal which oversighter suppressed it, if that is a concern. There is probably attribution in some Oversight log which is not visible to the rest of us but it doesn't say anything in the page history. Liz Read! Talk! 14:21, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 April 2016

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rss feed of wikimedia.org.au blog broken

Hello,

you have been mentioned on a ticket in phabricator as a person who might be able to help fixing the RSS feeds on blog.wikimedia.org.au. Would you mind taking a look if that's true? Best regards, Mutante (talk) 04:07, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 May 2016

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Your edit

Do you have a copy of the issue? [3] The Master ---)Vote Saxon(--- 13:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou, but yes. Unfortunately it doesn't offer much. - Bilby (talk) 14:04, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of List of role-playing game software for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of role-playing game software is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of role-playing game software until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Ravenswing 20:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shawn McNulty

Shawn McNulty has been recreated. As you previously deleted it only 10 days ago, I thought you might like to be informed.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  04:57, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 17 May 2016

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Page protection question

Hello Bilby, I have just hit undo on a vandal edit on Peter Dutton (again). I noticed you had protected the page so had a look at the help page User access levels but I can't understand how that IP's edit was allowed through. The IP has only made 3 edits, all vandalism. Did the protection not work or am I missing something? Thanks JennyOz (talk) 00:23, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhh, now I see it had expired:) JennyOz (talk) 00:47, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've protected it for another two weeks, but I suspect we'll end up having to cover the full election. Thanks for letting me know - I probably would have missed that. - Bilby (talk) 01:20, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you JennyOz (talk) 01:32, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How-to?

Hello, What's the first thing an editor is supposed to do when they suspect sockpuppets? I don't want to be UNCIVIL by falsely accusing anyone of anything, but I'm getting sick and tired of the absurd personal attacks you're getting at the Wilyman article. I don't even remember when or why I started following that article, but it's driving me up the wall! Anyway, I've never personally initiated a sockpuppet investigation, so I wanted to make sure all my I's are dotted and T's are crossed before moving forward. Thoughts/advice? —PermStrump(talk) 05:35, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is a bit tricky when someone is using IPs, as we still want to respect their privacy by not connecting their IP to their username. I suspect that the editor has been using an IP on and off, but until now it hasn't been a concern, as they didn't use both the IP and their account in the same debate. That appears to have changed. Nevertheless, I'll keep an eye on it and if it becomes any more of a problem it'll be worth doing an SPI, although I was hoping they'd get the point and pull back. I'm probably being overly optimistic, though. I haven't tried a IP-based SPI before, so I'll check to see if there's anything we should know.
Otherwise, I'm not too worried about things - if I'm stupid enough to edit controversial topics, especially ones which have been dominated by one side of the debate, any attempt to make it neutral is going to be seen as being part of the opposition. :) Too many strong opinions and lines in the sand. It makes things difficult, but I think that the article has improved over recent weeks. - Bilby (talk) 15:10, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Haha ok I will follow your lead and try to be more patient. :-P —PermStrump(talk) 15:36, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bilby ! Thanks for taking time to review two of my newest articles on living people. Saw the signs "The neutrality of this article is disputed" and "article appears to have a close connection with its subject". Need your advice on how to improve them. Have no connection, except the general interest in these areas, and hearing about those subjects in news, so used the information from Google to create the articles. Could you please guide me on what needs to be rewritten/restated/removed/added? Didn't have those issues before, so need help. Thanks--L7starlight (talk) 00:56, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 May 2016

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This Month in Education: [June 2016]



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We hope you enjoy the newest issue of the Education Newsletter.--Sailesh Patnaik (Distribution leader) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:53, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 05 June 2016

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The Signpost: 15 June 2016

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COI

I am working on removing promotional content on the pages tagged with COI. Can you please review Patrick Maher (writer) and check if there is still COI? Kavdiamanju (talk) 20:03, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editing News #2—2016

Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with many items

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.

Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.

Recent changes

The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.

The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.

Future changes

The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

July 2016

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Jesse Waugh. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. The Master ---)Vote Saxon(--- 00:43, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I always find it entertaining when someone notifies me about reverting, and then goes of and reverts the material themselves. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 04 July 2016

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The Signpost: 21 July 2016

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Just a thought

You might get less heat if every single edit you made was not sympathetic to Wilyman's fraudulent "science". Drip, drip, drip, constantly watering down criticism and beefing up her special pleading. In as much as Wikipedia has a position on this, it should echo the scientific view, which is that her PhD is drivel. It does not even include an attempt to review the literature to examine whether he her claims of lack of safety are addressed in research within the field. Genuinely, it claims risk, but not only does it not include any reference to papers that directly address the question and find the risk not to exist, it doesn't even acknowledge that such papers might exist. Guy (Help!) 08:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that we have no shortage of people willing to add criticism of Wilyman, but we have had a shortage of people willing to balance this. Unfortunately, that means that my focus has had to be on pulling back the more extreme content. As mentioned before, I have no interest in defending the content of her thesis, but that doesn't mean that we have to surrender NPOV and the requirements of BLP. - Bilby (talk) 10:50, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 04 August 2016

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Beilby Poulden Costello

You have recently deleted the page because it was created by a blocked or banner user. However, the subject of the page is notable as per Wikipedia guidelines. If edited with the right case examples and information, the law consultancy firm can have a page of its own. Becktea (talk) 14:33, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the article was deleted under G5 and the creator was also blocked. I don't understand why. The law firm can have a page, if written properly. Gayatri0704 (talk) 09:22, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The law firm can potentially have a page, yes. But it cannot be created by a blocked editor. If they continue to hire blocked editors to create it, the page will need to be deleted again. That said, it will need to be properly sourced and meet the notability requirements. The previous version would likely have been deleted even if it was not created by a blocked editor. - Bilby (talk) 01:33, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Zaggora

Hi. You previously deleted this article under G5 and also blocked the article's creator. I can't figure out why. A new user (presumably the same person as the one you blocked) created the article again. Can you explain what's going on? Brianga (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article was created by a sock of the paid editor User:Alechkoist. Presumably the new user is also a sock, if only because they claim to be the previous editor under a new account. - Bilby (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Would you like to take it from here, since you have some experience with these users? Brianga (talk) 17:16, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll chase it up. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:34, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies

Sorry, mate. I confused your reversion with the edit summary from Dumuzid's later re-reversion. :( - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. :) - Bilby (talk) 14:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

long time no speak

could you email me please? thanks - need to re-contact JarrahTree 01:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've sent an email to an address I still have, but I'm not sure if it is current. - Bilby (talk) 02:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Tis ok we are in contact JarrahTree 02:40, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 August 2016

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Userfication of Svetha Venkatesh

Would you elaborate on why you moved Svetha Venkatesh to User:Bilby/Svetha Venkatesh? It is highly unusual for someone to userfy a page, not authored by themselves, edited by multiple others, and not as a result of a deletion process. The page needs work, but it can survive in article space, and because it was already there, that is surely the best place for the work to be done. --Worldbruce (talk) 18:29, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It had been deleted under CSD. I disagree with the decision, but need a few hours to make the changes so that it won't just be deleted again if I leave it in mainspace. So I undeleted it and moved it out of mainspace while the article was fixed, so I could move it straight back once I was done. - Bilby (talk) 18:34, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. Since the version restored was from prior to its tagging for CSD, I didn't think to check the deletion log. Thanks for undertaking to fix it up. Worldbruce (talk) 19:07, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No problems. It seems that it wasn't tagged for CSD anyway - just deleted - which is why that diff isn't there. I'm finding some decent sources on her, and her work is certainly impressive, so it shouldn't take long to make sure that the article will be kept. - Bilby (talk) 02:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes

They aren't scare quotes, they are quote marks clarifying that this is attribution to Wilyman and not a statement of fact. It's necessary because, as the article makes out, the PhD is not a work of science, and the "suppression" simply amounts to challenging the quality of the work, which is a perfectly legitimate part of academic discourse. Guy (Help!) 13:00, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You know exactly what you are doing with that edit. You don't need quotes around single words unless you are questioning those words. We don't need to do that. This is a description of her claims, and we don't need to make additional commentary. If you would rather I'll change it to a direct quote and we can drop this thing, but what you are doing does not make the article stronger - it makes it less convincing, not more. - Bilby (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You need quotes if you want to be sure the reader correctly attributes them to the source, rather than understanding them as a factual description of what went on. In this case, it is unambiguously appropriate. This PhD does not, after all, have any legitimate place in scientific discourse, because it is not even a scientific PhD - it describes purported conspiracies, the author has no expertise in the underlying science, neither did the supervisor or the reviewers (other than the one who rejected it and was replaced). Guy (Help!) 16:46, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Again, what you are doing is using quotes around a single word because you want to be clear that you disagree with the us of those words - you do not accept that her thesis is part of a scientific debate, so the quote marks are being used to emphasis this. You are saying exactly why, and using the quotes as your own commentary withing the article. We have the full quote so it is a non-issue now. - Bilby (talk) 21:50, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, I am using quotes in the way I was taught at school. This is absolutely standard usage. It's also used journalistically to remind the user that a claim emanates from the parties being discussed, and is not the settled view of the writer. There's nothing wrong with it Guy (Help!) 22:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You have outlined why with your comments - "it describes purported conspiracies, the author has no expertise in the underlying science, neither did the supervisor or the reviewers", "the PhD is not a work of science, and the "suppression" simply amounts to challenging the quality of the work, which is a perfectly legitimate part of academic discourse", "this PhD is not part of scientific debate (it includes no actual science) and criticism is not suppression". It is a non-issue now, so let's drop it, but you have been clear on your reasoning each time. - Bilby (talk) 22:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Have you read the article? All this is clear from it and based on the sources we cite. It is not part of scientific discourse, it has no actual science in it. It's a social science document discussing vaccine policy, but includes so many inaccuracies and omissions that it's unlikely to form part of that debate either. Only Wilyman thinks it's science. Guy (Help!) 11:25, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
{edit - misread what you meant by article} It doesn't really matter, as this issue is moot as we're using a longer quote. It seemed like the best fix. - Bilby (talk) 11:35, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in Education: [September 2016]


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We hope you enjoy the newest issue of the Education Newsletter.-- Sailesh Patnaik using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 06 September 2016

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Paolo Petricelli article

I saw your tag and re-read the article and I must say that I see your point. I have re-edited the article and feel that its much better now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Petrocelli Jbmalone (talk) 16:28, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's going on?

@JzG: An individual contacted Wikimedia to inquire about some material that had been removed. I checked to see that it was removed by Bilby and suggested that they leave the query on their talk page, which was done but you removed it. What's going on?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:33, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The individual is aksing about deletion of an article. The user who created the article is blocked. The IP that left the comment is clearly the same person, so is evading a block. I guess they forgot to mention they were blocked? Guy (Help!) 21:14, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

27century

Hi there! I'm a non-admin SPI clerk, and doing cleanup on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/27century just now I noticed your comment about blocking "other accounts" on their talk page. I assume that you ended up there from COIN, based on your note that you were not going to block 27century, but via SPI they have been blocked (by Vanjagenije) for a week for violations of the sockpuppetry and copyright policies. I'm just leaving a note here to make sure everyone involved is on the same page. Also, can you disclose the other accounts you blocked so that we can add them to the SPI case? Thanks. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:44, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Bilby. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

  • Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
  • A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
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The Kids Menu

Hi Bilby, I noticed that you deleted the article for a documentary film entitled The Kids Menu because it was created by a user who was blocked. I'm interested in recreating the article as it does seem to have quite a few verifiable sources but I wanted to ask whether there were any other issues with the article before I can go ahead and re-draft (and re-publish) it to avoid any conflict later on. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 06:48, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't really look too deeply into the content - my main issue was the problem caused by the article being created by a blocked/banned editor. I presume from this that you have taken the contract? I don't have any specific problem with that, so long as the Terms of Use are met. - Bilby (talk) 12:09, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Cheers for your reply. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 21:44, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 September 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gordon Smith

I don't understand the most recent rewording. The NYT source specifically states one reason for his vote was the missionary expansion. Why did you separate the two concepts when the source does not? Please help me understand. Tripleahg (talk) 05:50, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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