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Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 06:46, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm still lurking around, just terribly busy in real life right now. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:47, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

A decline at AFC

I know this is ancient history, but some of these old declines are just coming to light as a result of CSD G13 reviews. Just in case you are still declining articles on the same basis, I would like to point out to you that the decline reason given in this decline is invalid. Formatting of references is not grounds to decline an article (it would not be grounds for deletion at AFD). Only the content and quality of references is relevant. SpinningSpark 00:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I only placed the article on hold. Looks like a different user actually declined the article. If my memory is correct, in 2010, it was recommended (or at least regular practice) that articles without inline citations be placed on hold, especially if some of the references are behind paywalls or in print (as was in this case, it seems). The problem is that AfC reviewers don't know which references support what content in the article, so simply moving such an article, particularly a BLP, into mainspace wasn't generally acceptable under the 2010 guidelines as I remember them. I haven't been active at all in the past year, and I know that AfC has undergone quite a few changes since then, so feel free to do whatever with the article if policies now differ. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 07:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The article has been reset so that it gets a fresh review. The reason I am following up these old declines is that I believe the AFC project has played a big part in driving away new editors. Hundreds of thousands of pages have now been put up for G13 deletion. In reviewing them, I find that I am prepared to move at least one in ten of them to mainspace. There may well be a lot more that could be rescued; some kinds of articles I just pass over and leave to others to deal with. That just has to mean that tens of thousands of new editors have been blown off by AFC and in most cases are lost for good.

When there is an article in mainspace where we cannot access the sources, we assume good faith (one of our core policies). This is still the case even at reviews like DYK and GA. FA does a source check but would still not decline on accessibility grounds. AGF has always been a core policy and the AFC reviewing instructions have never said anything about inline citations (I checked back to May 2010). If it was in mainspace we would not speedy delete or AFD on those grounds. We might template it, but that option is open to AFC reviewers also. There is no excuse, and never has been an excuse, for AFC behaving differently. SpinningSpark 09:28, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

My experience at AfC—and I'm speaking solely for myself during the time I was active there—does not match your characterization of the project. I was also active in the AfC IRC channel, which, at least during that time, functioned as a sort of online help desk for new users having trouble with AfC. My experience was that many of the articles submitted were by users who never seemed to check back to see if there were problems that needed to be addressed. Many others were users whose sole goal was to have a particular article created and had no intentions of "joining" Wikipedia, i.e., PR people and the like. I don't consider these users to have been driven away by AfC, merely that they never intended to be regular editors. I also interacted with many users who were genuinely interested in improving their article submissions and who were helped, through AfC, to create mainspace-appropriate article submissions. Probably the majority of these interactions for me occurred in the IRC channel.

My point about the particular article you brought to my attention is not accessibility. I've used plenty of non-online citations in articles to which I've contributed, and that's by no means a problem. The main issue is that, guidelines aside, AfC reviewers generally did not accept BLPs without quality inline citations because a list of references doesn't necessarily support all or most or even more than one assertion in an article. I could have a list of thirty sources at the bottom of an article about John Seigenthaler pertaining only to his journalism career but twenty paragraphs in the article about how he killed a president—just because there's a list of sources doesn't mean that all of the material is verifiable. And at AfC, while I was active there, such a situation was grounds to place the article on hold (not generally decline). I'm not of the mindset that AfC existed so we could move poorly sourced articles to mainspace and immediately stick some maintenance templates on them. I also think that AfC was more concerned about quality over quantity, i.e., that even if a subject is notable, that is not an excuse to create an article that doesn't meet the basic criteria of verifiability and slap a template on there so it becomes part of someone else's backlog. So in this regard, I think our opinions differ on how AfC should operate—again, I don't know how it works nowadays, but when I was involved, I recall this as the de facto consensus of how article submissions should be treated. AfC was also a much smaller, specialized operation that didn't have a backlog anywhere close to over a thousand submissions.

Perhaps inline citations was not explicitly mentioned in the AfC guidelines, but it has become the indisputable standard for verifiability in articles these days. WP:CITE says: "A general reference is a citation that supports content, but is not linked to any particular piece of material in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section. They are usually found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source. They may also be listed in more developed articles as a supplement to inline citations." So I don't think that placing an article on hold to ask for inline citations is terribly unreasonable.

/ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Your assistance please

I believe we had a couple of discussions over the Ashley Kirilow article, and what steps I should take, prior to re-introducing to article space an article with changes that addressed the concerns expressed at {{afd}}. I kept updating the userspace draft, until June of last year, when List of cancer victim hoaxes was deleted. At that point I placed a {{db-u1}} on the userspace draft, and took it to another wiki, where I added a couple more updates.

Somehow it escaped my notice that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Change for the Cure closed with a call for a restoration of my recently deleted userspace draft, and a restoration of it to article space, to serve as a target for Change for the cure to be redirected to.

It has a distinct revision history from the original article. So, if you have time, could you graft together the two revision histories?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 01:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, sorry for the very late reply. Life has been rather overbearing in the past weeks. It looks like JohnCD did the histmerge back in January. I'm not currently in a consistent state of activity on here, so you may want to find a different admin for histmerges and such in the future. Regards, /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 08:12, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 January newsletter

The 2014 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with, at time of writing, 138 participants. The is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2010. If you are yet to join the competition, don't worry- the judges have agreed to keep the signups open for a few more days. By a wide margin, our current leader is newcomer Godot13 (submissions), whose set of 14 featured pictures, the first FPs of the competition, was worth 490 points. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:

• 12george1 (submissions) and TropicalAnalystwx13 (submissions) were the first people to score, for the good article Tropical Storm Bret (1981) and its good article review respectively. 12george1 was also the first person to score in 2012 and 2013.
• Sven Manguard (submissions) scored the first ITN points for 2014 North American polar vortex.
• WonderBoy1998 (submissions) scored points for an early good topic, finishing off Wikipedia:Featured topics/She Wolf.
• TheAustinMan (submissions) scored the first bonus points of the competition, for his work on Typhoon Vera.
• Igordebraga (submissions) has scored the highest number of bonus points for a single article, for the high-importance Jurassic Park (film).

Featured articles, featured lists, featured topics and featured portals are yet to play a part in the competition. The judges have removed a number of submissions which were deemed ineligible. Typically, we aim to see work on a project, followed by a nomination, followed by promotion, this year. We apologise for any disappointment caused by our strict enforcement this year; we're aiming to keep the competition as fair as possible.

Wikipedians interested in friendly competition may be interested to take part in The Core Contest; unlike the WikiCup, The Core Contest is not about audited content, but, like the WikiCup, it is about article improvement; specifically, The Core Contest is about contribution to some of Wikipedia's most important article. Of course, any work done for The Core Contest, if it leads to a DYK, GA or FA, can earn WikiCup points.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 19:54, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Matthew Bellamy edit

I'm trying to add Matthew Bellamy's relationship but you won't let me

Marilyn1029 (talk) 05:28, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

In fact @Marilyn1029:, it was me. The edit won't work because Template:Infobox musician doesn't include the parameter "partner". So, it would have nonsense to include a paramenter that won't be displayed. © Tbhotch^™ (en-2.5). 05:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 February newsletter

And so ends the most competitive first round we have ever seen, with 38 points required to qualify for round 2. Last year, 19 points secured a place; before that, 11 (2012) or 8 (2011) were enough. This is both a blessing and a curse. While it shows the vigourous good health of the competition, it also means that we have already lost many worthy competitors. Our top three scorers were:

1. Godot13 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer whose high-quality scans of rare banknotes represent an unusual, interesting and valuable contribution to Wikipedia. Most of Godot's points this round have come from a large set of pictures used in Treasury Note (1890–91).
2. Adam Cuerden (submissions), a WikiCup veteran and a finalist last year, Adam is also a featured picture specialist, focusing on the restoration of historical images. This month's promotions have included a carefully restored set of artist William Russell Flint's work.
3. WikiRedactor (submissions), another WikiCup newcomer. WikiRedactor has claimed points for good article reviews and good articles relating to pop music, many of which were awarded bonus points. Articles include Sky Ferreira, Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus and "Wrecking Ball" (Miley Cyrus song).

Other competitors of note include:

• Hahc21 (submissions), who helped take Thirty Flights of Loving through good article candidates and featured article candidates, claiming the first first featured article of the competition.
• Prism (submissions), who claimed the first featured list of the competition with Natalia Kills discography.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions), who takes the title of the contributor awarded the highest bonus point multiplier (resulting in the highest scoring article) of the competition so far. Her high-importance salamander, now a good article, scored 108 points.

After such a competitive first round, expect the second round to also be fiercely fought. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2, but please do not update your submission page until March (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 00:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

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Tempodivalse [talk] 04:58, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014 March newsletter

A quick update as we are half way through round two of this year's competition. WikiCup newcomer Godot13 (submissions) (Pool E) leads, having produced a massive set of featured pictures for Silver certificate (United States), an article also brought to featured list status. Former finalist Adam Cuerden (submissions) (Pool G) is in second, which he owes mostly to his work with historical images, including a number of images from Urania's Mirror, an article also brought to good status. 2010 champion (Pool C) is third overall, thanks to contributions relating to naval history, including the newly featured Japanese battleship Nagato. Cliftonian (submissions), who currently leads Pool A and is sixth overall, takes the title for the highest scoring individual article of the competition so far, with the top importance featured article Ian Smith.

With 26 people having already scored over 100 points, it is likely that well over 100 points will be needed to secure a place in round 3. Recent years have required 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) and 100 (2010). Remember that only 64 will progress to round 3 at the end of April. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page; if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email), The ed17 (talk • email) and Miyagawa (talk • email) 22:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)