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The Signpost: 01 October 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? is a Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved. This week, a scandal centering around Roger Bamkin's work with Wikimedia UK and Gibraltarpedia erupted ... In light of these events, opinions on how to avoid future controversy are as important as ever. ... The Signpost spoke with Jimmy Wales to better understand how he views the paid editing environment and what he thinks is needed to improve it.
Following considerable online and media reportage on the Gibraltar controversy and a Signpost report last week, the Wikimedia UK chapter and the foundation published a joint statement on September 28: "To better understand the facts and details of these allegations and to ensure that governance arrangements commensurate with the standing of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK and the worldwide Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia UK's trustees and the Wikimedia Foundation will jointly appoint an independent expert advisor to objectively review both Wikimedia UK's governance arrangements and its handling of the conflict of interest."
Five articles, three lists, and nine images were promoted to "featured" this week.
The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities ... In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series, we spent some time bonding with WikiProject James Bond. The project is in the unique position of having already pushed all of its primary content to Good and Featured status, including all of Ian Fleming's novels, short stories, and every film that has been released. Work has begun in earnest on the article Skyfall for the release of the new Bond film later this month. The project could still use help improving articles about Bond actors, characters, gadgets, music, video games, and related topics

You're invited: Ada Lovelace, STEM women edit-a-thon at Harvard

U.S. Ada Lovelace Day 2012 edit-a-thon, Harvard University - You are invited!
Now in its fourth year, Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and related fields. Participants from around New England are invited to gather together at Harvard Law School to edit and create Wikipedia entries on women who have made significant contributions to the STEM fields.
Register to attend or sign up to participate remotely - visit this page to do either.
00:05, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

GibraltarpediA MFD

Err, thanks. I've been criticised for being reluctant to close XfDs as no consensus, so hopefully it's indicative that I'm re-centring correctly. WilyD 14:33, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

It was more than just the "No Consensus" decision. The manner in which you did it (laying out each side, including strong minority opinions) was deft and important. Achowat (talk) 14:36, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, I'm glad to hear that you're pleased with it, anyhow. WilyD 17:38, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

Wikipedia in education is far from a new idea: years of news stories, op-eds, and editorials have focused on the topic; and on Wikipedia itself, the Schools and universities projects page has existed in various forms since 2003. Over the next six years, the page was rarely developed, and when it did advance there was no clear goal in mind.
On this day five years ago, the WikiProject Report debuted as a new Signpost column with an overview of WikiProject Biography. Today, we're celebrating two milestone: five years of the WikiProject Report and the tenth birthday of our first featured project. WikiProject Biography is by far the largest WikiProject on Wikipedia, with over one million articles under the project's scope. As a comparison, WikiProject Biography is three times larger than Wikipedia's second largest project, and if WikiProject Biography were split into its 14 subprojects and work groups, it would still make the list of the 20 largest WikiProjects... four times.
This week the Signpost interviews Arsenikk, an editor of six years who has brought sixteen lists through our featured list process, mostly regarding transportation in Norway but also about the 1952 Winter Olympics and World Heritage Sites in Africa. Arsenikk tells us about why he joined the project, what moves him, and how editors can join the sometimes daunting world of featured lists.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for September 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment). Three of the seven headline items in the report have already been covered in the Signpost: problems with the corruption of several Gerrit (code) repositories, the introduction of widespread translation memory across Wikimedia wikis, and the launch of the "Page Curation" tool on the English Wikipedia, with development work on that project now winding down. The report also drew attention to the end of Google Summer of Code 2012, the deployment to the English Wikipedia of a new ePUB (electronic book) export feature, and improvements to the WLM app aimed at more serious photographers.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...

Welcome, and congratulations, from STiki!

Hello, Achowat, and welcome to STiki! Thank you for your recent contributions using our tool. We at STiki hope you like using the tool and decide to continue using it in the future. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Here are some pages which are a little more fun:

  • The STiki leaderboard - See how you are faring against other STiki users!
  • Userboxes - Do not hesitate to wear the STiki label with pride by choosing from a selection of userboxes!

We hope you enjoy maintaining Wikipedia with STiki! If you have any questions, problems, or suggestions don't hesitate to drop a note over at the STiki talk page and we'll be more than happy to help. Again, welcome, and thanks! West.andrew.g (talk) 11:55, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


The Anti-Vandalism + STiki Barnstar

Congratulations, Achowat! You're receiving this barnstar because you recently crossed the 1,000 classification threshold using STiki. We thank you both for your contributions to Wikipedia at-large and your use of the tool. We hope you continue your ascent up the leaderboard and stay in touch at the talk page. Thank you and keep up the good work! West.andrew.g (talk) 11:55, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Portal:New England has been designated as a Wikipedia Featured portal, per the discussion that occurred at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:New England. Thanks for your work to improve the encyclopedia! Northamerica1000(talk) 16:22, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Battle of the Sit River

Hi, yes, i think You are wrong, because Rus' that's not Russia, that's rather ancient Ukraine.--Romkobomko (talk) 17:28, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I'm sorry about the vandalism template, clearly your intent was not to harm the encyclopedia, given your statements. The reason it appeared as though you had is because you broke the Stub templates. See, for the various different kinds of stubs we have here (for football, or flags, or Olympians) we have different stub templates. Template:Russia-battle-stub is one, that creates a nice little note for editors. {{Rus'-battle-stub}} isn't a template we have, so it creates just an unattractive (and unhelpful) red blob at the bottom of the page. So, while "Russia battle" might not be the most precise category we could have, it's the most accurate category that we do have. And, well We build an encyclopedia with the stub templates we have, not the stub templates we might want or wish to have at a later time. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 12:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

All Saints

All I did was correct two typos. 87.113.150.116 (talk) 18:55, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

You're correct. Entirely my fault. I offer my apologies, and I've reverted to your edit and will be removing the template from your talk. Achowat (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Appealing a block

Hi,

You seemed to have blocked me due to an edit I made to an article (IMVU). I thought the change was helpful, but you seemed to disagree. Instead of editing he article to change any mistakes I may have made, you thought that blocking me from editing wikipedia was the logical thing to do. It would be appreciated if you could undo this action and allow me to continue contributing to the website. 77.97.52.185 (talk) 20:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I can tell you three things. First, you are not blocked, you can keep editing as normal (that should be a relief). Second, even if you were blocked, it wouldn't have been me to do the blocking, as only administrators have that button. Third, the reason I removed your edit and set the template out was twofold: First, but by no means most importantly, you seem to have deleted a space between "is" and "located", which may have been an honest mistake. Second, the tone of your comment (infamous, excessive advertising, etc) seemed overly negative. I'm an IMVU user myself, and while these contentions may be true, without a reliable, secondary source stating that, it rises to the level of original research, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Now, either of these two things (the spelling and the POV advertising complaint) when taken on their own may have gotten a revert without a template, but together they seemed to be indicative of a pattern. No real worries, though. Feel free to remove the template (and, really, any templates you're ever given) and hopefully take a look at the blue links above; they'll give you a pretty quick hows-what about editing Wikipedia (well, if you add in WP:N and WP:CIVIL). I hope to see you editing more in the future, but why not register so that you're more than just a string of numbers? Achowat (talk) 02:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)


Suggestion request

Achowat, will you please take a look here and make suggestions if you have time? Cheers.~©Djathinkimacowboy 00:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 15 October 2012

There is wide agreement among English Wikipedians that the administrator system is in some ways broken—but no consensus on how to fix it. Most suggestions have been relatively small in scope, and could at best produce small improvements. I would like to make a proposal to fundamentally restructure the administrator system, in a way that I believe would make it more effective and responsive. The proposal is to create an elected Administration Committee ("AdminCom") which would select, oversee, and deselect administrators.
This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
On the English Wikipedia, five featured articles, ten featured lists, and four featured pictures were promoted, including USS Lexington, a ship built for the United States Navy that, although ordered in 1916 as a battlecruiser, was converted to an aircraft carrier. It was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea during the Second World War.
The volunteer-led Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and interested community members are looking at Wikimedia organization applications worth about US$10.4 million out of the committee's first full year's operation, in just the inaugural round one of two that have been planned for the year with a planned budget of US$11.4M.
A trial of the first phase of Wikimedia Deutschland's "Wikidata" project–implementing the first ever interwiki repository—may soon get underway following the successful passage of much of its code through MediaWiki's review processes this week.
This week, we experimented with WikiProject Chemicals. Started in August 2004, WikiProject Chemicals has grown to include over 10,000 articles about chemical compounds. The project has a unique assessment system that omits C-class, Good, and Featured Articles. As a result, the project's 11 GAs and 9 FAs are treated as A-class articles. WikiProject Chemicals is a child of WikiProject Chemistry (interviewed in 2009) and a parent of WikiProject Polymers.

Marvin's talk

I am hoping that someone with some creativity can make my user page tell more about me and my constant. I am secretly hoping that my userpage will make a foundation for a more complete article on me. It might be a while before the documentation is available online but I would eventually like the article on me to include my struggle with cognitive and schizoaffective disorders. I'm really proud of what I've overcome and achieved so far! The first step however, is just to get my userpage in order.Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 23:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, there are a couple of problems with that. Per WP:FAKEARTICLE, it is inappropriate to use Userspace to host pages that look like encyclopedia articles. Now, it'd be possible to create a draft article, but hosting it in your Userspace probably has WP:COI issues, perhaps WP:AFC would be a better place. And the final issue that I see with your plan is WP:STALEDRAFT; specifically that we shouldn't create an unreferenced draft of an article and then hope sources come in, but rather that we should wait until the sources exist and then make it. If you want help creating an interesting and engaging Userpage that fits within the standards of WP:UP, let me know. But, as it stands, it appears as though your idea is not in keeping with the Guidelines we'd like to see. Achowat (talk) 14:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Do what you can for my UserPage and I will give you a BarnStar.Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 21:44, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
You might be too busy, but when you can, I'll take your help creating an interesting and engaging Userpage that fits within the standards of WP:UP.Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 23:34, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, the question becomes "What do you like?". Whose User page (or multiple user's pages) have elements that you'd like to see on your? Achowat (talk) 11:37, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
I like the monkey typing userbox that I put on my page because it reminds me of how I first described the MRB constant; I saw that on someones page. I Also saw a userbox that said this user is a mathematician; I like it. Perhaps pictures of more notable mathematicians would be a nice inspiration to me and visitors!Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 01:16, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
If you told me what users have them, I'd be happy to help. You might also want to look at WP:UBX, which has a complete (near) listing. Achowat (talk) 20:04, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Here is the "This user is a Mathematician:" Template:User mathematician, {{User mathematician}}

Here is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:18th-century_mathematicians. I thought the pictures of Johann and Jakob Bernoulli would be nice.

Ok, so I fixed your UBXs, and put the thumbed picture to the right. If you could tell me which pictures you want and where, I'd be fine helping you out. Also, if you could tell me which picture of the Bernoulli's, I'd be happy to throw them on the page. Just a protip, if you type [[File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg]] the picture will pop up, but if you use [[:File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg]], just a link will appear, to make things easier when you're refering me to the picture. Achowat (talk) 12:23, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I think that is pretty good the way it is!Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 14:09, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Ok, so is there anything else I can help you with? Achowat (talk) 14:13, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Not right now, I guess.
The Cleanup Barnstar
For fixing Marvin Ray Burns' Userpage Marvin Ray Burns (talk) 14:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, thank you. If I can be useful again, just let me know. Achowat (talk) 14:40, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

A thank-you

This was very nice of you. I appreciate you putting that in, because I was lacking that html. However, I would prefer it if you posted to me rather than alter things yourself, yes? It's just that far from being ungrateful, I do not like someone else making changes to my user or talk pages. If you need to reply please feel welcome to do so at my talk page.~©Djathinkimacowboy 20:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I entirely understand. It just seemed like such a minor change that I figured it was better to look past the rules to improve the product. But if you have an issue with that (which is perfectly understandable) I'll do my best to be mindful of that in the future. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 20:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oh, I am not angry and always appreciate help. But I thought it should be clear protocol that no one messes with anyone's user or talk pages unless asked...or unless it's an admin getting someone in trouble. I can understand and appreciate what you were doing, but I believe it's general rule that you should not have done it, you should have asked.~©Djathinkimacowboy 22:53, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

2012 Maine earthquake at AfD

Hi Achowat, just to let you know that I've nominated this article for deletion as I think that it falls well below the notability for such an event. The discussion is here. Mikenorton (talk) 22:51, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that - I don't AfD many articles (I think that's four) - so I'm glad that you saw the point so quickly. Mikenorton (talk) 16:39, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
I knew it was coming. It was some wishful thinking to think that there'd be anything more than WP:ROUTINE coverage. Once it was clear that no such coverage was coming, it wasn't right to draw out an AFD for something the encyclopedia has no business covering. Achowat (talk) 17:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Freshers

With regard to the last update. I do not know whether or not you know about loughborough university. but there is no evidence to suggest that they have the best freshers. Indeed their opinion was biased. I merely changed it so that the author would see how absurd it originally was. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.222.219.61 (talk)

Gadfium did the right thing and removed the sentence entirely. We shouldn't be hyping one school, for good or for ill. Achowat (talk) 19:23, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Copycats copying content from my website hosuronline.com

For several years I am forced to fight against copycats busy copying contents from my website page "hosur.hosuronline.com/abouthosur.asp" to wiki article Hosur and when I opposed the copy works, I have been blocked as an editor of wiki by an admin of wikipedia. You can look at the log page of discussion of the article Hosur in wiki. Please help to stop this menace — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.124.238.114 (talk) 04:32, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I've taken a look at both the website I was pointed to and Hosur, but I couldn't find a single instance of copying, like at all. I tried every unique phrase I could find on your site, to no avail. Could you, perhaps, be more specific as to what instances of "copying" exist on the page? Achowat (talk) 11:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Vivek Varshney

Hello,Actually I m not a fake user.I m a real valid user Vivek Varshney 16:41, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, Vivek. The {{Talkback}} template is used to let another user know that there's a message waiting for them at your userpage. Since there was no such message, I am a little confused. I'm going to assume this is in relation to my comments at the MFD for your userpage. My concerns have not been addressed, and your comments have been dealt with by other users. Achowat (talk) 17:16, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 October 2012

Unlike the long-running disputes that have characterised attempts to reform the RfA process on the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia's tradition of making decisions not by consensus but knife-edged 50% + 1 votes has led to a fundamentally different outcome. In 2009, the project managed to largely settle the RfA mode issue in 2009 indirectly.
One clarification request concerns the civility enforcement case – specifically, Malleus Fatuorum's perceived circumvention of his topic ban. It has resulted in thousands of bytes spent in vitriolic discussions, multiple blocks, and "no confidence" motions against the Arbitration Committee and one arbitrator, among other ramifications.
Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006, is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
The WikiProject Report normally brings tidings from Wikipedia's most active, inventive, and unique WikiProjects. This week, we're trying something new by focusing on Wikipedia's dark side: the various regional and national WikiProjects that are dead or dying. How can some tiny municipalities and exclaves generate highly active, cross-language, multimedia platforms be successful while the projects representing many sovereign countries and entire continents wallow in obscurity? Today, we'll search for answers among geographic projects large and small, highly active and barely functioning, enthusiastic about the future and mired in past conflicts.
Eleven articles, including one on Franz Kafka, three lists, one image, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status this week.

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