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Captain, what do you think about an ARV for possible UPE on the English Wikipedia? I believe it to be imperative, I know there is COIN and other avenues to report UPE but tbh they aren’t effective in any manner. It appears in the entirety of the English Wikipedia, save for my fellow colleagues at anti spam.. it’s literally just Myself, Timtrent, Praxidicae, TheAafi, & most important;MER-C who is literally our only real defense against unethical practices, what do you think about a proper ARV for possible undeclared Paid editing.Celestina007 (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
I think UPE is one of those "everyone is concerned about this as a problem but only a few are willing to do the grunt work" issues. Copyright is another one of those. I think a discussion on evolving COIN could be productive but I don't know that creating a new forum is going to increase capacity. But I look forward to what the other users pinged might say. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:48, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) I 100% agree with ..."everyone is concerned about this as a problem but only a few are willing to do the grunt work" issues. Copyright is another one of those. Copyright is a total pain to do, especially complex cases. I feel your pain Celestina007. Signed,The4lines |||| (Talk) (Contributions) 22:07, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
The4lines, you both are correct everyone is aware of the clear and present danger undeclared paid editing possesses and the adverse effect it would invariably have on the collaborative project but this aspect of editing is where most editors tend to shy away from. UPE is a cancer and if not dealt with accordingly we would morph into LinkedIn, As aforementioned it’s a cancer and it needs to be cut off as soon as can be. In any case, The4lines, I want to Thank you for your input Celestina007 (talk) 22:26, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, no problem. If we let UPE run free, it wouldn't be good. Imagine a Wikipedia where articles are basically ads. Bringing editors, especially new and upcoming editors to work on UPE and Copyright is a big priority. Thank you for the work you do Celestina007, it really is a huge and important job :). Signed,The4lines |||| (Talk) (Contributions) 22:37, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
The4lines, my point exactly, but there is a general lackadaisical attitude towards addressing UPE, like I said I don’t really blame anyone not venturing into that space, three times now I have ended up in ANI because I tackled UPE(although ferociously) I should add, In any case all three times I was vindicated as all editors I outrightly accused of unethical practices were all guilty as charged. I’m aware of the fact that I wouldn’t be here forever thus I’m trying to put into writing all I have learned about UPE on my talk page so posterity can benefit from it. Thank you also for trusting me. Celestina007 (talk) 16:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
Celestina007 Yeah so is copyright, not many new editors are coming to work on copyright. I don't blame them though, although you might not get dragged to ANI, the work that we do can have legal implications. Along with being annoying sometimes, it does have a steep learning curve. Even I, after almost exactly 2 years of working with copyright (this month is 2 years!) still have questions sometimes. In any case, there is a definite need for editors in Copyright and UPE. There has to be a way to get editors in these areas, whether a new noticeboard, or even a school (like CVA or NPPS). Signed,The4lines |||| (Talk) (Contributions) 23:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
User:Celestina007, User:Barkeep49, User:The4lines - In my opinion, what we need to do about UPE is to treat it in a way similar to our treatment of sockpuppetry, in at least two respects. First, we need a procedure for handling reports of it, more formal and with better indexing than COIN presently is. Second, we need a duck test so that admins can conclude that there is UPE and that the UPE needs to be blocked, if it should be obvious to a rational H. sapiens that someone is acting like a flack. Once a procedure for handling and indexing reports is set up, then it makes sense to use Twinkle to ARV the reports. But first we need a procedure for dealing with the reports, and we need a rule that a duck can be plucked if it quacks and swims. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:27, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.
Arbitration
Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.
(Moved over here as you invited) I'd call my idea off the cuff/ mere brainstorming at this phase. My Draft Board idea that this would be a quick way to change the whole tone from "I want this" to "I got drafted and am willing to serve". Again for ones that are exceedingly experienced and who look good under a lot of long term visibility. Three ways this would help: lower the decision threshold, change the tone at RFA, and the change in tone at RFA would make RFA process more palatable to them. North8000 (talk) 15:55, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Is the idea more of a "If this person were ever nominated I expect I'd vote for them" kind of board? Is that what you mean by draft? Or do you mean more like a formal Draft board or like National Football League Draft? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:06, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
My whimsical metaphor was the involuntary induction by a Draft board. I shouldn't use metaphors that only us old people would remember. :-) If you want to try little fast experiment, we pick a victim. I could be the hit man.....I'll go post on their talk page and say that Barkeep and I (the beta version of the Draft Board) decided that they need to be an admin and that they'd better say yes. Then we'd say what we did in co-nominations at RFA. Which would change the whole tone at RFA. North8000 (talk) 17:07, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks for the explanation @North8000. As an April Fool's joke I find it interesting. As someone who believes pretty firmly in the gift that is us being volunteers, it's a bit harder for me to get behind. But now I'm wondering if there would be anything to my "Let me publicly endorse the concept of this person running." Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:37, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
I don't think that I communicated my idea very well. A fun friendly way to say: "you're good, we want you", and a way to shift the psychological ground. They merely need to say "I accept" instead of "I want it". But if it needs skillful communicating then it many not be a good idea. Regarding your idea, IMO is safe with no down side, but the details would determine how effective it would be. Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 20:03, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
See the thing is, I've written to people, sometimes multiple times, saying a version of "I'm ready to nominate you and in my expert opinion you'll pass. Are you interested?" often times accompanied by details of the assessment that I did that would suggest they're ready to run (and be the kind of stuff that ends up in a nomination statement). And I get turned down. On the regular. So I don't think that's what holds most people who would pass at RfA from running. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:17, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
What are the common reasons given for turning it down? This is probably really good info, doubly so because it was said in a non-public venue.North8000 (talk) 20:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Generally falls into one (or more) of three categories:
I don't believe you that I would pass
I'm uninterested in being the center of attention at RfA
I don't think being a sysop is all that useful
Sometimes it's crouched in "oh well I'm just so busy with Y right now but maybe in a couple months" but I have found that when a couple months pass and I follow-up there's some new thing that they're busy with and it's still a couple months away. This is qualitatively different from candidates who say "Yes but in a few months". Sometimes those candidates shift further out (maybe even more than once) but there's a much better chance they end up running. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:51, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, that's excellent information. Note that only 1 of them is about being and admin and 2 of them are about the rfa process.North8000 (talk) 21:18, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Oh believe me, I have noted that. Which is why when someone offers a new idea - as you did here - about a potential process I get excited to think about it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Just to piggyback on this - the number one answer I get is - the tools aren't worth it. I think a lot of people would at least take up the mantle of being a member of the corps, but to go through an RfA seems pointless when they can continue to edit just fine without the tools. I do think the barrier for entry is way too hard, when realistically we want people who are experienced and valued members of the community to have the power. Imagine if you had to get consensus on getting autopatrolled. No one would ever do it, even if they had created hundreds of articles. I always have my eye out for people to nominate. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 21:50, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 As someone who would hate being the center of attention, a draft board would actually dissuade someone giving out answer #2. I dream of horses(Contribs)(Talk) 23:10, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Just chiming in to say this sounds like a good idea to me. For the people who are on the fence and/or aren't sure they'd pass, a draft board where a long list of people express advance support might provide useful reassurance/comfort/maybe a touch of extra peer pressure. The key, IMO, would be ensuring it doesn't turn negative. We don't want to give people the displeasure of an RfA without even being an RfA. So you can support, but it's not ORCP, which should be opt-in not opt-out. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 22:29, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites, glad you found this because you are 1 of 2 people I plan to put on this board if it comes to pass. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:35, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
FYI, I screwed up. I didn't mean to put internal links to the potential targets. I was thinking more of a surprise ambush. North8000 (talk) 13:27, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the compliment. I get to claim objection #4, "I don't want advanced privs on my accounts so long as I'm working for the WMF". I give the same story to my boss about my work account.
May I suggest a few? I don't know what you might think about their realistic chances, since some of them have "only" made about 10K edits, but IMO Firefangledfeathers, Talpedia, JenOttawa, EMsmile, Markworthen and DrVogel are all capable of keeping their tempers in check when discussions get hot, which I think is a quality that serves the community well. There are doubtless many more worthy of suggestion, but I've run across these six recently, so they are the first six who occurred to me offhand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
I wasn't going to post this, but in the spirit of old fashioned, good natured peer pressure, the first names that came to my mind were User:Another Believer, User:Epicgenius, User:Nikkimaria, User:Buidhe, User:Sdkb, User:JPxG, and User:Bluerasberry (apologies to those of you who I know have already said no in the past -- no response needed, this is just a reaffirmation of support for the idea should you change your mind). BTW @North8000, Masem is already admin. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 03:22, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites: Yeah, fine -- putting it off any further is a little embarrassing at this point. jp×g 07:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
First, what is meant (at the top of this section) by lowering the decision threshold? Second, I will comment that there is still a cult of the content creator. There are some long-time editors who think that "excellent content creators" are the only editors who should be admins, because only they will understand content creators, and that content creation is still the single most important role in Wikipedia. This view is less widespread than in the past, but is still held by a number of editors who participate at RFA. I don't plan to become an excellent content creator, or go through a training stage of becoming an excellent content creator. There are other editors who do that better than I would hope to do (unless I were to drop all of my other Wikipedia activities and do only content creation for six months, which I do not plan to do). I think that is a 1, that I am not persuaded that I could pass. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:56, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
By "lowering the decision threshold" I meant making it easier to say yes and harder to say no. I don't want to get into it deep here, but for any actual unwritten "content creator" threshold, you'd have no problem there. :-) North8000 (talk) 13:18, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Once again, I don't volunteer to go through RFA.—S MarshallT/C 07:59, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
OK so there's 19 good future admins there. Maybe this could expand to all of such folks. But for our first target, may I suggest an even shorter list of those listed above who also have particularly extensive and visible experience (and haven't said "no" here?) I'll start, just edit the list, we can skip signing: North8000 (talk) 13:53, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Robert McClenon
Blueboar
Remove those who already declined.North8000 (talk) 12:24, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
End of shorter list
Thanks for the ping, and for thinking of me. At some other time, I might have been interested in doing this, but for the time being, I'm going to shorten your short list to two. But I do appreciate the thought. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:56, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon:I read though that last RFA. I read the main issue as them considering him to be a deletionist, and viewed the "content creation" part mostly in relation to that.North8000 (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
It might be a good idea to focus on people who have not already survived RFA in the past. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
I think you mean people who have not already attempted an RfA – or in effect, people who would be first-time RfA nominees – and I would agree with that. But I want to clarify that you didn't mean people who did not succeed in a past RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:47, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
"Not already attempted" is a less trauma-oriented way to say what I intended. I can see how that might be confusing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
How about we draft Blueboar? 50K edits, editor since Dec 2005, has been very active on policy pages....I think they helped write them. . If some people just say they'd support and one would be a co-nomminator, I'd go post the draft notice. :-) North8000 (talk) 19:03, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Looks like nothing really caught fire. If any one or two editors wanted to join me we could try it at any time in the future. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
I actually think it was a great effort @North8000. I'm wondering if a more permanent board might help, or if it would just reveal more people like here who have made the decision not to. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:55, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Since I'm watching here, I agree with Barkeep49 that it was a commendable effort. As a bit of feedback, I'd suggest that there are limits to the concept of "drafting" people to volunteer for something. There's never anything wrong with one or more editors simply leaving a friendly message on someone's talkpage, suggesting RfA. Beyond that, anything that has a more formal tone of a group of us have decided to select you feels pushy to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
I think I failed to communicate that it was intended to do it in a fun whimsical way. I know that if I were the target I'd certainly also take it as a compliment.North8000 (talk) 20:20, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
I didn't realize how many of the highly established folks flatly said no. And again, the discussion refocuses on the RFA process. RFA and discussions about getting more admins makes me think of a metaphor... RFA as a mechanism which pours burning oil on anyone who comes into a hamburger joint. And the management, trying to figure out how to get more customers contemplates running an ad in the paper or offering a discount on hamburgers. North8000 (talk) 20:17, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Foundation funding
Thanks not interested in being admin I would be willing to support admin recruitment or RfA reform in these ways:
If anyone wants to tell a story about wiki governance, adminship, or the RfA process, then I would meet them by video chat, record it, and post the video. I am looking for ideas to create new conversations; exploring more video comes to my mind.
I feel like one of the bottlenecks lack of volunteer participation in WMF financial investments. WMF has 1000 staff now paid ~US$100k each, and of the US$230 mil / annual budget, about 5% goes to communities. Money does not solve everything but it solves some things, and I think it is a great omission to continue to discuss growth of community leadership without having a shared concept of what happens with donor contributions. My general position is 1) Wikipedia's success has a foundation in community participation and 2) money to support editors in lower and middle income countries would go far. If anyone could seriously consider applying for WMF funds in any context leading to admin development, then I would talk and join.
If anyone is friendly to talk, but does not want to be recorded, then I might like to meet for unrecorded coffee chat. I have a sort of project for that at meta:Wikimedia Café. I really like talking with other people about wiki stuff but it is hard for me to organize small group discussions.
I recently had the chance to be one of several people to talk with Maryana Iskander as part of the Foundation's efforts at "two way planning" for their upcoming fiscal year. One of my comments was noting the great work the Growth Team has done around helping new editors get over that threshold and make their first (and hopefully 10th which if I recall right is an important benchmark) edit and wondering what ways we can find to keep veteran editors invested. One obvious piece, in my mind, is the little summary on the homepage of new editors that shows how many views your recent edits have gotten since you made the edit. I'm guessing with smart people thinking more ideas could be found. But yes a big yes to @Lane's idea of spending some of the leadership development dollars in onwiki leadership development rather than just in building affiliate/user group type capacity. Both are needed and I know I've not given enough thought to what way Foundation resources might be able to help us with leadership development in this area so I appreciate his throwing that out there. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
@Xeno (WMF) an interesting idea. I'm certainly game for filling out paperwork. I'm trying to think how an academy would be different from the old Admin mentorship that used to happen (other than a better name). At first blush from my thinking, and this truly is representing top of the head thinking, in terms of where money could be useful I see two answers. One in having a platform that could support regular admin elections - the limitations of Secure Poll probably being the deciding factor in why admin elections did not pass (note: not the only factor, just the deciding one from my analysis). Two in seeing there would be a better way to find potential admins. I could see this taking several forms from qualitative research with people like S Marshall and Bluerasberry who have had people tell them they should run but declined to do so, to developing better self-assessment tools for people who might be intersted, admin score is fun but not actually a great gauge for predicting admin readiness, to actually doing real research into what factors actually seem to make a difference. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:20, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
I've always thought the WMF should be partnering with universities to do research studies on online community collaboration. Both sides would mutually benefit greatly. isaacl (talk) 15:51, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
There's also the new m:Leadership Development Working Group. One of the goals is to develop a common definition of "leadership". I hope that they are successful, because it would be useful to have an understanding of leadership that wasn't merely leadership as it happens to be recognized in the US's white-collar office culture. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Hard block
I am ready to be blocked until June 25 with email and talkpage access disabled. Thanks. Scorpions13256 (talk) 17:07, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 06:31, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
NPP
I know you're not really interested because you've got enough on your plate, but have you seen the NPP backlog graph recently? Makes me seriously wonder what I bothered working nearly full-time for more than a decade for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung essentially Onel had been the only reason the graph wasn't bad since about 2019. This is why I tried to build capacity when I was coordinating in 2020 knowing that if Onel ever stopped NPP would be in trouble. Unfortunately I wasn't effective. That said, the work you did meant that thousands (tens? hundreds?) of pages that should never have seen mainspace didn't see mainspace. The problems now don't undermine the past successes. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:30, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
The joke is that if every one of those nearly 700 hat collectors did just 20 patrolls (one hour's work), the entire backlog would be gone overnight. Even if they are not bling-bunnies, it's psychological: They think "Oh, there are 700 patrollers, there's no need for me to do anything." The main problem however, is that there are no de facto coords and no one wants the job. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
Appreciation
I’m really grateful for your UCoC reporting. I’m a lawyer IRL and was stunned at the complacently poor drafting. I’m dealing with ‘’all the crud’’ IRL (some people in my life compulsively play video poker into the wee hours when under stress; I prefer to stay awake watching ‘’Mannix’’ reruns and correcting capitalization and hyphenating compound modifiers in Asian food articles, which is way cheaper) and couldn’t take on volunteering to be involved in that process.
I am happy to give input on an ‘’ad hoc’’ basis. (And I’m using the mobile app and it looks like all my intended italics here, outside article space, have been converted into incompetent-appearing attempted quotation-mark insertions. Kindly don’t hold this against me!)
You are doing a great job. I am grateful for you. Hang in there.
@Julietdeltalima this is so nice of you to say. The truth is that given the timeline the UCoC Enforcement Drafting Committee was given the priority had to be on getting something that could be called "complete". And that meant the quality of the writing was a secondary focus. I am appreciative of @Rosiestep and the other members of the board who recognized the shortcomings of what was approved and said we need to do better. Improving the accessibility is my #1 priority (even as I am excited to work on the other areas outlined). There is going to be a consultation happening soon spearheaded by Xeno (WMF) and colleagues and there will be the opportunity to give specific wording suggestions. I hope you consider doing so then, but also know I welcome feedback, even when it's hard to hear and even if it's not so complementary. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:30, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
New Page Review queue March 2022
Hello Barkeep49/Archives,
At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.
Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.
In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 809 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 861 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.
This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent 05:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
I copyedited that because a newsletter I once wrote was used as a template. I removed some irrelevant elements, corrected some of the new markup, and minimally rationalised some of the prose and they were accepted, but the suggestions I made for better accuracy and the corrections to the stats were rejected. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not saying that my newsletters had any better results. I think the new NPP crowd look at me as a doddering old age pensioner and at best I should piss off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Indeed we shall see. Barkeep49 (talk) 12:31, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm still of the mind that something changed in the queue, and that we can (and should) develop a BOT that will fix/reroute the articles that are ending up in the queue that simply don't belong there, such as edit warred redirects. Perhaps a bot could also automatically draftify articles that have -0- sources, or that are 2 sentences long, and maybe delete copyvios (which may be a toughie because of mirrors, and percentages, etc.) Atsme💬📧 16:28, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Interesting ideas all, but I think that would require a level of community support for "this is a problem that's worth addressing" that isn't yet established @Atsme. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
The whole community as in VPP?? Atsme💬📧 16:31, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Has anyone been talking about the NPP backlog outside of the NPP community? I don't get around to the pumps on the regular that much these days but I haven't seen anything but that would certainly be one place such a consensus could be established. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
If the community isn't participating in AfC/NPP why should we have to consult them? This is an AfC/NPP problem where there is ongoing discussion, the backlog is climbing, and where we've always had discussions for the various tools we needed - the curation tool for example. If anything, a community drive might be helpful but too few want to read thousands of articles they have no interest in. j/s Atsme💬📧 16:37, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
If you want to have a bot automatically draftify articles that have 0 sources or that are 2 sentences long you're going to need community support given the recent RfC saying "don't draftify old stuff". And honestly that's as I think it should be - I can care about certain policy/guideline elements even if I'm not involved in day to day discussions about them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:40, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
I prefer WP:IAR in this case. Do you have a link to the "don't draftify old stuff" RfC? Atsme💬📧 16:45, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Here you go. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:47, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
♡ Thank you! My thinking when faced with an exorbitant backlog aligns more closely with this and getting things done. Perhaps this "unearthing" followed by this incredible surprise have had a subjective influence. In light of the circumstances, our backlog, and not knowing who forms a consensus at any given moment in time, maybe...just maybe it wouldn't hurt anything if my suggestions had a trickle down effect that would convince arbcom to find a remedy that would actually work without increasing the workload of our volunteers to the point of burn-out. Just a thought. Atsme💬📧 23:30, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
I don't know what ArbCom would come up with, but there would have to be some kind of specific case request (that gets accepted) for ArbCom to even possibly come up with something useful. I admit I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out what the angle for ArbCom would be in this area. But I agree with the "The Limits of Volunteerism". I think we've entered a new age for Wikipedia, and not a better one when it comes to our ability to run this encyclopedia, and we have yet to change our policies/guidelines/practices to reflect this new age. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
We may need to kickstart the WikiCons and Wikimania so we'll at least have some one-on-one with folks @WMF as well as the folks behind the WP group funding/organizing/planning (not to mention the fun experiences derived from attending such events). I was happy to make a contribution (verbal not $$) to a staff member of the WMF yesterday re: some of the issues at Commons, and interactions between Commons and en.WP relative to video, photographs, VRT issues, etc. Atsme💬📧 17:56, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing thanks for bringing that up. I've long thought "If I had money to fund a study of Wikipedia" some kind of effort to understand what, analytically, we can do to predict success at RfA would be useful. In other words in a pie in the sky way I really like the This might, for example, be a neural network trained on the contributions of current admins before they were made admins.) It does, however, feel out of scope for the wishlist. And since I'm in no position to do such a study myself doesn't make sense for me to apply for a grant. Curious if Bluerasberry or Piotrus as two academics who've written about Wikipedia might have any insight into how we might find someone qualified to conduct such a study were funding to be made available. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
Not my major specialization (as in, even within "Wikipedia studies", there are so many things to look at), but [1]. Also [2]. And possibly some other papers, GScholar query "wikipedia request for adminship prediction" shows several papers that may or may not have some predictive models within them. Step 1, before tackling this more seriously, would be to spend an hour or two on a lit review. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:56, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
@Piotrus thanks for pointing that out. I have read both those papers, though admittedly not recently so I will do so and also see what else may be out there. One limitation with those is that the RfA environment of 2022 is qualitatively different than 2008 so what worked then may or may not still work now. But you're correct that building off previous academic work is an important element of serious study and I appreciate you bringing it up. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
It would probably tell us that the optimal is to have just enough experience to qualify and stayed in low visibility areas. And beyond that experience is a minus. Also, once the shortage became known, the acceptance rate went up. North8000 (talk) 01:26, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
@North8000 That's my thought; as I wrote elsewhere, I expect that editors who are very active in many areas, particularly controversial ones, will start getting too much baggage to pass easily. Would make for interesting research to verify this hypothesis. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
I think we'd need to hone in on what are "controversial areas" in some meaningful way because working in tough behavioral areas (i.e. CV, SPI, Arbcom) doesn't seem to be it. I think there could be something more to content work in DS areas, particularly those with multiple ArbCom cases (AP2, PIA4, EE) but truthfully that describes a very small percentage of editors. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
I guess if we really update it, there's probably an average of 1 per year failed RFA or less in the last three years. The one that got banned in the middle of a snow pass doesn't count. North8000 (talk) 20:03, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Yea, cause I just sent it again. Strange, I didn't get the copy back either. All my other email notifications are working. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:53, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
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NPP queue size
A couple of questions. If I go to the New Page Feed, it says (at this moment) "14430 total unreviewed pages (oldest: 6498 days)" down at the bottom and "14327 pages in your filtered list". I don't believe I have anything filtered out, do you know why these numbers are different?
Is there a way to get the number so I can display it on a page? MB 16:35, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
@MB it likely one of two things. First, if you keep the page open only one of the number adjusts as you (and others) review pages so it could be different for that. Second it could be that you do have options. The options to get the two numbers to match would be:
In namespace: Article
State: Unreviewed pages
Type: nominated for deletion, All others
That: Show all
Predicted class: nothing
Potential issues: nothing checked (do not have "none" checked)
Date range: Blank
Either of those do it for you? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
No, neither. This happens when opening the feed. Just now it says 14161/14264. Upon a refresh after a few minutes, I see 14158/14261. It seems to be a consistent difference of 103. I have my filters set just as you said above, yet the numbers don't match. I assume from your comments that the numbers match for you. Strange. MB 23:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
@MB they do indeed. So one other thing to try. Try switching from the NPP feed to the AfC feed, do a refresh or two, and then switch back. Otherwise I would file a phab ticket about it - knowing that nothing may happen for a long time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Nope. But I changed the namespace to user and the numbers there matched. Then I went back and forth from article to user, and now the filtered user count is higher than the total. The filtered article count is now 112 less than the total instead of 103. What is the total you see right now (to confirm my assumption that my total is the correct number). Thanks. MB 00:50, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
@MB Interestingly enough when I just went to the queue there was a difference of 1. 14259 below 14260 up top. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
I just saw 14259 at the bottom too, so I guess that is reliable. Now I can tell if we meet the backlog reduction goal! MB 00:53, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Well if that's what you need it for - and it makes sense now given the ping Kudpung gave me on your usertalk - I would strongly advise using Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Backlog_chart/daily. It's bot updated and so it's easier to compare like points in time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:56, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer to that. I'm really just trying to get a feel for the data we have in general. I've already got a request to the operator of another bot to get the latest count every 15 minutes. The will allow something like Template:Pending Changes backlog. My thought is that some people are motivated by seeing the immediate results of their effort and a handy template that anyone can use on their own TP or any project page (like the Pending Changes one) may help. I would prefer that this provided the backlog in realtime, but every 15 minutes is pretty good.
Back to the numbers in the footer of the NPP feed. It shows #unreviewed and #reviewed this week. But the backlog does not include redirects while the number reviewed does (apples & oranges). I can tell from the twice a day report that the bot and Rosguill reviewed around 9,200 redirects, so the number of articles is around 4,500 (last 7 days). I would like to see actual numbers - four numbers in the NPP footer instead of two. I guess open a Phab ticket and added it to the NPP suggestion list? MB 21:44, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
Pretty much. Barkeep49 (talk) 05:29, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
I understand that I was blocked for rude behaviour and edit warring. I fully admit to doing this. If I am unblocked, I will not begin edit wars or harass other users. I will not engage in this behaviour again. I have a genuine interest in improving Wikipedia, as evidenced by my edit history. I have made significant changes (that are still in place) to lead sections of major articles such as Ronald Reagan and Elizabeth II. I hope to continue improving the lead sections of articles. Another editor stated on my talk page following my indefinite mute that I should be given a chance to appeal it, an editor with whom I made those kinds of major edits.
Would this be acceptable as far as it goes? I expect them to fully explain how to handle disagreements w/o being disagreeable. Frankly, I don't see them as being compatible. Do they need a TBAN as an unblock condition? --Deepfriedokra(talk) 13:44, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.
I was invited to be a New Page Reviewer a few days ago and have been browsing the NPR school page. (I have not decided whether I am going to apply to be a NPR). I want to thank you for your contributions in the area of Children's literature. I am a big fan of children's books and own several of the Caldecott and Newberry winners. Good stuff! MauraWen (talk) 15:42, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @MauraWen. If you have any questions about NPP please feel free to ask me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:26, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure what's going on either, but I would love someone to have a look. (nb/ G10. Pages that disparage, threaten, intimidate, or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose seemed a fair description). Cheers, PierreLsn (talk) 00:40, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@PierreLsn so that has very specific criteria which that page doesn't meet. Can you say what your issues with the page are? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:41, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Right. Thanks. New here but trying. Yes, to be fair this is what I summarised in the Speedy Deletion note:
Based on reviewing leading to this diff, institutional attack page with disregard for Wikipedia:Etiquette. Albeit trying (tens of edits), page makes no sense to maintain (list of institutions not in a list), and is already duplicated here [[3]]. For these reasons, I propose deletion. PierreLsn (talk) 00:45, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@PierreLsn, a breach of Wikipedia Etiquette is not a reason to delete an article on English Wikipedia . Duplicate content is called a WP:FORK. That is bad. You could try to start a WP:MERGE discussion to see if the articles should be combined. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:51, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Okay, gotcha, thanks. Will review that. You're right, the information is not bad to have if handled in the proper manner - The attack wasn't about the Etiquette but about where it's coming from and its multiple user accounts. Will review WP:MERGE. thanks! PierreLsn (talk) 00:56, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Good luck! Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:57, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Discussion at RfA/RfB
I see you're on your RfA reform hobbyhorse again ;) This is in no way of criticism, mind, something has needed to be done about that place for years, but IMO, NPP which you were so good at managing for a while is a far more pressing function of WP than the occasional RfX. I do fully appreciate though, that as volunteers we all choose to work in our favourite areas, or like the majority of NPPers, not work at all! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung I appreciate the feedback. The issue with NPP leadership is that when I'm not actively doing NPP patrols I don't feel like I have the moral authority to provide leadership. When I'm off ArbCom and can start doing reviews of new pages more regularly I'm guessing I'll go back into those waters. On the other hand, RfA/RfB fits nicely around my ArbCom work and I certainly remain active there so the chance for leadership remains. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:26, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
<butting in noises> It's been in the back of my mind for a while that RFA could use formal clerks tasked with keeping decorum on RFA pages. However, in the case of arbcom, the committee oversees the clerks, at SPI the checkusers oversee the clerks, I'm not sure who would oversee RFA clerks. The 'crats don't actually run RFx, they just close discussions, and they don't, as a group, seem interested in doing this. So I think it's an idea with potential but I'm not sure what it would actually look like. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
There are a couple other groups of clerks but you're right that there's some group that oversees them in each case and for RfA it would have to be the crats. In 2015, or thereabouts, formal clerking was pretty roundly rejected and some people didn't like it at Wugs' RfA but there is more of a frustration over the tone of RfA than there has been in a while so you're right that there might be community consensus for it. But it does kind of fall apart if the crats aren't interested. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
The reason why RfC often fail is because the proposers got their wording wrong or didn't do sufficient research into what has previously been done or debated. None of the major RfA reform discussions have been a resounding success. Some less important points may have reached a consensus and sometimes tangential things have been spawned like the new complains noticeboard for admin actions (which IMO is dead and should remain so) and its mess of multiple RfC.
On the history of clerking of RfX, although the idea has never gained traction, one might wish to start at RfA Clerks which was a discussion within the framework of RFA2011 propsals, most of which never went to RfC stage because the reform project coords closed everything down due to the trolling from some well known (and legendary) users who seemed to think RfA was a playground for incivility and silly or disingenuous behaviour with impunity. Some of them were finally T-banned from RfA or indeffed years later but it took huge pressure from the community to get rid of them.
Various discussions on RfX clerking have left the community with the misinformed opinion that clerking, if any, can only be done by 'crats. It has indeed been suggested several times over the years that RfX clerking should be formally included in the official 'crat remit, but AFAICS, never has it been formally agreed that they are or should be the only ones allowed to.
Suggested changes to 'cratship or expansion of its role have mostly met with resistance, although some new blood on WP could change that (but I'm not hinting here at a recently failed RfB). Any responsible, uninvolved user can insert a formal-sounding remark that a vote is inadmissible by policy, or remove 'heat-but-no-light' threads to the talk page. I'm not the only user who has voted on nearly 500 RfA since 2010 and nominated a few, but perhaps only editors with a long institutional memory fully recognise the changes in style and tone of RfA that have snuck in over the years. @Beeblebrox, Primefac, and Worm That Turned:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
From a crat perspective, we are here to read the consensus that is built out of an RFA. If there is one "hot button" issue that is sinking an RFA, but otherwise everyone is happy (e.g. Vami, Tamzin), there's not really much to "clerk" other than conversations that get off-topic or otherwise out-of-hand (which can happen in any RFA). With the exception of Wug's RFB, I think I've watched almost every recent RFX (even if I didn't close it), just to stay on top of any improprieties. I do try to use a light hand in that role, and as such do little more than shift long threads to the talk page or hat excessive badgering of the opposition, but I can't really think of a time when this wasn't enough to "maintain decorum".
I honestly don't know if we should be clerking from the perspective of "this isn't a valid oppose reason" - while it is true that we each give weight to the various arguments made — and thus a no-opinion Oppose will be weighted severely less than one that has rationale — to even get to the point of a 'crat chat you would need a fairly large number of those, and recently there have been almost none.
In other words, I don't see a need for clerks, or even expanding the 'crat role; if anything the major changes need to come from the community itself. Primefac (talk) 11:19, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac I have always found moving long on topic discussions to the talk page dubious. I am curious what the consensus of the RfC that spurred this thread will be as it might give an updated consensus about that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:19, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
Moving long discussions to the talk page was normal even before I became a 'crat, and as far as I understand it is to keep the main page somewhat "cleaner", i.e. someone skimming through the oppose section doesn't need to scroll past pages of potentially off-topic discussion about the appropriateness of someone's !vote. Obviously there is some discretion involved on the part of the moving 'crat, but I can think of only one or two times where I've felt it was heavy-handed. Primefac (talk) 07:41, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: I think that approach ignores the reality of RfA for the candidate. I think that, simply, the English Wikipedia has outgrown the old RfA atmosphere, but that atmosphere persists out of inertia. People join a relatively civil project, gain some experience, are asked to RfA, and discover that RfA is still run by 2010 standards—where if one user calls out another for remarks that would be personal attacks anywhere else (even in many CBAN threads), it's the admin doing the calling-out who's the bad guy, and where the truth quickly takes a back seat to what makes for a catchy oppose rationale. (I don't think that most people opposing me on outright factually incorrect bases [like that I want to ban all conservatives] were intentionally spreading misinformation, but rather confused by a chaotic RfA that begged to be skimmed rather than read. What's more troubling, I think, is that people were cowed from correcting these misstatements by an inexplicable stigma against asking people to justify their !votes.)There's been consensus in several RfCs that RfX's attitude is toxic and that the 'crats have the power to clerk it. I think the problem is that the 'crats have clerked it on a standard of "What goes beyond the pale for RfA?", when that's a pretty weak limit. That's like taking a highway with a "Whatever's safe" speed limit where people routinely go 100mph and crash and kill people, asking the cops to crack down, and the cops say "Okay, we'll definitely pull over anyone who goes over 100mph" rather than "Maybe 100mph isn't safe to begin with and we should be pulling people over well before they get there".If you ask yourself, "Why should RfXs be the most acrimonious community discussions, often more so than CBAN threads?" it's hard to come up with a good answer that doesn't rest on "Because that's how it always has been." They are part of Wikipedia. There is no consensus to enforce civility norms more weakly there, and if anything the opposite. 'crats should enforce civility at RfA, and should flag or strike votes that are hyperbolic or based on misstatements of fact or policy. It's really not so much to ask that people put together superficially valid oppose rationales. "Doesn't have enough experience in X" will basically always be there, for some value of X. Because yes, bad votes can be disregarded in the closing 'crat's analysis or the 'crat chat (although I'm not sure if, in practice, they are, aside from the most egregiously bad), but that assumes that the RfA closes above 65%. And it assumes the candidate makes it to 168 hours without burning out. Candidates are humans. There's a reason no one runs. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 20:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
I cannot make any guarantees, but given what happened with your RFA I can certainly see where you're coming from and will try to be more proactive in the future. I think the hardest thing for me is finding that balance between reasonable discussion and BLP violations/NPAs/harassment; there isn't a bright line difference, which is likely why the 'crats usually take a "beyond the pale" model of clerking. Primefac (talk) 07:37, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
Deletion ArbCom case
Hi Barkeep,
I noticed that the prior dispute resolution on the main case page for the present deletion-related case lists the present ANI thread on Lugnuts but not the other threads, on TenPoundHammer and John Pack Lambert, that appear relevant to me – and potentially also the one on Alansohn, if the list of named parties to the case is expanded. I wondered if there was a good reason to list one thread but not the others? My first thought was that these links will need updating once the threads are archived, so only having the biggest one listed is just easier. But then I thought, if I were a party or even closely connected to or watching the case, I might wonder why... and if I had doubts about ArbCom's coming to the evidence with an open mind, I could be concerned by the apparent selectivity in which ANI threads were listed as prior dispute resolution. Perhaps it's only a symbolic difference, but I thought you might choose to add those current ANI discussions to the list?
I haven't posted on the talk page knowing that there are some Arbs who do not believe that IP editors should be allowed to participate – not being "real" Wikipedians. But that's a different issue. I noticed you were engaging on the talk page, so figured you were the Arb to approach with my observation / thought / suggestion. I hope you don't mind me putting it here, but if I posted on the talk page and was then dismissed or had my comment removed without comment, I'd be even more disillusioned.
That got lumped over from the case request filing. The ANI threads about others was added as things went along. I will query the other drafting Arbs to see what they think. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:54, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
Should REVDEL be mentioned as a possible remedy for DEADNAMING?
While patrolling, I AFD'ed Four Rivers Conference (Missouri) where it was deleted with no discussion, then refunded. Now it is in mainspace without having been patrolled due to the inconclusive AFD. I think it's unlikely anyone could engineer this sequence to circumvent NPP, but it still should probably be back in the queue. I put this one back manually. Is there something better? Ask at User:SD0001/RFUD-helper? Is that used for all/most undeletes? MB 21:48, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
@MB making the suggestion to SD seems reasonable. I'm trying to think of something better because it is a weird way to end up avoiding the queue - a logical reaction might be for someone to renominate it, but to do that you'd have to know it was back in the first place. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:51, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I knew this one was back because, I believe, I AFD'ed it with Twinkle which put it on my watchlist. But there is no guarantee an article is on the watchlist of anyone, or even if it is, that that person is still active at the time of a REFUND. I assume that UNDELETE restores the article to the exact state it was at the time of deletion (which in this case would be with the patrol flag being set when sent to AFD).
One solution: upon undeletion, check to see when the patrol flag was set, and remove it if it was set within a month of deletion.
Or maybe just remove the patrol flag on undeleted articles regardless of how/when they were patrolled. We don't have this problem if a deleted article is re-created. Should we just treat undeleted the same as re-created? MB 16:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Yeah. I'm wondering if there's a way to just make this a phab task and have a brief onwiki discussion to get consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:46, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
That's what I was thinking too. Would you say this is minor enough to discuss at NPP (and not VP). MB 00:09, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
It would, at minimum, need to be noticed at REFUND. At a certain point you might as well have the conversation at a pump. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Mandatory draftification
Re. [4]: I assume you meant to say against mandating? – Joe (talk) 13:44, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Is it awful that I hoped this was about drafting editors to be admins... WormTT(talk) 13:51, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Thanks @Worm (I kid, I kid). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:52, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Everyone must do their service. If only we did RfA where you had to convince people that you wouldn't make for a good admin. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 14:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Pffft. Imagine a wiki where only those who've been admins are treated as "proper" wikipedians, are the only people who's votes count, are the only people who can run for advanced user right and who feel entitled to treat the rest of the community poorly. So glad that Starship Troopers is a complete fiction with no bearing on any societal groups at all. WormTT(talk) 07:51, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022
New Page Review queue June 2022
Hello Barkeep49/Archives,
Backlog status
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.
TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 15098 articles, as of 16:00, 28 April 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
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I was notified here that "An editor has requested that the Arbitration Committee list you as a party to an ongoing arbitration case". As far as I can see, nobody has proposed that I am added as a party, only mentioned me on the Evidence page (the notification has caused much confusion and distress and I am still awaiting clarification).
You state here that it is actually "if you mention someone who isn't a party you must notify them", which is a very sensible rule. If I hadn't have been notified in the first place, I would not have re-clicked on the page and seen, by chance, Dlthewave's comments about me. It should be no different to ANI with notifications - mandatory. GiantSnowman 07:12, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
@GiantSnowman so if I understand you correctly, you were given the notice that you might be made a party, did not see someone explicitly asking for you to be made a party, decided you were notified wrong, and then were dismayed to see another editor was mentioning you without a notification? Is that correct? Barkeep49 (talk) 14:23, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I was told I was being added as a party - as far as I am aware I have not - and then a few days later when I checked back to see if anything had changed. I saw that a second user had made a heap of allegations against me (a number I note which have been removed by others) without notifying me. GiantSnowman 18:05, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
So it feels like this is some combination of understandable confusion and things working the way they're supposed to? The notification you received said An editor has requested that the Arbitration Committee list you as a party to an ongoing arbitration case (emphasis added). This is different than the notice we send to people who get added as a party which says more directly that you are now a party but I can see how it could be read the way you did. So you got this notice and it caused you to start checking the case. This is what the notice was supposed to do. While checking you noticed more evidence against you. This is what the original notice was intended to do and why I had said a second notice wasn't necessary when new evidence was posted. And yes some of that new evidence was removed as out of scope - I was the one to do so and it was my message noting I had done that where this conversation began. Thanks for providing your feedback about how this new message template was interpreted by you so we can refine it going forward and I hope that this explanation helps you understand why no misconduct was done by not giving you a second notification when the new evidence was posted. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
But the issue/my concern is - if I hadn't had decided to re-cehck the Evidence page several days later (a Sliding Doors moment) I would never have been the accusations against me. That is not fair and other editors will be caught out in the future. I see no practical problems in introducing a mandatory rule like at ANI. GiantSnowman 18:47, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
There was a mandatory rule and it was followed. The first time evidence was introduced against you here you got a notice. At ANI the expectation is once you've been notified that you will check the thread. The same is true of the case - once you had been notified that there was evidence against you, you should check the page. At ANI if someone gives new evidence against you in an existing thread there's not an expectation you be re-notified nor is there one with-in a case. This is why I said that the notice was working as intended - it got your attention and let you know it was something you should check-in with. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Well we'll have to agree to disagree, because I view it as an editor raising new issues/making a new section some four days after the first notification, and it was only by chance I saw it. GiantSnowman 19:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
@GiantSnowman you, like me, have been party to an ArbCom case. At your case there were three days where no evidence was presented. Yet you weren't notified again. I get that this is different - you weren't actually a party - but the underlying idea is the same: the notice should serve to tell you that this something worth paying attention to, even if there's nothing for four days. So if we can improve the wording to make that clearer I'd like to. Especially because experience tells me that for some other editors receiving a second notification from someone they have a poor relationship with, as you do with Dlthewave, it would be seen as its own problem: "Why are you telling me something again that I was already alerted to?" Which again is why I'd love to not agree to disagree on what should happen, but agree on how we can make the wording clearer so people know what to actually expect. Barkeep49 (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
In my ArbCom case I was watching the pages; here, as I am/was not involved, I was not. The wording for the initial message should be not 'you might become a party' (confusing, distressing) but more along the lines of 'you have been mentioned at this case and we suggest you watchlist to monitor'. GiantSnowman 19:38, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Thought you might want to know this if you didn't already. Stephen Harrison in Slate quoted some text including a risk adverse and high stakes atmosphere in the community RfA discussion. Near as I can tell, the phrase first occurred around the inception of WP:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Issues by you. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@Bri heh. When I read the story I thought the quote was attributed to Tamzin and was like "yeah that sounds right". No wonder it did! Thanks for noting that for me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Something I did was once noted on Fox News. I wanted to hide under a rock. My essay getting a mention on Slate was a much more pleasant experience. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Was this now or for a previous article? If now I missed which link was your @Beeblebrox. best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:46, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
No, sorry, should've been more clear, this was years ago [5]. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
That was a good article - still resonates today - and yes UNBLOCKABLES is a good thing indeed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:54, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox and Bri: It doesn't really matter whose comments Harrison is alluding to. More to the point, his Tamzin RfA article focuses on the extraordiary high participation. As his title image depicts, there could only have been some massive canvassing somewhere. Stuff for a significant mentions in the the News & Notes and ITM columns in The Signpost but the new editorial team appears to have other ideas about what constitutes compelling reading.
On another note, the 2014 Slate article hits Wikipedia's major civility problem squarely on the nail's head and also highlights what's generally wrong with Arbcom. Both articles are what I call excellent journalistic opinion; written a couple of years later (like mid 2018), I'm sure Auerbach would have mentioned a few more men's and ladies' names. Sad to say, if The Signpost staff were to write anything like it, they would be tarred and feathered at best by the peanut gallery, blocked and banned at worst at ANI, and the article deleted and oversighted by WP's governance obsessives. Time to put the publication on an independent server. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:55, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Kudpung. If you'd like to accuse me or anyone else of canvassing or any other misconduct, well, you know where to find the drama boards, I'm sure. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 23:02, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
One of the problems of WP, Tamzin, is reading too much into what people write. That is important for admins to remember. Perhaps you should follow the links and read Harrison's article. I did support your RfA, and I am extremely familiar with the drama boards. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:40, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
I have to say, watching your RFA did make me wonder if there was some canvassing going on, but from the other side, not from you. I'm sure nobody canvassed my support. Nobody ever brings me in on their conspiracies! How am I supposed to uphold my reputation as a corrupt and abusive admin when I don't even get the opportunity? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: I'm sure there was some amount of canvassing on both sides, as is inevitable in basically any large discussion, and probably considerably more "soft canvassing", as in "Hey, did you see what's going on at Tamzin's RfA?" But, for the same reason I don't believe in IRL conspiracy theories, I don't believe there could have been anything coördinated, on either side, involving more than 5-10 people. My more AGF explanation is that a lot of people don't participate in discussions that seem to have already settled in one way or another. In some cases, RFX200 and RFX300 may even be deterrents: You see a candidate you have a moderately favorable opinion of is running, and you see they're already at 220 support, and you ask yourself, "Sure, they should be an admin, but are they a 221-support admin?" Or in the other direction there's "I want this RfA to fail, but it's already on track to, and I don't wanna pile on". But if someone gets the watchlist-notice and sees the near-unprecedented sight on an RfA that's still being actively contested past the 200-supporter mark, then the incentives to vote or not vote are different. The normal safety valves against runaway support or opposition vanish, and each new support makes someone more likely to oppose than sit it out, and vice versa.People justify RfA by saying it prepares you well for adminship. Well yes, I'm sure it's prepared me well for all those many times as an admin I'll be forced to sit through a week of people debating my moral character at airport novel length.[sarcasm] (Not grumbling at you there. Just. Grumbling.) -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 23:49, 16 June 2022 (UTC)Just
@Tamzin:, you still seem to be demonstrating some bitterness about your RfA. The main thing is, it passed (I supported and even reaffirmed my vote). One 'support' vote less, but certainly just one 'oppose' more and it would have failed. BTW, there was also an unprecedented number of user questions on your RfA too. Some voters are just plain ridiculous. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:40, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung one support less and one oppose more it would have been in the discretionary range and gone to a crat chat. Which is exactly what happened despite it being above the technical range. I also think it's quite natural, a couple months on, to feel what Tamzin is feeling. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:14, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
I wouldn't say I'm bitter. As far I'm concerned, I walked out of that RfA with one of the strongest mandates any administrator has received, 340 in support, outnumbering opposes 3:1. That's nothing to be bitter about. If there's an enduring negative emotion, it's confusion, maybe. A significant contingent of a community I've called myself a part of for a decade told me that they view it as disqualifying from a position of trust for me to speak out against my own oppression (but that it's not disqualifying to speak in favor of said oppression). A month and a half on, yes, I'm still processing that. I think we should all be still processing that. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 02:38, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 and Tamzin:, Barkeep, that's where you and I differ. One 'support' vote less (mine perhaps?), but certainly just one 'oppose' more and it would have been below the technical pass mark and the 'crat chat might have ended very differently. 340 support votes is not a strong mandate, the mandate is the math percentage difference between the supports and the opposes. There is also the question of the extraordinary, unprecedented high turnout, for whatever reason it was; just for the hell of it, I'm going to spend the rest of this morning analysing the voters like we did back at WP:RFA2011. RfA can be a tough place for many who passed, and who even passed with a reasonably healthy margin, but IMO those who passed should be content and just get on with the job with the tools they won, and avoid making rash accusations so early into their adminship. If RfX fail, however, it's generally because they should have (even one of my nominations failed). Now if you want to poll some users about being jaded and having lingering feelings, the people to ask would be those industrious users who were desysoped in the 2020 Arbcom rampage. That takes some getting over, even for those who have continued to be interested in what happens in WP's highly toxic back office and who still create articles and make some edits. There is also another, different issue that left Tamzin very upset, but that's not up for discussion here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
Oh I do greatly beg your pardon if I have spoken out of turn, sir. I'll get straight back to my duties at once. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 03:15, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
So the absurdity of the idea that anyone would read this in the future made me look at the page views for my archives over the last 30 days. Archive 1 has 173 page views. What's up with that? Meanwhile half of my archives have no views and the most any other archive has is 8. That feels more like it. Bottomline, including this link out of consideration for future readers, which may be like 3 people ever, is such a Wikipedian thing to do. I love it. No changes. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:23, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
I am reading this 206 days in the future. Natureium (talk) 00:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm really interested in how things would turn out to be if there is another workshop like the previous RfA reforms again, now in 2022. 0xDeadbeef 07:24, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
I think the community's appetite for RfA changes is incredibly low at this point. The community needs a chance to recharge before anything major could be productive. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:44, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
In my early days as a (former) enthusiastic Wikipedia maintenance worker interested in reforms of RfA and NPP, WereSpielChequers mentioned something to me in a private meetup many, many years ago in Weatherspoons (fork 'andles) in Oxford that struck a chord and I never forgot it. It went something like: "Baby steps - it's always easier to get changes made incrementally rather than propose a huge set of reforms in one go". Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:17, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 20:31, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
WikiCup 2022 July newsletter
The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.
Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:50, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.
The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
"Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
"Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [6]
Suggested edits
Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [7]
Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.
Hi Barkeep49, was doing what is normally 0-drama cleanup and ran across you again. Are you running in to some sort of issue that necessitates adding the patroller group to your account? All of the permissions in it should be included with sysop. Thanks for checking! — xaosfluxTalk 01:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
Official email address: You can now be in contact with the Movement Charter Drafting Committee using the official email address: movementcharterwikimedia.org
Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)
Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)
Hi, Barkeep49 - I'm here to endorse Matthewrb who recently applied for NPP rights - would you be so kind as to expedite? We desperately need more reviewers, especially users with his credentials. Atsme💬📧 13:11, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
NPP
Very much against my philosophy of not wanting to help this encyclopedia by working at the coal face since I was stripped of the tools I never abused, I am trying to help out by patrolling new pages. I find it very frustrating that I can't get the Curation tool to load. Has it been discontinued? Is there something I'm missing? Thanks for your help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung can you do a find for "Open page curation"? That's what appears when I close the toolbar down to get it back up. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:54, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that. It seems one now needs a script in one's .js page. The link then appears in the side bar when one is working on the feed. Maybe I even inadvertently deleted the script in my fury back in March 2020! I'm glad the tool hasn't been deprecated, I basically designed it and stipulated what it should do and the WMF wrote the code for it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:20, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung glad to have you back reviewing some pages and that you figured out there was a script needed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:21, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Sorry to pester you again, but you do still probably know more about NPP than most people (this might also interest TonyBallioni and Scottywong), but maybe I can tax your memory on something. Now that I've reluctantly been doing some actual patrolling again, I've come across new articles from admins and other advance rights holders that are subpar and we're already aware that the 'autopatrolled' right is being abused. I'm sure that when I was discussing the improvements to the New Pages feed a couple of years ago with Marshall Miller, I included 'were created by autopatrolled users' on the list of filter prefs. At least that's what I thought these past years, so I was surprised to see that it's not there. Also, since ACPERM was rolled out, 'were created by newcomers (non-autoconfirmed users)' is now defunct because they can't anyway. There seems to be a new trend coming from 'crats and Arbcom members that every dot for an I and every cross on a T now requires a full-blown, widely publicised RfC. However, I'm sure these minor changes can be added without any fuss like they could in my time. So before I make a faux pas and open a ticket at Phab for these minor details, I would very much appreciate your feedback. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:13, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
I am pretty sure that the filter prefs got slimmed down when that project happened in favor of some other improvements but it's been so long I forget the details. My concern remains that one day page curation is just going to break and we won't be able to get it fixed because it's orphaned tech. And this is hardly reassuring. With the new found energy at NPP it might be time to do a "modernize Page Curation" wishlist. This would be to make it possible to use on other wikis and otherwise bring the code up to modern standards. I continue to think having it deployed on wikis beyond English is key to the longterm viability of the tool. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:48, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm aware of the Community Tech talk. It's certainly not encouraging. There is indeed a 'new found energy at NPP' and MB is doing his best to coordinate some of it - I hope he will stick with it because I won't be around for ever to support NPP. While admitting that the code would need to be rewritten from the ground up to comply with later iterations of MedaWik, the devs emphatically stated that making Page Curation Wiki-agnostic was not in their plans ; see also MSchottlender-WMF's reply to you. They didn't use the expression, but it smacks of sunk cost.
However, the filter system, including adding a feed for AfC, was a feature that Marshall Miller and I developed together not so very long ago. Many features were improved as recently as late 2019 including embedding ORES so I assume that the fixes I'm suggesting would be addressed if we can convince the Growth Team or Community Tech whoever is responsible for it nowadays -.NKohli (WMF) and IFried (WMF) were exceptionally helpful; Marshall has moved up but still apparently retains overall control and recommends Kirsten Stoller aka Eetzie as a go-to person who is now in charge of Growth.
One thing is for sure, the need for NPP won't go away and while backlog drives might have a short term impact, in order to retain the interest of the reviewers and keep new page creators happy, the tools need to be the best possible, and sooner or later Page Curation will need its new code and lack of funds will no longer be a viable excuse. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:38, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello @Kudpung and @Barkeep49 -- thanks for the ping. I've definitely noticed that a couple of bugs with PageCuration have been coming up lately (Kudpung, you've been bringing some attention to them on Phabricator). Although the wishlist process has been the go-to method of improving and extending PageCuration, we also want to keep track of important bugs all along the way to see if we can get them solved through other channels. Sometimes the fix is easy and makes a big difference to the patrollers. I'll connect with Community Tech just to check in. Regarding the issue that started this thread, Kudpung I do think it's worth filing a task for if you think it's a degradation from past performance, and we can look into it. From my own memory working on Special:NewPagesFeed, I would have thought that all pages created by autopatrolled users might be wholesale excluded from the feed, because "autopatrolled" means that patrollers wouldn't need to be looking at them. I do see the logic, though, of preferring the feed to be exhaustive and then filtering out pages created by autopatrolled users.
I'm not going to be working the rest of this week and next, but I'll look for your reply the week after! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you so much Marshall for replying here. In order to relieve user talk pages and the NPP talk page of discussions of a more technical nature, since yesterday on my suggestion, we now have a page where such issues can be broadly discussed by NPP coordinators.. There is also a page where we list technical bugs, and required new features for followup at Phab. FYI @KStoller-WMF, NKohli (WMF), and IFried (WMF):. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung -- thanks for explaining what's going on. It looks like the page for listing bugs is the most clearly actionable. I see that @Novem Linguae is proceeding with a couple of them, which is great. I asked them in Phabricator to ping Growth team members if they need assistance or code review. Please let me know if bugs come up that are of high urgency! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:32, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
Pikavoom
Hello, Barkeep49,
Once again, I'm surprised to see an editor whose work I see every day, whose been around for a while, be identified as a sockpuppet. Is it unusual for sockpuppets to be overly focused on catching other people's sockpuppets, reverting their edits and tagging their page creations for deletion? Because I seem to see these editors who are very active around SPI cases be found out to be sockpuppets themselves.
I'm often baffled by the behavior of sockpuppets but this seems like dancing around a fire with a can of gasoline in your hands. Or maybe it's about hiding in plain sight, I don't know. Any way, thanks once again for your due diligence. LizRead!Talk! 21:41, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
@Liz it is not unusual for some LTAs to engage in counter-vandalism work and so it's not surprising that there's some work done in catching socks as well. Beyond that I apologize that I can't be a great conversational partner given my NDA obligations. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:48, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
I understand, as soon as I see "off-wiki evidence" I know that we'll never know. I was surprised you revoked talk page access, I think seeing that is what prompted me to post here because that usually has to be serious stuff. Thanks. LizRead!Talk! 23:44, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
Request for IP block exemption
Hello. Can I ask you for IP block exemption in English Wikipedia? I need IP block exemption to access and edit in English Wikipedia in my region. (I'm using an open proxy now but this IP is not blocked currently.) I already have global IP block exemption and this is not enough in English Wikipedia. Please inform me if this is not a right place to ask or further explanation is needed. Thanks. 慈居 (talk) 06:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
@慈居 you should send an email to checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org with your request. I don't normally grant IPBE so I'm not the right person to ask, but that email does have a CU who regularly works it. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:34, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I'll try sending an email to this address. 慈居 (talk) 15:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
Finally
I know I've been beating around the bush for a while, but I now actually have seven contiguous days. I'll email you tomorrow :) jp×g 10:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
If that means what I hope that means, good luck :). Femke (talk) 11:20, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
Arbcom case
Hi Barkeep - hope you are well. I don't think I'm allowed to reply directly to your latest ping in proposed decision section, but yes, I do take the comments seriously, including the thinking offered by Spartaz. Hope that's OK to post here. On a lighter note - maybe it's me, but there could be a typo in your comment :-D LugnutsFire Walk with Me 21:06, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.
Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)
Arbitration
The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
Regarding this comment: I cannot recall the details, but I do remember situations not too long ago where the arbitration committee announced an unblock that was made based on a privately-submitted request and without any on-wiki discussion, and the community was left wondering why the editor has been unblocked and without conditions. I think some of the blowback from these situations have made the arbitration committee more sensitive about seeking input from the community. As time goes by, it's easy to forget about what restrictions were previously imposed. If there's some kind of procedure written down for handling unblocks, if it's not already there, perhaps there can be a step to examine the editor's restrictions and consider if community input should be sought? isaacl (talk) 21:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee unblocking someone via private appeal is a different set of circumstances than what would be a public appeal to have a topic ban rescinded. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:10, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Sure. The point is that the arbitration committee has made unblocks where the community felt that restrictions ought to have been imposed, so I don't think it's that unbelievable. isaacl (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022
New Page Review queue August 2022
Hello Barkeep49/Archives,
Backlog status
After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.
Coordination
MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
Open letter to the WMF
The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
TIP - Reviewing by subject
Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
New reviewers
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I ran across John Nesbitt Gordon Johnson today, which is a one-sentence stub with one reference. I would never create something like myself. Looking at other work of this editor, there are a lot of stubs with minimal references (there is a handy list on their User page). Not sure they really should have AP. I don't want to charge into a Admin noticeboard without more "evidence", so I am leaving this note. I wish we had some process, like a bot that analyzed articles created by AP users and looked for tags/deletions/stubiness/etc. Anyway, do what you choose with this (obviously). I probably should AFD that example; I can't see that Sir Gordon is notable. MB 03:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
@MB so I don't know. Are the topics notable? The one you linked here seems borderline so that's not great. The fact that the one sentence stub didn't have any inline citations is definitely poor. Some of their other creations are quite good which I'm sure is why they got AP. I would suggest giving some constructive feedback rater than going the admin noticeboard route. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:26, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
I don't believe that one is notable, Chief Commissioner of Delhi is just a redirect to a list article. So if the office is not particularly notable, my gut says that holders are not inherently notable either. But I don't have time to do a lot more (the NPP backlog is climbing rapidly now that the backlog drive is over, so I am spending most of my time reviewing). If this is not blatant, I'm moving on. Do you know how to utilize MW:ORES? If that were run on all the articles created by a user, we could have a clearer picture. MB 19:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
MB, sorry for butting in but I'm still interested in anything that can a) stem the tide of new articles that are not useful for an encyclopedia, and b) ensure the quality of the articles. If I had come across John Nesbitt Gordon Johnson on my watch, I would have immediately tagged it for expansion and more sources and added a stub tag and the {{WikiProject Biography}} banner tpl to the talk page. I would either have passed it as patrolled and pasted one of my Typinator' stock message to the creator: 'Thank you creating [.......]. Please consider returning to the article and addressing the tagged issues' , or depending on the severity, moved it to draft as several patrollers have already done for a number of this editor's creations. And If I were an admin I would have additionally left a personal but excruciatingly polite message saying something to the effect that it is generally expected that autopatrolled editors consistently provide good quality. After all, 'autopatrolled' was not created as a licence to mass produce stubs - nor is it a medal of merit even if the hat collectors think it is. As I am not an admin, I would do what MB has done here and appealed to an admin to thoroughly review the editor's work and act accordingly to his or her discretion - that's what we pay them for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:58, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
No problem, feel free to do any of those things - I am swamped. By coming here, I was really trying to pawn if off on someone else :) And I was hinting at a general solution (bots, ORES, etc to monitor the creation of AP editors). I believe you don't think there should be autopatrol, but I don't think it is abused frequently. I agree it is not a "license to mass produce stubs", but adding all articles created by AP editors to the NPP queue would just compound our problems. If we knew there were admins that had the time and inclination to delve into AP concerns, then maybe an autopatrol noticeboard, something a notch or two lower than ANI. MB 21:27, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
@MB you did successfully cause me to look into their creations. Absent some evidence that the user doesn't have an understanding of notability - and right now based on their existing creations that's not the case - I don't see a reason to pull autopatrol. Hence my suggestion around giving some specific feedback. As for how to run ORES, I don't know of a way to run that in a targeted manner. Just what comes up through it running as part of when it gets entered into the queue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:38, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
the problem
You know how they are. Deleting spam. Blocking spammers. Protecting pages against vandalism. That sort of hideousness. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 03:59, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
It's fairly easy to figure out why some people are decidely anti-admin. But he doesn't fit in the most common categories I see for those editors (bad incident(s) around blocking, long term editor who was around for some of the many shenanigans admins used to get up to). So I am genuinely interested in the answer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
First in-person meeting of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee: A summary of the first in-person meeting, which took place in Berlin in June 2022, is now available. It highlights some of the progress made on the Movement Charter outline and content methodology.
Hello, please my IP was blocked and I really would want to continue editing and contributing positively to the community I tried Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) but it wasn’t fruitful and I really don’t know what to do, I don’t have any VPN connection. I would love and appreciate if you guide me through the right processes to resume editing and be unblocked. Thank you Leon TRR (talk) 03:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
@Leon TRR I think what you want to do is apply for WP:IPBE. That link will have instructions on how to do that - technically I could grant that to you but I don't work in that area so it's better to ask for it through normal channels so someone who works in the area can evaluate it for you. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:30, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
Sourcing plot summaries.
Greetings Barkeep49 -
I wonder if you can take a look at the plot summaries for two articles I've recently created. The Hours After Noon and Tea on the Mountain, both by Paul Bowles. I've recently added sources for the summaries because they have been repeatedly removed by an editor (User: Praxidicae), who seem to be condemning my edits on political or gender-based grounds. Most plot sections I've viewed have no source/footnote/citations supporting them. What is my responsibility in a situations such as these?
@CerroFerro I'm not familiar with either of the books so it's hard for me give too much feedback. The summaries do read as potentially OR. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what about them is causing me concern, so I understand this isn't the most useful feedback. More concretely, the plot summaries are too long, or at least too long for the current state of the articles. The Hours after noon is over 1100 words which is considerably longer than the 700 word max the MOS recommends for novels. Tea on the Mountain is around 550 which could be appropriate for a fully built out article but at the moment recommends 70% of the words in the article. I hope that helps. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:07, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Barkeep49: Your Userpage indicates you are an Administrator. You don't need to be "familiar" with the books to determine if I am required to include a source for a Plot Summary. Or if tearing down the plot sections is appropriate because an editor claims that the content was assumed to be "copy and pasted". Or to explain what is "biased" in the content of that section. Please limit yourself to addressing the question. The plot sections are are attack. If I behaved that way, an Administrator would be threatening me with a 24-hour block.--CerroFerro (talk) 15:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
@CerroFerro You are correct that convention is that plot summaries do not strictly need a citation. There are editors who sometimes feel differently and since MOS:PLOTSOURCE says it doesn't hurt I'll often just let it happen. In terms of bias, I'm not sure if that's the same concept I was getting at with OR. I hope that helps. Also, I'm not sure if you meant to do this, but this reply came off pretty hostile, which is unusual in a situation where someone is asking for help. While it is true I am an administrator, for content disputes that doesn't give me any special powers and so this reply is from my point of view as an editor of book articles. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:08, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Dear Barkeep49- The wholesale removal of two plot summaries, repeatedly, and without going to the Talk Page, as I requested of User: Praxidicae is what I reported. The message was, and is, from that editor "either provide a source on demand for the summary, or it's coming down." There, I believe, is the "hostility", if you think about it. Contacting Praxidicae on this matter and requesting an explanation does not require any "special powers", just a sensible administrative approach. 'Nuff said.--CerroFerro (talk) 16:37, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Praxidicae frequently lurks on this user talk so I think there's an excellent chance she has seen this discussion and seen that I agree they belong, agree they likely don't need sources (the parts where I agree with you) and that I think they were UNDUE (the part I agree with her). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Now I'm really mystified. You wrote, Barkeep49, the you "agree with" User:Praxidicae on an "UNDUE" matter. The only complaints registered were concerning the plot sections for the two articles I linked above, to wit:
"this is clearly copied from somewhere and not at all neutral" and "unsourced and probably a copyvio"
What part of this do you "agree" with Barkeep49?
Let's consider this exchange as a "Third Party" review of the dispute. I'd like to go directly to Dispute Resolution if the "lurking" persists. Based on your own remarks, Praxidecae has declined to participate, which suggests bad faith.--CerroFerro (talk) 17:08, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
Barkeep49: I submit to you the vicious remarks posted on "The Hours After Noon" Talk page, just to spread the fun around:
Would you please stop bludgeoning discussions everywhere about this? I reverted you a single time on either article and you haven't bothered to actually you know, address me on my talk page or even ping me about it until now. I think your creations are largely MOS:PLOT violations and while I know there's mixed views on sourcing plot summaries, the widely accepted norm is that the bulk of any article shouldn't be a plot summary, which yours largely are. Stop making idle threats and accusing me of bias where there is none. tl;dr at this point I don't care what you do, stop pingin me and stop accusing me of the nonsense you have above. If you want to create massive plot based articles, be my guest. Someone else can clean up after you. PRAXIDICAE🌈 17:05, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
"Bludgeoning"?
"Idle threats"?
"Massive plot based article"?
"Clean up after you..."?
This is the response to my consulting you, an administrator, and our recent exchange on the matter. The comments are an assault against a conscientious content contributor.
Normally, there would be disciplinary action taken against the editor who posted this. And by the way, I have no obligation to address a dispute with an editor on their personal Talk page. The proper venue is the ARTICLE Talk Page or an Administrator.
--CerroFerro (talk) 17:14, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
@CerroFerro I think what you should take away from this, is that Praxidicae is going to withdraw from the discussion. So I would encourage you to think about what you've learned in the discussion - which includes me saying that the plot summaries included had some problems - and act accordingly in the future. I am purposefully not responding to the behavior concerns you're presenting, because you've already gotten to "yes" and getting hung up in what is and isn't fair in what Praxidicae wrote isn't going to help you - especially because I don't see those items in the quotes the same way you do. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:41, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
I've learned much from this discussion, and you've learned nothing.--CerroFerro (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP message
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I think you forgot to include your username in your sig.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:39, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP Award for 2020
The New Page Patroller's Barnstar
For over 100 article reviews during 2020. Thank you for patrolling new pages and helping us out with the backlog! -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:09, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Here is a barnstar to show appreciation for the NPP reviews you did back in 2020. We realize this is late, but NPP fell behind in some coordination activities. We are just getting caught up. If you don't want to receive "old" barnstars, please just ignore this and reply (with a ping) to let us know not to send you any more. Also, we notice you haven't been very active here recently, and hope you will consider increasing your participation. The backlog is relatively high and we could really use your help. Regardless, thanks again for your past effort. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:09, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
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Hello Barkeep49, on August 4, you removed my ANI noticeboard section due to the degree of conduct violations by the user being reported and then told me you had emailed ArbCom about the violations. [10] Did you hear back from ArbCom about this matter?
Should I remake the ANI section? Please advise on next steps. Thank you! Saucysalsa30 (talk) 21:25, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 Could you please take a look at this Talk section? You made a report to ArbCom on my behalf a few weeks ago and I'm curious what response you had gotten and if I should re-make the ANI section. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 03:12, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
@Saucysalsa30 apologies for my slow response, but I've been busy off-wiki and my limited time has been focused elsewhere. There has not been much discussion from the committee. If the issue is continuing to be a problem you can look to re-report without the information that got it removed in the first place. Or you can send an email to the committee yourself asking for update/action. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:58, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 Thanks for your response! I've been told before that ArbCom can be very slow so this sounds about right. My understanding is that ArbCom (and Wikipedia) doesn't take repeated personal attacks and the more egregious violation lightly. Despite this, surprisingly this still is a continuing problem in the form of the editor's edit warring on the same exact article with partial and full reverts of edits by other editors that had been discussed at length in the Talk page. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 05:23, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP Award for 2019
The New Page Reviewer's Iron Award
For over 360 article reviews during 2019. Thank you for patrolling new pages and helping us out with the backlog! -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Here is a barnstar to show appreciation for the NPP reviews you did back in 2019. We realize this is late, but NPP fell behind in some coordination activities. We are almost caught up. If you don't want to receive "old" barnstars, please just ignore this and reply to let us know not to send you any more. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
@BilledMammal yes it would need to be proposed there. You might want to do some brainstorming on the talk page about the exact format first. Owing to my position on the revisions committee I don't think I'm the right person to carry that forward but am glad you haven't forgotten this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.
Technical news
The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please emailMadalina Ana.
Arbitration
An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
I don't really want to get involved in the discussion but I have followed its development. Obviously I do not know what is going on behind the scenes but I get this feeling that the test didn't end and everything, including the discussion, is part of it. That's just what I see when I look at it from fifty-thousand feet. I don't know why it would all be a test but it sure feels like it. Anyway, I saw your comment there and though I would just muse a little on your talk page about what I saw in the discussion. --ARoseWolf 15:24, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
WikiCup 2022 September newsletter
WikiCup 2022 September newsletter
The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.
At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!
If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
Update: Phase II of DS reform now open for comment
Regarding this comment: perhaps you might consider expanding the initialism? Without going back to check, I'm guessing you're referring to eastern Europe-related behavioural issues? isaacl (talk) 16:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Reviewing unblock requests
You are right per policy, of course, but I still don't like to accept an unblock request regarding a block I imposed, if the user is not ok with it, because I'd feel a bit like I'm avoiding scrutiny. I mean, another administrator reviewing the unblock request might conclude that my block was inappropriate and make a note to that effect in the block log... I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it... Salvio 21:56, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
@Salvio giuliano in my experience, rarely is a successful unblock request going to be about peer review - in this case it's certainly not making the argument. Instead it's about whether disruption would continue if unblocked. You as the blocking admin feeling satisfied that it won't doesn't seem to be avoiding scrutiny, it seems to be doing right by the editor and the project. Of course we're all volunteers and so if you'd prefer to have his consent, or the consent of some other admin, fair enough. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:00, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Ok, I'm sold. Salvio 22:03, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
RfC on Vector (2022) - draft
Hello! I'm reaching to you as a person both experienced in reading and closing discussions, and introduced to the context of Vector (2022) as the possible future default. Would you like to review the draft of the RfC? I'm open to any comments regarding how we've framed it, its clarity, length, arguments and data presented, things missing (if any). Thank you for your activity! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee explains: what is the purpose of a 'movement charter'?
Wikimedia Summit 2022: The Drafting Committee will present three brief drafts of sections from the Movement Charter for discussion at the Wikimedia Summit on 10 September. The drafts will also be posted publicly on Meta.
Movement Charter video: The Committee and the MSG team created a short video (~8 minutes). The video briefly explains what the Movement Charter is, and introduces the Drafting Committee members. This video was streamed during Wikimania.
For over 2,000 article reviews during 2018. Well done! Keep up the good work! -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:04, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Here is a barnstar to show appreciation for the NPP reviews you did back in 2018. We realize this is late, but NPP fell behind in some coordination activities. We have just caught up with giving out deserved barnstars. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:04, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
You got mail!
Hi Barkeep. Hope all is well. Just wanted to let you know I've sent you an email, though there is no rush for a reply. Isabelle🏳🌈 17:14, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Disruptive User
Hello, not here to stalk you or anything, but can you deal with User:Gotitbro, he's been reverting many of my edits as "hoax" such as the one on Wanigam Bala and Kathal Hil Patribal even why I put sources. Sorry to disturb you if anything is wrong. Muhafiz-e-Pakistan (talk) 23:06, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
And also I feel like he's also attacking users interested in Pakistan, such as this edit Talk:Kharosthi. Muhafiz-e-Pakistan (talk) 23:09, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
{{Not in reference}} is where your edits fall under if taken in good faith, but considering the fact that you have recently gotten blocked for creating outright hoaxes on simplewiki, WP:HOAX is the way to put it. You need to learn what WP:DISRUPTIVE means, and addressing sockpuppet concerns is not attacking. Gotitbro (talk) 00:09, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
No, but when I even added references, he still reverted it. And they were accurate ones. Muhafiz-e-Pakistan (talk) 09:29, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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Lightburst
I presume this is a typo in the appended text of the recently submitted commentary from lightbreather? Should probably be corrected if so. Cheers. Anastrophe (talk) 20:21, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. Separate question, and I've no problem if you wish to just delete this little Lightburst section (thus why I'm putting this new thing in here). In my time here on WP, I've engaged in administrative/formal actions about as commonly as I visit Walmart, which is to say once a decade or so... so I'm barely educated on what formalities are typically engaged in. So - in the arbcom community comments re LB unban, i've noticed that the most recent cluster of them are including a bold-type 'vote' as in Support unban or Oppose. Having those show up so deep into the already existing comments bothers me a bit, as we're not voting here, so it seems as if these recent additions are gently pushing to make it appear as if there are votes to count. Should those who commented previously update their entries to conform to this new style, or should those who've recently 'voted' be encouraged to drop the, for lack of a better term, pretense? I don't think it's a significant issue, but it seems mildly disruptive in itself to see the format changed ad hoc. cheers Anastrophe (talk) 19:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
@Anastrophe no. As you note Arbcom will do all the actual voting everything else is just feedback. Barkeep49 (talk) 12:16, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Right, I understand that. However I presented an 'or' construct and you replied 'no', so I assume you mean no to both...? Cheers. Anastrophe (talk) 18:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
@Anastrophe sorry for the lack of clarity. No need for anyone to update a comment. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:41, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
@Anastrophe: FYI there are users named Lightbreather and Lightburst. The latter may be confused about the heading and mention in the text above. May want to fix. :) — Rhododendritestalk \\ 12:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
I think unless someone were to ping them on this thread, it's unlikely. However, the world has enough confusion already, so I'll just plant this here for posterity.[[11]] Cheers. Anastrophe (talk) 18:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
but it is lacking page history. Looks like a copy and paste from somewhere. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 17:28, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
The only AfD I can find is from 2016 and it does seem substantially different from that. It definitely isn't ready for mainspace but I have a bit of a light hand when it comes to G11 in draftspace. Was there a particular reason you pinged me @Fiddle Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Only because you appear, once, to have declined it, but I can see no article history. It is more for your amusement than anything else.
It's paid editing by an almost properly declared paid editor, and not a good one. I doubt their invoice will ever be presented for payment. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 18:19, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Restoring accidentally deleted content
Barkeep, thanks for this. I have seen this happen before, where the software for some reason arbitrarily deletes some other portion of the thread. In my recent set of posts there, it did it elsewhere too. See Valereee's 18:43, 17 September 2022 comment in this diff that got removed. I didn't touch Valeree's or RoySmith's comment. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:06, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Adam Neumann
Hi Barkeep49. Just wanted to revisit my request on Talk:Adam_Neumann#Intro/Career_and_trademark. Previously you implemented part of my edit request (thanks so much!) and stated that you also agreed with my second bullet point concerning the more accurate wording of the sentence about the "We" family of trademarks. If you still agree, I'd greatly appreciate if you could please implement that edit. Thanks so much, Carlos for Neumann (talk) 10:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Hi Barkeep49. I hope you don't mind taking a look at something I am quite frustrated about. The last two times I tried to make a simple, uncontroversial direct edit on Adam Neumann's article, my efforts were reverted. It is my understanding that paid editors are allowed to make uncontroversial edits directly to articles they have a COI with, without having to make an edit request, but one particular editor continues to revert those edits solely based on my COI, here and here. As you can see from the diffs, the first was an attempt to fix a typo, and the second was to remove a phrase not supported by the source; owning property does not mean they ever lived at that property; and the source explicitly states that the Neumanns sold the Greenwich Village property in 2021. Could you please help me understand how the guidelines for paid editors apply in situations like these, and in this specific case? Thank you for your continued time and effort. Carlos for Neumann (talk) 20:28, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
@Carlos for Neumann it's not uncommon for some editors to take a very narrow reading of what is uncontroversial. My suggestion is to talk about it either on that editor's talk page or the article's talk page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Libelous statements by someone who is a moderator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Otoya_Yamaguchi
For the sake of civility, I will not be stating their name on here but its the edit request dated 9/12/22.
Wikipedia has rules on civility. Please have a word with him about talking to people this way.
This has been a topic of discussion for a very long time, and this guy clearly has it in his head that everyone who's not on his side is a "proud boy".
He has been refusing to listen to anyone on this, and has turned his brain off on this because he think's he's championing it against "proud boys".
Going that detailed into them when they reenacted the crime is insane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.241.30.108 (talk) 03:08, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
It looks like this has been discussed now on WP:ANI and the article's talk page which are two better places for this issue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:35, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #22
Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.
We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.
If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.
Ongoing projects and explorations
The new impact module is part of the Positive Reinforcement project. The image displays the mockup for mobile we used for user testing.
We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.
We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.
Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).
Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.
News for mentors
A new system for the mentors list
The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.
At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.
The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [12][13]
Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.
Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.
And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.
Other improvements
Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:
While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [14]
Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [15]
Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [16]
Recent changes and fixed bugs
We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [17]
Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [18]
Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [19]
In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [20]
Since I write essays to be read, I hope my talk page watchers will continue to indulge me when I link to new ones I write on my own talk. Today's essay, with a healthy dose of conceptual help from Worm That Turned is Wisdom of the crowd. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:01, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm struggling to understand how to apply that to this hugely attended RFC that a) proposed text that had no sources backing it (at least none in the article), b) which no one seems to have cared about, and c) came to a conclusion not based on sources that we are still stuck with. Very widely attended, no wisdom; maybe I'm missing the point? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
There clearly was no consensus at that RfC judging by the spread of choices among the options, so no consensus is what the crowd decided there. You're correct the essay isn't addressing that situation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:00, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
At least I didn't completely miss it then! I think that one falls under GIGO, but we're still stuck with it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:03, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia I've added a sentence to note that no consensus can also become clear when there's a lot of people participating. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:07, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
BoT
While I am thrilled that Mike Peel was elected, I am utterly surprised and dismayed that Legoktm did not get in. Those two were the candidates who were running on a platform of more board attention to technical and community issues rather than supporting the Foundation's more abstract goals. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung I share your disappointment about Lego. I think he could have really brought perspective and expertise to the board that would have helped it and the movement. I hope he'll consider another go, just as Mike got elected on his second try. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:24, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
New watchlist message for RfC on Vector 2022 doesn't link to the RfC
Can you please edit the watchlist message you recently added for the RfC on Vector 2022? The message doesn't link to the actual RfC which is very confusing and unhelpful. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 19:20, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Hello there - on a page I have contributed to, there is another user who is being very condescending - along the lines of "people who are inexeprienced (unlike this user) shouldn't be posting". His comments are very rude and I want to know what I can do to stop him being so nasty. Rhyddfrydol2 (talk) 20:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Rhyddfrydol2 I'm sorry you're having difficulties with another editor. That's a fairly common situation and there are some options for you at Dispute Resolution. The first step I'd suggest trying in this situation might be to further explain why policies and guidelines support your content position. If that doesn't work you could try asking for a WP:3PO. I understand you're more concerned about the rudeness and condescension but keeping the focus on content can often be a productive way of dealing with that. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:57, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment
Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.
Arbitration
Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
As an IP editor, am I allowed to request a checkuser be performed on an editor? I have reason to believe a "new" editor has edited previously under a different account where he/she was banned. I asked the editor on their talkpage if they had edited previously under a different name, and they refused to answer the question
2600:1012:B049:3409:2C3A:43A1:4B7C:1ED4 (talk) 21:19, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
I don't normally work SPI but I from a quick check I believe you are able to file an SPI report as long as you present evidence of why you think there is socking against policy going. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:21, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022
Hello Barkeep49/Archives,
Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.
Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.
Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.
NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022
Suggestions:
There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.
Backlog:
Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!
Reminders
Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
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If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sorry about the wrong use of g10. I don't usually run into this at AfC. I'll just remove the info about the arrest and go from there. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
@StarryGrandma Absolutely no need to apologize. I put the longer note in the edit summary as an educational piece not as a scold. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:54, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Devs
You've got me curious now. What in your opinion are the features we'd care about more? Naturally this little one is more than technically doable, but as I said, it's nice but not urgent. I think we are all aware that the WMF are more concerned with fulfilling their commitment to the rigid future plans for their top down software they are always working on instead of repairing their own earlier developments.
It's like an analogy I made somewhere earlier today: A couple of years ago, Mercedes launched a new model and tens of thousands of them had to be recalled because there was a fault in the design of the brakes. It's almost sure they hadn't budgeted for that but they had to fix the brakes. Not a good advertisement for one of the world's most prestigious makes of motor cars. The WMF likes to think its cherished Wikipedia is a prestigious project. NPP are the brakes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung I think the thing we should care about most is making Page Curation available on any wikipedia (and perhaps any Wikimedia project). That would have the long term benefit of building support and demand for the WMF to not ignore it outside our community which would make the calls for that action stronger. This would also make our call for some team to own this as part of their scope of responsibilities for maintenance, rather than just when it gets the most votes on the community wishlist, more obtainable. Next I would say that the NOINDEX variable should be able to be set locally, not through developer intervention. Next I would say some quality of life improvements to make finding articles you wish to review easier. That would be my top list. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:30, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
In 2011 when the WMF built Page Curation, it was with the intention of making it Wiki agnostic. How can we canvass 300 other Wikis and tell them to ask for Page Curation? At the end of the day its not our job to do lobbying for dozens of minor Wikis. Subsequent excuses for not working on it have included lack of funds (the most frequent one), and some tech stuff about its code base no longer being compatible with later iterations of MediaWiki and the extension would have to be re-coded from the ground up. The paradox right now is that within the same group, some of the 'managers' are telling us to queue our requirements at the Wishlist, others are saying it's out of scope for the Wishlist, while others are saying, again, that they have no money. Who are the volunteers to believe? We now have our own NPPers writing patches and doing the WMF's work for free, just to put BAND-AID on the broken brakes. The runaway train of trash still keeps arriving in the feed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:02, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
Your history is of course correct. Here's the thing that making Page Curation wiki agnostic also gets us: it forces a complete update of the code base. Because of how the tool has been developed it uses practices and code styles that are out of date which make anything happening on it harder than it should be. So this makes the other things that enwiki wants easier - whether it's a volunteer or the foundation doing it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
You bring up some good points @Novem Linguae but I am not suggesting necessarily a rewrite from scratch. I am instead weighting the technical debt piece differently and saying that needs to be addressed as a priority. About once a year on a WP:THURSDAY Page Curation breaks. What has generally happened is that Legoktm responds to the bat signal and an emergency patch is pushed out. But having something that is so dependent on a single volunteer developer to keep running is a point of failure risk I would not prefer. Having the code be more modern allows a much wider pool of developers, volunteer and foundation, to be able to address things when they break (and make it easier to do future development). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
About once a year on a WP:THURSDAY Page Curation breaks.Selenium tests such as those proposed in phab:T320924 would probably solve this problem. We'd write automated browser tests for all the major code paths (e.g. click an article in Special:NewPagesFeed and make sure it loads, tag an article AFD and make sure the AFD page is created and the article is tagged, etc.), and it'd be run every time someone submits a patch. If the Selenium tests fail, the patch would be stopped until the patch is rewritten so that the tests pass. I will go ahead and prioritize this. Any additional details as to what kinds of patches tend to break core functionality? Is it refactoring patches that aren't manually tested well enough? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:26, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
No but the phab tickets should be linked in the NPR archives. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:23, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
We now have our own NPPers writing patches and doing the WMF's work for free I want to push back on the framing that this is a *bad* thing. I think it is fundamentally a good thing that volunteer NPPers are stepping up to write code for PageCuration - they know the problem space the best, they know what features they want to work on, etc. This model is working pretty well for AbuseFilter, parts of CentralAuth and now CheckUser (with Dreamy Jazz stepping up). I haven't done my regular checks yet, but if things continue at the same pace, I hope/wish/expect to nominate Novem for +2 rights next month so they have the authority to merge others' patches on their own.
On the flip side, after PageCuration's initial creation, can you say you've been pleased with how the WMF has handled any development related to it/NPP priorities? My impression is that the answer would be a resounding "nope", so I don't see any value in trying to push it back into the WMF's hands (I was hopeful that the letter would get a better reception but unsurprised). In general as people are dissatisfied with the WMF, we should be taking responsibility away from them, not giving them more (I'm generalizing here, I do think there are things that WMF staff are uniquely positioned to be good at and should be responsible for, but this is far from it).
There is a very correct concern about WMF funding/fundraising and how it allocates the money it is given, but I don't think us putting more things in the WMF basket helps with this case. Legoktm (talk) 21:46, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
I don't disagree with anything you said, Legoktm. Today's WMF automatically assumes however, that anyone who who knows enough to use a computer or mobile device is a competent software programmer. It's a bit like my Mercedes analogy if they were to say "We've sold you a car with faulty brakes, so what? Go fix them yourself." We all know how to drive cars and use computers, but it's not a foregone conclusion that we've done a three-year degree in automobile mechanics and IT so that we know how to fix them.
Based on the old, clumsy system using Special:NewPages and Twinkle, which gave the devs a head start - after all, a necessary new page control of sorts had been around since the beginning - Page Curation itself was a brilliant project. The features were well thought out, the GUI and UX were show pieces in form and functionality for something that is just a tool, a motorised sit-on sweeper for cleaning the warehouse floor. It's a shame it was born out of a most unpleasant conflict at Bugzilla between the patrollers' absolute necessity and the WF's staunch, unpragmatic ideology (which took 7 long years to resolve).
The Blade of the Northern Lights, Scottywong, and I, fought hard for a solution for the NPP crisis and we were hugely relived - and grateful - when Erik came up with the idea of Page Curation and asked us to collaborate on it from the patrollers' angle. Built only for the use of NPP, IMO it was nevertheless one of the best pieces of software that came out of the WMF stable since Wikipedia's creation and still is. It renders the task more practical for keeping the very thing that maintains the vital reputation of the encyclopedia: clean, responsible, accurate, and neutral encyclopedia pages. There were around a dozen paid WMF employees at the time, we knew them, and we were able to collaborate directly with them.
Later, in 2018, after another bitter bun fight with the WMF, they conceded to the trial, and at a great expense of funds which they hoped would prove us wrong. The result was that they ended up losing very big face for their completely wrong claims all those years, and all for the want of throwing a simple switch in the MediaWiki prefs - not even ten minutes of dev time required.
What I resent most these days is the way the WMF scorns the volunteers' intelligence and uses its human capital as galley slaves. That's not what most of us signed up for seventeen years ago. A time will come when the NPPers will drift away entirely, and what will the staff on their $0.5 mio salaries do then? Just move on to another job in Big Tech or go work as an adviser to a candidate for the the next POTUS election (it's happening). I've worked alongside NGOs here in some of the poorest countries in Asia (Cambodia, Laos) for decades and it's scandalous what the staff do with the donors' money and how they treat the Western volunteers here on a gap year.
The actual solution is easy: If the WMF won't do what's necessary, give the en.Wiki a grant to pay the likes of Novem Linguae, Dreamy Jazz, MB and others, who are applying the puncture patches - (I think it's great that on-wiki users are contributing and hopefully maintaining the software they use and know best), those of us who have understood UX since before the advent if desktop computers some of us here are experts at workflows, design, writing manuals, and project management - give us the funds and we'll do it ourselves, at least that way we won't be wasting it on staff perks and junkets.
The NPP team already has a clear concept for a workflow and its elements from onboarding newly registered users (many of whom nowadays are not even native English speakers) to the final stages of processing their first pages and providing help where needed, rather than simply directing them to huge walls of text of policies or to choose from a hundred redundant poorly written help pages. (rant over). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:28, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Seeing as I was pinged here, I'll add my thoughts.
I started working on writing code for CheckUser because features I wanted to see had been waiting with no progress for many years. Then it kind of went on a roll, and I've been writing more and more. The Anti-Harrassment team is the steward team responsible for CheckUser, but in practice I would say they focus pretty much solely on Special:Investigate.
Due to my limited experience with Investigate, I try to keep out of writing patches for Investigate specific code. I also do this to avoid trampling on any plans they may have. However, when I have asked questions to the team on Phabricator they can be very slow to respond if at all. I think this is because the team has focus on other extensions and is understandable if the team is very busy. However, there has been at least two security tickets for Investigate that have had the Anti-Harrassment team not respond on the associated phabricator ticket at all even after input was requested from them for months.
When I write patches for CheckUser they can often sit waiting for final review for several months. I think this is something that is common for most extensions. The reasons behind this I think is that in the very large majority of cases my patches are reviewed by other volunteer developers with +2 rights who do not focus just on CheckUser. Because I focus pretty much solely on CheckUser and put a fair bit of time into writing code over the summer this means that I'm writing code too fast and therefore the bottleneck is reviewing patches. Having too many patches open at once makes the chances for conflicts larger, which in some cases can require partially re-writing of the patch. I have a great amount of thanks for those who have reviewed my patches and my comments here are in no way a dig at them. Without that I could have made no improvements.
While being paid to maintain could help me justify writing more code while fitting in my last year of uni, at the moment doing that would not speed up how much I could write unless reviews in general become quicker. If there was another developer who was as active on CheckUser as I am, then we both could review each other's patches making the process a lot quicker. There is also the problem that I will work on things that interest me because I am not being paid for this. As such changes to the database structure which often are complicated and time consuming is not something I want to work on right now. This means that, unless someone else picks them up, these will sit without progress.
I would say that if funding was on the table I could get it for improving the tests for CheckUser. I say this because I have found patches that add just tests are reviewed on average a lot faster. However I do note that the WMF grants process for maintaining tools is not open yet so I presume this funding idea is an idea. Dreamy Jazztalk to me | my contributions 11:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) Code review is, by far, one of the areas where we need to improve the most — we used to have code review office hours, and I really want to see them come back.. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Three months to merge a javascript only patch? Ouch. JS patches, in my opinion, are pretty low risk compared to PHP patches. Much less chance of taking down the whole website with a performance issue, security issue, or bug. I understand why code review is needed in general, but sadly it can really kill momentum if you're not on a WMF team. WMF teams have the benefit of their coworkers on their team quickly reviewing all their patches. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:25, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Dreamy Jazz for this write-up as I think it lays out pretty clearly the virtues and limitations of volunteer development. One of the virtues is that the volunteer works on whatever they want - Dreamy has made several improvements to CU I find very valuable - but that's also one of the limitations. At one point someone asked Dreamy if they had any kind of roadmap which is at once a reasonable and completely absurd thing to be asking. But it wouldn't be absurd to ask it of WMF proper. Nor does the WMF proper end up with challenges about getting their patches merged. And we know that the WMF is going to be around for a bit, but we don't know that for any volunteer (or know if that volunteer's interests will change and they will focus time elsewhere). It's for these reasons that I think it's worth trying to get this on the WMF plate despite the counter reasons @Legoktm posits above. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
I think it's important to put this on Product's plate. Since Ms Denckelmann's video chat with Novem Linguae in which she admitted to being ultimately resonsible for development, maybe she will begin to understand that despite Product being short staffed it's time to change that. It's absolutely inadmissible that volunteers should have to wait for years for bug fixes and finally do the wealthy Foundation's work for free. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:55, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment
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Finally (part 2)
Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
hi i created the innapropriate accout @my fukling nuts hurt!!. im gonna go troll on a different website, but not here. please forgive me, seriosuly, not joking. 104.235.95.189 (talk) 00:42, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
The A in "A11" stands for "Article" so you can't tag something in draftspace as A11. I haven't looked at them so it's possible some other tag might be appropriate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:06, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee at the Wikimedia Summit in September.
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's participation at the Wikimedia Summit: The MCDC members presented initial drafts of the three chapters of the Movement Charter: Preamble, Values and Principles, and Roles and Responsibilities. The three chapters were prioritized to lay the groundwork for the rest of the Charter. MCDC members attended breakout rooms to discuss the progress with all attendees - both online and offline. The drafts received valuable feedback from the affiliates in many sessions. The Committee also launched a survey to gather feedback and suggestions on the Movement Charter development. Report for the Wikimedia Summit can be found here.
Learn about Movement Charter Drafting Committee’s work in September: The Committee released its regular monthly update from September 2022. It includes highlights about the Committee's progress in creating the Movement Charter content, results of the Wikimedia Summit, and an important announcement about membership.
Coming up:
Community consultations. In November the MCDC will be organizing events to hear your thoughts on the first three drafts. There will be onboarding sessions for community members to learn about Movement Charter and ask their questions to the Committee members. Community members will be able to share their thoughts and feedback via open and anonymous surveys, along with Meta pages, MS Forum and email. Details to be communicated by the MSG team.
Conference engagement. MCDC members will be attending the following conferences in October/November:
WikiArabia (28 - 30 October): Anass, Ravan, Reda will facilitate a discussion about the Movement Charter. Additional sessions include a conversation about the roles & responsibilities, and a conversation about hubs. .
WikiIndaba (4 - 6 November): Anasss will present a Movement Charter update.
WikiConNL (19 November): Ciell will present an Movement Charter update.
Movement Charter Ambassadors Package. Individuals and/or groups from various communities will be able to get resources and support to help increase the engagement of community members in the Movement Charter. The details to be shared by the MSG team.
--15:24, 25 October 2022 (UTC).
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.
Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.
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WikiCup 2022 November newsletter
The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is
Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.
During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field.
Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.
Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Discretionary sanctions review: proposed decision and community review
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Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
Ask Me Anything session introduction (12 November), presented by a Movement Charter Drafting Committee member.
MCDC members attended the “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter” sessions to provide more information about the Movement Charter, its goal, why it matters and how it impacts the communities. Recordings of the presentations in different languages can be found here.
The Movement Charter Ambassadors Program: Movement Charter Ambassadors (MCA) are individuals or groups interested in helping to ensure that their communities are fully engaged in community consultations. MCA are interested in supporting their communities to understand the content of the Movement Charter as well as ensuring that their communities can easily provide feedback. Anyone can become a MCA! Dedicated funds are available to support the MCA and their activities. Are you interested in becoming a Movement Charter Ambassador for your community? Sign up here!
Learn about Movement Charter Drafting Committee’s work in October: The Committee released its regular monthly update from October 2022. It includes highlights about the Committee's progress in drafting the Movement Charter content, its upcoming community consultation and participation at Wikimedia events.
Coming up:
Regional feedback conversations: The MCDC’s community consultations to collect feedback on the first three sections of the Movement Charter will take place between November 20 and December 18, 2022. You are invited to join one of the regional conversations planned for the eight regions (and various languages) of the Movement. Please note that interested people can share their feedback in different ways, including on the Meta talk page, on the Movement Strategy forum, filling out a survey (anonymously) and sending an email to: movementcharterwikimedia.org.
Sign up here to become a Movement Charter Ambassadors from your community and help ensure that your community is aware of the conversations around the Movement Charter!
--13:37, 20 November 2022 (UTC).
ButterCashier
I've already warned them once for attempted proxy editing while blocked. This is borderline, but seems like a veiled attempt at further proxy editing. Thoughts? OhNoitsJamieTalk 15:46, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
@Ohnoitsjamie when I saw that warning I considered saying something but then ultimately decided not to. My thinking is that those kinds of edits have nothing to do with why he's blocked and the truth is he could get unblocked fairly easily and at any time. So I'm inclined to cut him some slack. But if you're not? Well fair enough and a successful appeal might have to be done privately anyway. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:09, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
I was on the fence about it, but I'm OK with him some slack. OhNoitsJamieTalk 16:54, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
My ACE qustion, and your replies: better here in a bit more privacy. I should perhaps laugh about the statement made by a user who claims to have vanished but "hangs around" enough to make that comment, but I'm not quite there yet ;) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
The vanishing that isn't is a whole separate matter. I actually think the fact that no one cares to do anything about it is another sign of our lower temperature with infoboxes because at its height I don't see people on the "opposite" side being able to let that go. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
(ec) I unwatched the article, after a friend of mine was desysopped for having protected it during edit-warring. He then left, and is dead, which perhaps explains why laughing doesn't come easily.
after ec: I don't know what your reply means, sorry, but as I touched "its height" in my addition, it may not matter much. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Understandable how the death of a friend would make it harder for you to find laughter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
He died in 2016. I'm over his death, and we had email contact between retiring and his death, but one of those whose actions caused him to retire making the statement quoted - tough. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
ANI
I pronounce it "the incidents noticeboard". I'm probably the only one, though to be fair, I write it that way also, to avoid mysterious letters for the uninitiated ;-). isaacl (talk) 22:34, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
I tried to be very approachable in my statement around abbreviations but admit I'm less good in my platform and in the questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:42, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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Growth team newsletter #23
Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!
Screenshot of the positive reinforcement module improvements.
Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test
The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.
Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.
This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.
Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback
After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.
We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
Patroller fatigue:
By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [21]
The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
Recent changes
All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [22]
The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [23][24]
Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.
News for mentors
All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting Special:MentorDashboard.
Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [25]
Deployments
Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [26]
Improving this newsletter
We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.
Hi there. Hate to bug you. I posted this question over on NPP. It's not just limited to roads, but also other items. Without belaboring the issue here on your talk page, and understanding I hate bringing stuff to the drama boards, it has reached a point (with several admins opposing what I consider core WP policy), that it needs to be addressed. Since this is not limited to a single individual, but involves numerous editors and admins, where would you suggest I bring it up?Onel5969TT me 11:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
@Onel5969 I really do think this discussion is at a place where coming up with an RfC that roads project editors and NPP reviewers both feel good about (in terms of the question) is the right step and would suggest some effort be made at crafting that. In fact after I reply here I'm going to go over to that thread to agree with that suggestion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:14, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.
Technical news
A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)
Arbitration
Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.
Miscellaneous
Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.
Thank you for stepping in earlier this year to redact a Twitter link to a conspiracy theory about an editor here.
The IP range that was t-banned for pushing this conspiracy theory is at it again, this time positing the link at an article talk page [27][28] and a user talk page [29] (and linking to that link at a second user talk page [30]).
If you or any of the other admins who watch your page care to step in, it would be much appreciated. This user is seeking attention, so bringing them to ANI doesn't seem like the ideal solution.
Generalrelative, please don't admin shop. You've already requested against action against me from one admin, Generalnotability, and there is no need to request it from a second one before the first has had the chance to respond. 2600:1004:B102:3157:19F1:799:70D7:C775 (talk) 17:10, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
@Generalrelative I'm not going to comment on why I oversighted any previous content other than to say that those circumstances don't apply here. It does look like a topic ban violation from the IP but I'm rather occupied with other things and GeneralNotability or any other uninvolved admin at AE can weigh in on that in case my first impression is wrong. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:11, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Understood. I'll give GeneralNotability an opportunity to respond, and take the matter to AE if necessary. Generalrelative (talk) 21:40, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Your "Death of Wikipedia" Essay
Hello! I saw you linked to your "Death of Wikipedia" essay below that article in The Signpost. I was wondering if you knew of any other discussions of existential threats to the encyclopedia? I am in the very early stages of drafting a similar piece. Thanks! Mainly 22:15, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
I don't but if you find them let me know. I'd be happy to give them some "See also" linking. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your speedy reply, and sure thing, will do. — Mainly 22:21, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
When you relist an AFD after a DRV can you pleasen renotify the previous notified projects to enable a more complete discussion. Thanks, Nfitz (talk) 18:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'm prepared to agree to that. If project members are interested they can choose to follow along the AfDs when they are initially nominated or once it reaches the DRV stage. Notifying projects are not part of the DRV closing instructions and frankly in this case if they had been I'd have decided not to close a discussion that had already been dormant for weeks because I wouldn't have been interested in trying to discover which projects had been originally notified. I don't think that would have benefitted the project. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
It's hard to follow closely when the DRV stage takes six weeks. I did check regularly for weeks! And then it slipped through between my November 27 check, and when someone (a biased sockpuppet I admit) pinged me today. I guess I need to be more obsessive (joke ...). I'm not sure how this isn't a benefit for the project, when better attended AFDs for almost identical topics, have resulted in a clear keep consensus, when relisted. I've opened a discussion at WT:Deletion review#Deletion sorting after a relist outcome in a DRV. Nfitz (talk) 20:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
I hear what you're saying and am glad you started a broader discussion. With the new expiring watchlist feature a suggestion I'd have for the future (or at least how I would do it) is to watch list the articles or AFD discussions themselves with say a 3 month expiration because that way if they come back to activity you might see it? Anyhow I'm looking forward to hearing what others say at the talk page discussion you started. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Thank you for helping answer my question on the IP address ban, and answering all my questions without hesitance. Here is some appreciation for you. MasterMatt12 (talk) 22:08, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
Dan "Plank" Rogers
It's an article that mocks a run-of-the-mill fourth division player, aged 30, that he is the best ever and will be selected to play for the national team. You can delete it as Vandalism if you prefer that over Attack Page, but it is an unacceptable page (not just as "not notable", but as "don't ever try to write an article like this again"). Fram (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
We have run of the mill companies and musicians puffery themselves up all the time. From the discussion on the editor's talk page it's still not clear to me that this was done maliciously despite your assertions otherwise. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:55, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
Oh no, the vandal doesn't tell us he is a vandal, who to believe??? It wasn't "puffery" and it wasn't writing about themselves. It was a BLP telling blatant lies about that person. Whether they did it maliciously or for laughs or for a bet or whatever is of no interest to me. It wasn't simply praising someone a bit too strongly, it was pure nonsense, and the article creator knows well enough that the chance of the English national team selecting some 30-year old 9th (!) tier rugby player is well below zero. I wonder why even have a "current squad" on that club article, these people are total unknowns and shouldn't be included (just like we don't include non-notable relatives of well-known people). Fram (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
Doing a solid for a mate or having a joke with a colleague both fit the facts that we have in front of us and are, in my mind, more likely than material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone which would justify a G10. As to broader problems you see around the notability of the creation, that's a different matter than being an attack page and my edit summary was intentionally worded to say that I'm not looking to get in the middle of that. But if something is tagged G10 I go out of my way to take a look at it because, as we both agree, there's real harm from having attack pages of people live on Wikipedia. In those instances if it's obviously say a G3 I'll still delete under the right criteria but am less interested in doing the evaluation work I do for an A7 or G11 neither of which have the urgency of a G10. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:59, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
If it wasn´t an attack but a ´joke´ then it was a G3, telling blatant lies about a BLP. A7 wouldn´t have included the ridiculous claims. But I don´t expect you to somehow admit that you missed the utterly, completely "hilarious" claims in the lead and the body and somehow want to turn this in an A7 to save face. Very poor showing. Fram (talk) 21:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
@Fram I'm normally content to let someone else have the last word. However I want to clarify: is "very poor showing" a demand for administrator accountability? Because if so I'll answer it but otherwise I'm pretty confident that we're going to continue to see this differently and don't think either of us needs to continue the discussion. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:58, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
@No, you´ve answered. I think you were really wrong here, but I don´t plan to escalate this. I just hope that if you come across anything similar in the future, you´ll be, let´s say more BLPminded, more alert. Fram (talk) 22:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
AI-generated text
I was going to wait to see if a more detailed proposal was made that used the term "chatbot", but I agree: the effect of the underlying tech is what's of interest, not one particular packaging of it. I appreciate that valid concerns can still be raised by those who don't understand the technology, but the continued use of "chatbot" makes it sound like people are going to just hook up AIs to edit Wikipedia at random. Since I don't understand the motivation of persistent vandals, I guess that's a theoretical risk, but I think the bigger threat is editors using it to integrate poor content, either intentionally or naively. Since Wikipedia doesn't have gamification-based incentives like Stack Overflow, I don't feel there's the same degree of motivation to pump out edits indiscriminately for most editors (I know, there are some who are driven by counts). isaacl (talk) 17:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Responding to you isaac but also to what @Levivich wrote at VPP, I think there is some ability to do large disruptive editing at scale that is harder to identify as disruptive content from a quick look and so will take more human time to counter. I think there are paid or government actors that might be motivated to use this because they couldn't compose text in English at the proficiency of GPT. And of course I think AI is what's most likely to bring about the death of Wikipedia. But for now I'm not sure our existing policies are insufficient to counter the limitations of AI generated text. In fact maybe I should go further - I think the policies are sufficient. Will that change with GPT4 or 6 or whatever? Quite possibly. But that's another reason to really understand the technology at play here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
I've been meaning to write something in response to your essay. There may be a day when AI is able to perform the curation and organization roles of human editors across all topics, obscure and popular, but I don't think it's that close, so I don't think it's going to kill off Wikipedia as a complete replacement in the intermediate term. I agree, though, that in some shorter timeframe it may become good enough for a sufficient set of topics such that a large portion of the Wikipedia community will lose interest, thus threatening its sustainability. I think other factors too may drive a loss of editors (the usual one I mention is how there is more incentive for poor behaviour versus collaborative behaviour), so combined they may lead to an inability for Wikipedia to remain up-to-date.
While it's possible that AI ghostwriters might tip the balance towards enabling more malevolent groups, I don't think it's that hard to find human ghostwriters who can write as well as an average Wikipedia editor if you can pay them. A larger threat might be AI socks, who could make lots of housekeeping edits to appear like regular editors, and then swamp discussions to support specific views. isaacl (talk) 18:36, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
I think AI progress is still on an exponential curve so it will get to the point you lay out in the second sentence sooner rather than later. But interesting point about the presence of AI to harm editor interest. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:00, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm probably influenced by the fact that AI has been on that curve since the 70s and falling short of predictions for fifty years, so it still feels like there's a lot of slope to go, but I may be underestimating the current state of research. I think replacing human editorial curation is a much tougher job than generating text, though.
As an example of a technological change affecting knowledge sharing: once upon a time, there were Usenet newsgroups covering every topic under the sun, with FAQs that were regularly updated with the latest info. As the web became more widespread, it seemed to me that FAQs very quickly stagnated and thus faded in importance. I think with the rise of search engines making it possible for anyone to setup a reference page that others could find, Usenet users lost interest in maintaining text-based FAQs. I feel that a lot of useful legacy info compiled in most of those FAQs hasn't made the transition to regularly-updated web pages. It's true that good portions of it may have been recreated in new form, likely a lot of it on Wikipedia, but as Wikipedia is a non-specialist encyclopedia, it usually doesn't preserve the same amount of deep detail that were present in the old Usenet FAQs. isaacl (talk) 03:02, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I mean computers were also on that long arc of falling short of predictions for a longtime and now we have the iPhone (and arguably have moved off the scale around the time of the iPhone 2 or 3). I would suggest we're probably in the late 90s stage of computers where we're getting some genuinely useful things out of it but it's still clunky. Because the pace of innovation quickens (as the innovations can build on past innovations) I would expect we'll get to mid-2000s level of Internet usefulness (i.e. when Wikipedia started hitting the mainstream) relatively soon.As for your usernet example, I think it shows how knowledge became disaggregated but more widely accessible. That might be a loss for the people who already had access before but is probably a net-win for the world.The thing about GPT is that in most ways it's a re-aggregator. If you ask the question in the right way (its own skill) you can learn from a huge percentage of the whole internet rather than merely what the thousands of Wikipedians put together. And part of the premise of AI is that in theory you don't need curation, in that it could address like Google whatever you want. Now of course Google is curated (and arguably in a way that is worse for my search experience than for Google's bottomline as compared to a decade ago) and AI will be too. But in terms of what we do here at Wikipedia? I think it can do that quite well. It's just that for now, at least, we have access to sources it doesn't and the OpenAI people aren't prioritizing informational accuracy in the way that we are. But when someone with a large language model does prioritize that... Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:15, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I think we have different views on technology history: I think computers have exceeded predictions for a long time, with Moore's law holding for much longer than anyone had reason to believe. I don't see the iPhone as an advance in computing, but in user interface design (and niche marketing to an audience willing to spend money on apps). (Later features incorporated in smartphones do reflect the continued increase in computing power, such as natural language recognition and automatic photo processing.) The continued advances in computing power is what drives changes such as the shift to streaming video, and the increased capability of AI technology.
I disagree that AI is premised on not requiring curation. I do agree that curation may not be required if the only aspect of Wikipedia being replaced is "provide an answer to this question". From the aspect of Wikipedia being a learning tool, guiding readers through topics from broader descriptions to detailed information, I think editorial judgement in organizing the information is important. I think it's still daunting to train a model that can design a curriculum on any subject. However, I can see how an AI-based question answerer could be good enough to cause Wikipedia's editing community to shrink significantly. isaacl (talk) 22:40, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I think this article needs more than 2 days of protection. I protected it for 2 weeks and the vandal came back as soon as the protection expired. I think we need to think about weeks, not days. LizRead!Talk! 07:23, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Honestly when I saw I had pings about this here and from Johnuniq I was expecting criticism for jumping to ECP given that none of the accounts that have had content suppressed have even been confirmed. If you want to go longer at confirmed I have no objections. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:45, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
I suspect that the lack of criticism was because Zzuuzz had semi-protected the article 38 minutes before your extended-confirmed protection (hence the "changed protection settings" in the log entry). The users that were editing the article in the inter-protection period were therefore autoconfirmed (as you noted in your log entry...). While we're on the subject of that article, can the edit summaries by Zzuuzz and Nick Levine there be unsuppressed? Thanks, Sdrqaz (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
That wasn't my suppression but I have unsuppressed those edit summaries as there is indeed no need for those ES to be suppressed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:53, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. The same goes for Special:Diff/1127293423, which was by Nick at that article too. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:12, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Done. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for your measured responses in dealing with my concern at RFA: tone is everything. What I remember most about being in AfDs on opposite sides with you. You have never used harsh tones or threats etc. and you have always taken the time to respond comprehensively. You have also always focussed on the content and not the editor. You can see in that RFA other admins are of of smattering quality and some gleefully diminish other editors to make their points. I can support the candidate now and I am glad that they could answer the reworded question. Apologies for the initial clumsy wording and the failure to get the point on the talk page. The initial concern I had centered on the candidate's acceptance where they stated, "I had another account that I abandoned for concerns of privacy and inexperience" I found the new account to be experienced. Their answer to my question filled in the blanks regarding experience. Again, you are a credit to this project. Happy Holidays. Lightburst (talk) 23:53, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words. It is important to me that we stay kind to each other even (especially) at RfA. Like you I'm glad this ended in a way that got you the information you sought without CR feeling like they had to compromise their privacy. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:12, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Username question
Hello again, I have an unrelated topic. I want to ask about a WP:USERNAME which may violate WP:DISRUPTNAME and rather than start a dustup I wanted to get your opinion. The name is "Piecesofuk", In my life I have heard this phrase used as profanity. The account was started in 2016 and I have not seen any editor ask about it. But that very well could be because Piecesofuk only has 2k edits. Thanks for considering my question. Lightburst (talk) 17:13, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
Funny that you're asking me this because one of my go to examples for an area that I know I'm not an expert in is usernames. There is a whole lot of practice and expertise around how we handle usernames that I know that I don't have. That said while I can read it in a way that it comes out dirty, I can also read it so it comes out as PiecesOfUK which would not be a violation. So yeah sorry that I'm the wrong admin to ask. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
Fair enough, maybe I can @Cullen328:. I do know that this is not the correct procedure but I see that Cullen328 has done some work there. Rather than start friction with the editor over it, maybe they can weigh in. Lightburst (talk) 17:32, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
Lightburst, unless a username is extremely egregious, I do not look at the name in isolation but also look at their editing history. In this case, the editor says they have written eight articles. I read three and they are good work. Most of their work seems to be related to the UK. So, I am inclined to accept Barkeep49's benign interpretation. Cullen328 (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Cullen328 That makes sense and shows where my mind is at. I could only see "Pieces of F*&K" before I came here. Happy holidays to both of you. Lightburst (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
Lightburst, your reading is an entirely reasonable one, and it would have been best if UK had been capitalized. Cullen328 (talk) 19:09, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has concluded the 2021-22 review of the contentious topics system (formerly known as discretionary sanctions), and its final decision is viewable at the revision process page. As part of the review process, the Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:
The above proposals that are supported by an absolute majority of unrecused active arbitrators are hereby enacted. The drafting arbitrators (CaptainEek, L235, and Wugapodes) are directed to take the actions necessary to bring the proposals enacted by this motion into effect, including by amending the procedures at WP:AC/P and WP:AC/DS. The authority granted to the drafting arbitrators by this motion expires one month after enactment.
The Arbitration Committee thanks all those who have participated in the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process and all who have helped bring it to a successful conclusion. This motion concludes the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process.
This motion initiates a one-month implementation period for the updates to the contentious topics system. The Arbitration Committee will announce when the initial implementation of the Committee's decision has concluded and the amendments made by the drafting arbitrators in accordance with the Committee's decision take effect. Any editors interested in the implementation process are invited to assist at the implementation talk page, and editors interested in updates may subscribe to the update list.
ACE2022 isn't officially over yet, we are awaiting final scrutineer certification. While we do have a majority, should the final turn up issues they could convince others to withdraw. — xaosfluxTalk 18:29, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Additionally, the election is not run by the arbitration committee, so sending notification "for the Arbitration Committee" declaring the winners of the election is also a bit out of order. — xaosfluxTalk 18:38, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux I certainly agree with this second message but I'm confused what you're saying. The message I used is a templated message ArbCom has used for years. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:57, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
I think that is normally sent out to welcome people to the committee, after they are declared winners. As the election isn't closed yet, they haven't been declared yet - but that template presumes that they are. — xaosfluxTalk 18:58, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
You have a member of the Electcom updating Arb templates with the new members, a different member of electcom certifying the results. I believe I have taken my cues from that group. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:00, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
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 and yours nothing but joy, health and prosperity. Onel5969TT me 20:07, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
Presentation about the Values & Principles chapter by MCDC member Georges Fodouop.Presentation about the Roles and Responsibilities chapter (statement of intent) by MCDC member Manavpreet Kaur.
Learn about Movement Charter Drafting Committee’s work in November: As usual, the Committee released its regular monthly updates from November 2022. This month’s updates include highlights about the external facilitator hiring, next in-person meeting of the Committee and updates about the new drafting groups, among others.
First community consultation period: From mid November to mid December 2022 the Committee members took part in 8 regional feedback sessions. Committee members joined the sessions to provide clarifications and answer to questions that came from different language communities on the Movement Charter.
Recordings of the presentations shared during the regional meetings are available here for those interested.
If you have not shared your feedback on the drafts of the Movement Charter yet, please do so by filling out this anonymous survey, which is open until January 2, 2023 and is available in more than 12 languages.
The Movement Charter Ambassador Program received over 15 proposals. The ambassadors are currently putting their initiatives into action in various local communities. The Movement Charter Ambassadors Program will once again be opened for applications in the second quarter of 2023, in preparation for the next round of Movement Charter consultations. Both individuals and organizations will be able to apply. Those interested in becoming Movement Charter Ambassadors are encouraged to sign-up.
Coming up:
Community Conversations summary:The Movement Strategy and Governance team of the Wikimedia Foundation will prepare and publish the final summary report of the community feedback in January 2023. The report will be shared with the MCDC and the communities on different channels of communication.
Feedback on the Movement Charter: There will be additional ways to engage with the Movement Charter content, including the early feedback on the proposed ratification process and a new set of draft chapters in the second quarter of 2023.
--14:27, 22 December 2022 (UTC).
Happy holidays!
Happy New Year!
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, Barkeep49!
The other day, I was having a conversation with someone about holiday cards and social media. It occurred to me that, in the years since I left Facebook, the site I use most to communicate with people I like isn't actually a social media site at all. If you're receiving this, it's pretty likely I've talked with you more recently than I have my distant relatives and college friends on FB, at very least, and we may have even collaborated on something useful. So here's a holiday "card", Wikipedia friend. :) Hope the next couple weeks bring some fun and/or rest. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:10, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand your rationale
Why in your opinion is the panel concept not useful to this closing situation at the 12/15 Twitter AfD? BusterD (talk) 21:45, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm skeptical of panels in general. To the extent that they have value I think it's in making closes stick with the upper echelons of Wikipedia elite. There are no deep policy questions at play in the 12/15 Twitter AfD and so it's just a gigantic AfD. Frankly I think a better argument could be made that a panel would have helped at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daily Dozen Doughnut Company (2nd nomination) and no one seriously suggested that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:53, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Here I'm concerned about how the non-Wikipedia world views our decision making process and a non-admin close wouldn't be appropriate in this case, IMHO. I've already seen and mentioned gaming activity here. I have no personal interest (although I have made assertion) except for how our processes are (and appear to be) transparent and somewhat precise. BusterD (talk) 22:17, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Oh I 100% agree it would be inappropriate for a NAC. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:28, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
The problem is that if the outside world truly scrutinizes how Wikipedia processes work, there's not a lot of substantial difference between a one-person or multi-person evaluation of consensus, or between an admin versus an experienced non-admin editor evaluating consensus. The oddity with Wikipedia versus dispute resolution on most other sites is that someone just volunteers to evaluate consensus, regardless of whether or not they have any experience with the type of discussion in question, or the subject matter, and they aren't supposed to personally evaluate the validity of the arguments. Personally, I feel the best way to minimize external criticism is to find an editor with a sterling history of closing deletion discussions. I appreciate that'll probably be an admin, but it's the history that I think is important, not the administrative privileges. isaacl (talk) 22:52, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
If we were talking about an RfC or even an RM, I would agree. But I also believe that NAC are, for the reasons that WP:RELISTBIAS lays out, inclined at the margins to close in a way other than delete. Not to say that this AfD should be closed as delete - truthfully beyond the ping to visit it I haven't been watching - just that I think AfD has a different quality than some other places where strong closes are called for. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:56, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
My apologies; you're right that deletion discussions that aren't obvious keeps are most frequently (always?) closed by admins since they have the ability to implement a deletion outcome. All the same, I still feel that the key characteristic of the admin should be an excellent history of evaluating consensus in deletion discussions. isaacl (talk) 23:10, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Inadvertently deleted redirects
Hello @Barkeep49, and thank you for your quick response to the G10 deletion request I made. It seems, however, that quite a few redirects were "fixed" by @Xqbot, which caused those valid redirects to also get deleted by Twinkle. I'm unsure of the page histories for these redirects, so I'm wary of recreating all of these on my own. When you find the time, please restore the following redirects that were inadvertently caught up in this mess:
One of the deleted redirects, Blengblong, seems to be an attack title as well; this can be left alone. Thank you very much for your help! Chlod (say hi!) 16:11, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
@Chlod I've undeleted them. Feel free to fix redirects. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
All done. Thank you very much! Chlod (say hi!) 16:59, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Seasons Greetings
Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether it's Christmas or some other festival, I hope you and those close to you have a happy, restful time! Have fun, Donner60 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)}}
Hello Barkeep49 Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, RV (talk) 08:12, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 21:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk·contribs·email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk·contribs·email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello, Barkeep49/Archives. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.casualdejekyll 17:47, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023
Hello Barkeep49/Archives,
New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog
The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.
2022 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!
Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)
New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js
Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.
Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.
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About GA reviews and archives
Hello and happy new year, although I'm pretty late for it...
Since I recently found out about the WP:RGA process and grew interested in it, I wanted to ask you for help and assistance as I try my hand at it, please, should I decide to take up some reviews in the next weeks (I'd probably start from some of the pages listed in the Sports category). Obviously, no worries if you're already overloaded with other things coming up.
On a side note, may I ask you for some advice on archiving my own talk page, too? I'm still learning about how scripts and bots work on this site, so I don't really know how to set one of those properly...
I hope I've articulated myself well enough. Thank you!
@Oltrepier happy to help with archiving. Essentially what you want to do is go to Help:Archiving_a_talk_page#Sequentially_numbered_archives and copy the code for either sigma or clue on the top of your user talk page. Those default settings are likely to work well for you. As for Good Articles, while I have a bunch of experience with them, I'm not really in a place where I could mentor someone new. I bet, however, if you asked at WT:GAN you'd find someone eager and able to help you. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:38, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
OK, I've just managed to activate it, hopefully it will work out.
Thank you so much for your advice! Oltrepier (talk) 15:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
Nosebagbear (talk) is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!
Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
CAPTAIN RAJU(T) is wishing you a MerryChristmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!
Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.
Best wishes for joy and prosperity. Thanks for helping me get through RfA! Happy holidays, Complex/Rational 00:26, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
larger change
Regarding While brainstorming this idea Xaosflux suggested a larger change so that the Blocking and Admin policies used the same language could be useful.: I had to read this several times to try to understand what was being said. Perhaps you could reword it to something like "While brainstorming this idea, Xaosflux suggested it could be useful to make a larger change that synchronizes the text in the Blocking and Admin policies."
On a secondary note, you introduced "child protection" in one location but not another; not sure if that was intentional or just an oversight. isaacl (talk) 22:02, 6 January 2023 (UTC
I see the secondary note is moot now. isaacl (talk) 22:04, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. I edited it in a slightly different way but hopefully one that will still be clear. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks; the change is helpful. isaacl (talk) 22:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. Congratulations to being a chosen arbitrator. I like the discussions for Tchaikovsky, - promising. What do you think about Mozart, on the talk and at User talk:Michael Bednarek? (asking you because you once were the closer, in a rather historic close, in retrospect) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Consensus can change and I think we are witnessing the slow change of that consensus in regards to infoboxes. Perhaps one day the consensus will change back or perhaps this will just become so accepted that it becomes an expected default. And yes that close does feel like a milestone of sorts in retrospect. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
All quite correct in general. Looking closer, a good question has been raised today (Debussy): should the principal editors decide, or the community? (More precisely: an opposer said the principal editors should decide.) In all RfCs sinze Mozart that I noticed (and there were not many, and there was Beethoven before), the community wanted to have to decide, - in a way no surprise. In no case I noticed was that decision reverted. If you want my modest suggestion: we should stop thinking infoboxes are anything special, but treat them like other content: bold edits get reverted and discussed. I feel that in the recent discussions, some of the principal editors didn't treat newbies well, and wonder a bit why the existing DS were not used, to enforce at least civility. - What I came for was pointing at two singers whose performance I enjoyed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Music in general, but certainly music older than the 1960s, is a place where I don't have a lot of knowledge. Which of the songs that you listed on your page was by Parsley? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:14, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for confusing you ;) - Parsley is one of the more recent FAs about a composer with an infobox, while those an obvious newbie added to Benjamin Britten and Felix Mendelssohn were predictably reverted, - I just wish someone new who has probably no idea of a (former?) conflict would get more education in an edit summary than "restore". I began a new article on my songs, which has nothing to do with Parsley. On vacation - click on songs for images. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:35, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello Barkeep49. You helped me in the past with the Adam Neuman page, so I wonder if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at my most recent edit request concerning the neutrality of the Property section of Adam Neumann's BLP. If you agree that some clarification is needed to add balance to the sentence in question, I'd greatly appreciate your help with the implementation. Thanks so much, Carlos for Neumann (talk) 12:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
An editor has responded to the request so I suggest discussing this with them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:29, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
This “harassment” occurred at Texan Santa Fe Expedition and Limoges (I asked for references or sources for his edits) as well as on his talk page. Check it out. Carptrash (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure how this ended up on my talk page and I see the IP has now been blocked which seems reasonable all things considered. That said @Carptrash I'm guessing you didn't mean it this way, but your email to me felt firmly in legal threat territory. Given what happened it's understandable but I thought you'd want to know to avoid doing that in the fute. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:23, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, not you in legal trouble but rather the editor who left the message here for you as an administrator. I guess. You are fine. i just wanted you to know that this was happening. Carptrash (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
You know...
Thanks. Unbelievable, huh. Drmies (talk) 03:45, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Unbelievable indeed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:51, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
Suggestions and concerns may be directed to the arbitration clerk team at WT:AC/C.
The drafting arbitrators warmly thank all those who have worked to implement the new procedure during this implementation period and beyond. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 19:44, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
While playing around with collapsing the sidebar, I actually had the opposite problem of most of those who object to the new skin: the wikitext edit box takes up the whole width of the browser window, which I usually have set an uncomfortably large width for editing text. I remember one of the things I liked about the introduction of Vector was that it reduced the width of the edit box to a more manageable size, as it kept the sidebar visible on the edit screen as opposed to monobook, which doesn't. Of course I can toggle the sidebar back on, so it's not an impediment. I have a very plain vanilla setup, with no gadgets configured other than what's available in the user preferences, so I haven't faced any of the compatibility issues that you have seen.
Addendum: pressing "Preview" brings up a page where the edit box is contained with the content area of the preview, so it's limited by the article width. (Hacking the web page to add a "useskin" parameter to the form, I see the same happens with monobook.) isaacl (talk) 00:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Tik Tok
Hi Barkeep49. Would you mind helping close a discussion at Talk:TikTok#Community Guidelines and Transparency Center, and implement accordingly? I saw that you've edited the YouTube article significantly, including a bit to the section on YouTube's community guidelines, so hopefully the subject matter at TikTok is relevant for you as well.
Some context: There has been some discussion there already, but the conversation died out before anyone got a chance to implement at least the parts of my proposed edits that most of the editors agreed on. So I feel it would be good to get closure from outside eyes like yours. Finally, I'll note that I have not added even the agreed-upon material unilaterally, due to my COI. Thank you, Bkenny44 (talk) 18:07, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
@Bkenny44 that isn't the kind of discussion that is typically closed. I would suggest offering a revised version of what you originally suggested that is changed based on the feedback offered by FormalDude, Skdb, and SMcCandlish and see what kind of feedback that suggestion gets. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:23, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Evaluation required
Hello, once in a while you gave me valuable recommendations how to deal with possibly disruptive editing in Lithuanian topics. There is a recent case at the administrators noticeboard about an user Marcelus who is actively describing one of the most competent and recognized experts in Lithuanian content Zigmas Zinkevičius as chauvinistic pig (1, 2) and saying that his intentions is to describe him as such (3). Mr. Zinkevičius is one of the most important and acknowledged authors in the main Lithuanian encyclopedias (Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija and Mažosios Lietuvos enciklopedija), so such intentions can cause significant harm to Lithuanian content and unnecessary WP:BATTLEGROUNDs. Two other users already acknowledged possible serious violations of Wikipedia's rules, including WP:SYNTH, WP:POVPUSH, WP:OR. So I kindly request you to evaluate this report: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruptive editing by Marcelus before it is turned into a skyscraper of text and such actions spreads into other Lithuanian artices.
Have a nice day, -- Pofka (talk) 21:50, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
@Pofka I have generally not been an active participant at ANI and because of my role as an arbitrator I find it helpful to participate even less so that if a problem reaches us, I can approach it with fresh eyes. Sorry I cannot help you here. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:11, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Apologies
Shall I file a clarification request at ARCA? Never been through the process. Doug's comments are certainly helpful. TrangaBellam (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
@TrangaBellam if you feel like you still need an answer to your question, yes. If you feel like you have the information you need, no. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:54, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
UCOC vote on enforcement guidelines
I voted and added a somewhat lengthy comment. Where can I find the comment and read responses to it? I was going to ping Xeno but it seems he has nothing more recent than 2021 about UCOC. I noticed your name on his user page. Martindo (talk) 05:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
@Martindo yeah Xeno has other responsibilities at the foundation now. I'm not sure who if anyone filled his role. Anyhow the comments aren't revealed until the voting ends because they are actually encrypted and inaccessible until the end of the process. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 08:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Martindo (talk) 08:11, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 14:31, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #24
Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomer experience projects
The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention.
Results from four of these experiments are now available:
Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.
Newcomer tasks
Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [31]
The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [32]
Mentorship
When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [33]
Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [34]
Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.
This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.
Translations
Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.
Hello, yesterday I spent three hours trying to clean up the mess made by a blocked IP address 88.255.159.106 on the Sharia article. From their edits I recognise the hand of User:Ben Bilal. For example, these edits are indicative: Special:Diff/1124315285 (use of caption to expound theories), Special:Diff/1132518572 and Special:Diff/1132533646 (automatically translated texts), Special:Diff/1125691718 (use of Turkish sources). Could you please check whether IP 88.255.159.106 and Ben Bilal are the same user? I think a global ban might be appropriate, as was recently requested by an SPA here: Ben Bilal spams their content all over the world, has been active on more than 60 Wikipedias and has already been blocked on en.wiki [36] and on 11 other Wikipedias [37].
I'm also seeking your advice on how - and whether - to proceed on Meta. Note that I was instrumental in getting their temporary block on it.wiki (here) and their indefinite block on fr.wiki and simple.wiki (see this discussion on simple.wiki). I also was involved in their indefinite block on es.wiki, where I myself was indefinitely blocked, arguably for no reason at all since I complied with policy and did not engage in disruptive editing and edit war [38].
I mention this because it may have some bearing on the decision to start an RfC on Meta: I am convinced that the user is harmful to many Wikipedias across the world and should be blocked globally, but I am reluctant to deal with it myself, since I already had a bad experience. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 12:07, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
@Gitz6666 I don't have enough experience with Meta RfCs to offer you good advice. As for your request, it's against the privacy policy to link a user to the IP address so if I were to do that check I'd be unable to comment. Sorry I couldn't offer more help. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
I didn't know that. Sorry for a request that, I now realise, was quite inappropriate on my part. I will look elsewhere for information on an RfC on Meta: I guess asking the question I put to you to a Meta steward is the easiest way to find out if it is worth proceeding. Thank you, Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:44, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
AA3
Hi Barkeep49, hope you're doing well. It seems like the evidence I presented in AA3 was cut considerably. When I asked about posting the off-wiki evidence, I thought it would be an exception and allowed based on your reply, did I misunderstand you? In any case, I already emailed the full off-wiki evidence to ArbCom. Regards, ZaniGiovanni (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
@ZaniGiovanni sorry for the miscommunication but it was not my intention to OK that publicly. I know one of the drafting arbs @Moneytrees has cleaned up what is allowed publicly. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
I see, thanks for clarifying. I modified my comment. ZaniGiovanni (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
I think some of it could've stayed (like the "Qorqud club" evidence) as it hardly violates outing, even had several news articles written about it. But I presume it makes no difference since I've emailed the full evidence to ArbCom already. Regards, ZaniGiovanni (talk) 17:35, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment
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New essay - Friends don't let friends get sanctioned
I have written a new essay Friends don't let friends get sanctioned. I hope you'll give it a read. (I always feel a bit obnoxious writing on my own talk page, I also write these to be read and so I feel the need to take some advantage of having a bunch of talk page watchers). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Since I've had a few offwiki conversations with people tying this into recent events, I just want to note that this idea has been something I started talking about in a wiki context in 2020. So while some recent events were the spur I needed to write this in essay form, it wasn't recent events that I had in mind as I wrote. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:54, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Very good ... applies to so many cases ... where were their friends when they needed them? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:02, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
A lot of times, they don't listen! Obviously without disclosing any details, I can't tell you how many times I've said to a "wikifriend" that they're headed towards a TBAN or siteban, and they just don't listen. And when people ask, "where were their friends?" I can't quite say, "Oh, we were here, this editor just didn't listen to us," because that would be throwing a friend under a bus. I think the point raised in this essay is a good one, but I think it needs an expansion along the lines of, "...and listen to your friends!". Levivich (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
So true ... BTDT. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
In the past I've toyed with the idea of writing an essay, "Please don't be obnoxious, even though there's no rule against it," which is kind of along a similar vein, in the sense that you shouldn't reply to someone giving you advice by saying "but there's no rule against behaving that way". I haven't written it because I didn't think it would reach anyone who could benefit and be receptive to it. (I started an offline draft, "On kindness", with the thesis statement that exhibiting kindness has better long-term results than being uncollaborative, but the problem is... the long term might be way out there.) I started to write that I thought a separate essay on listening to your friends would be better, as the target audience is different, but then thought maybe having a gentle section in this essay ("if someone is giving advice to you, try to truly understand what prompted it and how you might benefit") might help the medicine go down. I suspect, though, that they'll just bounce over it and instead provide their helpful (from their point of view) advice to those opposing them. isaacl (talk) 18:23, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
BK49, along the same lines of what Levivich mentions, you might also expand to include a different scenario. You're trying to have an open, transparent, onWiki discussion with a "friend", explaining where they are wrong, and the peanut gallery chimes in, making the conversation even more difficult, and erasing all your efforts. That is, if you see someone trying to help a friend correct course, stay out of it until they have more or less come to an understanding, and only then weigh in, and only if it will really help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:23, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
The main example I see of "too much friendly advice" is on incidents notice board threads where multiple people start constructing different scenarios based on cascading assumptions regarding an editor's motivations. Unfortunately it's a hard problem to resolve, since many editors want to post a response sooner in hopes of expediting a reply to their personal concerns. I think it would be nice if all editors, friendly, neutral, or otherwise, would defer responding until the subject of the feedback has replied to clarify whether or not various assumptions are correct, or to further explain their point of view. But sadly I can't think of a way to make this happen. isaacl (talk) 18:45, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately, for personal criticism of another's actions as a friend, I think you're probably setting yourself for (some) failure with open, transparent, onWiki discussion. Having a personal or at least a private discussion really is the best way to start the process. It can be hurtful to hear the truth. As much as we like to say "comment on content/action, not contributor", that doesn't stop criticism of action from being a hurtful process. Radical transparency has its place in many or most things, but I'm not sure "you shouldn't have done that" is always the right time for it. As some have noted onwiki, if you get a review of your efforts in the workplace, it's not with the whole department getting the opportunity to have their say; they are deliberately excluded from that discussion. Izno (talk) 19:50, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Well in a 360 review everyone might give their feedback but the results aren't shown publicly and that initial feedback is itself collated privately. That's my backwards way of saying I really agree with this idea and it's something that needs to be incorporated into the essay as it stands now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Unless Wikipedia introduces its own private messaging, though, I'm personally reluctant to use email for this purpose. But I'm one of those who has said a public group conversation is a terrible way to provide criticism, so I don't have any good ideas on how to resolve this problem. Personally, I only like to give feedback when I feel there is a reasonable chance of it being received well. Usually I try to point out how different behaviour would benefit that person's objectives. Unfortunately it often seems like you need to catch the lightning in a bottle at just the right time in order to have an effect. isaacl (talk) 17:10, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
If a brewing mess is already at ANI, you are kinda forced to public, and if you go private, the "aggrieved party" can feel excluded or that there was collusion or whatever, because of the lack of transparency. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:29, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
It's not necessary to include the aggrieved party in an initial communication. In the offline world, you might take someone aside and tell them they were being rude to someone else, in hopes they would alter their behaviour towards the other party. Different circumstances can call for different approaches, of course. isaacl (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the great discussion and suggestions. I hope it continues. Levivich is not the first to note to me that sometimes friends do try and end up being unsuccessful or are successful only in mitigating the sanctions (i.e. instead of a CBAN they just get a TBAN). I had intentionally tried to keep the focus narrow and the call to action simple. But maybe it really does need to have 3 parts: talk to your friends, listen to your friends when they talk to you, supporting rather than defending should be the mindset with a friend (tying in both the contradicting on a user talk and noticeboard behavior strands). I will have to see how those ideas percolate in the days and weeks ahead. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
BK, another piece is that friends can sometimes talk friends down off the ledge if others don't interfere. I have several times been involved in messy ANIs, where I was able to talk a friend down because of knowing what they were going through IRL, and in the cases where I have been successful, it was because others kept the peanut gallery at bay while I tried to get an editor to see reason and see where they were wrong and stop the behavior. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about here Sandy as I've seen it myself. Thematically I saw that as part of that third topic I outlined above. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
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Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
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