User talk:WereSpielChequers

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

not curly

Saw that on my watchlist and wondered what the tarnation does that mean? Looked at the diff and laughed. Well done. It is nice to laugh for a change amongst all the vandalism entries on the watchlist. Bgwhite (talk) 07:24, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, it took a while to get that one under control, and there are still a few music lyrics where I'm really not sure whether to put them on my safe page list or not. But I reckon to make two or three typo fixing not curly edits per week. Curiously I'm seeing less vandalism nowadays, especially with that particular search, I suspect someone has set an edit filter to stop edits that include removing the first l from "public schools" as I used to get one or two of that sort of vandalism every week. I also stopped patrolling for "poop", lots of vandalism when I first went through all the articles that contained that word, but nowadays not enough to be worth manually checking for. ϢereSpielChequers 11:45, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

And in the case of Empire Air Day, does show I wasn't copy+pasting form the sources !--Shirt58 (talk) 10:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

List

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rich_Farmbrough/British_places_with_coord_and_no_pic

Note: that this may include non-place entities, e.g. people in the category tree that have burial coordinates. But then there may well be a nice photo of their tomb/grave/crypt.

If you let me know any items without coords or with images, improvement may be possible.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:47, 5 February 2015 (UTC).

Thanks, that's brilliant. I spotted that where the infobox and image are being delivered by a template your program doesn't realise there is an image see Lochaber Narrow Gauge Railway. Also Zeta Island, Bermuda a Dutch volcano Zuidwal volcano a pass in South Georgia Zigzag Pass and a museum in Abu Dhabi Zayed National Museum are not quite in the UK, though the volcano is close. ϢereSpielChequers 22:39, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

There's not a lot I can easily do about abuses like Lochaber Narrow Gauge Railway - content is not supposed to be abstracted away like that, though I understand the reasoning if there are many uses of the template - in this case there is only one. Conversely, of course, if the template was used on many station pages, then a generic image would not suffice.

• Zayed National Museum was in the category "British Museum"
• Zeta Island was included because Category:Islands of British Overseas Territories was a sub-cat of "Islands of the United Kingdom"
• Zuidwal volcano was included because Category:North Sea is a sub-cat of "Bodies of water of the United Kingdom" (among others) (not changed yet...)
• Zig-Zag Pass was probably included because of a similar British Overseas Territories miscat, possibly Category:British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies being a sub-cat of "Government of the United Kingdom"

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC).

Nominating for Autopatrolled user rights

Hello WereSpielChequers! At our earlier discussion at WT:Autopatrolled you said "Many people get nominated or are nominated for this user right, and occasionally when we have a list I and others trawl through the list of prolific article creators and appoint suitable ones as autopatrollers." Well, I'm starting to parse through the data to try to figure out how many editors there are with 20-50 (non-redirect) articles created (which I'm having to do manually via Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count!) But what I'm finding alarming is the number of (still active) editors that have 50-100 (non-redirect) articles created and who don't have "Autopatrolled" rights! So, I'm thinking that I'd like to nominate some of these for Autopatrolled rights – How do I do that? Thanks in advance! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:14, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi IJBall, the simple answer is that you can nominate them at Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/Autopatrolled - though you might want to check a bit more than just the raw number of articles created. However I'm hoping to get one of my contacts to start producing the list of prospects again, 14 months after it last ran there should be a good crop of editors ready for this userright. Extracting it manually from the Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count sounds like a much more time consuming thing as a lot of those editors will already have the right directly or as admins, and those that don't need to be checked out, some will have already lost the userright due to copyvio or creating unreferenced BLPs, and some will still be creating articles that get deleted for notability reasons, doing some of those checks is a lot quicker if you have admin rights and can look at deleted revisions. So I don't want to sound discouraging, but I wouldn't want you to waste hours of time doing something that a computer may be about to resume doing. ϢereSpielChequers 21:01, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that's exactly what I'm having to do: weed out Admins (and the occasional Bureaucrat), and exclude anyone who hasn't edited in a year or more. I'm also checking to see if they're already "Autopatrolled" at less than 50 articles created (I'd say about 20% are...). I'm not sure I have the stomach to do this for the Top 10,000 Article Creators, but I will definitely finish this out for the Top 5,000 (I'm already up to about #2,200 right now...) So, progress!! I figure some numbers here for my proposal are better than none! (I'll hope the people that lost Autopatrolled due to Copyvios, etc. is a very small number here – hopefully ~0.) P.S. Thanks for the answer on nominating – I won't be nominating any of those editors today (with maybe just a few exceptions! – I've already seen 2–3 editors that I know should be Autopatrolled!), but I may come back later, on a day I'm bored, and check the 50–100 article editors, and think about nominating some of them for Autopatrolled... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:02, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

WMF / Auto sign on talkpages

The WMF put out some extremely misleading statements. Some of your comments in the Village Pump discussion were incorrect (not your fault).

• Now that Flow is deprioritised - Nope.
• The WMF is asking for community input into things they could do instead of FLOW - Nope.

I spoke with the Flow project manager[1]. They have not diminished work on Flow, they are working full speed ahead on specific features for Flow. When the WMF says that their new work is going to be driven by the needs of the Community, they mean they decided what they wanted to give us, then they did research interviews with a couple of editors, then they shoehorned those responses to fit what they wanted to build. I spoke to one of the people they interviewed - the WMF staff interviewing him didn't even know the Community had already built the functionality they are working on. Specifically they are building a replacement for scripts like Twinkle, except their version won't work on existing pages. The Flow team is going full speed ahead, building a project that largely duplicates functionality we already built, and they are deliberately designing it so it won't work unless we convert every goddamn page on Wikipedia into Flow chatboards. Oh.... and it doesn't work unless you switch to Visual Editor too.

In the last election for WMF board of directors, all three elected candidates ran on a platform that Flow could not be deployed if the community didn't want it. So.... the WMF is restricting new development and support to Flow. If we want any new features, if we want any continuing support, we have to take Flow first. There's not much chance of the WMF willingly picking up the autosign project. They want our editor *gone*. Alsee (talk) 19:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, interesting. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-09-02/News_and_notes "Flow on Ice" did seem to me a pretty clear sign that Flow was no longer in fashion at the WMF. The dinosaur takes time to change, but in my view that sort of comment is usually code for "this project is dead", due to the obfuscation the message may get out more slowly, and due to its sauropod like nature the WMF's hind legs might still be moving for a while after the brain has squawked end. But I had stopped worrying about Flow. Though this implies that you may be right, staffers may still try to get it deployed wherever they can get consensus. ϢereSpielChequers 19:55, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello again

It's possible you may vaguely remember me. We had a fair bit of contact several years ago, but I became pretty disillusioned by certain aspects of the whole project (specifically with regard to fair use images) and I have been on pretty substantial wiki-break. Now I'm willingly getting pulled back in to things and I'm once again finding everything for the most part interesting, challenging and enjoyable.

Anyway, I was wondering if you might have any observations you might share about how editing culture has changed since 2011. There are a few things I have noticed that are at least as bad, and in some ways worse, than they were before:

• I still see speedy deletion being horribly misapplied, in ways which can only discourage new editors. I'm looking at an article which was tagged as A1 and G2, neither of which was valid, eight minutes after it was created. I doubt that user will be back.

• The new (to me!) Articles for Creation process doesn't seem to have significantly changed things. I regularly see drafts that are really in pretty good state being declined by editors who want to hold them to punitively high standards of referencing. I'm looking at a draft that has three quality references to reliable sources which specifically discuss the topic in depth, which has been declined now by the same editor three times in a row, with the same reason given - "needs more references". The same editor declines drafts for hours on end at a rate of roughly two per minute. Unsurprisingly, the same editor is also an offender for inappropriate speedy deletion tagging.

• Free-content idealists are still chipping away at fair use images, unnecessarily making the encyclopedia progressively less useful as they work in pursuit of a goal that I do not share (an encyclopedia entirely built from free content, even if it means removing screenshots from articles about historically-significant GUIs). I'm staying away from this topic area because it's what led to my quitting in frustration last time. I do feel it's unfortunate that those policy and deletion debates are so dominated by editors with a stridently anti-fair-use point of view, and I'm not sure that they reflect the true consensus of the community.

• I keep seeing what appear to be deletion campaigns based on racial or religious grounds. For example there is an editor who is a significant contributor to articles on Sunni Islam, who also seems very keen on getting articles about Shia Islam-related topics, and Shia-believing individuals, deleted. I recently rescued an article about a significant topic in Sikhism (to be fair, the article was a pig's breakfast, and the "rescued" version is basically a stub). We have well-written, well-sourced, multiply-linked articles about "XXX in Catholicism", "XXX in Islam", "XXX in Buddhism" etc, but there was a serious argument from the nominator and an AfD participant that "XXX in Sikhism" was "not notable", a position that is so removed from reality (even reality as revealed by ten seconds of Googling) that I struggle to assume good faith.

• There seems to be an increase in the number of new articles from India, the Philippines, etc, and other places where English is not the primary or only language. I think this is a good thing - it reflects the global reach of the project, and increasing global participation is something to be proud of, not a problem to be solved. But new page patrollers in particular seem to disregard non-English sources. They don't seem to know how to Google non-latin-alphabet names. I don't think this is deliberate racism, but the behavior is racist in effect.

I suppose a lot of these things could have been written in 2011. Maybe not much has changed. Certainly the ongoing trend away from the "optimistic content creators" of 2006 towards the "pessimistic gatekeepers" who will eventually control everything is very noticeable when you take a few years away.

Cheers,

Thparkth (talk) 15:09, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi and welcome back! Yes CSD is an ongoing problem, but as we found with WP:NEWT resolving it one way or the other risks tearing the community apart. I do occasionally decline incorrect speedies and try to educate patrollers, but its a thankless task. There is a new speedy deletion process but it largely missed the point and for example changes such as disabling A1 and A3 as options for the first few minutes were rejected out of hand. I'm more enthusiastic about our chance of protecting more of our established writers from deletionist mistakes, once I get a bot writer to refresh the prospect list we can appoint a load of overlooked ones, the sort of people who create an articles a fortnight and have done so for years.

AFC is a failure and I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking so. Part of the problem is that it keeps articles out of mainspace so they don't get collaborative editing, and anyone can decline an AFC submission whilst only an admin can delete a new page in mainspace. I would advise against any goodfaith newbie using it.

Disregarding non-English sources is a problem, people who !vote delete at AFD with rationales such as "no English sources" should soon get the message when admins close as no valid reason given for deletion. A bigger issue is when people who rescue articles don't know how to use non English articles. Is there an essay explaining how to do so? If not would you consider writing one?

Yes there has been greater growth in areas such as India, I assume this reflects growing internet use in such places. My view is that editing Wikipedia is not usually an entry level Internet task, I don't know if the rule of thumb still holds that it takes two years from getting internet access to using it for shopping. But I'm expecting there to be a lag between growth in internet use in an area and growth of the Wikipedia community in that area. This is greatly complicated/hindered by the problem that the smartphone is not as good an editing devise as a pc, and in many areas the increase in Internet use is basically a smartphone phenomena. I'm hoping that we have little overt racism here, but we've yet to come to terms with issues such as people in poorer societies having less access to free reference sources, or even the reliable sources in some countries being much more extensive than others. On the plus side there has been a huge growth in Commons, not least because it is much more inclusionist than Wikipedia, and part of that growth has been European museums digitally releasing images from their former colonies.

I can't comment as to whether partisan deletion tagging has become more or less common. The biggest such battle I've been involved in was before you left and I don't know whether my experience is indicative of anything.

I'd agree we have a problem with gatekeeping, but I'd diagnose it slightly differently. The community is roughly the same size today as it was four years ago, but we have significantly more articles; So we probably have less of a problem with people owning articles and rejecting any change to "their" work. But we have more of a problem with people who treat unsourced changes in the same way we used to treat vandalism. Personally I'm quite moderate on this issue, but I draw the line at an unsourced change to sourced information, and with a growing proportion of the pedia being sourced even with my stance there is much less room for editors who contribute uncited content. ϢereSpielChequers 17:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Lots to digest there. For now, is there any chance you could share the kind of criteria you're thinking of with regards to protecting established editors? Is there any existing "prospect list"? Thparkth (talk) 14:06, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege is worth looking at and explains why Wikipedia:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege isn't currently fit for purpose. ϢereSpielChequers 11:24, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

So from what I understand, you're looking for editors who have created articles in the last 30 days, who don't currently have autopatrol, and who meet the general autopatrol eligibility criteria of having created at least 25 articles. At that point presumably you and other administrators would want to manually review the persons article creation history with a view to proactively offering them the autopatrol right. I've written a little bit of MediaWiki::API code that might be helpful in identifying those users. It isn't a bot - it doesn't make any edits, and it's run manually for now.

I have put the output from a limited test run in my userspace here (based on editors who created pages in the last day, rather than the last 30 days). Note that I don't bother counting pages created if it goes over fifty, because it takes longer and is unnecessary since the guideline threshold is twenty-five. Even from this limited amount of data it is clear that there are many users who should really have autopatrol.

I would be grateful if you would let me know if this going in the right direction. If so I will work further on it.

Cheers, Thparkth (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Further to this, I updated the page with my output data with the complete data set, and also upped the maximum creation count to 200. This should pretty much be the complete list of users who meet the criteria of having created 25+ articles, not currently having autopatrol, and having created at least one article in the last month. Thparkth (talk) 12:16, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, that's good, almost there, and you've got rid of the bots. Running it daily means we might miss the person who creates an article every week or two, and they are a key group I'm trying to find an appoint as autopatrollers here; so if it could pick up anyone who has created mainspace article in the last 30 days that would be better. Also I'm not sure whether you are excluding redirects and creations of pages outside mainspace. This editor has over a thousand according to your list, but I could find only twenty mainspace articles they had started. ϢereSpielChequers 23:20, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello, apologies for the confusion from the contradictory information as I worked on the code. The current version of the report does indeed consider all of the users who have created articles in the last 30 days, not just those from the last few days. It also does exclude redirects. However it appears that the "count how many articles the user created" method I am using inadvertently includes the File: namespace, which is why the numbers are anomalous for the user you referenced. I'll go work on that now :) Thparkth (talk) 01:03, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Update - I have fixed the issue with the inclusion of non-mainspace contributions in the count. Updated data (for all users who have created articles in the last thirty days) is in the same place, User:Thparkth/autopatroltest. Thparkth (talk) 02:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Nicely done, I've started appoint autopatrollers from that list. Do you want to start refreshing Wikipedia:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege, that's where people look for it, and we can mark the request as fixed once you refresh it there. ϢereSpielChequers 13:13, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• I agree with much of what Thparkth says but he's perhaps getting too black a view by looking at speedy deletions and AFC which, by their nature, tend to be negative in nature. The number of articles is still going up steadily – see WP:5MILLION – and the rate seems to have increased in the last year or so. So, overall, the content creators are still gaining ground. Where they have got the hang of this, this seems to happen without much fuss and so is perhaps just hard to discern. Anyway, welcome back and feel free to ping me if you need help with something. Andrew D. (talk) 09:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello :) What is perhaps not obvious from what I wrote is that speedy deletion was something I was heavily involved with in 2011 as well. I really do notice a less patient, less forgiving, less encouraging mood in the project today versus then. It was already pretty WP:BITEy back then, but it is worse now.

That is the continuation of a long-term trend that I have observed from my earliest days as a Wikipedian when as a brand new editor I created a number of shitty unreferenced articles (in mainspace directly, no less!) and was immediately welcomed by a real person and constructively engaged in cooperative editing. Today I wonder how many templated warnings I would have earned instead.

In my mind, the early days of the project were dominated by optimistic, imaginative, open-minded content-creators who loved the idea that they could significantly contribute to an encyclopedia article on a major topic. "Geology", "James Watt", "Scotland", "Christianity" - they were all missing or stubs. How exciting is that? But over time the trailblazers got burned out, or bored, or just weren't interested in writing about minor topics. On the other hand, there was a need for a new kind of editor - one who would make incremental improvements, and create new articles on minor topics, but who would also defend the encyclopedia from the growing menaces of vandalism, POV-pushing, and commercial interests. This time also corresponded with the explosion of policies, guidelines and the zoo of acronyms that we cheerfully throw at each other nowadays, and it was also the time when newcomers began to be treated with suspicion and distrust.

A few years later and we have a situation where new article creation is becoming an eccentric minority interest (and we more or less have a default assumption that any article a new user wants to create is probably a bad idea), where WP:NPP is played like it's a MMPORG where score is kept by counting the number of pages deleted and new editors banned (the goal being to level-up to admin, at which point you have completed Wikipedia and presumably will stop playing it), and where a huge amount of human effort is spent discussing, criticizing, documenting, and ultimately supporting an ever-more-self-referential quasi-judicial bureaucracy that is so many steps removed from the stated goal of building an encyclopedia that it is sometimes alarming. (Why are we arguing about the fairness of the process for establishing a consensus as to how to run an election for membership of an arbitration panel? Don't these people realize that Semiconductor is still a WP:SHITTYARTICLE?

Now you may take issue with the factual accuracy of some or all of the above, and you may be right - it is largely bullshit. I am looking at the past through rose-tinted eyeglasses, and I am being more cynical then necessary about the present. But I do genuinely believe that somewhere along the line we have stopped assuming good faith about new editors, and the foundational principle of being the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit" (and which anyone else may fix afterwards if necessary) may no longer be the consensus position of the community.

I guess this is where I see myself fitting in, in a small way. I am motivated to look out for new users, particularly those who have created new articles. There are some new users whose contributions we would not miss, it's true, but it breaks my heart to see someone's genuine, well-intended best work be slapped with an A7 and their talk page pasted with warning banners all because some wikipedian with a hundred thousand twinkle edits and a complete lack of empathy is ignorant of its importance. I know this is a concern WSC and others share. I'm not proposing any major changes to the processes - they are mostly quite well designed. I'm just advocating for a kinder, more empathetic, and perhaps less-rushed approach in dealing with newbies. Much as we need new pages patrollers, we can't ever get into the situation where we are significantly more welcoming to new patrollers than to new good-faith content contributors.

Thparkth (talk) 17:02, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

2011 wasn't perfect either- have a look at some of the problems we battled over in WP:NEWT. My theory is that the drift from the wp:soFixIt society of the pre 2007 era to the subsequent WP:SoTagitForSomeHypotheticalOthertoFix era is an ongoing process. the article rescue squadron is one of the responses. My hope is that we can get the WMF to do some technical changes, in particular reducing the edit conflicts caused by people categorising and templating new articles. The difficulty is in getting WMF support for change. ϢereSpielChequers 22:22, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I know and have been following Wikipedia articles for many years though I never knew how to write or edit one until a few months ago. I am from India and yes, people are getting more involved about from where and how all that information is coming. I am new writer and I have made a few edits; making edits is easier now due to visual formatting. It's very helpful.

Dishita Bhowmik (talk) 17:49, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

can I get advices on how to write an article Amogelang22 (talk) 18:17, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Amogelang22, sure, can I suggest reading Wikipedia:How to write a great article? ϢereSpielChequers 11:10, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Okay Amogelang22 (talk) 12:18, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Users eligible for Autopatrolled

Thought I would move this discussion into it's own section, hope that's OK.

I could definitely update Wikipedia:Database_reports/Editors_eligible_for_Autopatrol_privilege but that page "belongs" to the Database Reports project and Community Tech Bot is updating it with its slightly-less-useful information twice each month. I suspect it is theoretically possible to have my script run through that mechanism, but I haven't worked in that environment before and there would likely be a learning curve involved. Going that way may end up being dependent on the same overworked volunteers who haven't yet been able to action your request to modify the current report.

It would be much, much easier to put my data somewhere else. Any thoughts?

Finally I have updated User:Thparkth/autopatroltest with data from December 18th.

Cheers,

Thparkth (talk) 22:22, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

@Thparkth: Your list does look useful. I hope you get some help on this, as your list will be much more helpful than the current Database Report version... You might want to contact NKohli (WMF) about your version. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

New list

I have forgotten how I created the old list, but I found a note on Meta from you asking for a list split by {{Infobox UK place}} vs everything else.

As I remarked I am still severely restricted in what I am permitted to do, so the list(s) will have to be placed in my user space, from where they can be copied, moved or transcluded.

I have been tussling with a huge (somewhat related) issue of producing accurate region codes for some 100k+ articles, success rate is now about 87-88% (compared with much less than 50% before I started) but of course the last 20% is going to be 80% of the work.

Nonetheless the first list should be uploaded soon. The rest will have to go on my todo list for now.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 7. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:11, 17 January 2016 (UTC).

Precious anniversary

Three years ago ...

native tongue as tool
... you were recipient no. 432 of Precious, a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:46, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Four years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

... and five! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

... and six! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:47, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

... and seven! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:48, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Users eligible for autopatrol... finally!

It's been a while but the all-singing, all-dancing, new version of the report code is now working and its first results are on the report page. I would be grateful if you would let me know about any problems you identify in the output.

Thanks for setting me along this road by the way - this kind of work is a lot of fun for me, and I now have all the access required to fix, modify, and create new reports without undue delay. Thparkth (talk) 23:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

WSC – I can confirm that this list is now useful again! I'll start looking through it on my end for editors I recognize to let them know about applying for autopatrolled... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:51, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

The the

Thank you!

You've fixed a lot of my shoddy reduplicative errors ("the the") etc recently and I appreciate it a lot. › Mortee _talk 21:54, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome! ϢereSpielChequers 05:42, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

the ''[[The → ''[[The in AWB

Hi - I noticed that you've removed the second the in "the German adaption of the The Best Singers series.", and that you've performed a large number of similar edits with AWB. I don't think this is correct, however, as the final the is part of a proper noun which forms a separate syntactic unit, so the preceding article is still necessary, in my understanding - although a rewording of the sentence would most likely be preferable, as the repetition of the is obviously awkward. If there is an obscure grammatical rule permitting omission of the article, I would be pleased to read it, but otherwise I'd request that you be more careful or stop using AWB for this particular change, and go through the previous such edits again. Thanks. Kranix (talk | contribs) 18:09, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Kranix, I have edited a number of "the the" instances, but not the one you link to, did you mean to link to something else?. Glad you agree that the repetition of the is obviously awkward. Do you want to give an example where you would have resolved this differently? ϢereSpielChequers 18:20, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot the link. The sentence I was referring to appears in Silbermond. Kranix (talk | contribs) 18:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

OK, so you prefer: of the The Best Singers series over of The Best Singers series. I think that of the The is awkward and my solution an improvement. What alternative do you propose? ϢereSpielChequers 18:38, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it should be either way, but I also don't think we should change an awkward construction to an incorrect one. I went ahead and changed it to the "the TV series The Best Singers". The best course of action when going through this with AWB (or otherwise) is to perform a minor rewording like this; if that's not obvious, I would just skip the page. Kranix (talk | contribs) 18:46, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Correct typos in one click

I saw the edit you made beenath->beneath. This kind of edits can be easily done using the tool in the title. Let me know if you need any help setting it up. Uziel302 (talk) 15:19, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for helping correcting typos from this list, I would love it if you can use the script and give me some feedback. If you prefer to correct one by one, please remove the ones you checked after you finish. Thanks again, Uziel302 (talk) 11:27, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I already use both AWB and another tool that Edward wrote for me - top thread on this list. I'm finding your list useful, but I'm just using the generic search, that way I get to see the same typo in other projects like Wikivoyage and Wikibooks as well. Plus I have something in Firefox that helps me find other typos around that one. If you are working from the top of your list I could start working from the bottom? What would make it even more interesting is if you could list words by number of occurrences, as using AWB I would start with the most frequent ones. ϢereSpielChequers 20:58, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I understand you already use tools, I am also using AWB. As of Edward's tool, I would love to try it out. The point of my script is to make the obvious corrections as easy and fast, without looking for similar typos and typos in the area, in order to manage to fix the 6000 typos my software have found. I would appreciate it a lot if you could just try it out, by adding importScript('User:Uziel302/typo.js'); to your User:WereSpielChequers/common.js. This tool adds simple buttons to the lis: replace, remove, no much to learn. If after 5 minutes you don't like it, you can revert the edit on you common.js. No need to divide work as every checked typo should be removed from the list. The typos are sorted alphabetically so you can see those who happen couple of time, these are the top reccurring ones:

unveilled - 9 receving - 9 awll - 8 teching - 7 coveres - 7 appearanced - 7 adiation - 7 sceni - 6 unnotated - 6 predomnantly - 6 featureed - 6

Thanks again, Uziel302 (talk) 05:56, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I made: Wikipedia:Correct typos in one click/list by occurrence. Uziel302 (talk) 18:03, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Uziel, that's interesting, I have fixed a few and also fed some of those to AWB. Taking aritst as an example. You had it down as 4 examples, I have just fixed 35. Part of that difference is that I think your search is case sensitive, and also misses plurals. Perhaps another involves non-alphanumeric characters, for example ". Another thing I would point out is that sometimes all your examples are very recent, like from the last month or so. That probably means that AWB already picks up that typo, its just that AWB usually has a backlog of typos to fix. That's why it is useful to have people like me do AWB fixes whilst we are using AWB to do other things. If the people who just use AWB in typo fixing mode were on top of the flow of new typos it would be rare for me to find AWB typo fixes when I'm searching for something else. Would it be possible for you to exclude either existing AWB typo fixes, or articles updated in the last three months? If so that would make your tool a really useful way to find additional typos to go into AWB, or if they have lots of false positives or multiple things they could be, to go into Edward's tool. ϢereSpielChequers 10:56, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the elaborated feedback. I only got to see it now, haven't gotten notification on it. I know my scan is selective and doesn't find all occurrences, I only look for words with space on both sides so that the replacement won't replace part of other word. There are other ways to protect replacements, right now the bottleneck is not finding more typos but actually correcting the current typos. I may run a fuller scan in order to find the most frequent typos to add to AWB. I can also exclude current AWB replacements. I'm less of a fan of AWB since it requires a windows app (even if possible to run on other desktop), my script is easy to use right from browser, both desktop and mobile. Current bottleneck is finding more editors to help with this mission, and after we finish the current list of 6k typos, I will improve the scanning script.

Another issue is that the edits aren't recorded anywhere except for the project history page. In Hebrew Wikipedia I created tag for edits of this script and it makes it easier to keep track of the edits (current count over 16k typos fixed). Is there a chance you can create a tag here for "fix-typo-tool" or something like that? Uziel302 (talk) 09:55, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Uziel302, I'm sorry, but I have no idea how to create a tag. Perhaps Rich_Farmbrough can help us? I agree that AWB isn't ideal, and I resent having to run a Windows machine in order to use it, but it has an established userbase such that I assume any typo loaded into it is fixed long term whether I'm around or not. Plus I'm really interested in the sort of typos that have so many false positives that they need a human like me to look at them, or they could be typos of more than one word and you need a human to decide which. I'm not really interested in going through thousands of typos in the way that AWB does, especially not if AWB is going to fix most of them I the next few weeks. But if you can tweak your scanning script to screen out current AWB replacements then I would be very interested in going through some of what you then found. As for other occurrences, if you can treat commas, semicolons, the equals sign and brackets in the same way as spaces then that would be very helpful. If you could also treat "fullstop and space" in the same way that would be good (fullstop without a space would give us a deluge of urls). Once again, thanks for this. ϢereSpielChequers 11:31, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

There should be a simple interface to create new tag on Special:Tags, but it only available for sysadmins. Uziel302 (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I made a list of odd words that don't appear on scowl biggest wordlist, English Wikipedia titles and wordnet. I looked only for lower case words, capitalized words have so many false positives of names etc. I posted here only words that appeared on latest dump more than 5 times. I then used AWB to see what it does, and excluded all the words it changed. The result is mainly legit variations of words, some foreign language words and some real typos like duringthe. Let me know if this list helps you and if you have any idea how to exclude more correct words without excluding common typos (like, if you exclude all wiktionary words, you get over 5000 common misspelling recorded there, and many many typos that are words in foreign languages. One of the reasons I try to help Lexeme namespace on Wikidata, where words can be querried and filtered by langauge and many other parameters) Uziel302 (talk) 15:14, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Uziel, I've skimmed through part of that, and used it to fix more than a hundred typos and suggest several new ones for AWB. I'm sure there's more to find as well, though most of those words are either jargon or quoted foreign words. ϢereSpielChequers 10:12, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Dear Uziel302, I'm still working through that useful list of yours. I have found a number that I have suggested incorporating into AWB and which have started going into it. I have also found examples such as "startet" where I corrected 36 articles where it was a typo, but hundreds more are a correct use of a non English word. So far too many false positives to load into AWB, but I might put into Edward's tool as I'm sure there will be more such typos in the future. There are also some words where the meaning is clear and which may in time be recognised as new words in English. I suspect there are also some that are either picked up by the Regex function in AWB or because someone else occasionally patrols for them, so if you have the time to rerun it some time it would be interesting to see the difference. ϢereSpielChequers 10:10, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Dear WereSpielChequers, I ran a new scan, this time focusing on capitalized words. Many of them are names, but I expect every name appearing frequently on Wikipedia to have an article containing it, or at list a disambiguation page. Here is the list I found the most, please note that all of it are words similar to known words, so it won't surprise me if many are typos: User:Uziel302#Missing names that appear frequently on Wikipedia. Thanks a lot, Uziel302 (talk) 04:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Uziel, I have fixed a couple of them, and gone through a couple more that had some to fix. But a lot will be like "Saachi", occasionally a typo for Saatchi but mostly a rare Indian name. So rare that there aren't enough articles on people with that name to justify a disambiguation page - just passing references such as a minor character in the plot of a Bollywood film. Unfortunately I am a bit pressed for time and or editing away from my home setup for the next few weeks, so I'm not sure when I will have time to go through more of this. ϢereSpielChequers 12:56, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

There is a new list you might want to take a look.This time all the words are variations of actual words so it may contain higher rate of real typos. Uziel302 (talk) 12:04, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Uziel302, good to hear from you. Hope all is well with you and yours. "15$$$Deptt" is a duplicate, and gets no hits for me, but Deptt does. Should i ignore the dollar signs? ϢereSpielChequers 13:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, the dollars just helped me separating numbers from words. I started grouping words by 15 and went from there down to 3 so words with over 15 occurrences may appear twice. It was easier than doing a full count. Usually I count on excel but this list was too long for excel to process in a timely manner, so I stayed on the text editor and ran regex replacements. Uziel302 (talk) 14:47, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Uziel302/sandbox - new list of lower case words that don't appear on aspell list of words but do appear multiple times here, and are very similar to common words. Some are foreign words and some are names, but you might find some that can be real typos, e.g. appointement that appears in non-french text. Uziel302 (talk) 06:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi Uziel and thanks for doing that - lots of French words as you surmise, but also plenty of typos. I have just fixed 59 occurrences of qualifed and a few others. pinging @Wpollard: and @Pdebee: as they might want to join in this. ϢereSpielChequers 20:48, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I would appreciate if you could try using the script for fixing and dismissing typos of Wikipedia:Correct typos in one click and give some feedback. Thanks. Uziel302 (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Just updated the list on User:Uziel302/sandbox to current dump. Uziel302 (talk) 18:13, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Added some 10K capitalize words that appear at least 5 times and very similar to common words. User:Uziel302/sandbox. Some are typos, most are names. Would appreciate any help locating and fixing the typos. Uziel302 (talk) 18:10, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

You may want to check insource:/ whats /. Uziel302 (talk) 07:08, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Strange sequence of edits.

It is not immediately clear whether it's vandalism or good faith editing, but I am required by policy to assume the latter in the absence of evidence to the contrary. What makes it so difficult to assume good faith is that you have edited over 200 articles contributed to by well in excess of that number of editors and yet you assume that you are right and therefore every one else must be wrong. You have been industriously changing "dependant" in all those articles to "dependent". "dependant" is the correct spelling of the word (see [here]). "dependent" seems to be creeping in as a alternate spelling (historically: it is an olde English spelling often still used by the legal profession). There was no reason to change the spelling per WP:NOTBROKEN.

On the subject of plurals, an apostrophe is not used when pluralising a word. However: English, as ever, has its exceptions and decades is one of those exceptions. Thus referring to the 1970's as a decade is correctly apostrophised. Another good (topical) example would be, "The United Kingdom will be leaving Europe on the 31st of October, no if's or but's". -86.130.28.61 (talk) 12:31, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Over the years I have corrected tens of thousands of easily confused words and have significantly reduced the occurrence of some words in Wikipedia, especially posses which when I started was mostly a typo of possess. It is because of me that very few actors are now staring in films as opposed to starring in them, and neither pubic schools nor pubic libraries last long without me adding the missing l. So I'm well used to finding that hundreds of editors have made minor typos for me to fix, and as encouraged by Wikipedia I have been bold and corrected many contributions that were made by people who knew that their contributions were liable to be "ruthlessly edited". It is possible that wiktionary or my reading of it are wrong re dependant, and I have paused my dependent corrections to give you time to convince the good people at wiktionary to change their records accordingly. As for your suggestion that "in the 1970s" could be "in the 1970's". I find that an odd use of the grocers' apostrophe, but since that one is embedded in AWB it would probably be better to discuss there, as you presumably want AWB changed. ϢereSpielChequers 13:57, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I would not regard "dependant" as an obsolete spelling. The link that I provided lists "dependent" as the US English spelling so this may be an WP:ENGVAR issue. My own (paper) dictionary gives the spelling as "dependant" and notes no alternative. The fact that over 200 articles (and probably a lot more) used the -ant spelling must be a good indication that it is still very much in use.

I often wonder if the exceptions to non-apostrophised plurals is the source of the misused grocer's apostrophe (to give it its correct name). I know not what this Autowiki Browser is and I doubt that I can use it anyway. -86.130.28.61 (talk) 15:14, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Dependant isn't entirely an obsolete spelling, and it is partly an EngVar issue. Dependant is still valid for (Britain) A person who depends on another for support, particularly financial support (= US dependent). So I was careful not to change all the examples that I encountered, only the ones that according to my reading of Wiktionary were wrong. If Wiktionary needs updating, then, well it is a wiki. As for AWB, you don't need to be a user of it to take part in the discussions there, so I have started a thread at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#In_the_1970's. ϢereSpielChequers 15:49, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

OK, now that we have one issue resolved, I have started a thread on Wiktionary. Given the relative frequencies of Dependent and Dependant I would be surprised if the Wiktionary article was wrong, but I'm OK to continue pausing my patrol of dependant for a few days more. ϢereSpielChequers 12:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

BTW Do you have any opinion re "publicistic"? ϢereSpielChequers 13:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

86.130.28.61 Discussion at wikt:Talk:dependant doesn't seem to be taking off, are you OK if I resume correcting those examples of dependant that don't fit the wiktionary definition? ϢereSpielChequers 17:21, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Here's what Merriam-Webster has to say on dependent vs. dependant. They note British usage versus American, as well as adjective form vs noun. isaacl (talk) 18:34, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

if you haven't already done so, please fix your script

Yeah, I know, an old edit, but your script broke a citation template by corrupting its |url= value. If you have not already fixed it, please do so.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Whoops, sorry about that. I don't currently have a working machine that supports AWB. But thanks for spotting and fixing that. ϢereSpielChequers 14:20, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

secularisation in action

Sorry, what? You'll have to explain that one to me. EchetusXe 13:21, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

It helps to give a diff or an article when you query something. But usually I use that edit summary when changing calvary to cavalry, minster to minister or manger to manager. I've probably also used it for incorrect use of the words font and canon, and angels, especially right angels. ϢereSpielChequers 13:28, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

This gave me a chuckle. Thanks for the help! Cheers! --Engineerchange (talk) 14:29, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Thou art welcome. That particular typo is one of my favourites, though the depinnipedisation of seal level as an altitude is now my top favourite. ϢereSpielChequers 20:39, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

== Best edit summary ever ==

Well played here! Nice one DBaK (talk) 13:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thou art most welcome. ϢereSpielChequers 15:49, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Amaravati Stupa

Hi - this from my talk:

• You don't appear to be short of pics. Was there anything specifically you wanted?©Geni (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

©Geni, there are actually few good photos of the main types of sculpture; most are taken in gloomy Indian museums, often blurry & at funny angles. I would use good ones of the round medallions with scenes, and of the thin coping stone relief on the BM back wall, also the garland frieze above that. One of their rectangular drum-slabs is carved on both sides - pics of each would be great. We only have 11 photos of the Amaravati Marbles from London (in this commons cat), one a crop of another. Thanks, Johnbod (talk) 17:32, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

There are still only 11 in the commons cat - I think he had taken some before, but not uploaded them, Best, Johnbod (talk) 05:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I can't go there for a week or two, but I hope to get some pics this month. ϢereSpielChequers 08:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing news 2023 #1

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

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Your planned demised

To note; "it has given me some ideas for my own idealised funerary monument"[2] is one of the funniest and driest comments have seen anywhere in years. I nearly choked laughing :) Ceoil (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, if ever get round to writing my SF novel this may actually appear, though I'm no longer thinking about my own plans, something altogether more grand. ϢereSpielChequers 22:22, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks

Just to give appreciation for your insightful and though-provoking review of the Tomb of Philippe Pot. A difficult FAC on the prose side, but your content review was most rewarding, esp wgt to material and the colour scheme. Fwiw, going the PR-> GA route next time so not so much glaring grammar errors. Anyway best as usual. Ceoil (talk) 16:04, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

It was a pleasure to be involved in such a fascinating article from a time and place so completely outside my ken. Happy to be involved at an earlier stage in anything as quirky in the future. ϢereSpielChequers 18:47, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Well I might tap you sometime in the early summer during a planned PR on some early Celtic sculpture if that's ok. As I say your comments on the tomb brought the page on quite a lot, and thoughtful feedback is always appreciated. Tks once again. Ceoil (talk) 11:05, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Just as a note, as with a few times before, am relying on series of pics you took and uploaded to commons - without them would have bothered to expanded Tomb of the Black Prince. Yeah another tomb; a shrink might say I'm also thinking for what would be the most magnificent celebration of my eventual demise. <shrug> as the kids might say. Ceoil (talk) 22:26, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

HotCat

Hi there! I see we were both adding categories to Lorenzo Aillapán at the same time, and you made five edits using HotCat in a row. In case you're not aware, you can do it all in one edit: see Wikipedia:HotCat#Making more than one category change. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 22:09, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi going Batty, I have had a couple of bad experiences with that option on Hotcat, not sure whether the problem was my understanding or my IT Setup. But I'll give it another look. ϢereSpielChequers 22:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Link

Got a link to that AI generated list of typos?[3] Do you know who made it? I'm using AI to (try to) determine if a potential typo is a typo, but not to generate the lists. Polygnotus (talk) 09:16, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm having some busy days IRL, will respond on this in the next week. ϢereSpielChequers 06:54, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. No hurry. Polygnotus (talk) 07:37, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

OK User:WereSpielChequers/AI typo suggestions shows how far I got with this, and that it comes from work by Phlsph7 Your AI is also welcome to look at User:WereSpielChequers/searches which lists many of my typo finding searches but not what I've fixed, I tend to run these across mainspace and draft, but sometimes in draftspace only as a way to ignore things I have previously patrolled. The complexity of the searches gives some of the "safe phrases" I have worked to. Page patrol is a more sophisticated but mainspace only search tool that allows both safe pages and safe phrases and far far more of them than a search can encompass (ignore smelly and mafiosi these were anti vandalism tests not typo fixing. Your AI may also be interested in looking at some of my edits; in particular those with the edit summaries "not salty", "not curly", "thump" and "secularisation in action" all are specific to typo fixing, though "secularisation in action" is one I use for several disparate typos. Thereis an overlap between typo fixing and vandalfighting, aside from the notorious "vandals can't type" truism, my not curly edit summaries I tend to reserve for pubic as a typo of public as opposed to pubic vandalism.

One big caveat. I'm only really interested in cases where there are lots of false positives - anything up to 95% false positives even after narrowing the search with some safe phrases. If there are no or nearly no false positives I tend to report them at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos, provided they are common enough for someone to put them into AWB. There is usually some lag there, I think it takes several months for each AWB pass of the pedia, but I reckon to leave those tests to AWB even when I'm on top of things at page patrol.ϢereSpielChequers 16:06, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Interesting stuff. A very different approach to mine. Polygnotus (talk) 07:34, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Now that makes me curious, what is your approach? One thing I'd like to do with AI is to get one of those translation software systems and get some anomalies where it ascribes a low confidence to the translation of a particular combination of words. Presumably an alternative would be to run articles through AI, starting with the first word, adding a word with each pass and compare the AI predicted next word to the reality. ϢereSpielChequers 16:34, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

See User_talk:John_of_Reading/Archive_28#Hi_John! Polygnotus (talk) 16:41, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

OK, not so different from some I've done, or passed on to AWB just way more systematic. I take it User:Polygnotus/typos is currently the place to go? I checked Carier, if you can exclude "Camille Carier" and "Benjamin Carier" most of yours will disappear. Monstery is more fun, I've corrected a few to monastery, but monstery is arguably a real word, plus a fencer you can exclude by testing for "Hoyer Monstery", I also found some in Wikivoyage and elsewhere, and have added it to my searches. By contrast adpated has no false positives so I have suggested it at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#adpated_-_adapted ϢereSpielChequers 20:30, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

That list is from August 2024; bit old. If you want a list I can make you one of course (AWB or "plain"?). I believe User:Polygnotus/Data/john is still waiting on @John of Reading: but it is possibly a bit outdated by now. I am currently 1.6m articles deep in the dump. I generally try to focus on typos with few false positives; not many. Polygnotus (talk) 20:36, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

For the record, the idea with User:Polygnotus/typos was to use it in combination with User:Polygnotus/typo.js. You open a bunch of links at the same time with something like LinkClump and then the script does the fix, or closes the window if the typo is in one of a bunch of regex matches. And then you just go through the tabs and save when it is an improvement. Polygnotus (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

(since I was mentioned) I hadn't seen User:Polygnotus/Data/john; I'll have a go at it. I think I prefer the one-per-line "good|bad|article" format, since I can transform that into something that fits better into my current settings file. I aimed to expand my existing rules to cover the new misspellings, rather than import hundreds of new one-off rules. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:56, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

@John of Reading That one is pretty old; I'll make you a new batch. The advantage of using a separate settings.xml is that it doesn't mess up your existing settings of course. Polygnotus (talk) 00:03, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

@John of Reading Here is a start: User:Polygnotus/JOR. Polygnotus (talk) 09:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

@John of Reading Here is some more: User:Polygnotus/JOR2 Polygnotus (talk) 15:42, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: Stop there, please! Those two lists will keep me going for many weeks. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi, yes please give me an up to date list. User:Polygnotus/typos format is OK, though a plain list of the search terms would be easier. If you can filter it, I'm interested in the most common ones as I can feed some of them into AWB typos. ϢereSpielChequers 12:49, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Here ya go: User:Polygnotus/Data/WSCJORlist, here is a sorted version: User:Polygnotus/Data/WSCJORlist-sorted. Polygnotus (talk) 23:42, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, that's useful. Couple of possible tweaks, can you screen out redirects and anything marked with a {{SIC}} template? Also, nothing with more than 9 occurrences, is that a filter or the result of lots of hard work? ϢereSpielChequers 17:35, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

hi, Polygnotus I've gone through the whole of User:Polygnotus/Data/WSCJORlist-sorted#9_hits. I'm pretty sure some of these words are covered by AWB, but my advantage of going manual is that I can click on links and a surprising number of what I've found are ones where the typos was not in the source. I think AWB ignores stuff in links, so this might be picking upstuff that would be otherwise unnoticed. ϢereSpielChequers 22:25, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Hm, I got three rewrites of the code; I'll combine them into one and make some improvements. Pretty much all the typos it finds are not in AWB's regextypofix list. Polygnotus (talk) 00:02, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

hi Polygnotus one thing I've realised is that AWB doesn't check for typos in either section headings or short descriptions. Would you be willing to produce lists of possible typos in either of those spaces? Lots of false positives I expect but a niche that AWB misses. ϢereSpielChequers 09:03, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately you can't tell the API "Search in section headers or short descriptions only". Polygnotus (talk) 04:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

That's a shame, but thanks for checking. ϢereSpielChequers 07:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, looking forward to it, especially if you can find examples with more than 9 hits. Incidentally, are you just running this across mainspace, or do you also include draftspace? ϢereSpielChequers 21:13, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Growth News #34

A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.

Mentoring new editors

In February, Mentorship was successfully rolled out to 100% of newcomers on English Wikipedia. Following this milestone, we collaborated with Spanish Wikipedia to expand Mentorship coverage to 70% of new accounts, with plans to reach 85% soon unless concerns are raised by mentors. (T394867)

“Add a Link” Task – Iteration and Experimentation

Our efforts to improve and scale the “Add a Link” structured task continued across multiple fronts:

• Community Feedback & Model Improvements: We’ve responded to community concerns with targeted changes:
  • Restricting access to newer accounts (T393688)
  • Some links types were removed to align with recommendations written in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style (T390683)
  • Allowing communities to limit “Add a Link” to newcomers (T393771)
  • The model used to suggest the links was improved to ease its training (T388258)
• English Wikipedia rollout and A/B test: We increased the rollout to 20% of newcomers, with analysis underway. Preliminary data suggests this feature makes new account holders more likely to complete an unreverted edit. (T386029, T382603)
• Surfacing Structured Tasks: An experiment where we show “add a link” suggestions to newly registered users while they are reading an article is running on pilot wikis (French, Persian, Indonesian, Portuguese, Egyptian Arabic). Initial results are under analysis. (T386029)

Newcomer Engagement Features

• “Get Started” notification: Engineering is in progress for a new notification (Echo/email) to encourage editing among newcomers with zero edits. Early research shows this type of nudge is effective. (T392256)
• Confirmation email: We are exploring ways to simplify and improve the initial account confirmation email newly registered users receive. (T215665)

Community Configuration Enhancements

Communities can now manage which namespaces are eligible for Event Registration via Community Configuration. (T385341)

Annual Planning

The Wikimedia Foundation’s 2025–2026 Annual Plan is taking shape. The Growth and Editing teams will focus on the Contributor Experiences (WE1) objective, with a focus on increasing constructive edits by editors with fewer than 100 cumulative contributions.

Get Involved

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18:51, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

BoT election 2025

See Kudpung/BoT_2025_election_guide. I wish you the very best of luck. You'd have your work cut out but you are really needed there. Cheers, Chris Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:16, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Chris, that's very flattering. I would just point out that the movement is much bigger than the English language Wikipedia. I'm standing this time partly because of Mike Peel's retirement from the board. If neither of the people elected this time have strong links to the English Language Wikipedia, then we have a board where the main link to our largest Wiki is Jimmy Wales. Now no offence to Jimmy, but he is the founder of the whole movement not someone particularly involved in EN wiki recently, and his last thousand edits here go back to 2019. ϢereSpielChequers 09:34, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I am also disappointed that the Board is losing Mike, and it's a grand thing you are doing throwing your hat in the ring. The movement is indeed much bigger than the English language Wikipedia, but it's still the en.Wiki that brings in most of the money, therefore they deserve the biggest number of seats in the movement's parliament, which is a very flawed democracy because there should be even more community elected seats on it - wherever they come from in the world. This doesn't mean that other voices should not be heard, and I hope the Board's initiative with their CAC doesn't lose impetus like many other things do around here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:45, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't have stood against Mike, but he has decided to move on. I'm not keen on the argument that we should focus on where our money comes from, to me our readers in Africa and rural India are as important those in the wealthy parts of the world. If you look at my fixing of easily confused words it is far more important to those who read EN Wikipedia via Google translate. Manger and Manager, minster and minister, if your a native English speaker your mind pretty much autocorrects, but translate the wrong word into Hindi or Swahili and results can look weird. I'm more concerned about where our editors are and where are readers go, and on both those metrics it would be odd if the project that had more than a fifth of our volunteers and more than a third of our readers didn't have a currently active member on the board. I spend a lot of my Wiki time elsewhere, on commons but my recent edits include ones on Wikibooks and Wikivoyage. However a third of my edits are on EN Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 07:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Update. I didn't make the shortlist of 6 going out to a vote by the community, but at least Lane did. ϢereSpielChequers 20:51, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

I know. I was sorry to see that. You and Lane were my joint favourites. You both have very different qualities and experience but are the most qualified by a country mile and it's extremely rare that any candidates or sitting members have anything approaching your levels of editing and community engagement and tenure. Without doubt, one Wiki is over-represented on that list, but like any election for a finite number of seats, that's the nature of the line up. I'm not 100% convinced that the shortlisting is a democratic process and whether all these tiny non-chapter groups have voting rights. Still, there's a long way to go yet; let the shouting begin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:33, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Having reread the shortlisting process, I see we will know who voted and for whom, but only after the community phase. In hindsight I didn't think enough about that phase when I was answering the questions, but then a shortlisting was only going to be triggered if we had more than ten candidates, and we had nowhere near that when I filed my candidacy. ϢereSpielChequers 05:36, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Some brave and highly qualified community elected members have often had a hard time on the board and may have felt they were playing second fiddle. When you look at the 'appointees' it's not hard to understand, but IMO it's time for the systems for the composition of the board to be modernised to reflect the status of the 'movement' in the second quarter of this century (yeah, time flies frighteningly fast), hence my comment about 'the tail wagging the dog' because that's what it looks like to the communities. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:59, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm aware of that risk. In some ways it is like jury duty, and I might mention my experience as a juror if I ever run again. There is no point putting someone on a board if they have the scrutiny abilities of a rubberstamp; conversely you don't want someone who winds up in a minority faction that is always at loggerheads with others whose mutual antipathy leads them to autoreject each others ideas. I've been a trustee and a school governor, usually both, for more than a quarter of a century. I like to think I'm much better at it than I used to be; for most of that time I've been the sort of colleague people ask to chair things ranging from tricky appeal sub committees to one of the main committees of the last two charities I've been on. I know how to raise things in a timely manner, concede when I get an effective response and park an idea for long enough when I'm outvoted (nobody appreciates the person who can't stop pushing an outvoted agenda). I'm also well used to two forms of collective responsibility: Being able to explain a decision I disagreed with while being clear where I dissented (the Supreme Court Model); and being able to explain a decision I disagreed with or at least staying silent and allowing those who agreed with the decision to talk about it publicly. There is also a model where you have your say, and if you are outvoted you either get on board with the decision or you resign. I think of this as the military model, and it probably makes sense there as it looks more decisive and gives clarity to those receiving orders, there's also a great need for operational secrecy. It also makes sense in a corporate environment, especially with all the rules about disclosure of things that might effect the share price. But it isn't a good fit for the not for profit sector, and not just because you don't have military secrets to protect or a share price to worry about, it can be very problematic for anyone from the community, even if committee members from outside might have been taught that it is "best practice". ϢereSpielChequers 12:33, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

On another note, I don't understand why the WMF or the MediaWiki devs or admins are not allowing access to Extension:Translation to translate all the candidates' statements into other languages. It only works for some of the sections of the pages. See details HERE. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:32, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Odd, but translation is not in my repertoire. ϢereSpielChequers 12:37, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm also disappointed to see that you did not make the short list. Regarding whether all these tiny non-chapter groups have voting rights I see that a message was posted at m:Talk:Ohio Wikimedians User Group#2025 Board of Trustees selection process – Candidate shortlisting process by MediaWiki message delivery @18:16, 15 July 2025, on behalf of the Elections Committee and the Governance Committee, to which there was no response or followup discussion. Representatives of Wikimedia movement affiliates that are currently compliant with their reporting obligations (list of all Affiliates currently compliant) were notified to participate in the shortlisting process based on the candidates’ alignment with the requirements and desired criteria for candidates. My understanding is that just making an edit is all that's required to join a user group. "Membership to the Ohio Wikimedians User Group is open to all. Feel free to add your username to the list below! Any active Wikimedian may sign themselves up." You don't even actually have to be a resident of Ohio, as you would need to be to be eligible to vote for the Governor of Ohio. I'm not sure whether that makes me a "representative of this Wikimedia movement affiliate", or if not, how representatives of Wikimedia movement affiliates are (s)elected. I also don't know the mechanism by which representatives of Wikimedia movement affiliates vote for their favored shortlist candidates, or whether the Ohio Wikimedians voted in this shortlist (s)election. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:26, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I think there is something curious about the way Affcom operates (at least two of the elected voting member are or were WMF staff or contractors). These pages are not in sync or not regularly updated:

• Wikimedia movement affiliates
• Wikimedia movement affiliates/Affiliates Status Report
• Wikimedia_movement_affiliates/Affiliates_Status_Report/Archive/2025-07

and this group which I selected at random, appears to be defunct according to the template, but is not listed as such anywhere else:

• Wiki_Cemeteries_User_Group and there may be others.

While I fully appreciate the need for regional and global coverage of all WMF projects in the movement, I do believe that en.Wiki as the movement's major bread-winner is underrepresented on the dozens of various committees and groups; their voting rights could have a negative impact on the pioneering work of en.Wiki from which all other Wikis ultimately benefit. And that is why the system that (s)elects the members of the BoT should be scrupulously equitable and free of COI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:12, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, Cemeteries were notified at m:Talk:Wiki Cemeteries User Group#2025 Board of Trustees selection process – Candidate shortlisting process, but also m:Wikimedia movement affiliates/Affiliates Status Report/Archive/2025-07#Wikimedia Affiliates Out of Compliance - 4 group(s).

There are currently only two m:Wikimedia thematic organizations. We should consider forming an English Wikipedia thematic organization whose focus is on the English-language Wikipedia. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:52, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks wbm1058 for those kind words. Later this year, after the election is over, we will find out which of these organisations voted and for whom. I rather expect we will find that the moribund user groups were much less likely to vote than the active ones. I'm not a great fan of the system they used "vote for up to 6 of 12" as the obvious tactic if you have one or two favourite candidates is to just vote for them. STV in my view is a much better system, you put as many candidates as you have preferences for in order of preference, and your lower preferences can't effect your higher ones.

As for whether these organisations see EN Wiki as a priority - several cover English speaking countries or just parts of the USA. I think the shortlisting reflects that, and also that one of the two vacancies was to replace the only active English language Wikipedian on the board. OK I didn't make the shortlist, but the six who did include two from the USA and a South African - EN wiki did rather well in that shortlisting even if I didn't make the cut. I've just watched the 6 lightning talks and while I'm still giving Lane my first choice, my big struggle is in deciding who to put second, I think they are an interesting set of candidates who all bring experience that I respect.

As for creating a thematic org for EN Wiki; one more org wouldn't likely make much difference to the shortlisting, and it would need to be very very big to speak for EN wiki. More likely it would result in duplication and then tension between the org and the online community. I can see a case for creating a user group for London, or rather formalising one that we already have and which I attended yesterday as I normally do on the second Sunday of the month. We've considered this in the past, and I like to think we typically get a larger crowd of active Wikimedians than I suspect some of the recognised groups have. ϢereSpielChequers 23:12, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't know why you didn't make the cut. Maybe it's due to some editors' names popping up more frequently and in more places than others. Lane is a regular contributor to The Signpost besides all his outreach work in the US. and Nairobi is the first Wikimania he's missed since 2012. Being in the US he also gets around a lot of other conferences.

I'm not sure that the creation of user groups under such easy criteria was a good idea especially if they are to be accorded equal voting rights for BoT election shortlists. However, this year's shortlist does seem to have matched many people's expectations, and perhaps more community voter guides are still to come. That said, in 2024 'The Elections Committee and Board of Trustees determined 12 candidates would be a reasonable number for voters to review. If there are more than 15 eligible candidates as determined by the Elections Committee, a shortlisting process will occur', so I don't really see why a shortlisting was deemed necessary this year. Admittedly there were 4 seats to be filled, but I don't see how that makes much difference.

Nevertheless, for the main poll there was a good turnout of 6,000 voters from more than 180 wiki projects so it's fair to assume that the majority of the electorate was drawn from the major encyclopedia projects. The main poll is not an STV so tactical voting can have an important influence on the outcome, and that's probably a good thing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

The shortlisting isn't done by STV, but the final election is. Looking at last year's results meta:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2024/Results one unusual thing is how little the subsequent stages altered the result - the same four people were in the top four slots the whole time. I suspect the presence of a candidate from a community tended to increase turnout from that community. It will be interesting to see if the Italians and Germans have as high a turnout this year when they don't have a candidate as last year when they did. There seems to be a pattern of low turnouts in the Far East, Japanese most prominently but also Thai and Vietnamese. I wonder if translation or lack of it is the problem there. Differential turnout had a massive effect with DE wiki supplying nearly half as many voters as EN wiki. About 15% of the voters had commons as their most active Wiki, the second largest set of voters. However the vast majority of voters were from the various Wikipedia communities - the staff vote was quite low considering, though I'm assuming the staff who are active editors would have counted as part of their active wiki. I count about 1% of the voters as having Wiktionary as their most active project and 1.5% WikiSource, but only 0.3% Wikivoyage 0.2% Wikiquote and 0.1% Wikinews. However the skew to the global north is intensified by turnout differences. Vietnamese Wikipedia had nearly five times as many Wikipedians who qualified for a vote as Basque Wikipedia, but more Basques voted. Thai and Esperanto had a similar relationship. ϢereSpielChequers 09:32, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

When you get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries ...

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		For your splendid "secularization" edit summary! Ravenswing 15:56, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

"When you get down on your knees, fiddle...with your rosaries... published 21 days ago.. Is that a topic? Zoe the original? (talk) 10:41, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

For this marvelous encyclopedia? Zoe the original? (talk) 10:43, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh sorry it's a joke is it? Zoe the original? (talk) 10:47, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm not a Wikipedia editor

Hello,

While reading an article on a topic I plan to write a paper about, I was surprised that what is locally the most notable thing about the place was left out. So I looked at its edit history and fell into a rabbithole that brought me to your talk page. I wondered if you might consider reviewing an article you'd made a minor edit on to see what the next edit had changed. The edit after yours was tagged only as "Visual edit" but the change erased any mention of the significance of its very famous, very influential, and very controversial founder.

I've never edited an article, and I don't think I'm cut out to become a contributor to this incredibly valuable project you participate in, but you seem to be someone who likes to fix mistakes where you find them and I believe this one might be worth your consideration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shrine_of_the_Little_Flower_Basilica

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Shrine_of_the_Little_Flower_Basilica&diff=next&oldid=1202456937

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/series/radioactive/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin 2601:40F:4381:3EC0:CCE6:18C0:4342:1A04 (talk) 00:30, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for all that and welcome to my talkpage. I'm not user:Spiel, but no matter, I'll look at this. You'd be very welcome to edit this site, but you are very sensible in not starting out with writing about antisemitism, even from ninety years ago. ϢereSpielChequers 12:03, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I am so confused. What is this about? I am very tolerant and Jewish, so I wouldn’t purposefully add something anti-Semitic. Spiel (talk) 07:50, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi Spiel and welcome to my talkpage. You just removed a deadlink. The next editor removed an unsourced assertion that in the 30s the institution covered by that article had been associated with a then prominent anti semite. I'm not familiar with sources about 1930s America, so it will probably be a few days before I can dig around and make a sourced restoration of that information. I got the request at the start of the thread because I'm an admin with a similar name to yourself. No need for you to be involved if you don't want to be, but if you fancy looking for a reliable source to restore the edit after yours I'd be grateful as I'm having a busy week in real life. ϢereSpielChequers 10:04, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Growth News #35

A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.

New releases

English Wikipedia gets "Add a Link" Structured Task

We released the "Add a Link" Structured Task to 100% of accounts at English Wikipedia on Tuesday, September 2nd (before then it was available to 20% of accounts).

Growth features for Wikidata

After examining if the Growth features and Mentorship could be adapted to Wikidata, we activated the Growth features on Beta Wikidata to allow for testing and discussion (T400937). Although some features, like Suggested Edits, are Wikipedia-specific, the Growth team designed most features to be more wiki-agnostic.

Work in progress

Revise Tone Structured Task

The Growth team is making progress on the technical architecture, onboarding design, and early user testing. We are targeting an A/B test before the end of this year, with constructive edits by newcomers as the primary success metric.

Add a link to more wikis

The machine learning team has been working on a new model that can suggest links to more languages, including Urdu, Chinese, and Japanese Wikipedias. We are starting to release the “Add a Link” feature to Wikipedias that weren’t supported by the previous model.

Add a link, which can be configured by the community locally, increases the chance that a new contributor will make their first edit and then continue to participate in Wikipedia.

Research

The Growth team is involved in several research initiatives to help guide our future work:

Progression System – We have published initial findings from interviews with 10 English and French Wikipedia newcomers. The research examined motivations, challenges, and feedback on a prototype system intended to help editors build confidence, develop skills, and contribute more constructively over time.

Mobile Web Editing Research – This project combines quantitative and qualitative data, community feedback, and user journey analysis to identify possible ways to enhance the mobile editing experience.

Newcomers Survey – This project surveys successful newcomers on English Wikipedia to understand their early editing experiences, tool use, and community interactions.

Community events

The Growth team participated in several community events to listen, share, and collaborate on improving newcomer experiences across Wikimedia projects.

Wikimania - Organizers as key partners to support newcomers' growth in our movement

This session invited organizers to share how they introduce newcomers to Growth features and the challenges they encounter. The discussion focused on common newcomer questions and opportunities to strengthen collaboration in supporting new editors.

Wikimania - Lightning Talk: Structured Tasks

This talk demonstrated how Structured Tasks help newcomers take their first successful steps on Wikipedia. It shared impact data, community configurations, and a demo of “Add a Link,” illustrating how these tasks make editing more accessible and sustainable, particularly for mobile contributors.

Wikimania - Building a Sustainable Future for Wikimedia Contributors

With active editor numbers declining, the Contributors Strategy aims to create a clearer, more engaging path for participation. This session, led by the WMF Contributors group with involvement from the Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Connection (formerly Campaigns) teams, highlighted efforts to streamline contributor experiences, offer structured and mobile-friendly workflows, and foster meaningful engagement. Participants learned about ongoing initiatives and shared feedback to help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for Wikimedia contributors.

CEE Meeting - Retaining beginners and improving content moderation: an inclusive and sustainable future for Wikipedia contributors

Many communities face a decline in volunteer engagement. Newcomers often leave soon after joining, while experienced editors struggle to manage increasingly complex workflows and overwhelming backlogs. We presented the Contributors Strategy and the different features and workflows that can help communities to address these challenges. We listened to the specific needs of the CEE communities to help guide the Contributors teams' work.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Guide to temporary accounts

Hello, WereSpielChequers. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.

Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.

How do temporary accounts work?

Editing from a temporary account

• When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
• All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
• A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
• As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
  • There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
  • There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.

Temporary account IP viewer user right

How to enable IP Reveal

• Administrators may grant the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet the criteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. at WP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators are not permitted to assign the right without a request.
• Administrators will automatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy via Special:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.

Impact for administrators

• It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
• It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).

Rules about IP information disclosure

• Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
• Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
• See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

• It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Enable the user info card
  • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
• Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
• Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
• The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

• How to use Special:IPContributions
• How automatic IP reveal works
• How to use IP Info
• How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

• For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.

Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

User:WereSpielChequers/Smart Blocking

Calling on any and all talkpage stalkers, I would welcome feedback on User:WereSpielChequers/Smart Blocking. ϢereSpielChequers 13:00, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

On blocking extended-confirmed users

I saw that you proposed elsewhere that blocking extended-confirmed users should be a right restricted to checkusers, oversighters, and bureaucrats, or else require multiple admins to confirm the block. Are you aware of the LTA who creates accounts, leaves them for 30 days, and then rapidly games 500 edits so they can vandalize extended-confirmed articles? jlwoodwa (talk) 20:05, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi jlwoodwa, that relates to this post of mine? no I wasn't aware of that particular LTA. I get that would be a problem if we upbundled block EC. ϢereSpielChequers 20:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Guidance Barnstar
		For helping us out and being cordial and friendly! (You've probably received this like a 1000 times lol) Wikieditor662 (talk) 19:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Wikieditor662, I have been given that one a couple of times before, but both of those were RFA related, from people I nominated for adminship, this is the first time I've had this from a discussion on wiki. And not a discussion I would have thought I'd get into just a few weeks ago. ϢereSpielChequers 20:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, could you clarify what you mean by 1) Specifically from people I nominated for adminship, this is the first time I've had this from a discussion on wiki, 2) the reasoning for this? not a discussion I would have thought I'd get into just a few weeks ago.? Thanks again! Wikieditor662 (talk) 20:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I've had quite a few different barnstars over the years, but this specific one, the guidance barnstar, only twice and both from people I had nominated for adminship. We have a contentious and arguably overly harsh process by which we recruit new administrators and I used to be one of the nominators. As for not a discussion I would have thought I'd get into a few weeks ago, I'd heard of Larry Sanger and even met some people who would have interacted with him. But I started editing in 2007, several years after Larry left, and until his unexpected return I never thought I'd get his perspective on the project. And though he has been a disappointment, in his ideas and his response to the discussion, I have enjoyed the discussions with others about those 9 theses. I think I said somewhere that it would be really interesting to read his opinion of the current community, after he had got reacquainted with it and caught up with how much it has changed in his absence. ϢereSpielChequers 01:49, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think most people don't randomly hand out barnstars, which is probably why you see it so rarely, but I feel generous at times.

We have a contentious and arguably overly harsh process by which we recruit new administrators wouldn't it be better we're too harsh than too loose, as the saying goes, "better safe than sorry"?

As for Larry, I'd guess he'd see different parts of the community differently, but I wouldn't be too surprised if he saw much of it as negative.

he has been a disappointment, in his ideas and his response to the discussion I'm guessing you're referring to how he didn't comment about being more active on Wikipedia and changing his theses based on what he sees...

And I think the thesis are too large, and there are many negative responses to it, but I do hope some day at least some parts of it will change Wikipedia policy to make it more equitable and fair.

Wikieditor662 (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

When it comes to RFA, I've been an oppose voter as well as a supporter, a nominator and twice a candidate. Plus these days I get to close them. I think we are generally less harsh than we were fifteen years ago, but that may just be me remembering some very harsh and incivil opposes that were a small percentage of RFAs. On the better safe than sorry principle, I would differentiate between harsh opposes and effective opposes. Yes RFA is there to reject inappropriate candidates as well as to approve appropriate candidates, but my experience is that an RFA can be defeated by a polite oppose explaining that the candidate's tagging shows that they are likely to be heavyhanded in a particular area with at least two linked examples one of which needs to be from the last 6 months. Whilst I've also seen a very harsh oppose that literally described the candidate as making "terrible contributions", an oppose that was pretty much ignored during the RFA, but immediately afterwards it emerged that the candidate was breaching copyright through overly close paraphrasing (copy and paste followed by a few word substitutions and other tweaks). In that case, as is so often the case, a civil but better argued case would have been far more effective than a harsh one that lacked explanation.

As for Larry, yes I do think his 9 theses indicate he is out of touch with Wikipedia and the changes that have happened here in the last twenty years. I think his views would change if he simply became active as an editor for a while and experienced some of the differences. But I'm also disappointed that he hasn't responded to the debate on that talkpage by amending any of his points. That's sad for people like me who have invested hours of time reading and commenting on his document, but perhaps sadder for him as I'm sure he spent far longer writing all that stuff down. But if he insists on retaining the whole package without even defending the bits that have been most challenged, he will find that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Better to respond by removing weak links from the chain and refocussing discussion on the remaining links. One thing to remember is that Wikipedia is somewhat resistant to change. We are not a democracy, if there is only a narrow majority for a particular change we will usually go back to the drawing board and try for consensus - listen to the minority and try to come up with an alternative solution that can get broad agreement. Sometimes that works, my first request for adminship failed even though I had majority support, my second a few months later showed I'd responded to several of the reasons why the first failed and it achieved consensus. Here in Britain we'd describe such a change resistant system as "conservative with a small c", meaning conservative as in defaulting to conserve what's there as opposed to politically Conservative which can sometimes mean radical change of a regressive nature. We also have aspects that I would describe as being socially conservative, for example almost any article can feature on the front page if it achieves featured status. But one exception was and probably still is pornstars, you can get such an article to featured status, but I'd be surprised if one ever got to feature on the mainpage for a day.

Making Wikipedia more equitable and fair is a worthy goal, and I'd hope most of us would support that. The tricky thing is in agreeing where it is being unfair and inequitable. Given the nature of our community, I can understand those who point to our list of most read articles now being a combination of Hollywood and Bollywood, popular culture of the USA and India, with the rest of the English speaking world only getting a look in where one of those centres of English speaking is interested; So I get the concern that our insistence on reliable sources negates the experience of much of the world whose written records from the nineteenth and early twentieth century are mostly the approved and censored documents of an occupying power. Whilst among the editing community? I don't know about the rest of Larry Sanger's 62 user accounts who he thinks are the most important; but among the 16 crats as I'm one I do have an idea of some of our skews. Roughly half North America and a quarter Britain and Ireland, with the other quarter undeclared but unlikely to be that different. As for gender, as far as I'm aware only one of us is a lady, though again we have a few who don't disclose their gender. So I understand those who criticise the community for changing from the stereotype of a bunch of young white guys to the stereotype of a bunch of old white guys, and that it is difficult for us to be fair and equitable to an audience that is half female, and when you include the English speaking parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, much less white than our editing community. But I doubt that Larry Sanger has the same concern as to where we are least fair or equitable. That said I agree with him that there are flaws in our blocking process and I'm keen to reduce collateral damage there. ϢereSpielChequers 12:27, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

The reason Larry left is that he was not being paid: "I would have been welcome to continue on, but I decided not to basically devalue my professional labour."

Since then he has generally been critical of Wikipedia, sometimes attacking it, sometimes setting up "competing" projects in the online encyclopaedia space. Whether this valued his professional labour I do not know. However I doubt he has decided to return as an unpaid volunteer. You can watch his somewhat outré interview with Ticker Carlson on YouTube.

As for his "theses" I doubt any will gain traction. There are issues which Wikipedia should address which overlap with these, but there's probably not a great deal of use in them. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:43, 5 November 2025 (UTC).

True he was employed by Jimmy or Jimmy's company in the early days of the project, and I can't fault him for not sticking around as a volunteer after being made redundant. I know some ex employees do, but I think it is more common among those like me who were volunteers for years before becoming staff. Even then, ten years after I left WMUK I rarely volunteer to do the sort of thing I once was paid to do. I read his 9 theses and was rather disappointed. I get that not everyone is an altruist and many that are look for different opportunities to volunteer or give than building an encyclopaedia on a website. So I shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't want to volunteer here, but if not why post on such a page? Especially if he doesn't respond to feedback on his diatribe. As for him being a critic of the project and having set up some ill-fated rivals, I really welcomed his writing up his perspective. But I was really disappointed at his lack of reflection as to why some of his ideas didn't work out so well for Citizendium, and his evident failure to keep abreast of how Wikipedia works internally. He also shares a common flaw among staff members who have come from outside the movement of not valuing volunteer time. Anyone who has volunteered time for this project is likely to grasp why moving from an individual admin can issue an indef block to requiring three admins to issue an indef block is a huge extra ask of volunteers that would require a very good reason such as a significant percentage of indef blocks being unwarranted. Similarly reviving the article feedback tool with its massive overhead in moderation time is the sort of proposal that indicates to me a mindest that puts zero value on volunteer time. All that said I was and am willing to trawl through his diatribe to see of there is anything worth salvaging, and I do think there is something awry in our autoblocking of IPs, hence my revival of the idea of smart blocking. ϢereSpielChequers 11:03, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Wow, thank you so much for your long answers! I'd give you a second barnstar, but I don't want to make it seem excessive.

Do you think though that Larry just hasn't seen these messages? Or that he thinks that reading more rules won't change anything?

Also, Here in Britain we'd describe such a change resistant system as "conservative with a small c", meaning conservative as in defaulting to conserve what's there what do you think of this type of system for Wikipedia?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 23:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Thankyou for asking questions that make me think.

I've never met Larry Sanger, I started editing Wikipedia in 2007, long after he'd gone and I never edited Citizendium or his other attempts to compete with Wikipedia. So this was my first attempt to interact with him. I'm going to be charitable and assume that he just doesn't have the bandwidth to cope with so much feedback at once. His 9 theses were much more than 9 proposals as some of them had whole bundles of suggestions and misconceptions behind them. I remember my first RFA and what a multifront farrago that was, and that involved a tiny fraction of the issues inherent in the 9 theses. I'm not convinced that reading rules is a big part of the answer here. OK, so rereading it might lead Larry to understand that the Standard offer isn't so much go away for 6 months, it is more inline with his idea of come back after twelve months and ask for another chance. Except 6 months is less time than 12 months. But there are several other issues, I'm not sure when Wikipedia's community grew beyond Dunbar's number and whether that occurred during Larry's time here, or whether his Citizendium project grew beyond that. But a community that way exceeds that number needs a different rules than a smaller community does. He also lacks experience of either the era when vandalism almost seemed an existential threat to the project, or the more recent era where spam had become our biggest problem, as for the current era where alternative facts are our biggest challenge, I'm not convinced he is on our side.

As for Wikipedia being an inherently conservative project, I'm on board with that in the classical conservative sense of a pursuit of excellence. Our aim, to make the sum of human knowledge freely available to all, is inherently a progressive one. But our structure necessarily has elements that seem very conservative to me:

1. This is not a place where all shall have prizes, your contributions may be ruthlessly edited and if someone can replace a bunch of photographs I have taken with better quality photographs then that's for the good of the project. Even if it can ruffle my feathers when it happens. There is much to be done here and I think that almost any volunteer can find a niche where they are useful, but we are most definitely a meritocratic project that prizes quality contributions.
2. I'm also on board with the idea that on this project change requires consensus rather than a simple majority. We are in many respects a Direct Democracy and such institutions can be unstable if any policy can be overturned by a simple majority of a small subset of the community. Ireland resolves this by requiring referenda before changing the constitution, and those referenda require only a simple majority - but that sort of system does not easily scale to handling the plethora of decisions that we need to make as a community. The downsides of consensus are many, sometimes there really is a fork in the road and you need to choose one way or the other with neither as the default.
3. You risk ossification if you have a blocking minority and a frustrated majority, in my view this is one of the flaws at RFA, where for years we have not been able to appoint as many admins as we lose, with various unhealthy results including a Wikigeneration divide and at an extreme some taking the view that we can't afford to be too strict with current admins as they are in such short supply. To some extent we have moved away from consensus in this area first by lowering the threshold and more recently by introducing elections, replacing consensus with a supermajority system.
4. Perhaps where I'm most comfortable is in our level of prudishness. I think Jimmy described it well as the principle of least surprise. Yes if you look for it all knowledge is here, that includes porn and assorted sexual fetishes. But you shouldn't come across that unless you are looking for it, so the mainpage should be a bit more vanilla than a random walk through the project. Of course in a world where appropriate clothing ranges from the 100% cover up of Saudi Arabia to the minimalist G string of the French beaches, curating for a global audience is not easy. My personal approach is that we should be aware that much of our audience is more conservative than we are, I'm sure that most English speakers, especially in the USA, are far more conservative than I am.
5. Requiring reliable sources is at the heart of our project, the preference used to be verifiability over truth. This puts us at odds with the social justice warriors who are concerned that the reliable sources we have are often the records of the conquerors and the imperial oppressors. Both in the past and of course in the current day with the IDF limiting journalistic access to Palestinian territories. It also puts us in conflict with those on the alt right who deal in alternative facts. I'm not sure anyone likes our current situation, actual conservatives being thin on the ground these days. My own concern is more with the freedom fighters of India, South Africa and so forth who find their story to be far less documented than that of their former oppressors. But at heart this project is a tertiary source, some problems are best fixed by others creating secondary sources to plug gaps in human knowledge.
6. One of the changes over the last twenty years has been the rise of the silver surfer - retirees who have computers and know how to use them. Another has been the rise of the smartphone as the main internet access device of the young and those beyond the reach of power cables, since Wikipedia is a pig to edit on mobile we have very few editors who edit on smartphones. The combination of those two has been the greying of the pedia. When I first attended a London meetup in 2008 I was older than 95% of attendees. I'm now 17 years older, but I'm unlikely to be among the oldest 10% of attendees at a London meetup. When Larry was last active we were in the era where you could assume any Wikipedian you interacted with was a 14 year old, today the default assumption is a pensioner. This has implications. Now I'm not a fan of the theory that people drift to the right as we age, but I am aware that older people are more likely to remember the values of their childhood than people young enough to be their grandchildren will be influenced by their grandparents teachers. Some value changes are in part generational, and in that sense we have become more conservative than Larry would remember us as. Especially if Wikipedia has his age correctly, in which case one change he may not be aware of is that the proportion of the community who are older than him may be far greater now than it was over twenty years ago.

ϢereSpielChequers 13:01, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Glad I'm making you think! Perhaps some of these things you propose will become a reality someday.

the current era where alternative facts are our biggest challenge, are you referring to this? Or sources from places such as WP:FRINGE?

Also, for the whole admin thing, why not add something below an admin, perhaps the rank of moderator, which has fewer permissions than an administrator but that you can more easily attain?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 19:25, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Re Alternative facts, I think a mix of both. It seems to have started in the alternative health sphere, and then of course porn. Though in that area it was at least partially a matter of creating multiple overlapping award systems so that every adult performer could win a "notable" award for something. Then lines in journalism got more blurred between the entertainment and journalism, I'm almost nostalgic for the pre Internet days when a certain tabloid here in Britain managed two consecutive front pages, "WW2 bomber found on the Moon" then topped with "WW2 bomber mysteriously disappears from the Moon".

As for a moderator or other not quite admin role, we have had some unbundlings such as template editor and even an upbundling for interface editor. One problem seems to be that not only does each such change just slightly add further complication to an over complex system; But each change results in standards inflation at RFA and another group of people no longer qualifying to be admins. Arguably it all started in early 2008 with the unbundling of Rollback, Wikipedia:RFA by month shows you when in early 2008 we made that change, and suddenly "good vandalfighter" ceased to be sufficient qualification for anyone to pass RFA. I'm with the consensus on this, I do think that any new admin should be able to list some diffs where they have added content to the pedia supported by an inline cite to a reliable source. However, we still need vandalfighters who spot and revert vandalism, and those are the people who don't just need rollback, they need the ability to block vandals. The problem the community has, and this has been argued many many times over, is that there are many many people who don't want "moderators" who can block regulars and enforce civility and deal with editwarring by people who contribute content, unless they have contributed content themselves. I think this could be resolved by creating a vandalfighter role with a block button that only works on IP/temporary accounts and accounts that are not yet confirmed, but there are some, particularly in the WMF, who think we have a problem with newbie biting and don't want to make it easier to block new editors. As to how this relates to Larry Sanger's ideas, I think this would go in the opposite direction, more power spread among the volunteers rather than moderation by WMF employees. I'd prefer that we persuade more people to run for RFA, it isn't as bad as its reputation, and crucially, if we trust someone with the whole admin toolset they sometimes go on to use various other parts of that toolset for many years. But if that fails I'd rather empower vandalfighters to block vandals than run out of admins. ϢereSpielChequers 07:40, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't know too much about RFA, and definitely not nearly as much as you. I wonder if there's a tyranny of the majority when it comes to that. Do you worry that to pass RFA you have to, or are at least pressured to, primarily represent the majority of extended confirmed editors, which could marginalize minorities on Wikipedia? Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:51, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes it is the opposite of tyranny of the majority as you don't need 50% to defeat a candidate. There have been plenty of unsuccessful candidates who got clear majorities. There certainly is normative pressure, my belief is that part of the standards inflation in terms of edit count and length of service has come through people supporting candidates who failed on one or other of those reasons despite getting over 50% support. If we had 50% as the pass mark then you'd expect a normalisation on the mean, not that I'm arguing for such a low pass mark, just aware that our higher one has unintended consequences. One downside of a supermajority system is that people who supported a candidate who narrowly missed passing can feel that their criteria were out of line with the community. We rarely get more than 400 editors participating in any single RFA, so I certainly wouldn't claim that RFA decisions represent the majority of the extended confirmed editors. But the combination of a watchlist notice so many voters are aware, and the much larger number of people who take part in at least one RFA a year, means that RFA arguably does represent the community, if only because most members of the community choose not to participate but leave it to others. !voters want to be sure that new admins will use the tools in line with policy, and there are at least five overlapping !voting blocs that can block an otherwise qualified candidate:

1. Inclusionists who will oppose any candidate who seems heavyhanded or going beyond policy in their deletion tagging (there's probably an equally large deletionist faction, but we won't see that unless there is a candidate who wants to save stuff that would be deleted by strictly following policy)
2. People who expect admins to have demonstrated an ability to write content cited to reliable sources (some of these people may be motivated with the idea that we don't need civility police getting in the way of the people who actually write content, or at least not unless they have skin in the game).
3. Admins must have x months tenure. At one point this was defended by saying that certain problem users had shown they could behave themselves for x-1 months when they return under a new name.
4. Admins must have contributed y edits. I'm not a fan of this sort of !voting rationale, especially if from a !voter who hasn't actually checked the candidate's edits.
5. Admins should be legal adults. This is usually coded as opposes for perceived immaturity as that sounds less ageist than saying please come back when you are 18.

Obviously the last of these involves a minority on Wikipedia. The first involves a minority within Wikipedia that doesn't easily map onto minorities off Wikipedia. Otherwise I don't see that RFA discriminates against minorities. We get the occasional gay candidate and we had a blind candidate who uses a screen reader. Long ago, before the smartphone era, we used to have quite a few teenage candidates, I'm pretty sure that there was a pattern of teenage boys opposing other teenage boys who they perceived as being younger than themselves. The rare teenage girl would not be opposed by any teenage boy. We did briefly have a problem with a misogynist site outside the Wikimedia universe that would send their fans here to oppose female RFA candidates, but I haven't noticed that happening in years. As for other minorities, on the internet who knows what minorities someone is part of? ϢereSpielChequers 15:06, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Admins must have contributed y edits. I'm not a fan of this sort of !voting rationale, especially if from a !voter who hasn't actually checked the candidate's edits. does this include the current requirement of at least around 7,000 edits, or people who want it even higher?

Also, what do you think of lowering the percentage needed to get elected, maybe to 60% or something like that?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 17:05, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

While I'm not sure when we last had an RFA pass with fewer than 7,000 edits, I do believe that the right candidate could still pass with far fewer than 7,000 edits. But they'd need to be the sort of candidate who spends half an hour of research per edit, not some AWB user who might save 100 edits in that same half hour. Wikipedia:RfA inflation is worth reading.

I think a case could be made to lower the passmark in RFA elections. We have had two elections so far and are about to have a third, we already have ten candidates who got over 64% but less than 70% and therefore narrowly missed. I expect there will be several more after next month's election. So lowering the pass mark would make a much bigger difference than it did when we lowered the pass mark in normal RFAs. One way to make a pitch for a lowering of the threshold would be to look at them as a group and see how many have subsequently been blocked or conversely gone on to do useful work. I have not reviewed them myself, and looking at the names there's only one that's familiar. Without doing such a review, I don't know whether I would be recommending keeping the threshold where it is or lowering it, but I suspect that at some stage next year someone will review the data and maybe start an RFC to make that sort of change. Conversely if it turns out that a couple of long term problem accounts were among the new admins who were narrowly elected then there could be pressure to increase scrutiny or even raise the pass mark, but if any of them have got into huge scandals I haven't noticed. ϢereSpielChequers 13:18, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I read that article.

Based on your observations, how do you know if you're qualified enough to run for RfA? Since you said (correct me if I'm wrong) that we're low on admins, I can find people who fit the criteria and either encourage or nominate them to an RfA.

Wikieditor662 (talk) 00:19, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Well we have certainly fewer admins than we used to and far fewer than we'd need to maintain their numbers. We aren't yet so low on admins that some sort of crisis point has hit, but we don't know how far we are from having too few admins to keep the site functioning. However we are low enough on admins that Larry Sanger's proposal to make extra work for admins by putting indef blocks into triplicate was not going to fly. If he'd understood today's Wikipedia better, he'd know he'd inadvertently come up with a proposal to damage us at one of our weakest points, as well as to give more power to the Foundation at a time when the Foundation is coming in for criticism in the US from the administration there.

There is no one single guide as to what the de facto criteria are for adminship. But this list of potential nominators makes for interesting reading. It's difficult to assess potential candidates for adminship unless you are an admin, because how does one check someone's deletion tagging without being able to view deleted edits? Yes there are some candidates who have stayed away from deletion and who's contributions can be checked by anyone, and I'm sure some nominations have been by non admins. What you might find interesting in the next few weeks would be to look at past Category:Wikipedia administrator elections voter guides and maybe do one yourself. If you are concerned about future admins being "equitable and fair" then this is your opportunity. Just look through the candidates' edits, especially re posts at WP:AIV and or on boards such as ANI, and either endorse them as fair, or put links in your voter guide giving recent examples where you think a candidate has been unfair. Voter guides are a great way to share research on candidates, one of my fears about the election system is that many of the voters just don't have time to spend even half an hour assessing each candidate they are voting on because there are so many at the same time. So some good candidates likely fail, and potentially a flawed candidate might skate through if no one spots their particular flaw. There is of course no shame in having a voting guide where you assert no opinion on several candidates you simply didn't have time to assess or who aren't active in the area you were looking at.

As part of writing such a guide and looking at the last two elections, you will likely become aware of the several candidates who only narrowly missed last time or the time before. Depending on why they lost, and on whether they are still around, you may well find one or more of them to be persuadable to stand for RFA. We used to have a steady trickle of RFA candidates whose first RFA had failed but who passed at the second attempt, (myself included). You have to wait a few months between runs, and I'm curious to see whether any of the narrowly rejected candidates from the last two elections try this December. But you might find some in this group who can be persuaded to run, especially if they have responded to the oppose reasons - for example "needs to create some cited content" or "needs a few months more experience". ϢereSpielChequers 12:44, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

It's difficult to assess potential candidates for adminship unless you are an admin, because how does one check someone's deletion tagging without being able to view deleted edits? Well, I suppose I could check their publicly available edits and discussions, and when nominated an admin could investigate them farther.

When you said What you might find interesting in the next few weeks would be to look at past and maybe do one yourself. If you are concerned about future admins being "equitable and fair" then this is your opportunity. were you referring to me running for RfA myself? I do have some concerns about that, for example, I'm not sure how active I'll be in the future, or what the community will think of that.

You have to wait a few months between runs, and I'm curious to see whether any of the narrowly rejected candidates from the last two elections try this December. How do you determine whether you should run through regular RfA or through elections? I assume regular elections would have more users participating overall but less attention per candidate, and vice versa for regular RfA.

Wikieditor662 (talk) 13:27, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

The advantage of looking at people who narrowly failed in an election is that you can assume that admins have looked at their deleted edits and if there were problems they would likely have appeared in a question or a voter guide. Plus you know those people were interested in running.

I wasn't intending to drop a hint about that, but I see how a missing colon makes it look like I asked that. Instead I think that a voter guide would be a soapbox that let you check the candidates for fairness and give examples of them being fair or otherwise. But since you ask, you've been around since July 2024, so if I assessed you as a potential candidate you'd start in the group of people who've been here between 12 and 24 months so you might get my support. But you'd also get my advice that running after you've been here at least 24 months would avoid some automatic opposes from some people who are pickier over than tenure than I am. I'd also advise being block free for at least 12 months when you run, and updating your userpage to list some articles you have made significant contributions to.

As to whether people are better off running a normal RFA or standing for election, we have only had two elections and it is a little hard to say. One clear thing is that elections get less debate. Another is that if you want to pass unanimously or near as damn it, your best chance is in an RFA. But if you just want a pass, then I don't think we have the data to say whether your best chance is in an election or a normal RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 18:34, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

The advantage of looking at people who narrowly failed in an election is that you can assume that admins have looked at their deleted edits and if there were problems they would likely have appeared in a question or a voter guide. Yeah, that makes sense. I was also talking about people who haven't ran before in addition.

running after you've been here at least 24 months would avoid some automatic opposes from some people who are pickier over than tenure than I am. I'd also advise being block free for at least 12 months when you run could it hurt to run before it? I mean, worst case they say no, and you can run again later, right? Or does being declined make it harder for you to run in the future? Or perhaps you're making these suggestions not just based on whether I'll win, but also whether you think that I should be one?

(I'm not necessarily saying I'm going to run; I'm just curious. If I did decide to run I'd have to do a bunch of more stuff beforehand).

Another is that if you want to pass unanimously or near as damn it, your best chance is in an RFA. yeah, I think I saw some users win with hundreds of people saying yes and none saying no.

Wikieditor662 (talk) 19:16, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest if you are going to look for potential RFA candidates you start with people who nearly got elected. You know they want or wanted to be admins, and there is less need for an admin to check their deleted edits. If you've successfully nominated someone then you could consider looking for people who have not run. One way to do this would be to ignore people who have recently had articles deleted or who are involved in tagging articles for deletion. Another would be to partner up with an admin who is an active nominator. That admin can look at someone's deleted edits and easily see the difference between somebody who created articles 12 years ago on sportspeople who don't quite meet modern standards of notability, or someone who created articles 12 weeks ago that don't meet are rules for neutrality, respect for living people etc. One of those would be a problem, the other just needs the candidate or a co-nom to say "some of the articles I created over ten years ago have been deleted, but I learned a long time ago only to create articles on players who have actually played for the team, not for those members of the squad who never got closer to the pitch than the reserves bench". But that sort of thing needs to be said, I once saw an RFA snow fail very quickly partly because the candidate had recently had talkpage messages telling them some articles they had created were going to be deleted. If an admin had looked at the deleted articles and said they were all many years old the RFA should have gone differently.

You can certainly run more than once, I passed on my second attempt, the record is I think 6 or 7. But there is an unwritten rule about waiting a few months between runs, I think it is something like wait 3 months plus 1 month per unsuccessful attempt, plus, look at the reasons that people gave for opposing you and fix at least some of those reasons. I wouldn't recommend running within 12 months of a block, that unwritten rule has lasted well over a decade. But running with less tenure or fewer edits than anyone has recently run? I think that in the last few years the lowest edit count of a successful candidate may have been 7,000. Could an otherwise well qualified candidate pass with just 6,000 edits? I would hope so, especially if they eschewed tools and those 6,000 edits had clearly taken more work than my last 60,000 edits. If I was their potential nominator I would make them aware that they were likely to get some opposes for this and that running in a few months with a slightly higher edit count would be easier for them, but if they were OK with seeing a few opposes of the "come back when you've done x" nature, then I'd be happy to see such a candidate run. Otherwise we risk seeing things ratchet and in a couple of years it might become "Oppose. No-one has passed in five years with less than 8,000 edits".

Oh and I'm not taking a view as to whether you should be an admin. If you were a candidate I would check various things such as your deleted contributions before I decided which way to !vote in your RFA, let alone whether I was going to nominate you. I think that sort of vetting is intrusive as well as time consuming, so I don't do it unless someone has put themselves forward for that scrutiny, such as by emailing saying they have read User:WereSpielChequers/RFA criteria and think they meet my nomination criteria or will fairly soon. I do check out deleted contributions and some of the things that I'd check for an RFA nomination when I check out potential autopatrollers. But that feels less intrusive because I'm largely looking at draft and mainspace. ϢereSpielChequers 13:26, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest if you are going to look for potential RFA candidates you start with people who nearly got elected. so find someone like that, check their edits, and see if the reasoning behind them not passing has now changed, and if it has, just point that out in the nomination? And should I ask them beforehand if they want to be nominated?

One way to do this would be to ignore people who have recently had articles deleted or who are involved in tagging articles for deletion. what do you mean by that?

I wouldn't recommend running within 12 months of a block, that unwritten rule has lasted well over a decade. Is there a way of getting a block overturned, perhaps through an apology or by a farther appeal?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:14, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Not only do you have to ask someone before nominating them, their nomination is only valid when they have accepted the nomination and answered the three default questions. Asking people to stand for adminship is a big deal, you are asking to take on extra unpaid work and putting themselves in the firing line for scrutiny not only internally but from Wikipedia's critics. Finding people who would make successful admins is easy, persuading people to stand for adminship is the difficult bit, if you haven't already read it I suggest reading Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. That's why I suggest starting with people who recently ran and came close, You know those people were willing to run and they are likely to welcome encouragement from others to run again.

As you aren't an admin you can't see people's deleted edits. So best to leave potential candidates who tag articles for deletion or who have recently had articles deleted for admins to consider.

Yes there are ways to overturn blocks, but they start with the divide into two approaches. Is this block no longer necessary or was this block wrong in the first place? Apologies and promises not to repeat the behaviour that lead to the block are relevant if you want a block to be ended as no longer necessary. But once a block has ended it is beyond the point of arguing whether it is no longer necessary. Wikipedia:Appealing_a_block#Direct_appeal gives a route to dispute resolution if you think a block was unwarranted, but I wouldn't advise that route if you are thinking of running for adminship as even if you win your appeal and the majority of the RFA crowd agrees with you, an RFA can fail if a large enough minority side with the blocking admin. So any such unblock needs to be very clearly an incorrect block. ϢereSpielChequers 10:15, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, thank you once again so much for your help! I sent a request to someone who narrowly lost the last election.

As for the block, I don't know if you're curious, but in my personal case users in a discussion were making comments on character rather than content, which I reported to ANI, and was closed. However, after that someone sent an incredibly insulting message which I thought was separate from the others, and that was far more hostile, so I went to ANI again but for a different reason, but the admins saw it as a continuation and blocked me. 2 to 3 Admins agreed this was right to do, so I'm not sure if there's much of a point in trying to refute it. Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

We are still in early days re elections, so I can understand someone not wanting to be in all of the first three. My guess is that someone who narrowly fails to be elected would do well if they stood in a conventional RFA a few months later, but it does rather depend on why they failed to be elected. Someone who was at the low end for either edits or tenure would probably do fine. Someone who doesn't add referenced content would likely be turned down at least as hard.

As for blocks, I've never been active in reviewing other people's blocks. If you had multiple admins agree that a 24 hour block was valid then it would be a difficult task to challenge that. Especially as by this time next year almost everyone would be likely to treat it as historic, assuming you have been active and unblocked since. ϢereSpielChequers 17:34, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

by this time next year almost everyone would be likely to treat it as historic, assuming you have been active and unblocked since. what do you mean by "historic"? Are you saying they won't see it as a big deal anymore? Because you basically said it affects you for 12 months.

Also, I wish you the best of luck with the elections!

Wikieditor662 (talk) 17:58, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Historic in the sense that a block that is over 12 months ago is unlikely to cause opposes in an RFA. But also question 3 "Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?" is an opportunity to say you had this block over 12 months ago but you've not been in any similar incident since. ϢereSpielChequers 18:35, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I was a little confused there when you say by this time next year almost everyone would be likely to treat it as historic, "next year" sounded a little bit like you meant starting from January, even though now I see you meant 12 months from the event.

PS I enjoyed talking to you. Wikieditor662 (talk) 18:51, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Geograph

Is there a pipeline for copying images to Commons? For example this one. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 19:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC).

I used to use geograph2commons but I think it has been down for years. Maybe a little project you might want to pick up? ϢereSpielChequers 21:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I do have a (Tool Forge) tool in the pipeline, or should I say stack. It's pushed down so far I've forgotten what it is, but once I have one, another should be simpler. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:19, 5 November 2025 (UTC).

The first draft of the Top 50 report is up

Numbers are really low. I have to wonder if Elon Musk and the current attacks on Wikipedia have poisoned the well. Serendi^podous 00:33, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Or perhaps we're seeing the effects of AI. Serendi^podous 10:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

By my count, Wikipedia's top 50 articles have seen a 10 percent drop in views since last year. I have not done the average for the last few years. Serendi^podous 10:55, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

My first impression was where is India? Then I looked at Wikipedia:2024_Top_50_Report and there weren't many Indian events in that. I thought the weekly spikes were more balanced between India and the USA, so maybe big Indian stories have more of a glass ceiling, so the top fifty for the year has a more US focus than the weekly top 10? Sport also languishes, not my subject area at all, but maybe the biggest sport stories of 2025 just weren't as big as in 2024? Even I notice when the Olympics take place, I even watched briefly when one of the London Olympics events went past my front door (the most recent time I attended a sporting event). But the biggest thing is, this is a draft 2025 list in mid November. There will surely be stories in the next 6 weeks that break the top 50 and push other events down and in a couple of cases out of the top 50. Unless you were comparing that 10% fall against a draft of the 2024 report from mid November 2024?

All that said, yes we are losing some market share to mirrors and indeed Grokipedia. I'm just waiting for Grokipedia to have its Siegenthaler incident. Lower sourcing standards, less concern about quality, and computers working on predictive text and LLMs rather than humans, including some humans who have access to some paywalled sources, what could possibly go wrong with that? ϢereSpielChequers 11:34, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I've started a guide!

Hey! Based on our previous conversation, I've started a guide for the upcoming admin elections! You can see what I've created so far here. I hope you like it! Wikieditor662 (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but probably best if I don't comment on any specific guide at this stage of the event as I could be one of the crats who handles the results of the election. ϢereSpielChequers 17:11, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

End of elections

Hey, what did you think of the latest elections? And now that it's over are you allowed to comment on my voting guide if you want? Wikieditor662 (talk) 02:21, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Hi, very initial impressions, the reduced number of candidates has been combined with 75% of them passing, two with the highest results ever in an RFA election. This reinforces my suspicion that elections get more opposes, and that it is likely that some people oppose candidates who they haven't had time to assess. Your guide was pretty predictive of the result; two of your strong supports were the two who got the >85% results, and your No got the lowest. Your neutral passed and one of your supports didn't, but yes pretty accurate. I've been a bit busy this week and won't be able to go into more detail at present, I haven't even looked at the other guides. But at first glance an interesting document, did you enjoy the process, and how many edits did you personally look at when you assessed those candidates? ϢereSpielChequers 10:07, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm glad you liked it. For the one who was neutral, one of my biggest concerns required looking back at their older messages, which I don't think most editors were willing to do, especially at an election with multiple candidates. Perhaps I should've brought it up in the discussion.

I suppose I enjoyed the process, although it was a bit tedious. As for the edit count, I try not to let it affect me too much, as some editors do way more than others per edit while others do a bunch of small edits -- I might even remove the edit count or base it off whether they have 7,000 or more next time. Do you think that would be a good idea?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:58, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Well you had "12 months block free" as one criteria, so >7,000 edits would be simple. Or you could do a more nuanced >3,000 manual edits or >10,000 automated edits, or over 3,000 edits (discounting automated or minor edits by 90%). I suspect all those candidates would have passed either test ϢereSpielChequers 23:53, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

True, although to be fair, no candidate has won with under 7,700 edits in the past few years. Wikieditor662 (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

That's how the ratchet effect works. Another way of looking at it is to look at RFAs where lack of contributions was the main reason for it failing. ϢereSpielChequers 13:45, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Another way of looking at it is to look at RFAs where lack of contributions was the main reason for it failing. how among the hundreds or thousands of RFAs do you find that? Wikieditor662 (talk) 15:55, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Fiddly I agree, but if you start with the most recent and go back you don't need to look at many to get a pattern. More to the point, are you predicting where the community will go or are you looking for criteria that tell the difference between people who are not ready to become a good admin? In my criteria I try to differentiate between people I might support at RFA and people I would be willing to nominate at RFA. I'll only nominate someone who I think will make a good admin. I am unlikely to nominate someone unless I am fairly confident that they will pass RFA, unless they know they are taking a risk, I think they would make a good admin, and we both agree that they are knowingly taking a risk. ϢereSpielChequers 21:08, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

More to the point, are you predicting where the community will go or are you looking for criteria that tell the difference between people who are not ready to become a good admin? I'd guess it's more of a spectrum rather than one or the other. Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:28, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

My personal preference in voter guides, and similar places, is to be clear when you are saying this is a criteria that I apply and commend to others, and this is a community norm. With both tenure and edit count I think that if you are going to make a deal of it, It is worth avoiding the ratchet effect by saying something to the effect of in the last x years no one has been rejected just for lack of edits with fewer than x edits, or become an admin with less than y edits. Yes this could leave a significant range where we don't know how the community will jump, and of course there are some who differentiate sharply between the sort of edits that represent half an hour's work and the sort of edits that can be done at a rate of over a 100 in half an hour. ϢereSpielChequers 20:00, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Well, what do I do then? Should I not include the edit count or how long a user has been there? Wikieditor662 (talk) 22:31, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Well it is your user guide not mine, your preference may be different to mine. I can't tell you what you should do, at least not when the choices are all valid. But you did ask for my opinion on your guide. So I can ask why you make certain choices and point out the implications. If you think that tenure and or edit count are relevant bits of information you can of course include them in your guide. But how do you then use that information? I've seen people argue that certain longterm problem accounts have returned under a new name and behaved themselves for x months, so they like to see x+1 months tenure at RFA. Similarly there have been discussions both as to how many edits are needed to get the experience needed to be an admin, and what sort of edits are more useful than others. For example I do a lot of typo fixing and some categorisation, both things that rack up loads of minor edits. Some of the supports at my RFAs were because if you look carefully there are also some edits where I do more time consuming stuff like adding referenced material. Where I think a voting guide becomes really useful is when someone has done some research, or cites what others have done, and then has a comment such as "raw edit count looks a little light, but even a cursory random sample shows a high proportion of those edits are clueful, complicated and doing a lot of useful work" or "edit count seems high, but almost all are just vandal reversion, tagging or typo fixing. No mention of article writing in either the question answers or on the userpage. I concur with user:Example, the candidate doesn't yet have the experience of adding content with inline cites to reliable sources that we expect of admins". ϢereSpielChequers 18:00, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Example, the candidate doesn't yet have the experience of adding content with inline cites to reliable sources that we expect of admins" That could also go in the "other" section of the guide... also, perhaps I should just include the number of edits and tenure, and let each user decide for themselves whether they've had enough? Wikieditor662 (talk) 18:08, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Your perspective is valuable

I remember your comments on Meta in the recent board kerfuffle. I also know you've been around as an editor for an incredibly long time and I think that institutional knowledge is important. I've been trying to start a conversation over at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#Community-WMF relations and I would appreciate any thoughts you have regarding that, if any. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks Hannah, was this the sort of thing you wanted? ϢereSpielChequers 16:20, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it was very helpful. :) I was thinking a bit more on your comment about the vandal statistics and it reminds me of the "we know that new editors write most of the content" tidbit I've heard a few times, which seems a bit sketchy to me on a similar basis. The idea is supposedly that new editors write more content and experienced ones do more gnoming, but I'm not sure that nessecarily translates into new editors outcompeting experienced editors in content contributions. At the very least, I'd expect experienced editors to write content that isn't immediately reverted due to quality issues more often. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:23, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I think that comment is a bit out of date or maybe just a simplification, as is the similar one about the IP editors writing much of Wikipedia. There certainly are content writers who ignore the gnoming and adminy sides of things, and some of them have been around for years. But they rarely clock up the very high edit counts that people like me tend to get. If you ignore the minor edits such as categorisation, typo fixing and vandalism reversion, then the community looks very different than if you just go by edit count. Yes, one "career path" in the community is to start editing a subject you know about, and then to move onto other things. So an astronomer might start improving articles about astronomy on Wikipedia, and a few years later find themselves being a Wikipedia who can comment about all sorts of topics at FAC, if only from the viewpoint of a general reader trying to link or explain jargon that is way outside their own interest or expertise. It isn't the only "career path" though. I'm also conscious that a significant minority of the EN Wikipedia community have the secondary motivation that this is a hobby where they can practice and get feedback on their written English. In my time as a trainer I've met many people who had no problem getting the concept of needing to cite sources; As well as a few who were coming to Wikipedia to add a topic that was neglected by the mainstream sources, and some who were as unfamiliar with the concept of citing a source as I was when I first edited. I think the door has pretty much closed for getting in new people who are like I was when I first edited in early 2007.

I suspect that these days spammers and paid editors are now a much larger part of our community than we think. But if our distaste for spam results in some editors deliberately doing more uncontentious "volunteer like" editing and quid pro quos at DYK than their promotional editing, and in their keeping their promotional editing so factual that it is hard to spot their spam, then at least our risk from them is low. In my early days here I was able to spend time hunting down attack pages and getting them deleted as G10s. I pretty much stopped doing that after someone emailed me at work, ironically I suspect one thing that person respected of what I did was my hunting for G10s. But you need effective pseudonymity to do that sort of patrolling. ϢereSpielChequers 11:00, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Butting in. I don't think "we know that new editors write most of the content" is true at all. There were & I suppose still are editors who come on to WP to create/improve a group of articles on a specific area, often where they have considerable or great expertise. Once they have done that their editing may cease or switch to a maintenance basis, or they may develop a taste for it, and move into other areas. The late Professor User:Paul Barlow is a classic case of this. He was an art historian, biographer of Millais etc, who did a number of Pre-Raphaelite articles when I suppose he was a "new editor" (which were then fiercely maintained) before developing a taste for the Shakespeare authorship question and prehistoric racial theories in Europe, where he seemed to rather relish the controversies that abound in these areas. I think this was more common back in the "golden age", when we got lots of doctoral students and above. Johnbod (talk) 14:51, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Draft:Scholarly primitives

Thanks for catching the embarrassing typos on the Draft:Scholarly primitives. My dilemma now is if Ive added enough to resubmit? Do you have a view? thanks D Dz3 (talk) 10:27, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

You are most welcome re the typo fixing. As for the subject, I'm afraid it is out of my areas of expertise. Looking at Draft_talk:Scholarly_primitives it has been tagged as cognitive science, that doesn't even feel to me like the right branch of science - which may just be a demonstration of my lack of understanding of the topic. But if there is a more appropriate Wikiproject I would change the tag and put a query on the talkpage of that Wikiproject. ϢereSpielChequers 12:36, 23 January 2026 (UTC)