User talk:RileyBugz

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by RileyBugz (talk | contribs) at 23:28, 9 February 2021 (→‎QAI: r). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hello!
Experienced editors can answer questions on my talk page, but only if they are nice!

RfC at IPA/English

Hi, I am quite concerned by your comments here. Getting past the slippery use of the word "consensus" where there is merely a majority, your characterization of the proposal seems to indicate that you don't understand what the proposal actually was. You might want to reread the proposal and the discussion (particularly my comments that outline the confusion I'm sure a number of other contributors had as well) and revise your wording. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 00:07, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I accurately characterized the sentence "To accommodate this, should the key and template allow /ɜː/ to appear solely without /r/?", which is what the proposal is about. I'm assuming that you are talking about my characterization fo the opposes; I stand by that, because it seemed to me like two of the opposes were mainly focused on it, and the other one (besides your own) focusing both on its validity as a diaphoneme and on what I characterized as the viewpoint of the opposes. Your viewpoint, at least to me, seems to be very similar, but I can't find much justification to close it in your favour, because there have been example from dictionaries using the diaphoneme discussed. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 00:26, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
While your explanation is enlightening, you're responding to a strawman. I'm not asking for a readjudication. I'm asking for a reword on what the proposal actually was. This is what I meant when I said, "don't understand what the proposal actually was" (you'll note there is nothing in what I said about your characterization of the opposition). This is important because, IMHO, the proposal was so poorly worded that I suspect (based on people's comments) there were varying interpretations from both sides. I'd at least like the closing admin to get it right.
If you oversimplify the matter to allowing /ɜː/ instead of /ɜːr/ in some cases, I could accept that. But you stated that the proposal was to do this "in words the /r/ should not be pronounced no matter if one uses a rhotic or non-rhotic dialect." That would mean that /ɜː/ would be used to represent pronunciations that include American pronunciations. That's not what was proposed. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:00, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Would adding "/subdialect" be ok for you? RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 17:21, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That would not address my concern. If you want my input on specific wording, I would be satisfied with "allow /ɜː/ to appear solely without /r/ for certain words." It's generic and doesn't cover the specific instances/words, but it wouldn't be wrong. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 18:55, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've changed it to this: "The consensus is to allow the use of /ɜː/ instead of /ɜːr/ in words where the /r/ should not be pronounced." RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 19:35, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think that works. Thank you. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 01:15, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning Revert of MeToo Movement

Hey,

Why did you revert my edit? It was neutral especially considering how the page before I got there was riped with uninformed propaganda on this issue of what this movement really is. My edits provided a legal neutral point of view which also kept in tact what was there before. For now, I reverted your edits. You're in violation of Wikipedia guidelines. Roman J. Lane, Esquire (talk) 22:54, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd disagree. The sentence "It first spread virally in October 2017 as a hashtag on Twitter with truly unknown aims from unverifiable and non-political sources to bring awareness on a possible widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace" isn't exactly neutral. I mean, we clearly know its aims: to bring awareness to sexual assault and harassment. And ""It was also a propagandist media campaign against American film producer, Harvey Weinstein, among others in the entertainment industry regarding anonymous and non-anonymous sexual misconduct allegations"?! C'est absurde! RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:00, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Did you check the sources for which was next to that sentence? Okay, okay, okay. Maybe, you could say, "from diverse perspectives to bring awareness," instead. And it was also a media campaign against Weinstein. Read the New York Times. This is why it blew up the way it did to get him to step down from his company. Roman J. Lane, Esquire (talk) 23:11, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Uhhh... I don't have to check the sources, because while you sorta tell the facts, you twist them. For example, "propagandist media campaign" is non-neutral no matter what the sources tell you. And "from diverse perspectives to bring awareness" also seems pretty twisted to me. Also, news stories can be full of bias (looking at you, Fox News and CNN), and you shouldn't let that bias spill in to the article. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:27, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Your revert edits are counter productive, pal. Roman J. Lane, Esquire (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 1

Newsletter • July 2018

Welcome to the first issue of the Timeless newsletter! This issue is being sent or forwarded to everyone who has at some point expressed an interest in the project, give or take, as well as a couple of other potentially relevant pages, so if you would like to continue (or start) receiving this newsletter directly, please sign up for further updates on the meta page.


The news:

The Timeless grant has been selected for funding, and the project is now underway!

While I've had a somewhat slow start working on the project for health reasons, I'm pleased to announce that everything described in the proposal is now either happening, or on its way to happening.

Current progress:

  • The project now has a hub on Meta to serve as a directory for the various related pages, workboards, and local discussions and help pages. It's probably incomplete, especially with regards to specific language projects that might have local pages for Timeless, so if you know of others, please add them!
  • Outreach: I've been talking to various people and groups directly about skinning, desktop/mobile interfaces, project management, specific component support, and other things, and have begun to compile a very shoddy list of skinning problems and random issues on mw.org based on this. Some of this may inform the direction of this project, or possibly this project will result in building a more proper list that can then be used for other things. We shall see.
  • Some development - task triage, code review, bug fixing, and various rabbit holes involving ...overflows.

General plan for the future:

  • Triage the rest of the workboard.
  • Catch up with all the talkpages and other bug reports that have been left various other places that are not the project workboard
  • Do all the bug fixes/features/other things!
  • Some proposals aimed at Commons and Wikisource in particular (maybe, we'll see)

Essentially, the grant as written shall be carried out. This was the plan, and remains the plan. Timelines remain fuzzy, but while there have been some initial delays, I don't particularly expect the timeline for project as a whole to change a whole lot.

Also, for anyone at Wikimania right now: I am also at Wikimania. Come talk to me in person!

Thank you all for your interest and support thus far!

-— Isarra 12:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This issue has been sent regardless of signup status. To receive future issues please add yourself on the massmessage list.

Pornography industry source for false revision

Hello, I see you have protected the me too movement article page with a revision based on the lack of a source. The casting couch is a pornographic genre and is battled in books such as this which actually is also a source. Please don’t tamper with that point because people need to know about sources like this one:

https://books.google.com/books?id=6cTtz5hWOUAC&pg=PA34&dq=Casting+couch+pornography&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOqf6IwK7cAhUPB3wKHTtCBvAQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=Casting%20couch%20pornography&f=false

Please fix it. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100E:B047:240E:AD12:37C7:8DD1:3001 (talk) 20:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to fix it, because I'm not very interested in the article. If you do cite that source, and demonstrate that it has a direct connection (supported by reliable sources) to the Me Too movement, then I will not revert the edit. But, since my area of interest is biology, I don't want to put significant effort into the Me Too article, unless I want to. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 20:28, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, also, I can't protect things; I can only request it, since I'm not an admin. See this for how to cite your sources. I personally find this website useful for creating citations from google books urls. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 20:30, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I just realized it is semi-protected. I'll request that semi-protection to be lifted and replaced with pending changes protection, which is basically where new users and IPs can edit the page, but a pending changes reviewer (like me) must review them first. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 20:44, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nomination of Neocalanus cristatus

Hello! Your submission of Neocalanus cristatus at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:28, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Metridia longa

On 29 July 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Metridia longa, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the copepod Metridia longa cannibalizes up to 85% of its eggs? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Metridia longa. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Metridia longa), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:03, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)

Hello RileyBugz, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules
  • New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
  • Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
  • Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.
Editathons
  • Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
The Signpost
  • The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nomination of Neocalanus plumchrus

Hello! Your submission of Neocalanus plumchrus at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:45, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you ...

... for improving article quality in July! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:41, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: Thanks for the thanks! The picture reminds me a bit of the Tour de France; they frequently go up beautiful mountains like that one. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 21:42, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... and for August! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:35, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for today's Red-billed tropicbird! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:43, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome! And thank you so much for that message; it helped lift my spirits a lot. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 15:53, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... and for improvements in September! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for today's tree swallow, "about an American swallow in the genus Tachycineta. There has been a lot of research done on it (at least compared to most of the other birds I have worked on), with some even considering it a model organism."! - I have a FAC open, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:57, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... and for improvements in October! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
... and in November! - I hope I'll get to your FAC. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:55, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).

Administrator changes

added Sro23
readded KaisaLYmblanter

Guideline and policy news

  • After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
  • Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Neocalanus cristatus

On 7 August 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Neocalanus cristatus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Neocalanus cristatus nauplii feed off their yolks during the 40 days it may take them to ascend to the surface of the sea? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Neocalanus cristatus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Neocalanus cristatus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Neocalanus plumchrus

On 9 August 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Neocalanus plumchrus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Neocalanus plumchrus is able to uptake dissolved glucose directly from seawater despite its exoskeleton? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Neocalanus plumchrus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Neocalanus plumchrus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Alex Shih (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nomination of Pseudocalanus newmani

Hello! Your submission of Pseudocalanus newmani at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 20:27, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Pseudocalanus newmani

On 24 August 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Pseudocalanus newmani, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the preferred food of the copepod Pseudocalanus newmani includes diatoms of the genus Thalassiosira, which can be toxic to its young? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Pseudocalanus newmani. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Pseudocalanus newmani), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Alex Shih (talk) 00:01, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 2

The second issue of the Timeless newsletter is out.

The news: Themes are coming to Timeless! Your infobox and navbox templates in particular are probably going to look absolutely horrible in the new built-in night mode.


For more information, background, plans and progress updates, please see the full issue on Meta, complete with a ridiculous list of phabricator task links, gratuitous mention of other skins, and me complaining about the current state of MediaWiki skinning in general.

-— Isarra 01:48, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed AsterionCrisco 1492KFKudpungLizRandykittySpartaz
renamed Optimist on the runVoice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

added AmorymeltzerMr. StradivariusMusikAnimalMSGJTheDJXaosflux

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
  • Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
  • Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tree swallow scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Tree swallow article has been scheduled as today's featured article for October 6, 2018. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 6, 2018, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1100 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:07, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jimfbleak: Thank you! I have edited the main page text, just to include a sentence of extra-pair paternity. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 15:23, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018

Hello RileyBugz, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news
As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.
Other
Moving to Draft and Page Mover
  • Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
  • If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
  • Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
  • The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
  • The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.
List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

  • Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
  • In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
  • MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
  • User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
  • User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
  • User:Primefac/revdel.js(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
  • User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link.
  • User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.
  • User:Evad37/rater.js(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC) [reply]

Writing

Looking forward to your development. You could always run through a few of my writing exercises. Tony (talk) 02:02, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tony1: Thank you! I've started to look at them (I found them in your subpages). Hopefully that helps my writing improve. :) RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 10:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your GA nomination of Killdeer

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Killdeer you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:41, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your GA nomination of Killdeer

The article Killdeer you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Killdeer for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:41, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

added JustlettersandnumbersL235
removed BgwhiteHorsePunchKidJ GrebKillerChihuahuaRami RWinhunter

Interface administrator changes

added Cyberpower678Deryck ChanOshwahPharosRagesossRitchie333

Oversight changes

removed Guerillero NativeForeigner SnowolfXeno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
  • The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
  • Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
  • The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
  • Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
  • Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello RileyBugz, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal
Project updates
  • ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
  • There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.
New scripts

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please rewrite the history section of The Des Moines Register

  • Hi, I have a request. As my English is not my native language. I asked you to edit The Des Moines Register. The history section seems to have some bugs. Please check and use the resource[1] and rewrite.
  1. I can't find the newspaper called "the Iowa Citizen" in Iowa. I guess this is a bug and I deleted it not to make readers confused.
  2. The Iowa Stateman seems a newspaper name from the Iowa star since 1854. But the Iowa State Register is unable to be found.
  3. In 1857, The Statesman becomes the Iowa State Journal. Is Iowa State Journal a newspaper name or has it grew up as a state-scale publication?
  4. In 1860, it shows The weekly Citizen. I can't find the newspaper, too. So I removed it.
  5. In 1870, Iowa State Leader and Iowa Daily State Register are rival. I guess that's another newspaper who fight with each other in Iowa.
  6. Des Moines Tribune, when was this newspaper created. Delete it or reader would get confused.
Also, I will rewrite a small part in the beginning history. If you see what I was doing. You go on to rewrite.

--Beta Lohman (talk) 23:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
  • A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
  • The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
  • The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello RileyBugz,

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
  • Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.
If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.
We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.
With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, RileyBugz. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Asking about the title

  • Hi, I was intending to create an article, considering the title as List of banned films in the Russian Federation. Is it correct? --Beta Lohman (talk) 10:24, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Beta Lohman: Hi! I'd say "List of films banned in the Russian Federation" would be better. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 01:28, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

readded Al Ameer sonRandykittySpartaz
removed BosonDaniel J. LeivickEfeEsanchez7587Fred BauderGarzoMartijn HoekstraOrangemike

Interface administrator changes

removedDeryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
  • A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
  • A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
  • A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
  • Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018

Hello RileyBugz,

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.


Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.


Training video

Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.


If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 3

Newsletter • December 2018

Welcome to the third issue of the Timeless newsletter, complete with a somewhat dubious explanation of where I've been all this time.

Somewhat dubious explanation of where I've been all this time:

I suffered a rather bad concussion in October, which knocked me pretty much completely out of commission through November, and I'm still recovering even now. One person = bus factor of one, even though it wasn't actually a bus but a very short flight of stairs.

Updates:

  • Random bugs have been fixed. More bugs have been found. For a full list of horrors, see the workboard.
  • Implementing themes (T131991: the dark/night mode and winter variants of the skin) has proven far more complicated than initially thought, lacking either the extension, or preferably, some core support for this functionality. Thus:
    • I have submitted a Request for Comment proposing to merge Extension:Theme into core - this will enable skins to specify style variants as distinct options for users to select in their preferences by letting the skin specify the styles separately for each, a much neater way of implementing this than some of the existing hacks.
    • Jack Phoenix has already submitted a patch to do this. We simply need the buy-in and consensus to merge it, and to resolve whatever issues may arise from this wider review.

Comments on the RfC (MediaWiki wiki RfC page, task) or bugs, or further reports, are always appreciated.

Until next time, hopefully with no further injuries,

-— Isarra 22:35, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Austral season's greetings

Austral season's greetings
Tuck into this! We've made about three of these in the last few days for various festivities. Supermarkets are stuffed with cheap berries. Season's greetings! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:41, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Casliber: Thanks, and happy holidays to you! Hope you enjoyed all of the food. :) RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

2019


Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht

Happy 2019 -

begin it with music and memories

Thank you for your project help last year! - When would you like Killdeer to go for TFA? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:49, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please check out "Happy" once more, for a smile, and sharing (a Nobel Peace Prize), and resolutions. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:33, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Now I'm listening to the whole of Bach's Christmas Oratorio; thank you for the encouragement! As for the killdeer, I don't have much preference as to when it would go for TFA. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 16:49, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for article improvements in February! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:31, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Killdeer --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:36, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

March
... with thanks from QAI

... and for March! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:27, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 00:43, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Guideline and policy news

  1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
  2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
  3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

Technical news

  • Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
  1. At least 8 characters in length
  2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
  3. Different from their username
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
  • Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
  • {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
  • Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oops

Hey Riley,

Sorry about rolling back a reply on your talk page, I was going through my watchlist in multi-tab mode and clicked the wrong button.

Best,

SITH (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine. :) RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:25, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Administrator changes

added EnterpriseyJJMC89
readded BorgQueen
removed Harro5Jenks24GraftR. Baley

Interface administrator changes

removedEnterprisey

Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
  • Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
  • A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

  • A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

  • Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
  • A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
    • paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
    • checkuser-en-wp@wikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Killdeer scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Killdeer article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 3, 2019. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 3, 2019, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

We also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors on the day before and the day of this TFA. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:52, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary

Precious
Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:24, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Jimfbleak and Gerda Arendt: Thank you both (Gerda Arendt especially, for nominating the article for TFA)!
@Jimfbleak and Gerda Arendt: Re-ping since I forgot to add my sig. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 00:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
April
... with thanks from QAI
Thank you for the article "about a (primarily) North American shorebird. It is found both inland and on the coast."! - Nice to share the page, with Trois Chansons, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:29, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Three years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:03, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please participate to the talk pages consultation

Hello

Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As a Teahouse host, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for people that can report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate in the consultation, and invite new users to join too.

We thank you in advance for your participation and your help.

Trizek (WMF), 08:37, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please participate to the talk pages consultation - link update

The previous message about the talk pages consultation has a broken link.

The correct link has been misinterpreted by the MassMessage tool. Please use the following link: Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019.

Sorry for the inconvenience, Trizek (WMF), 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello RileyBugz,

News
Discussions of interest
  • Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
  • {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
  • A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.
Reminders
  • NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
NPP Tools Report
  • Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
  • copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
  • The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.


Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
  • As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

  • In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
  • Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • April 2019

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Timeless newsletter, with a cat! Or maybe not.

Un chat qui miaule???

It's true! The angry cat, a fundamental part of Timeless, has resulted in confusion and bug reports all across the projects and phabricator. And now it shall be immortalised forever in the new, shiny Timeless logo.

Updates:

After putting off the project for three months because I got hit in the head with a flight of stairs, and then putting off the project for another two months while working out what the status of the grant was, I have now put off the project even more in order to focus on my other project for a bit. So progress lately has been a bit whims-based as a result:

Radar:

  • The French Wiktionary voted to set Timeless as their default skin, with results possibly as you might expect: I ran away and hid, and the WMF said no. A bit of discussion later and we largely agreed that all else aside, this is a bit of a branding issue, but we love the enthusiasm! Also the bug reports that inevitably come out of such a discussion. I'm still working on properly going through those.
  • Theme support is still stuck in limbo, but now we have another skinning RfC. tl;dr, we wanna replace the entire skinning system, and Skizzerz'll write a prototype later.

I will be fully resuming work on Timeless next week, or maybe the week after, depending on what madness (or illness) comes out of the Hackathon in Prague. Please come talk to me there to discuss strategy!

-— Isarra 16:51, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello RileyBugz,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

  • Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
  • Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News
Discussions of interest

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250


Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

removed AndonicConsumed CrustaceanEnigmamanEuryalusEWS23HereToHelpNv8200paPeripitusStringTheory11Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

removed Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
  • An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
  • An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

  • The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
  • Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:48, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you ...

June
cornflowers
... with thanks from QAI

... for article improvements in June! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello RileyBugz,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.


Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

removed 28bytesAd OrientemAnsh666BeeblebroxBoing! said ZebedeeBU Rob13Dennis BrownDeorDoRDFloquenbeam1Flyguy649Fram2GadfiumGB fanJonathunderKusmaLectonarMoinkMSGJNickOd MishehuRamaSpartazSyrthissTheDJWJBscribe
1Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
2Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Guideline and policy news

  • In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

Technical news

  • The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you ...

July
... with thanks from QAI

... for improving article quality in July! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:30, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
  • The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

    Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

August
red admiral
... with thanks from QAI

... for improving articles in August! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:30, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • August 2019

Welcome to the fifth and final issue of the Timeless newsletter!

Progress was made. True story.

I am happy to announce that after about a year, this delightful project in which absolutely nothing has gone according to plan is coming to a close. Or at least, the grant-funded portion is. Which means we will now be resuming our regular schedule of random whims-based development, you probably won't notice any difference whatsoever unless you use MonoBook, and there's a report.

What's new from the past two months:

A lot less than we'd hoped, frankly. We:

We also wound up with:

  • Patches resulting in RelatedArticles working in MonoBook, and FlaggedRevisions showing up in Minerva, unless someone actually managed to turn that off as well. (Blame T181242.) It's possible we went a little overboard with the whole 'let's close all the tasks!' sprint.
  • An unfortunate repeated discovery that themes (the Night/Winter variants I keep insisting will happen at some point) are still pretty far off on the horizon. Um.
  • Possibly a quite a few more bugs coming your way. This month, and especially the past week, have been a bit of a mess, development-wise. While hopefully none of the worse issues make it to production, please keep the reports coming for whatever you do find and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can. Y'all've been amazing about this, and it's really appreciated.

And I guess that's that. I'm really bad at reporting, and this is a report. For the purposes of the grant, this was a requirement, but do you want me to keep trying to send these out?

-— Isarra 18:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

added BradvChetsfordIzno
readded FloquenbeamLectonar
removed DESiegelJake WartenbergRjanagTopbanana

CheckUser changes

removed CallaneccLFaraoneThere'sNoTime

Oversight changes

removed CallaneccFoxHJ MitchellLFaraoneThere'sNoTime

Technical news

  • Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
  • The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019

Hello RileyBugz,

Backlog

Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Coordinator

A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.

This month's refresher course

Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.

Paid editing

Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
  • Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
  • Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
  • A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools

Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.

Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.

Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.

DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Topic Ban Request: TakuyaMurata. Hasteur (talk) 23:54, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

  • As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals regarding AfC & NPP

You are invited to comment at discussion currently taking place at Relationship of Articles for Creation and New Page Reviewer for pre-opinion on the combined functions of Articles for Creation (AfC) and New Page Review (NPR).


This mass message invitation is being sent to subscribed members of the work group at the project The future of NPP and AfC. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello RileyBugz,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 818 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.


To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Guideline and policy news

  • A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Giving thanks

Thanksgiving
Cassia javanica, Torremolinos
... with thanks from QAI

Happy Thanksgiving! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:31, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: Thank you! I hope that you had a good Thanksgiving :). RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 16:02, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

added EvergreenFirToBeFree
removed AkhilleusAthaenaraJohn VandenbergMelchoirMichaelQSchmidtNeilNYoungamerican😂

CheckUser changes

readded Beeblebrox
removed Deskana

Interface administrator changes

readded Evad37

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Golden swallow scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the golden swallow article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 30, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 30, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted on or after October 1, 2018, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:53, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! Thanks! RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 17:24, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mislabeled pic

Hi Riley: While reading the Black-throated Loon article recently (nice job, BTW), I saw that the bottom picture (the one of the adult with a chick) was incorrectly identified. Actually, it WAS a Black-throated Loon back in 1972 when that picture was taken, but it's now (since the split) a Pacific Loon. The rounder, frosty-looking head, lack of a white patch at the waterline and shorter, stubbier bill help to distinguish it from the Black-throated (and were all morphological differences that helped suggest the split). Pacific Loons are very common in much of Alaska. Black-throated Loons are also present, but only in small numbers, and only in a few spots in the state. MeegsC (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MeegsC: Thank you (both for noticing the mislabeled pic and for the compliment)! I looked on Flickr to see if I could find a replacement, but I could not, so I removed the picture. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 17:23, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you ...

Happy 2020!
missing Brian ...

... for improving article quality in December! There's a peer review open for Clara Schumann and a FAC for Jauchzet, frohlocket!, DYK? We miss Brian who would have helped. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Now that I'm on winter break, I'm hoping to do a bit more editing. It is sad to hear about Brian. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 00:00, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you today for the beautiful Red-tailed tropicbird! - Look at the Happy link when it comes, please, working on the decoration. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:16, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days
Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 Rosguill (talk) 47,395 Patrol Page Curation
2 Onel5969 (talk) 41,883 Patrol Page Curation
3 JTtheOG (talk) 11,493 Patrol Page Curation
4 Arthistorian1977 (talk) 5,562 Patrol Page Curation
5 DannyS712 (talk) 4,866 Patrol Page Curation
6 CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) 3,995 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 3,812 Patrol Page Curation
8 Boleyn (talk) 3,655 Patrol Page Curation
9 Ymblanter (talk) 3,553 Patrol Page Curation
10 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 3,522 Patrol Page Curation

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:11, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers

Merry Christmas, RileyBugz!
Or Season's Greetings or Happy Winter Solstice! As the year winds to a close, I would like to take a moment to recognize your hard work and offer heartfelt gratitude for all you do for Wikipedia. May this Holiday Season bring you nothing but joy, health and prosperity.Onel5969 TT me 23:36, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
[reply]
@Onel5969: Thank you very much! I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season also, and I thank you for your hard work doing new page patrolling. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:54, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you ...

January
... with thanks from QAI

... for improving articles in January! Today - 20 in 2020 - is a birthday, she is pictured on the lower choir pic, enjoy listening. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you today for the Golden swallow, "about a swallow in the genus Tachycineta. It isn't very well studied, like, I daresay, most Caribbean birds"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! And I listened to about half of the choir broadcast; it was very nice :) RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 18:17, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
  • The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [2]

Arbitration

  • Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous



Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello RileyBugz,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources
Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Your WikiJSci nomination of Tree swallow

Hello, The Tree swallow article has been imported to v:WikiJournal_Preprints/Tree swallow. Whenever you're ready to proceed:

  1. Fill in the "article info" template at the top (often easiest in VisualEditor)
  2. When you're ready to submit it, just fill in the authorship declaration form

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 23:50, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on the Draft namrespace

As a user who has expressed an interest in the Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC, you are invited to join a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Rethinking_draft_space. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
  • A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

  • Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous



Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Easter

or: the resurrection of loving-kindness --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:51, 12 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Earth day!

Happy Earth Day!

Hello! Wishing you a Happy Earth day on the behalf of WikiProject Environment and WikiProject Ecology.


When man tries to fight nature, he invariably loses. Nature invariably wins. It is only when man is wise enough to live with nature that he really gets anywhere.

--Elmer T. Peterson





Sent by Path slopu (talk) on behalf of WikiProject Environment and its related projects. © Copyleft 2020
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:51, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

removed GnangarraKaisershatnerMalcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

readded Callanecc

Oversight changes

readded HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Hi RileyBugz, you are receiving this notice because you are listed as an active Articles for Creation reviewer.

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

To end on a positive note, the backlog has dropped below 1,500, so thanks for all of the hard work some of you have been putting into the AfC process!

Sent to all Articles for Creation reviewers as a one-time notice. To opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Regards, Sam-2727 (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

added CaptainEekCreffettCwmhiraeth
removed Anna FrodesiakBuckshot06RonhjonesSQL

CheckUser changes

removed SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

  • A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello RileyBugz,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources
  • A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
  • Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
  • A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
  • Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Administrator changes

added Red Phoenix
readded EuryalusSQL
removed JujutacularMonty845RettetastMadchester

Oversight changes

readded GB fan
removed KeeganOpabinia regalisPremeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tree swallow peer review

Hello, the first peer review comment has been posted and ready for you to revise the article. Thanks. OhanaUnitedTalk page 00:45, 9 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2020).

Administrator changes

added Eddie891
removed AngelaJcw69Just ChillingPhilg88Viajero

CheckUser changes

readded SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:56, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

added AjpolinoLuK3
readded Jackmcbarn
removed Ad OrientemHarejLidLomnMentoz86Oliver PereiraXJaM
renamed There'sNoTimeTheresNoTime

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Technical news

Arbitration

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for December 23, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 23, 2020. Congratulations on your work!—Wehwalt (talk) 13:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you today for the article "about a stork found in the Americas"! - Miss you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:45, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

Administrator changes

removed AndrwscAnetodeGoldenRingJzGLinguistAtLargeNehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

added Izno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello RileyBugz,

A chart of the 2020 New Page Patrol Queue

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 DannyS712 bot III (talk) 67,552 Patrol Page Curation
2 Rosguill (talk) 63,821 Patrol Page Curation
3 John B123 (talk) 21,697 Patrol Page Curation
4 Onel5969 (talk) 19,879 Patrol Page Curation
5 JTtheOG (talk) 12,901 Patrol Page Curation
6 Mcampany (talk) 9,103 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 6,401 Patrol Page Curation
8 Mccapra (talk) 4,918 Patrol Page Curation
9 Hughesdarren (talk) 4,520 Patrol Page Curation
10 Utopes (talk) 3,958 Patrol Page Curation
Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

You have been pruned from a list

Hi RileyBugz! You're receiving this notification because you were previously listed on the AFC's participants list, but you haven't made any edits to the English Wikipedia in over 6 months. Because of your inactivity, you have been removed from the list. If you would like to regain access to the AFCH script, you can do so at any time by visiting WT:AFCP. Thank you for your work at AFC, and if you start editing Wikipedia again we hope you will rejoin us. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 18:01, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

QAI

I tried to give 2021 a good start by updating the QAI project topics. Will you return? - For moar private "happy new year" see here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:39, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In case of interest: Jerome Kohl, remembered in friendship --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:12, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: Ah thanks! I'm going to be doing some copyediting work for a zine soon, so I'll use this to get back in the swing of things. RileyBugz私に叫ぼう私の編集 23:28, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]