Jump to content

User talk:PamD/Archive 6

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1←Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7Archive 8→Archive 10

Thanks

for chiming in here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 August 2012

The Wikimedia Foundation sometimes proposes new features that receive substantive criticism from Wikimedians, yet those criticisms may be dismissed on the basis that people are resistant to change—there's an unjustified view that the wikis have been overrun by vested contributors who hate all change. That view misses a lot of key details and insight because there are good reasons that Wikimedians are suspicious of features development, given past and present development of bad software, growing ties with the problematic Wikia, and a growing belief that it is acceptable to experiment on users.
The Core Contest is a month-long competition among editors to improve Wikipedia's most important "core" articles—especially those that are in a relatively poor state. Core articles, such as Music, Computer, and Philosophy, tend to lie in the trunk of the tree of knowledge; by analogy, featured-and good-article processes generally attract more specialist topics out on the branches.
In the Utah Court of Appeals this week, the majority opinion in Fire Insurance Exchange v. Robert Allen Oltmanns and Brady Blackner relied on Wikipedia for the basic premise of their legal opinion, and included a concurring opinion devoted solely to the issue of citing Wikipedia in a legal opinion.
Thirteen featured articles were promoted this week, including pelicans, which are a genus of large water birds comprising the family Pelecanidae, characterised by a long beak and large throat-pouch. They have a fossil record dating back at least 30 million years and are most closely related to the Shoebill and Hammerkop. These fish-feeders have a patchy relationship with humans: the birds are sometimes persecuted and sometimes feature in mythology.
New embeddable scripting ("template replacement") language Lua received considerable scrutiny this week when it began its long road to widespread deployment, landing on the test2wiki test site on Wednesday (wikitech-l mailing list). ... the fourth in our series profiling participants in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) programme.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Korea. Started in September 2006, WikiProject Korea covers the history and culture of the Korean people, including both countries that currently occupy the Korean peninsula. This task has proven difficult with North Koreans notably absent from the Wikipedia community due to tight control over access to external media. The project is home to over 16,000 pages, including 15 pieces of Featured material and 66 Good and A-class Articles.

Re: The New Kid

Re your message: If that editor keeps posting articles for stuff he has made up or non-notable videos, they will likely be blocked. There really is not a de-userfication process except for MfD. Although sometimes after an editor is blocked, their user space articles will be deleted depending upon the content. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 22:46, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

aloveofthelakes

Hi - the link to my web site (www.aloveofthelakes.co.uk) does contain lots of factual information about the fell regions and individual Wainwright fells. I did not think that this would contravene any rules — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robmarsh3 (talk • contribs) 14:52, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Replied at User_talk:Robmarsh3. PamD 15:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Enjoy your leave - come back soon :)

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:19, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Folding seat

PamD,
Please see Talk:Folding seat#Notabilety. Peter Horn User talk 14:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 August 2012

Wikimedia editors have been debating a community proposal for the adoption of a new project to host free travel-guide content. The debate reached a new stage when a three-month request for comment on Meta came to an end, with a decision to set up the first new type of Wikimedia project in half a decade. The original proposal for the travel guide unfolded during April on Meta and the Wikimedia-l mailing lists, centring around the wish of volunteer contributors to the WikiTravel project to work in a non-commercial environment.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee and republished as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Developers were left one step closer to an understanding of the code review outlook this week after the creation of a graph plotting "number changesets awaiting review" over time. The chart, which also shows the number of new changesets created on a daily basis, reveals a peak in the number of unreviewed changesets in mid-July, followed by a short drop. The current figure stands at approximately 219 unreviewed changesets.
This week the Signpost interviews Mark Arsten, who has written or contributed significantly to ten featured articles; most have related to new religious movements, and some have touched on other controversial or quirky topics. Mark gives us a rundown on how he keeps neutral and what drives him to write featured content; he also gives some hints for aspiring writers.
This week, we hopped in a little blue box with a batch of companions from WikiProject Doctor Who. Started in April 2005, the project has grown to include about 4,000 pages about the world's longest-running science fiction television show, its spinoffs, and various related material. The project is the parent of the Torchwood Taskforce and a child of WikiProject British TV and WikiProject Science Fiction. With new Doctor Who episodes airing this week and a 50th anniversary celebration around the corner, we thought now would be a good time to inquire about the famed Time Lord.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

Reply to your comment on "Anam Tanveer"

Hello! Thanks for reminding me about sources! Sorry, I'm new to this Wikipedia editing stuff. I've been trying to work my way through it slowly. Thats why there weren't any sources up yet, I'll slowly start to put references up. If you have the time, I would be extremely grateful if you could quickly check over the references, as I'm quiet new to this and not sure if certain blogs and such are reliable references. Thanks! 1335draco (talk) 03:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Every piece of information, especially about a living person, should be sourced from a "reliable source". You must not add information just because you personally know it to be true. Much of this article seems to be excessive detail about minor aspects of the subject, and more appropriate to a fan magazine than an encyclopedia. The only source added so far is a blog, and blogs are generally unacceptable as a reference. Please find coverage of the subject in published sources - newspaper or magazine articles, her TV station's website, etc - and supply the source for each item of information. Please also provide links to other Wikipedia articles - I didn't know what SZABIST was, but it links to the university now I've added the linkage. Thanks. PamD 08:31, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

Some of Wikimedia's most valuable photographs have been shot and uploaded under free licenses as a direct result of the annual Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) event each September. Last year, the project was conducted on a European level, resulting in the submission of an extraordinary 168,208 free images of cultural heritage sites ("monuments") from 18 countries, making it the world's largest photographic competition. Organising the 2012 event—which has just opened and will run for the full month of September—has required input from chapters and volunteers in 35 countries.
Developers are currently discussing the possibility of a MediaWiki Foundation to oversee those aspects of MediaWiki development that relate to non-Wikimedia wikis. The proposal was generated after a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about generalising Wikimedia's CentralAuth system.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week, including a video explaining the recent landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA called the final minutes of the complicated landing procedure "the seven minutes of terror".
Since May 2012 I've been a Wikimedia Foundation community fellow with the task of researching and improving dispute resolution on English Wikipedia. Surveying members of the community has revealed much about their thoughts on and experiences with dispute resolution. I've analysed processes to determine their use and effectiveness, and have presented ideas that I hope will improve the future of dispute resolution.

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Cresset Press, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Companies Registration Office (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation update

Hey all :). We've just deployed another set of features for Page Curation. They include flyouts from the icons in Special:NewPagesFeed, showing who reviewed an article and when, a listing of this in the "info" flyout, and a general re-jigging of the info flyout - we've also fixed the weird bug with page_titles_having_underscores_instead_of_spaces in messages sent to talkpages, and introduced CSD logging! As always, these features will need some work - but any feedback would be most welcome. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
Three hip hop discographies were promoted this week, alongside seven other lists.
After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 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).
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - September 2012

Delivered September 2012 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 11:56, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot’s recommendations. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet.

We have added information about the quality of the suggested articles using a Low/Medium/High scale which goes from Low Quality: Low to High Quality: High.

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs   Cleanup
Quality: Low Television lines   Quality: Low Badgaon Bandh
Quality: Low Dhumbadiya   Quality: Low Gadarmala
Quality: Low Hudiya   Quality: Low Bharinda
Quality: Low Henry Brewis (artist)   Merge
Quality: Low Pooran   Quality: Medium History of iOS jailbreaking
Quality: Low Luna, Rajasthan   Quality: Low Ash Street
Quality: Low Sandilipay   Quality: Low Oldhall Green
Quality: Low Bhanwarani   Add sources
Quality: Low Hammond, Montana   Quality: Low Gura Sonigara
Quality: Low Beaverbrook, Ottawa   Quality: Medium Acrylic paint
Quality: Low Jim Scott (politician)   Quality: High Marilyn Manson
Quality: Low Pendas Fields   Wikify
Quality: Low Claude Bartolone   Quality: Low Gudha
Quality: Low Lincoln Green   Quality: Low Maharaj Ganga Singh Dental College & Research Centre
Quality: Low Bentinck Island   Quality: Low Digital dictation
Quality: Low Edmund Schulze   Expand
Quality: Low H (EP)   Quality: High Minecraft
Quality: Low Bagoda   Quality: Low Dablirathan
Quality: Low Belott, Texas   Quality: Medium Singapore Armed Forces ranks

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:34, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

ProdwarningBLP

An incident in which you were involved is being used as an example at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#ProdwarningBLP. Please join the collegial discussion there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:17, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Philip Stopford, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page St Anne's Cathedral (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:12, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Martin John Callanan (artist)

Hello PamD. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Martin John Callanan (artist), a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: The article is not substantially the same as the deleted version. A new deletion discussion is required. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:44, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Have proposed page move to base title, currently salted after two AfDs in 2008 and 2009. PamD 06:48, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Jabez Tunnicliff

Thanks for your contributions. I stayed up too late creating that article. I have some samples of his handwriting from the "Church Book" from Cradley Heath to add at some stage as an image. Did you see my comment on the talk page enquiring whether we can use th engraving of Tunnicliff which was digitised by google? -- Robert of Ramsor (talk) 10:02, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for your tip regarding where to add stubs. I had forgotten. Also, awfully sorry about wasting your time! :-) Pasquale (talk) 15:44, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

We now have a Facebook page at facebook.com/wikisignpost. We invite you to "like" the page and join the discussion there.
This week, we shine the spotlight on the Indian Cinema Task Force, a subproject that seeks to improve the quality and quantity of articles about Indian cinema. As a child of WikiProject Film and WikiProject India, the Indian Cinema Task Force shares a variety of templates, resources, and members with its parent projects. The task force works on a to-do list, maintains the Bollywood Portal, and ensures articles follow the film style guidelines. With Indian cinema celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2013, we asked Karthik Nadar (Karthikndr), Secret of success, Ankit Bhatt, Dwaipayan, and AnimeshKulkarni what is in store for the Indian Cinema Task Force.
Eight featured articles, six featured lists, ten featured pictures, and one featured topic were promoted this week.
The world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is entering its final two weeks. The month-long event, of Dutch origin, is being held globally for the first time after the success of its European-level predecessor last year. During September 2011 more than 5000 volunteers from 18 countries took part and uploaded 168,208 free images. This year, volunteers and chapters from 35 countries around the world have organised the event. The best photographs will be determined by juries at the national and finally the global level.
1.20wmf12, the 12th release to Wikimedia wikis from the 1.20 branch, was deployed to its first wikis on September 17; if things go well, it will be deployed to all wikis by September 26. Its 200 or so changes – 111 to WMF-deployed extensions plus 98 to core MediaWiki code – include support for links with mixed-case protocols (e.g. Http://example.com) and the removal of the "No higher resolution available" message on the file description pages of SVG images.

Redirects

You are welcome :) - I like creating these redirects to make sure people go to the right place, and to prevent the creation of duplicate articles WhisperToMe (talk) 18:39, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

soft state

Hi. You know, I don't think that Soft State should even be at a capitalised version at all: the quote from Myrdal it has doesn't capitalise it. Perhaps that should be moved to soft state (politics), in which case the DAB is still necessary? Morwen - Talk 20:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

German American Chambers of Commerce

I did a redirect for the article German American Chambers of Commerce to Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce#AHK USA. You recently worked on this article. The primary reason for the rewrite and redirect was to save the information from being deleted. Please see the current redirect maintainence tags in history. The goal was to take 2 related stub articles and to make a better article. I also cleaned up the main article. Input and help is always welcome. Jrcrin001 (talk) 19:09, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Peruvian Amazon Company

Thanks for tidying Peruvian Amazon Company. Decora (talk) 22:42, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week. The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine New Yorker, and were covered by the Signpost two weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist (summarized in the research index) sheds new light on the English Wikipedia's declining editor growth and retention trends. The paper describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have lead to a more restrictive environment for newcomers". The number of active Wikipedia editors has been declining since 2007 and research examining data up to September 2009 has shown that the root of the problem has been the declining retention of new editors. The authors show this decline is mainly due to a decline among desirable, good-faith newcomers, and point to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.
This week, we tinkered with WikiProject Robotics. From the project's inception in December 2007, it has served as Wikipedia's hub for building and improving articles about robots and robotics, accumulating two Featured Articles and seven Good Articles along the way. The project covers both fictitious and real-life robots, the technology that powers them, and many of the brains behind the robotics field
In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in the UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week, including Dodo, along with six featured lists and five featured pictures.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

The Stub Barnstar

The Stub Barnstar
Thank you for your work sorting stubs! FunkyCanute (talk) 17:45, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Very kind of you, thanks! PamD 17:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

September 2012

Hi. Thank you for your help with the vital work of patrolling new pages. I noticed that you are not marking some of the pages you've reviewed as patrolled. Please do remember to click the 'mark this page as patrolled' link at the bottom of the new page if you have performed the standard patrolling tasks. Where appropriate, doing so saves time and work by informing fellow patrollers of your review of the page, so that they do not duplicate efforts. Thanks again for volunteering your time at the new pages patrol project. Funnyfarmofdoom (talk to me) 15:53, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I very rarely patrol new pages. I sort stubs. I wonder which articles you're looking at and thinking I've "new page patrolled..."? Some time, when I feel I've got time, I'll get to grips with the new page curation system and possible patrol some pages, but I'm not a regular NPP-er at present. PamD 16:45, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Besides which, since the launch of the new Special:NewPagesFeed, marking as patrolled has become optional, hence the warning above is pretty much deprecated. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:48, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - October 2012

Delivered October 2012 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 09:09, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

A Martínez

Hi. I've changed your BLP unsourced to a prod BLP as I thought it more appropriate. I also removed that spam tag in the course of chasing up a certain user's tags. Peridon (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think I wondered about the "Spam" tag but left it there, probably wrongly. And after this discussion I'm quite confused as to whether an unsourced BLP article should routinely be BLPPRODded or not! There seem to be a range of interpretations around. PamD 21:02, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
The editor that put that spam tag on had also (inter alia) tagged as spam a stub about an English MP who died in 1575... The advantage of the prod BLP is that it concentrates the mind of the author in a way that an 'unsourced' tag by itself doesn't. The article in question here didn't look to me to have much chance of RS. I'll happily look for refs if I think an article is worth it (and needs quick rescue), but otherwise I'll push the author to do the work. Or anyone else around as well... I nearly tagged A7 on this one. (I detagged one of the 'spam' articles, apologised to its author, looked back at it and deleted it as an attack. And warned its author.) Peridon (talk) 21:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
But it seems that some at least of the people at the BLP project don't think it was appropriate to BLPPROD unsourced stubs like this one. PamD 21:45, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It got the attention, didn't it? And the problem was sorted. Until it's clearly laid down which to use, I'll go on making my own choice. Peridon (talk) 21:52, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

A kitten (of apology) for you!

Hey Pam :). My apologies again about the absence of edit tools - we're restoring them on Thursday, hopefully. In the meantime we have another set of ideas if you want to chip in - I want to try and avoid us missing anything this time before switching it on :).

Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

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

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at I Jethrobot's talk page.
Message added 08:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 08:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Review of Plastic pollution

Thank you very much for the welcome on my usertalk as well as reviewing the article I created. I have added to the article and will continue to do so. Please check back and leave me an updated review :]

Philosiphia (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

c. vs. ca.

Hi; thanks for the message. I think the Latinist in me was bothered and that's why I changed them to ca.; I think it's more elegant, but I will leave them alone from now on based on MOSNUM.--FeanorStar7 (talk) 23:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's Collaborative

WikiWomen Unite!
Hi PamD! Women around the world who edit and contribute to Wikipedia are coming together to celebrate each other's work, support one another, and engage new women to also join in on the empowering experience of shaping the sum of all the world's knowledge - through the WikiWomen's Collaborative.

As a WikiWoman, we'd love to have you involved! You can do this by:

We can't wait to have you involved, and feel free to drop by our meta page (under construction) to see how else you can get involved!

Can't wait to have you involved! SarahStierch (talk) 00:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Thomas Pridgin Teale (died 1867) (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to FRS
Thomas Pridgin Teale (died 1923) (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to FRS

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 14:17, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello Pam!

Would it be alright if I don't tag one page I patrol, for deletion even though it could have been tagged for deletion? What if I am unsure (apparently I am not so au fait with the deletion rationales)? I am new at reviewing new articles. I am trying my best to help Wikipedia. The nominations are not deliberate attempts to disrupt Wikipedia.

The thing is, Kudpung has been putting immense pressure on me whenever I do not CSD/PROD a new page which (s)he thinks could have been tagged for deletion (sort of warned me 9 times for not CSD/PRODing new pages). This is seeming like a double-edged sword. I mean isn't that within my prerogatives to simply tag new pages with the appropriate tags and not nominate them for deletion if I sincerely feel that they deserve an article on Wikipedia? I am humbly trying to help wikipedia in whatever little way I can. But I am now in a terrible quandary. He keeps telling me to read WP:NPP but that page is very, very confusing (esp. when it comes to nominating pages for deletion) and the message is very foggy. I think from that page one message stands out which is, everything is at the reviewers' (plural) discretion. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 12:31, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

The suggestion of 'pressure' is inaccurate, and there have never been any accusations of disruption. Standard polite messages with advice at which I suggest Mrt3366 may wish to accept with good faith. No one on Wikipedia needs to feel embarrassed to ask for help, but when the request finally comes in the form of a complaint. All users interpret the policies to their best, but the discretionary zone is, and must be very narrow. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:09, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
"The suggestion of 'pressure' is inaccurate" - how do you know that? I am the one who is feeling pressed. But, I am not saying you're unreasonable. No, I am simply saying that your reasonable warnings seem like pressure. And I want to know if there is anything I can do about it. I am already trying my best to understand the issues. I am not a deletionist. I am simply letting her know that I didn't mean to disrupt wikipedia and other problems, it's not about not nominating pages for CSD, the issue here is opposite, nominating pages for speedy deletion. I'd prefer if I weren't pushed to choose a side where I would either have to CSD/PROD every page others might feel unworthy of inclusion or have to totally avoid CSD/PRODing pages.

See, I CSD/PROD some and then I don't CSD/PROD some but I feel more guilty when CSD/PROD something incorrectly than when I do not CSD/PROD deletable pages. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 13:31, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

As I said amongst all the other advice on my talk page, the simplest somution if you're not sure, is to move on and leave such pages for someone else to deal with. You're under no pressure whatsoever to attempt to tag every page - you can pick and choose as we all do. In fact I actually choose the difficult ones and leave the easy ones for the people who are still learning. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:05, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
But what if I feel that they deserve to be included in Wikipedia for some reason and do choose to leave them un-nominated? Now you're starting to sound like it's "my way or highway" (it's not that serious an issue). I need time. I am not here for any disingenuous agenda. If I leave everything and flee, then I will never learn ergo that's not a solution at all. I need to try. Please don't discourage me from trying! It's a collaborative process, isn't it? Nowhere does it say that one has to be a connoisseur/whiz before volunteering for a job. The only proviso I see in the dealings of Wikipedia is the willingness to learn. I am willing to learn. I will learn. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 15:13, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
No, it's not 'My way, or the highway'; it's the Wikipedia way, or the highway. To be a good page patroller (or even an admin) you can't really decide for yourself whether you keep an article or nominate it for deletion - the rules have made that decision for you and you have to apply them whether you like them or not. And believe me, there are plenty of policies that I don't wholly agree with, but I have to obey the law and implement it. Now I think we should let Pam have her talk page back ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:23, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
Wrong ! There is no "wikipedia way" as you put it. And even if so, I am at liberty to ignore a rule if it confuses me, hinders the maintenance of Wikipedia and leads me toward potentially damaging measures (CSD/PROD of salvageable/includible articles). Wikipedia rules are not applied consistently across Wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't have firm rules. Rules are often bent, often ignored, even changed for the betterment of the project. Wikipedia is not a totalitarian institution. Rules in Wikipedia are not carved in stone. Their wording and interpretation are likely to change over time. And sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making an exception to a rule. I think it's better to refrain from nominating something for deletion if you're unsure (that way we are not trying to bring any major change) than nominating it. Wikipedia says perfection right from the word "go" is not required: wikipedia is a work in progress. Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles.

Please do not push this far. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 08:10, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I thought I'd replied here yesterday, but I guess I used "Preview" and then didn't hit "Save"! What I said, apart from something like "Wow, I go away for a few hours on a sunny afternoon and come back to find you two slugging it out on my talk page", was to suggest that if you find the NPP page too difficult to understand, as you say, you should avoid trying to work on NPP. If you find an article which you think should not be in English Wikipedia then: if it fits the criteria for CSD, apply an appropriate template; if it does not, then use PROD or AfD, explaining your arguments. Do not invent new criteria for CSD, because that is not how Wikipedia works. If you are thinking about nominating an article for deletion just because it is unreferenced (other than BLP which has its own rules), see WP:BEFORE and try to source it first. WP:CIR: you are not at liberty to ignore a rule because it confuses you. PamD 08:32, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

@PamD

"you should avoid trying to work on NPP." - I won't avoid trying to work on NPP. I am not a fool. I know what I am doing.
"Do not invent new criteria for CSD, because that is not how Wikipedia works" - I didn't wish to. It was just one mistake. I try to learn from my mistakes. The patrolling doesn't confuse me. WP:CIR does not mean "come down hard on someone as soon as they make a mistake". Wikipedia most certainly has a learning curve.
"I thought I'd replied here yesterday, but I guess I used "Preview" and then didn't hit "Save"!" - should one interpret this as you are not competent enough to edit wikipedia because you lack the necessary concentration to click on a button? No. Furthermore, I am not saying what Kudpung and you are saying to me, is summarily bogus. I am saying exactly the opposite. I am asking you to have a little bit of patience. And asking for advice, not repeated warnings. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 14:36, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Árni Magnússon (politician)

As you check a thousand or two new articles every day and just might come across another Icelandic name...

Per WP:SUR, you forgot to add the sort value to the Icelandic category.Bgwhite (talk) 07:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out - I'd read the info but not digested the implication that having added a stub cat and a defaultsort I then needed to go back into the article to add the Icelandic sort key to the cat generated by the stub tag. Will try to remember next time round! PamD 07:04, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
In fact of course there are two Icelandic categories, the politicians and Category:Icelandic politician stubs (almost all of whom are sorting there by surname, and I'm sure it's not all my own work!). PamD 07:14, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
I hadn't thought about the stub template with a sortvalue before. Checked, there is no way to add a sort value there. Brazilian footballers are the only other "weird" name in which a WikiProject has decided to do something different. On a side note, a ($*#( spider just bit me 20 minutes ago and now I have a HUGE bump on my hand. Hmmm, I have this feeling to go swing between buildings now. Bgwhite (talk) 07:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

DB Move

It's my standard practice to just do the bit that actually needs an admin, i.e. the deletion, rather than the move as well. I normally pick these up working through the CSD lists, as just deletions waiting for action. I check my deletion logs daily, to see if anything has been recreated that shouldn't be, and I think few, if any, of these housekeeping speedies are not blue-linked within a day. Hope this helps, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:30, 9 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 ...

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot’s recommendations. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet.

We have added information about the quality of the suggested articles using a Low/Medium/High scale which goes from Low Quality: Low to High Quality: High.

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs   Cleanup
Quality: Low Paul Davis (Irish author)   Quality: High Ribble Way
Quality: Low AlphaGraphics   Quality: High Funhouse (Pink album)
Quality: Low Avon Valley Path   Quality: High Ordination of women
Quality: Low Sue Islet (Queensland)   Merge
Quality: Low National Chiayi University   Quality: Low Health administration
Quality: Low Chiayi County   Quality: Low Product management
Quality: Low Étienne Carjat   Quality: High Water heating
Quality: Low List of Governors of Haryana   Add sources
Quality: Low Limestone Link   Quality: Low Iamus (computer)
Quality: Low End of Nations   Quality: Low Ahmed Gul Khel
Quality: Low Makran Division   Quality: Low Kalri (Mianwali District)
Quality: Low Sherburn-in-Elmet railway station   Wikify
Quality: Low Mauza Kalri   Quality: Low Portavadie
Quality: Low Dapu, Chiayi   Quality: Low Surya Bahadur Thapa
Quality: Low Chiayi metropolitan area   Quality: Low Stony Point Evangelical Lutheran Church
Quality: Low Jack Mytton Way   Expand
Quality: Low Evadne   Quality: Low Recreational walks in Derbyshire
Quality: Low Rikhi   Quality: High La Brugeoise et Nivelles
Quality: Medium ANF Industrie   Quality: Medium Mammal

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at Wingtipvortex's talk page.
Message added 16:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

WingtipvorteX PTT ∅ 16:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Puthencavu Mathan Tharakan, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Mahakavi (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:56, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of M.G. Edwards for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article M.G. Edwards is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M.G. Edwards until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 05:04, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, this notification should have gone to User:Edworlds. Twinkle made a mistake because of the cut and paste move/history merge. Still, you can comment if you want to. :) — Mr. Stradivarius (have a chat) 05:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Bro (instrument)

Thanks Pam, I forgot ;) In ictu oculi (talk) 07:43, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Edmund Thomas (disambiguation)

You're right, my bad. --Meno25 (talk) 13:17, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit summary

Hi. Apologies, I'm new to AWB and wasn't aware that I could change it. I've worked out how to do it now. Thanks for pointing it out. Del♉sion23 (talk) 17:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

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.

Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

We're (very shortly) closing down this development cycle for Page Curation. It's genuinely been a pleasure to talk with you all and build software that is so close to my own heart, and also so effective. The current backlog is 9 days, and I've never seen it that low before.

However! Closing up shop does not mean not making any improvements. First-off, this is your last chance to give us a poke about unresolved bugs or report new ones on the talkpage. If something's going wrong, we want to know about it :). Second, we'll hopefully be taking another pass over the software next year. If you've got ideas for features Page Curation doesn't currently have, stick them here.

Again, it's been an honour. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Gaanga (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Saraiki
Padakal (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Hyderabad

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:56, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Michel Soymie

Hello PamD, sorry to mess up your work on the Michel Soymié (not Soymie) article I created earlier. It turns out that he is dead (2002), not a Living person - I don't know if there is an equivalent category Dead persons. Also I will need to ask an admin to change the name of the article to Michel Soymié with an e acute - I don't know whether that affects the Default Sort or whether accents are ignored anyway. Grateful for your advice/sorting out. Thanks. Opbeith (talk) 00:07, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Opbeith. Various replies:
  • Please, when you mention an article on a talk page, make it a link - saves other editors a little time.
  • You don't need to be an admin to move a page - I've just done it. Use the "Move" tag at the top of the article. Only problems are when there's already something at the title you want to move to (other than a redirect to the page being moved, with no edits after its creation): that's when you have to go to WP:RM if controversial, or use {{db-move}} if not.
  • Forget "dead persons", but add categories for birth and death dates - I've done it. When stub-sorting I usually add sortkey and those cats all in one with this: {{subst:l|1924|2002|Soymie, Michel}} (that's a lower case "L" as name of the template, not a "1") For unknown dates but likely still to be living, leaving out both dates - {{subst:l|||Soymie, Michel}} - generates the cats you saw for this article previously: living and date of birth unknown.
  • Sort key should definitely not have the accent: accented characters file weirdly, and the sort key should not include them.
  • If you see a red link for something which your instinct says is likely to have a Wikipedia article, like Bibliotheque Nationale Française, then it's worth looking around to see if the article exists under a slightly different title. It does here: Bibliothèque nationale de France. I've now made a Redirect from your version (hence it's looking blue now), as a likely mistaken version! (In fact, looking at the wonderful list of redirects to that title, it's amazing you found a wrong name for it which wasn't already linked!)
Hope that helps! PamD 07:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello PamD - thanks for all that help, and at that hour of the morning too! Apologies for making unnecessary work for you, I found more extra material than I expected and was well past sleeptime, so I bailed out and left stuff for this morning (I need to go and put some accents in that I couldn't face last night as well).

The last time I was involved in trying to Move an article there was a controversy raging whether article titles should have accents, so I was being cautious. I'm certainly in favour of including accents - I picked up the subject from the BL Dunhuang list where there was no accent and I had the wrong pronunciation in my head until I found the Bibliotheque Muncipale site. That's helpful to know about the sort key and accents - I've created a few articles with accented titles and I noticed that when Sort Keys were added they never included accents - I didn't understand Sort Key but I suspected there might be an issue there.

The combination sort key and categories tip is very handy - I'll lodge a copy in at my Talk Page as an aide-memoire.

I'm a pretty messy operator, definitely not librarian material, so I'm very grateful for your tidying up behind me!

All the best. Opbeith (talk) 09:10, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

spider stacy

hi pam, i see you edited spider stacy's wiki page again. Please let me know what your problems are with the passages you deleted. many thanks, louise stacy Louise stacy (talk) 01:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can see I have never edited the page Spider Stacy. (When you refer to a page on a talk page, please provide a link as a courtesy to the editor you are addressing and others who may read the talk page). Please check your information. I see that you made a major edit with the misleading edit summary "returned page after edit by unknown", after it had been edited by a large number of different editors, both named and IP, since it was last anything like that size in Nov 2011: please make sure that your edit summaries are accurate, and that you do not remove other editors' sourced contributions. I see that you share a surname with the subject: if you are related to him please read and be aware of WP:COI. Thanks. PamD 07:27, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello

Hi PamD, Thanks for the polite talk-note on Wikipedia policy, & your contributions to the Peter Vogel stub. --winterstein (talk) 16:06, 22 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.

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Jane Robinson (historian), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Telegraph (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:37, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at ToniSant's talk page.
Message added 14:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

ToniSant (talk) 14:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

University of Nottingham Students' Union Council

Hi, I'm writing up a motion to the UoN SU Council to promote the use and publication of media under free licences. As a UoN student/alumnus, I was wondering if you'd like to give your input.

Please comment at commons:Commons:Village pump#Motion to University of Nottingham Students' Union Council.

-mattbuck (Talk) 22:45, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Redirect

Hey Pam D

Thank you for your advice on my article on Stephen A. Schrum however I am a little confused as to what you mean as to how I go about adding the "Redirect" from "Stephen Schrum" - that you told me to, any further information of how I go about this would be helpful.

LydiaRDoyle1992 (talk) 12:39, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I just managed to create it. I am getting use to editing wikipedia : )

LydiaRDoyle1992 (talk) 13:43, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Hina Khan (Pakistan)

Regarding the "notability" and "orphan" tags in the above-mentioned article, I have now inserted some more sources to help establish notability. I have also posted a more elaborate explanation on the article's talk page. Please review my response there. Regarding the "orphan" tag, I have added a link to the Fareeda Kokikhel Afridi article. Please discuss the issues on the article's talk page so that they may be resolved. Regards. OrangesRyellow (talk) 10:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

If we click Google News [1] right now, and expand the section listing news reports on Malala Yousafzai, we find that google is giving a link to our above-mentioned article even when it is stub class. Is that enough to take off the notability tag?OrangesRyellow (talk) 18:08, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

The Google argument absolutely doesn't work: its computers have found our article, that's all - nothing there to give any "notability". But the four newspaper refs probably just about add up to it, though I worry it's a bit like WP:BLP1E. I've removed the tag. I've also formatted one of the references properly - please do your readers the courtesy of giving full information for all your references (name of newspaper, date published, author if stated, date retrieved - because online resources can change): they should not have to follow a link just to find out where the information comes from, whether it's a well-respected source or not. Please also note that the "See also" section isn't the place to list all the other articles you think are related. Create a "navbox" template for "Women's rights in Pakistan" or something, but please don't list so many articles this way. Thanks. PamD 18:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
I have expanded the refs as you suggested. Will add some more refs when I get around to expanding that article. Thanks for taking off the notability tag. I like the 'navbox' idea and though I am not familiar with the mechanics of creating a template, will give it a try...OrangesRyellow (talk) 19:29, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
Thank you so very much for all the generous help you've been giving me and my students.

-- ToniSant (talk) 09:38, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much - it's nice to see a UK university teaching students about Wikipedia, and I hope that some of them will continue to edit the encyclopedia even after the module is over. PamD 09:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Question moved from wrong place on talk page

Hi I am editing the article on Suzon Fuks, if I get permission off the artist to use her statement on waterwheel may I include this in the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eusa65 (talk • contribs) 18:57, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

The answer is simple: follow the "permission" link in the message on your talk page about copyright violation. That explains the system. But even if she gave you permission to dump everything from her website into your article, it's not written as an encyclopedia article. Phrases like "Here you can create and collaborate, rehearse and remix, present and exchange, participate and communicate—privately as a crew or publicly with an audience" are completely unsuitable in tone. You would do better to look at the information about Waterwheel on that page and extract some key ideas, plain factual information, which you then rewrite in your own words, bearing in mind that you are not writing advertising blurb but trying to explain what Waterwheel actually is for the benefit of readers of an international encyclopedia. PamD 19:29, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
Hello, PamD. You have new messages at NomNomNomNathan's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thank you

Hello Pam, just saying thanks for the alteration/ correction on the wiki article I am creating. I'm still fairly new to the wiki world and with your assistance it has helped me learn a little bit more on how it all works. Thanks again, keep up the good work. --LairdCharles (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC)LairdCharles

Plaintext Players - Many thanks

Dear User:PamD Thank you very much for the assistance and cleanup on my page Plaintext Players please bare in mind the current state is just the ground works andI intend to add further detail about various shows from combining both primary sources and secondary. Best, SWalton91 (talk) 23:52, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

Thank you for attempting to help, don't think this is in my remitt for my life denise (talk) 12:35, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For Dedicating your time to our student pages, thank you PamD NomNomNomNathan (talk) 12:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

Just a thankyou for the help you've given me and other students with our articles - especially thanks from me for clearing up the stub issue. Thanks! Have some falafel. - Dregan Phillips (talk) 12:43, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Teamwork Barnstar
Thank you for helping me to develop my page further Samantha2chipmunk (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Thank you very much for all your help over the last few days, I am really happy with how the page came out, and it would not have been as good without your advice and guidance. Joe Berwick (talk) 13:12, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

I just wanted to thank you for helping me and my colleagues in our early wikipedia lives. I feel that this cat symbolises our innocence in this community and that you will nurture us.

SWalton91 (talk) 13:16, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Thank you so much for the brilliant ideas and helping me on Wikipedia I really appreciate the help you gave me.

Thank you again. LydiaRDoyle1992 (talk) 13:18, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
Thank you so much for all your contributions, I know that all of my fellow students also greatly appreciate all the help you've been giving us. Franbundey (talk) 13:19, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Thanks for all the help on my wikipedia article, as well as my colleagues also. After your hard work, you deserve a drink. This one's on me :) LairdCharles (talk) 13:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
I see that most of my students have now thanked you personally for all the help you've given us during the last several days.

This morning each student gave a short presentation about their work on Wikipedia and they almost all managed to drop your name when it was their time to speak. The work goes on, of course, but this group will now be writing reflective essays on their success (or otherwise) with creating useful content for Wikipedia, understanding the conventions of contributing to this wiki, as well as engaging with other Wikipedians for an assessed hand-in tomorrow.

Once again, thank you so very much for all you help and support, Pam! -- ToniSant (talk) 14:07, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all (AIT 2)

How lovely to sit down after lunch and find all these Thank You gifts from the "Applied & Interactive Theatre 2" crowd!

I can't remember now just which of your articles I first came across while stub-sorting, but after I realised it was part of a set of articles from the module I began to look at others with interest. I'm sorry if I've been a bit brusque sometimes, but there's a lot to learn and you're supposed to be learning! Although not an official "Campus Ambassador" (and thus with no training in "how to help students"), I liked the idea of helping students from relatively close to home, and got interested in some of your topics. I did once, many years ago, set up an identity in Second Life, but never got the hang of it: by contrast, editing Wikipedia has become something of an addiction (and an occupation I can enjoy while semi-housebound with caring responsibilities in a rural village).

I've only today thought that it would have been useful to bring your articles to the notice of one or more appropriate WikiProjects: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Theatre and/or Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing (there doesn't seem to be an appropriate narrower IT project - Wikipedia:WikiProject Internet culture sounded likely but doesn't look as if it covers your kind of thing). That way you'd have had editors who are interested in and/or knowledgeable about the broad topic areas, who might have been able to help - and perhaps to dive in to the rescue where your articles were nominated for Speedy Deletion or Proposed Deletion. Perhaps something for Toni to think about another year: the appropriate banner(s) on the talk page of each article will alert the project(s).

I'm glad if some of my comments or edits have been useful to some of you. I'm a bit old-fashioned about accuracy and punctuation ... but then so will be some of the people you need to impress with your writings in your futures. Capitals, hypens, apostrophes, grammatical structures: get them right, otherwise someone will read your job application, political flyer etc and either reject it out of hand or just have mildly negative vibes from it which do you no good. And in a computerised environment, getting them right in an article title or search term can make the difference between finding information and not doing so ... though in Wikipedia we can make as many "redirects" from likely misspellings or variant punctuations as we want, which helps.

I hope that some of you will stick around with Wikipedia, though you're obviously all busy with studies and probably performances too. I tend to sit down with a bowl of breakfast muesli to look at my watchlist ... and discover it's lunchtime because I've rambled around the map of human knowledge adding a stub tag here, fixing grammar there, moving an article to its correct title, sorting out hatnotes and disambiguation pages, and creating articles on a variety of topics (they renamed Mother's daycentre, I wondered where the name came from ... there's now an article on Edward Denis de Vitre!)

It's been fun helping you these last few days. Good luck with this module and the rest of your studies! If you do decide to continue with Wikipedia, feel free to drop by this page with any questions where I might be able to help: I've learned quite a lot about editing here in the last six years, though there are still huge gaps in my knowledge.

And thanks again for the thanks, both today and in earlier responses to my comments. Wikipedia is an amazing project - someone in the middle of nowhere with a solar-powered internet connection can access this great collection of increasingly well-written and reliably-sourced information, even if their nearest serious physical library is hundreds of miles away - and it's now got a few more useful articles about interactive theatre and its proponents. PamD 14:13, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

PS And of course, congratulations to you all on learning a lot about Wikipedia editing in a short space of time, from a standing start, with deadline pressures, and while living busy student lives! PamD 15:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Notability

Hey PamD

Due to the fact your advice has been so helpful I thought I connect you regarding my main problem at the moment. My article has been given a notability tag, I am in the process of trying to prevent my article from being deleted. Looking at number 4 of the Notability guidelines for academics it states if the person has authored several books that are widely used as textbooks, although Stephen A. Schrum has published several books would adding more details about these books more the article more notable? Also I have discovered this website which was suggested on wikipedia page for book citations world cat in which the date of the top is the year he was born.

Thank you for your help.

LydiaRDoyle1992 (talk) 16:41, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Lydia, well done for finding that Worldcat record - I think you could add "(born 1957)" and cite the Worldcat record as your reference. Then add Category:1957 births. (Hint: if you want to mention a category in a talk page, without adding that talk page to the category, add a colon as in [[:Category:1957 births]].)
You've also now got his middle name, so can usefully add that to the opening sentence - this tends to include full names even when the subject never uses them.
And you have some more publications which you can add to your article, with publisher and ISBN details (click on each book in turn to get full info). Adding the ISBN, if you format it right - the letters ISBN in caps, then space, then the number - makes an automatic link, which is always an asset to your article. Ah, actually looking at them, two are his dissertations - but that's more information about him which you could usefully add, sourced to Worldcat. But the other one is in 238 libraries: can you find a review of it anywhere? (Worldcat hasn't got any linked).
You may still struggle to get him "notable", though. The rules are very strange, in that any footballer who has once played a single professional game counts as "notable" while academics have quite a high barrier to cross.
Check your spelling for "CALLAB-L". When you spell it right and Google it there are quite a few hits and one or two might be worth citing, like page 230 of https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/jdtc/article/viewFile/1923/1886. Does it still exist? Or is it historic info? (Do any listservs still exist?)
Good luck! PamD 18:10, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your help and advice here, as you can see I have taken into account what you said your advice has been brilliant.

LydiaRDoyle1992 (talk) 16:47, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Roy Anthony Cutaran Bennett

Thanks for the stub in SUBJECT article. That really helps. PamD is wonderful. Rammer (talk) 17:59, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Although an American married to a Swede, I'm a graduate of the University of Leeds. No joke. I used to live on Cumberland Road, LS2 9JT!! Rammer (talk) 19:16, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 October 2012

The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
This week, we're checking out ways to motivate editors and recognize valuable contributions by focusing on the awards and rewards of WikiProject Military History. Anyone unfamiliar with WikiProject Military History is encouraged to start at the report's first article about the project and make your way forward. While many WikiProjects provide a barnstar that can be awarded to helpful contributors, WikiProject Military History has gone a step further by creating a variety of awards with different criteria ranging from the all-purpose WikiChevrons to rewards for participating in drives and improving special topics to medals for improving articles up to A-class status to the coveted "Military Historian of the Year" award.
The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday ... Wikidata.org, a new repository designed to host interwiki links, launched this week and will begin accepting links shortly. The site, which is one half of the forthcoming Wikidata trial (the other half being the Wikidata client, which will be deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia shortly) will also act as a testing area for phase 2 of Wikidata (centralised data storage). The longer term plan is for Wikidata.org to become a "Wikimedia Commons for data" as phases 2 and 3 (dynamic lists) are developed, project managers say.
Thirteen articles, ten lists, nine images, one topic, and one portal were promoted to featured after peer reviews.
A paper in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, coming from the social control perspective and employing the repertory grid technique, has contributed interesting observations about the governance of Wikipedia.

Suzon Fuks

Hi I'm eusa65 working on the Suzon Fuks article, I would be grateful if you could help me understand why a banner has appeared saying conflict of...on the Suzon Fuks page denise (talk) 01:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Denise, three points:
  1. Please remember to add a section heading when you write on a talk page - I've done it now. Even if it only says "question", it separates it from the previous topic.
  2. Please remember to give a link to the article eg Suzon Fuks when writing on a talk page, to save the editor and any talk page stalkers from having to type it themselves.
  3. Now the substantive question: I think the banner was inappropriately added and have removed it and commented on the talk page of the editor who added it. I also disagree with much of that editor's other edits on the page - which I didn't have on my "watch list", so I didn't notice what was going on. No time right now, got to take Mother out to a meeting, but will have a look at it later and see what I can do.
PamD 08:26, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Pam, a question from a question

Hi Pam, hoping you are well, I have had a person ask me a good question, but one I cannot answer myself. Thought maybe you could help me/us? Here's his question:

"there is one major task that needs to be done that I have not figured out how to do. Currently, a search on Wikipedia for Neohumanism takes you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neohumanism#Neohumanism, which is just a small paragraph within a larger article on the propounder of this philosophy, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. I have added a link (a 'redirect'?) at the top of that small paragraph to the main article, which is Neohumanism (liberation of intellect). However, it would make much more sense if a Wikipedia search for "Neohumanism" took one directly to the main article. Hence, I would like to edit the titles and destinations for the two links (Neohumanism and Neohumanism (liberation of intellect)), essentially reversing them. I understand this is possible. I believe it is called "usurping a link". However, I have not been able to figure out how to do this. Could you please assist me with the process?"

Any thoughts? If you can help just pop back over to my page and you will see our discussion.

Many thanks and kindest regards, (MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 07:03, 1 November 2012 (UTC))

WP Yorkshire in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Yorkshire for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 00:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at ToniSant's talk page.
Message added 17:46, 2 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

ToniSant (talk) 17:46, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - November 2012

Delivered November 2012 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 16:53, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at Gtwfan52's talk page.
Message added 20:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Gtwfan52 (talk) 20:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 November 2012

J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
The Signpost's weekly roundup of topics for discussion on the English Wikipedia.
This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 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. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.

IVLA

You continue to impress me. Not long after I express the opinion that "this is a silly situation", you remedy it. Good work, done well! Thanks, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:23, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - it seemed the best way to tidy it all up! PamD 12:20, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI: WormTT's userpage

Hey, PamD, just letting you know that I've reverted a rollback you did on User:Worm That Turned. A misclick, I'd imagine; God knows I've made enough of 'em. :) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:53, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I ask you a favor

Do you can give your opinion on this topic? Also see here and here. Tnx. ;-) --Kasper2006 (talk) 07:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Religious offense deletion

Thanks for your contribution - I have placed references and commentary on talk page. This is a current world wide discussion on religious tolerance, and I am intolerant of intolerant religions. Are there any other sort of coercive organizations, religious or secular? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timpo (talk • contribs) 04:50, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Talk page

Well, that's kind of odd. Not sure what if anything I can actually do about it, but if I hear of anything I'll keep you posted. Bearcat (talk) 02:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Luisah Teish

Actually, I meant that I took the info the subject herself added to the article and split it up into sections with headings, and did some work on the bibliography. I didn't really know what else to do with it, and I didn't know if she intended to follow up with supportive citations, so I just cleaned up the page lay-out. If you see here, [2], the subject wrote over the previous article with a bunch of uncited text, and I tried with limited success to integrate it into the article and Wikify it.Rosencomet (talk) 09:19, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I worked that out while you were adding this, and have commented on Qworty's talk page. Sorry to jump in a bit hastily! PamD 09:23, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
No problem at all. Glad to have you work on it. Qworty is systematically gutting several of the articles I work on, and I really don't know what to do about it. You can read about some of what's going on on Qworty's talk page if you're interested at all.Rosencomet (talk) 09:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Have seen it. He's doing some stalwart work watching out for COI but is also throwing out babies with the bathwater - as in slamming COI tag onto a student's coursework article with no prior discussion on the article talk page because he assumed she was a student of the subject of the article (zero evidence except that they're in the same broad subject area, which is unsurprising!), and called her clumsy attempts at references "spam" links, justifying it as saying she was a WP:SPA. What student doing an assignment isn't? And he'd not spotted the "educational assignment" banner on the article talk page. PamD 09:35, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I just don't see how he/she can delete whole bibliographies with ISBN numbers as "unsourced". What sources are needed? What sources are EVER supplied to a bibliography? Then he/she turns around and shouts COI about simple non-controversial data like that. You should see what was done to Starwood Festival and Association for Consciousness Exploration, articles with dozens of citations about an event and an organization that's over thirty years old hosting dozens of notable speakers and entertainers.Rosencomet (talk) 09:43, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Looking more at Luisah Teish, though... I can't see any evidence of Notability in WP terms: where are the independent sources? Having published books is not enough, if they have not been reviewed or otherwise discussed in WP:RS. Lots of hits on bookseller websites, no doubt that her several books exist, but nothing to satisfy WP:AUTHOR or WP:GNG. PamD 09:52, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, thank you, you are quite right, and you've convinced me. I just took it to AfD. Qworty (talk) 10:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough. It's surprising it's been around this long without anyone tagging it as in need of sources for notability: book authorship verifies existence but not notability, and there seem never to have been refs or ELs except her own website and in an old version the dead link to http://www.ileorunmilaoshun.org/. It will be interesting to see what the AfD inspires. PamD 10:42, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry

I apologize Pam for not getting back to you. You dropped out "today's watchlist" notices without out me getting back to you and it became out of site and out of mind. Thank you for leaving the message to remind me. Bgwhite (talk) 20:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 November 2012

Last week, media outlets reported a ruling by a German court on the problem of businesses using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. The issue goes beyond the direct management of marketing-related edits by Wikipedians; it involves cross-monitoring and interacting among market competitors themselves on Wikipedia. A company that sells dietary supplements made from frankincense had taken a competitor to court. The recently published judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Munich, in dealing with the German Wikipedia article on frankincense products, was handed down in May and is based on European competition law.
Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
In late September, the Technology report published its findings about (particularly median) code review times. To the 23,900 changesets analysed the first time (the data for which has been updated), the Signpost added data from the 9,000 or so changesets contributed between September 17 and November 9 to a total of 93,000 reviews across 45,000 patchsets. Bots and self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers. The new analyses were consistent with the predictions of the previous analysis.
As promised, we're expanding our horizons by featuring projects that cover underrepresented areas of the globe. This week, we headed to WikiProject Brazil which keeps track of articles about the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country. The project has shown spurts of activity and continues to serve as a hub for discussions, despite the project's collaborations, peer reviews, and outreach activities being largely inactive.

Starwood Festival

As long as you have reverted the redirecting of Association for Consciousness Exploration to Starwood Festival, I was hoping you would get a chance to review the editing Qworty has done on the Starwood Festival article itself. It seems extreme to me. Thank you for your attention.Rosencomet (talk) 18:59, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I was hoping you might look at this article. Qworty seems to be preventing any improvement on it by other editors, challenging every attempt. He/she has deleted the entire reference section, over 40 listings of books and articles with no attempt to evaluate them individually or discuss an of it on the talk page (some by such prominent journalists and authors as Paul Krassner, Margot Adler, Patricia Monaghan and Raven Grimassi), and insists that the lists of notable speakers and entertainers (lists similar to many other festivals and events; several are listed on the talk page) must have individual citations. This Starwood Campaign, as another editor has called it, continues: for instance, only the Starwood reference has been deleted from World Music [3]. It's the same pattern: delete references, then delete material as "unsourced".
I also question the Qworty practice of "streamlining", which seems to mean eliminating all sections and headings, leaving an article a much less readable block of text with no section guide generated near the top. Is this really an improvement? He/she has done it on many articles. Rosencomet (talk) 23:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

The WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations for the inaugural round 1 of funding. Requests totalled US$10.4M, nearly all of the FDC's budget for both first and second rounds. The seven-member committee of community volunteers appointed in September advises the WMF board on the distribution of grant funds among applying Wikimedia organizations. The committee, which has a separate operating budget of $276k for salaries and expenses, considered 12 applications for funds, from 11 chapters and from the WMF itself for its non-core activities. The decision-making process included community and FDC staff input after October 1, the closing date for submissions. Taken together, the volunteers decided to endorse an average of 81% of the funding sought—a total of $8.43M, which went to 11 of the 12 applicants. This leaves $2.71M to be distributed in round 2, for which applications are due in little more than three months' time.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Turtles. The young project started in January 2011 and has accumulated 5 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, and 6 Featured Pictures. The project maintains a combined to-do list and hot articles meter, a popular pages ranking, and a collection of resources for turtle articles. We interviewed Faendalimas and NYMFan69-86.
WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner was forced to clarify this week that proposed structural changes to the Foundation's Engineering and Product Development Department were not a "done deal" and that it was "important that you [particularly affected staff] realise that ... your input is wanted". The reorganisation, announced on November 5 and planned for the middle of next year, will see its two components split off into their own departments.
Seven featured articles, four featured lists and ten featured pictures – including the photograph that spawned the Streisand effect – were promoted this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include the question of ticker symbol placement and the notability of various types of creative performer.

Tony Schumacher

I had checked and there is not a single article linking to the sportsman's page. There are a bunch of user pages, sand boxes and the like, but I do not think these need fixing? Please respond on my talk page Refdoc (talk) 21:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Refdoc (talk) 01:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 November 2012

On November 24, a general assembly of Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) voted on the fate of the Wikimedia Toolserver, a central external piece of technical infrastructure supporting the editing communities with volunteer-developed scripts and webpages of various kinds that are assisting in performing mostly menial tasks.
An open-access preprint presents the results from a study attempting to predict early box office revenues from Wikipedia traffic and activity data. The authors – a team of computational social scientists from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Aalto University and the Central European University – submit that behavioral patterns on Wikipedia can be used for accurate forecasting, matching and in some cases outperforming the use of social media data for predictive modeling. The results, based on a corpus of 312 English Wikipedia articles on movies released in 2010, indicate that the joint editing activity and traffic measures on Wikipedia are strong predictors of box office revenue for highly successful movies.
Six articles, one list, and six images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Wikidata, the new "Wikimedia Commons for data" and the first new Wikimedia project since 2006, reached 100,000 entries this week. The project aims to be a single, human- and machine-readable database for common data, spanning across all Wikipedia projects, which will "lead to a higher consistency and quality within Wikipedia articles, as well as increased availability of information in the smaller language editions" while lowering the burden on Wikipedia's volunteer editors—whose numbers have stalled overall, and continue to dwindle on the English Wikipedia.
This week, we uncovered WikiProject Deletion Sorting, Wikipedia's most active project by number of edits to all the project's pages. This special project seeks to increase participation in Articles for Deletion nominations by categorizing the AfD discussions by various topic areas that may draw the attention of editors. The project was started in August 2005 with manual processes that are continued today by a bevy of bots, categories, and transclusions. The project took inspiration from WikiProject Stub Sorting and some historical discussions on deletion reform. As the sheer number of AfDs continues to grow, the project is seeking better tools to manage the deletion sorting process and attract editors to comment on these deletion discussions.

Information

I noticed your username commenting at an Arbcom discussion regarding civility. An effort is underway that would likely benifit if your views were included. I hope you will append regards at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/Questionnaire Thank you for considering this request. My76Strat (talk) 11:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - December 2012

Delivered December 2012 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 05:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Lady Stanley

Well, I agree about Florence and the repeated year but the dates of birth and death certainly ought to be in the lead sentence. Whoever told you otherwise surely didn't encounter many biographical articles here, let alone good ones. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Opening paragraph. As for the sections, I'm not sure if there's a rule saying anything about them, but they seem to be avoided when articles are very short, which makes sense - why have a section that contains only a sentence or two? I can assure you the article won't be tagged and I'll try to find a relevant guideline. Surtsicna (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The article does have sections, just not too many. As the MoS says, "very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose." Good luck tracking down Ms West and wasting the rest of your day :D Surtsicna (talk) 18:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 December 2012

The global jury of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the world’s largest photo contest, announced its results on 3 December.
Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Deployments of MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 cause widespread problems for users across wikis when HTML and CSS updates came temporarily out of sync. On the first wikis targeted for deployment, this was caused by the different cache invalidation rates for HTML (typically one month) and CSS (typically five minutes). The retrospective on the problem highlighted the fact that that the test wiki – the WMF's answer to a production environment that individual developers can no longer practically emulate themselves – actually demonstrated the exact problem that would later manifest itself on production wikis. It went unnoticed.
This week, we went searching for white roses in the lands of WikiProject Yorkshire. The project began in May 2007 as a way to improve articles about the historic English county of Yorkshire and its modern-day administrative divisions and cities. Since then, the project has accumulated 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, 91 Good Articles, and a monstrous list of Did You Know entries. Despite all of the effort improving Yorkshire articles, the project has experienced waning participation in the last few years. The project still publishes a newsletter each month, monitors the popularity of and recent changes to its articles, maintains a portal, and collects resources for contributors to use.

Bootie (bicycle)

Hi. I thought you might like to comment at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bootie bicycle. Cheers. -- Trevj (talk) 10:31, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Your proposed deletion of Religious Offense

As I am a lawyer and as the article is connected to a broadly legal, rather than religious concept, my considered response appears at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Religious_offense Timpo (talk) 14:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

User:CBeebies

Fair enough, I've changed the block to a softer block which allows a new account to be created. Obviously this has to be done since the current name infringes username policy anyway Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
The Visual Editor project – an attempt to create the first WMF-deployable WYSIWYG editor – will go live on its first Wikipedias imminently following nearly six months of testing on MediaWiki.org. A full explanatory blog post accompanied the news, explaining the project and its setup. Once a user has opted-in, the editor can handle basic formatting, headings and lists, while safely ignoring elements it is yet to understand, including references, categories, templates, tables and images. At the last count, approximately 2% of pages would break in some way if a user tried the Visual Editor on them; it is unclear whether any specific protection will be put in place beyond relying on editors to spot problems.
In celebration of Human Rights Day, we checked out WikiProject Human Rights. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles, including 12 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, 66 Good Articles, a large collection of Did You Know entries, and a few mentions "in the news". The project monitors listings of popular pages and cleanup tags. We interviewed Khazar2, Cirt, and Boud.

Zomboy

Thanks for your message here, you're a better person than me Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Religious offense

I have expanded and restructured this article in order to try to address your concerns. Please would you review the article and advise your current deletion opinion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Religious_offense (if not ready please User talk:Timpo or Special:emailUser/Timpo) Timpo (talk) 11:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Friendly, West Yorkshire, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages River Calder and Halifax (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Speedy deletion nomination of Moralism (disambiguation)

Hello PamD. I had created the disambiguation page as an interim measure while editors were deciding whether to have Moralism (the religion) or a disambiguation page be the landing spot for "moralism," but I see the point you're making. In that case, (once I get everything clarified with Editor2020) we'll have Moralism (the religion) as the landing spot for "moralism" and then have an "other meaning" link at the top of the page for the philosophy of moralism (which redirects to "Morality"). JBogdan (talk) 23:53, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Apologies

I didn't mean to put the inappropriate tags on American Community School and have modified my settings to prevent something like that from happening again. Andrew (talk) 19:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit. Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities.
In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
Four articles, three lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week, including a picture of a three-week old donkey (also known as an 'ass').
MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation. The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups.

Blessing in Disguise

An excellent example of a Blessing in Disguise is the case of the Zeppelin LZ 4.

However the Blessing in Disguise disambig article failed to mention (until today) the striking Zeppelin LZ 4 example.

Also, the Zeppelin LZ 4 article failed to use this term, or link back to the Blessing in Disguise article.

Well they do now, if you don't wipe the relevant changes.

Blessing in Disguise and List of blessings in disguise might be merged if you so wish.

Tabletop (talk) 08:44, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for alerting me to the changes to the dab page, which I have indeed reverted as being inappropriate for a dab page. No dab page for a common noun or term would be expected to list every article which could be described as that term (think about Horse (disambiguation) which does not list every horse in Wikipedia). You could try creating a Category, though I don't know where in the hierarchy of categories it would go.
There are many idiomatic phrases which can be used subjectively about many events, people, or things. We do not need a list of "Stitches in time which saved nine" or "Incidents where people looked before they leaped". "Blessing in disguise" is a subjective term (someone's grandfather's death may be a blessing for the lady waiting for the vacancy in the care home, or indeed that grandfather may have been molesting his neighbour's children). It is reasonable to state, with sources, something like "The crash has been described as a 'blessing in disguise' as it led to ....", (though as Zeppelins were then used in war to wreak damage on civilian populations, was it really a blessing?) but I do not believe that an encyclopedic "list of blessings in disguise" is possible. PamD 09:14, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi

Sorry about you having to tell me 4 times about the dab tag. The problem is simple memorability. I created User talk:In ictu oculi/Useful and added the instruction there. Am I the only user you've ever had to tell twice :( ? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Non-Serendipity

You are proposing List of blessings in disguise for deletion without merging its contents with Blessing in Disguise, a disambig page.

You also fail to notice that blessings in Disguise is rather similar to Serendipity, where there are no crosslinks to BiD.

One of the great strengths of Wiki is the ease of making, which does not appear to be one of your strong points.

A link to related pages is as important as external reference.

Tabletop (talk) 06:19, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am indeed proposing deletion of the list, which seems to me to be unencyclopedic, and it would not be appropriate to add its entries to the dab page as they are not articles with titles ambiguous with the phrase "Blessing in Disguise". I see that you have removed the PROD, with no comment beyond "Fix", so I have taken it to AfD. PamD 09:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Minor coorection

AFAIK, apart from adding two sections regarding List of Blessings in Disguise, all that I did extra was to change the capitalisation to List of blessings in disguise. Tabletop (talk) 09:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Replied at User talk:Tabletop. PamD 09:09, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
I don;t remember deleting the word "striking" though I do remember puttung it in a few days ago.
I do not remember deleting your talk page "Thank you for alerting..." paragraphs, and cannot explain how they disappered.
Tabletop (talk) 09:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Janine Thompson

The article Janine Thompson has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this newly created biography of a living person will be deleted unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within ten days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. -- Patchy1 02:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Ref now added - I thought I'd done so but must have forgotten to click "Add citation" after doing "Preview citation". Must remember to always check! PamD 08:51, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Pennsylvania

Moved from my talk page. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 19:56, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
I guess the above editor raised it here because you seem to have created a large number of minimal stubs. An example is Allensville, Pennsylvania. If you're bulk-producing stubs like this, could you:
(I've done most or all of the above on this one)
When you're working on a lot of similar articles it would be a real help to the encyclopedia if you could do those things, and it's much easier for you to assign stub types and categories as you go along and have the sources to hand. PamD 10:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
I understand what you are saying. You want me to do more work than what I am doing. I can't. I do not have the desire to put any more work into those pages than I have. They are not a topic of great interest for me, and researching topics that I have little interest in, simply isn't my cup of tea. I was simply creating some requested pages, even though the subject was boring to me personally, for the good of Wikipedia. Don't take this the wrong way PLEASE. I do what I can, I'm sorry if you don't feel it's enough. I assume that those interested in the subject matter can take it from there. By the way, you did a LOT of work, it really looks good. Wikipedia needs more editors like you. It is nice to meet you. Be well. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 19:56, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Best wishes to all my talk page stalkers for a Peaceful Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2013. PamD 00:12, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

JDevil / Jonathan Davis Merge

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at Talk:Jonathan_Davis.
Message added 20:06, 26 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Hello, PamD. You have new messages at Talk:Jonathan_Davis.
Message added 20:07, Nbcwd (talk) 23:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Speedy deletion declined: Polgasowita

Hello PamD. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Polgasowita, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Article has been edited since it was tagged and has sufficient context to identify subject. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 05:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies PamD, the message above was my fault. I tidied up the article, then went off on some other tangent without removing the A1. --Shirt58 (talk) 08:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
No problem - delighted to see someone upgrading it. PamD 09:59, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - January 2013

Delivered January 2013 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 13:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Wildsworth, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Laughton (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:25, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for stub-sorting the Wahib al-Ghanim. You've saved me the task of finding the proper template for - a task which I don't find particularly enjoyable. --Piast93 21:02, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.
The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?
The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.
Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.
Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Pollards Point, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Baie Verte (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikify

You've been adding the wikify template to articles with some of your AWB edits [4], [5]. However that template doesn't exist anymore. If you go to the discussion section of WP:AWB perhaps you can find a link to a snapshot of an updated version of AWB which no longer adds this template? Thanks 130.88.141.34 (talk) 12:16, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out! After [Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Wikify a plea for help] I've now got a snapshot version which apparently should fix the problem. But I should have been more alert and spotted the problems as I went along. PamD 19:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Thanks for your help..I just don't know what I'm doing, I wasn't trying to create faux notoriety for myself..or delete the speedy deletion header...or any other thing...it was all done completely out of stupidity..I shall stay far far away from editing wikipedia in future...xox Patricia Wells 19:43, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

Thinneda thin Whitetararaj (talk) 12:13, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g
On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).
This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.

A Barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
For your selfless efforts to improve wikipedia. I have come across your edits a few times in the past month and they seemed to me to be particularly impressive. And thanks for your compliments. Cheers n happy editing. Suraj T 19:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Massachusetts smallpox epidemic

To answer your question in editing description of Massachusetts smallpox epidemic‎: Not in history of smallpox, but in history of colonies.

——Saurabh P. (talk) 14:06, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Mind Association, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Andrew Pyle (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:17, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Stub sorting

Thanks for the kudos. I tend, if the stub list is large, to do the letter based on the date, or if a letter has only a few entries. Sometimes I scan the list, and do a few that are in areas of interest. Good to hear from another stub-sorter. Rpyle731talk 17:39, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

James Watson

Left you a message over at User_talk:Boleyn#James_Watson_.28disambiguation.29. Thanks for being so friendly! Woodshed (talk) 10:39, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2013

The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.

I spy an SPI?

Since you were just on Binko's talk page, you might want to know about this. EEng (talk) 23:55, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

entered information about our labyrinth between Millendreath and Seaton

Hi Pam

hope this reaches you okay - I'm a newbie at this lark! - the website is www.thelabyrinth.org.uk, and the lat and long (if that's the ref you want) is 50.363788N and -4.41806W - or do you want the National Grid ref? If so, let me know and I'll try and work it out.

Also, the labyrinth is described on the South West Coast Path National Trail's website - see http://www.southwestcoastpath.com/walksdb/533/ (scroll down to (2) and read from there - several paragraphs)

hope this is enough information for you :-) Caroline Petherick 91.85.37.182 (talk) 17:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Caroline, What I meant by "reference" was a published account of the labyrinth, independent of yourselves. I've found a nice mention by the National Trust, and added it as a reference ... someone else had already deleted your addition by the time I went back to it (though without any comment, which is bad practice), so I've replaced it with the supporting NT ref.
When you add anything to a talk page, please sign it using ~~~~ or the "signature" button - it adds your username or IP address, and date and time. Thanks. PamD 17:37, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Just noticed you'd signed it but somehow stuck the sig into the middle of the words - have moved your sig to the end! There's a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia, but it's an entertaining journey. Happy Editing. PamD 17:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
And if we ever get round to doing the SWCP again, perhaps from Poole to Minehead this time, we'll look out for it! PamD 17:46, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Pam

Thanks for your help - both re etiquette and re the text. (I am, I must say, mystified as to why anyone should have just deleted my words without saying.) I've just had a look at the page, and I see the superscript number 44 plus the note referring to the National Trust website, so thank you very much for doing that. Blimey, Poole to Minehead??? I gather the ups and downs involved in doing that accumulate to the same as climbing Mount Everest four times over!! But if you're ever in this neck of the woods, do feel free to visit us. I can't see any Signature button, so I hope that putting ~~~~ at the end will do the trick! Caroline P ~~~~

Thank you and you've got a kind e-mail, too

Hello, PamD. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

via Wikipedia E-mail service. Best, --DancingPhilosopher my talk 15:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

U-8047

Just FYI, see this posting and this website. I've emailed the skipper to confirm what Jericho has said. Best regards (and how are you doing?), TransporterMan (TALK) 22:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks: yes, I'd noticed Russ's edits, but didn't pursue it. Interesting reading! And life goes on, still spending too much time Wiki-editing! PamD 23:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, PamD. You have new messages at DGG's talk page.
Message added 01:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

restoration of text

Why did you restore the discussion at the Rah Crawford AfD?  There are two priorities (1) we are here to build an encyclopedia, and (2) don't change the meaning.  After your edit, readers had no obvious way to know that I had removed an unnecessary discussion thread.  Unscintillating (talk) 09:38, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I replaced it because Boleyn had expressed unhappiness at your removal of her comments, and because it seemed inappropriate for one editor to unilaterally remove a discussion in which another editor had participated. Other editors had contributed to the AfD after the text you deleted had been added, so by removing it you were removing the context in which they had made their contributions. I did not change the meaning of anything - no-one had edited the page between your removal and my replacement. PamD 09:45, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
When you accuse me of "changing the meaning" I wonder whether you are mistaking me for the following editor? PamD 09:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
One, your revert removed a comment that I had added to the talk page.  Two, your revert added material to the talk page that had been removed.  Neither change could be known by subsequent readers without finding your edit in the edit history.  Both you and the subsequent editor changed meaning.  You can also argue as you have that I changed meaning, but the edit I made left a notice to alert readers to review the edit history.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Reading the above, I worried that I had accidentally removed a real contribution to the discussion, but was relieved to find this was not the case. The only comment of yours which I removed was "Notice: A discussion thread that has gone off-topic has been removed with this edit.  The discussion thread is retained in the edit history". As the removed text was being replaced, this was now irrelevant. The bottom line is that an exchange of comments involving contributions by more than one editor should not have been removed. PamD 07:54, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • The word "accidentally" shows that you were not aware that the revert removed a comment.  You agree that you did remove the comment.  You state that you knew that removed text was being restored.  Your revert hides my removal of what I characterized as an unnecessary discussion thread, and your revert does not disclose your own modification of the talk page.  Your defense conveys that you see no difference between a revert of an article edit and a revert of a talk page edit.  Unscintillating (talk) 06:09, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
  • The revert can now also be seen in the context of the conversation on this talk page.  Having ignored my simple direct explanation of the problem for two posts, these three edits as a group show a pattern of escalation.  How far do you want to escalate this?  Unscintillating (talk) 06:09, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
This discussion is not worth continuing, and I do not intend to reply further. PamD 07:52, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 January 2013

On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.
A special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist is devoted to "open collaboration".
When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.
New discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.
This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.
The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.

Ujkiol

Seriously, nothing more irritating for a new editor than to have a veteran stalk him and keep tagging and prodding him and making editing miserable for him. Can you please back off a little and allow him to get his bearings, Ipigott and myself can help him.♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 22:49, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I PRODded one article on a Danish hymn at a time when it gave no indication of notability and was not mentioned in the author's page on either EN or Danish Wikipedia. When the author dePRRODded and mentioned the Canon I created appropriate links, improved its category, and went on to propose moving the author to a better article title. I later found more of the editor's new articles while stub-sorting (not stalking), and made what I thought were helpful comments, including creating Category:Danish paintings for two of them to go into (and finding it had been a redlinked category in another article for 2 years already). I don't recall that I've tagged any of his articles. I queried (with him, rather than as a "disputed") one fact which looked distinctly odd, and pointed out the setup of paintings date categories, which he clearly didn't know as he'd used a wrong decade category probably mistakenly for a century. I doubt that my help made him miserable, and don't think it's right to say that I "keep tagging and prodding him". We can all help in different ways. PamD 11:51, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
OK, I'd normally assume good faith but it was your tagging for deletion or notability of one of the Danish canon articles amd seeing a lot of posts on his talk page which prompted this. I don't want to frighten off potentially fantastically productive editors!♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 18:05, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

You commented on WT:RM: I think this conversation echoes my problems in the earlier discussion about RMassist: the documentation about technical moves is not at all clear. Maybe needs a flowchart or a set of yes/no questions to help a newcomer to the page to navigate and find their answer? PamD 09:58, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Pam, can you help again with progressing this beyond just WT:RM, not a single byte of actual improvement to WP:RM has resulted in a month of raising it. Best regards. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:52, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.
Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.
This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.
On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.

Disambiguation articles

There needs to be a consistent pattern established for these name articles. Not all of them include lists of people and probably should not since there are far too many Mary's or Elizabeth's, etc. Most of the name stubs I have created are referred back to the article List of most popular given names. The Disambiguation bot tags all of the articles that are Disambiguation pages and notes that they are almost always a mistake. When that template is left in place yet another bot comes along and links articles to bio articles that have nothing to do with the given name. Bookworm857158367 (talk) 12:24, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm copying this to User_talk:Bookworm857158367#Given_name_stubs and will reply there. PamD 12:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit on White noise a Tale of Horror

Sorry I wasn't here I had to do school work and I only managed to add some information not all since the schedule is kind of keeping me off the site from time to time. I can't fully make it a Non-stub for that page since my computer at home has been acting up lately and theirs hardly any other information to find unless I ask Milkstone studios about it? --Indienews (talk) 15:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Borderline mental retardation

An article that you have been involved in editing, Borderline mental retardation, has been proposed for a merge into Borderline intellectual functioning. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Lova Falk talk 09:48, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - February 2013

Delivered February 2013 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 13:01, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 February 2013

Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with hoaxes; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. Why?
Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.
This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.
Foreign Policy has published a report on editing of the Wikipedia articles on the Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute. The uninhabited islands are under the control of Japan, but China and Taiwan are asserting rival territorial claims. Tensions have risen of late—and not just in the waters surrounding the actual islands.
Wikimedia UK, the non-profit organization devoted to furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement in the United Kingdom, has published the findings of a governance review conducted by Compass Partnership.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week.

Tanya Monro

Now tell me: How would wikipedia manage without you? There doesn't seem to be ANYONE else doing what you're doing, and in my (no doubt biassed) opinion, what you are doing is "an essential service". Again in my no doubt biassed opinion, I believe what you are doing is "under appreciated", and this is to bring to your attention that there is at least one person who appreciates your work. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words! I think there are quite a lot of busy wiki-gnomes tidying things up, making connections, sorting stubs, etc. It's got the fascination of an infinite jigsaw-puzzle - and acts as a displacement activity when I ought to be getting on with a whole lot of real life stuff! PamD 12:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)(Hilarious debilitating laughter.) "Procrastination is the thief of time", but that's not the (only) issue. Wikipedia provides one with the impression and excuse that what one is doing is so valuable that it could not possibly be procrastination. As somebody else once said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time - particularly yourself." Pdfpdf (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
... And a working life as a librarian has left me with the tendency to want to know what any abbreviation stands for - FTSE to me means the stock market index, so I searched around to track down what it meant as a postnominal (it had been linked to a dab page!). PamD 12:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
OK. Thanks. More information please so I can address, (and possibly even resolve), that problem. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
It was solved within the diffs you linked above. Fellowship of the Australian ... oh I forget what, but it's now linked anyway and added to the dab page! PamD 14:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
(Place tongue firmly in cheek.) Now isn't that typical of you imperialists! "oh I forget what". Yeah. I bet you don't forget what FRS means! ;-) Pdfpdf (talk) 14:37, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Put it down to short term memory problems and a good lunch! PamD 14:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

About Rochelle School of the Arts

Hi PamD,
From what I can see, this appears to be an elementary school, albeit one which has adjuncts to the standard curriculum for talented children. The usual outcome of a WP:AFD for a US elementary school would be a WP:REDIRECT to its school district, in this case Polk County School District, Florida.
There appears to be some assertion of notability of this school in what we have edited, so I'm leery of simply redirecting it, or sending it to AfD.
Your thoughts? Peter aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:47, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Hadn't noticed the age range. Seems to be scope for an article about the predecessor school on the site - see google books - but there isn't even a list of elem in the area (either at Polk County Public Schools or at Lakeland,_Florida#Education (hmm, list of middle schools there, should it be included?), so if we redirected the connection would be lost. Perhaps best to leave it in existence for now? PamD 10:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
d'accord.--Shirt58 (talk) 09:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Ilaria (given name), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Hilarius (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Stubs

Thanks for the stub missive, I'll be more careful. Your stub work and new article work is mightily impressive! Do take a look at my lovely collection of red links if you're ever in need of more material. Thanks again. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 20:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly Sorry!!!!

Hi PamD, this is Ajay from the translation screwup on the Danish page... I cannot express how sheepish I feel for committing that very silly mistake... Careful is not the word; I will keep my eyes and mind wide open and be very vigilant and I sincerely hope you will forgive me... I was planning to put the article or deletion but decided against it and so used the translation tag for the very first time and I messed up, I'm not trying to justify myself. But I hope you don't think of me as a bad and stupid editor... I hope you can forgive for this one silly mistake as advice from a senior editor like you to juniors like me... And plz feel free to blast me the next time I commit such errors, which I promise will never happen again.... Sorry once again!!!Ajayupai95 (talk) 12:29, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

That "Needs translation" tag is cumbersome to use properly - I don't know why "someone" can't fix it so that the report gets generated automatically when you add the tag, but for now it doesn't. Once we got it listed on that list, someone would probably have come along pretty soon to read it, understand the Danish, and delete it, so it was the right tag to add - but Google Translate is pretty useful for a short stub like that one. Sorry if I came over a bit fierce on this one. There's a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia but it's an interesting journey. Happy editing! PamD 23:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 February 2013

This week, we put our life in the hands of WikiProject Airlines. Starting in July 2005, the project has improved articles relating to airline companies, alliances, destination lists, and travel benefit programs. WikiProject Airlines has accumulated over 4,000 pages, including 4 Featured Articles and 26 Good Articles.
As of time of writing, twenty wikis (including the English, French and Hungarian Wikipedias) are in the process of getting access to the Lua scripting language, an optional substitute for the clunky template code that exists at present.
On February 15, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) declared 'victory' in its counter-lawsuit against Internet Brands (IB), the owner of Wikitravel and the operator of several online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The lawsuit clears the last remaining hurdles for the WMF's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage.
Sue Gardner's visit to Australia sparked a number of interviews in the Australian press. An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 February 2013, titled "Data plans 'unnerving': Wikipedia boss", saw Gardner comment on Australian plans to store personal internet and telephone data. The planned measure, intended to assist crime prevention, would involve internet service providers and mobile phone firms storing customer usage data for up to two years.
Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

Award

The Tightrope Award
You do good work reporting bad stuff. Here's the prestigious
Tightrope Award for good balance!
(The image represents the amazing Charles Blondin carrying
Jimbo Wales safely across the Niagara Falls.)
Bishonen | talk 20:29, 23 February 2013 (UTC).

Thank you so much! PamD 21:06, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Your recent deletions

Interesting article here on decline of participation in Wikipedia:

http://www.dailydot.com/business/wikipedia-editors-decline-wikimedia-fellows/

"A new study published in the American Behavioral Science Journal by former Wikimedia Fellows says Wikipedia has lost some 30 percent of its English-language editors since 2006, as a result of off-putting automated rejections, restrictive new rules, and controlling older editors."

You're mentioned by name in this thread:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/935750/wikipedia-editors-needed

Some food for thought. 68.144.172.8 (talk) 20:04, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

  • Yes, and the result of the thought and a little research is:
  1. Of course as a non-admin I can't actually delete anything
  2. Checking my CSD log and PROD log I don't see that I nominated any of User:ILIKESPI's games articles
  3. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Armageddon:_Tactical_Combat,_3000-500_BC shows I tried to save some of these games articles from deletion
  4. I gave the editor some constructive suggestions at User_talk:ILIKESPI#Games_articles
  5. ... and did quite a bit myself to improve them - eg these changes
  6. So I don't really think I'm the problem here, and I suggest that Michael Dorosh of boardgamegeek misread the events and was mistaken in what he said about me. Possibly just has a prejudice about librarians. PamD 23:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello PamD...

Both the Hunt Stromberg and Ken Swofford articles ARE stubs.

I researched Stromberg {see history and Hunt Stromberg Jr.} and know for a fact this article isn't even the tip of the iceberg; no solid information about his early career, personal life or subsequent racing affiliations - and he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood! For example: he orchestrated the cover-up when Jean Harlow's husband committed suicide (can't remember source off-hand, may have been "Hollywood Babylon"). This article should be at least 5 times as long as it is.

I also created the Swofford article and had a heck of a time 'cobbling' it together from tag ends; for an actor who was so prolific there's very little information out there - quite possibly by his or his family's choice; someone has already changed his birth date, which is currently incorrect (at least based on the consensus of source at the time it was written).

I did the best I could (mistakes and all), but for sure someone out there can do better - which is the whole point of Wikipedia in the first place. Hence the "stubs," and I'm re-instating them.

Since ArielGold left I've been looking for a mentor/collaborator: would you be interested? Cheers! Shir-El too 15:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that they are stubs: they may be incomplete, but WP:STUB says "Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they have significant problems or are noticeably incomplete." Add any cleanup tags which seem appropriate, and/or comment on the talk pages, but don't waste the time of stub-sorters by asking us to stub-sort these non-stubs. I'm not going to stub-sort them right now, and if I'm cleaning out Category:Stubs and they're the last two left I'll de-stub them again. You might be lucky - someone less fussy might stub-sort them before then. I'm flattered to be asked to be your mentor, but I'd rather not take on any commitment to anyone here on Wikipedia - I just go around Wikignoming as the mood takes me. Best wishes, PamD 18:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
If you think particular sections are too thin within the articles, you could add {{expand section}} in appropriate sections. More informative to the next editor than just calling the whole thing "an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject". PamD 18:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi again!

I rechecked the talk pages: Stromberg was designated 'start', Swofford is still 'stub.'
I don't know what a "stub sorter" does.
Thank you very much for the {{expand section}} tag; I'll use it often.
And thank you for your time. Have a really nice day! Cheers! Shir-El too 20:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
A stub-sorter looks at articles given a tag like {{stub}} and amends that to {{Tuscany-geo-stub}} or {{US-film-bio-stub}} or whatever is appropriate. See WP:WSS. Articles may be called "stub-class" by a project and still not be a Stub as described at WP:STUB. PamD 22:52, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
Thanks for reverting vandalism on my Talkpage! Cheers, Kevin12xd (contribs) 01:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

David Martyn

Sometimes WP amuses me - usually regarding my own behaviour. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

In December I was looking at the Founding Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science, and was surprised to find so many red links, including David Martyn. It didn't take long to find David Forbes Martyn, so I created David Martyn as a redirect to David Forbes Martyn. (There was some reason why I couldn't move DFM to DM). A week ago, LlywelynII turned it into a dab/hndis page, without a dab or hndis template. About 48 hours ago, Dawynn added the dab template. About 24 hours ago, a bot added the "incoming links template; 30 or more links". What I should have done is what I originally did, and what you subsequently did.

Moral: Engage brain and think first, rather than don't think, engage auto-pilot, and achieve nothing particularly useful. Or worse: and achieve an even bigger mess. Ho hum. Pdfpdf (talk) 16:16, 26 February 2013 (UTC) (P.S. Once again: Thank you!)

I could see there'd been a lot of action! It looks to me as if he probably ought to be moved from DFM to plain DM - you might like to do a WP:RM for it as you're familiar with Australian scientists? PamD 17:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. Thanks. Pdfpdf (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


The Signpost: 04 March 2013

Recently I was having a casual conversation with a friend, and he mentioned that he spent too many hours a day playing video games. I responded with a comment that I, too, spent way too much time on an activity of my own – Wikipedia. In an attempt to reply with a relevant remark, he offered something along the lines of: "So have you ever written anything?" After a second, I quickly answered yes, but I was still in shock over his question. It seemed to be rooted in a belief on his part that using Wikipedia meant just reading the articles, and that editing was something that someone, hypothetically, might do, but not really more likely than randomly counting to 7,744.
"WP:OUTING", the normally little-noticed policy corner of the English Wikipedia that governs the release of editors' personal information, has suddenly been brought to wider attention after long-term contributor and featured article writer Cla68 was indefinitely blocked last week. This snowballed into several other blocks, a desysopping by ArbCom, and a request for arbitration.
Three articles, six lists, and three pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on "Laura Secord", who was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812 best known for warning the British of an impending American attack.
This week, we tuned to WikiProject Television Stations, a project that dates back to March 2004. WikiProject Television Stations primarily focuses on local stations, national networks, television markets, and other topics related to television channels in North America, the Caribbean, and some Pacific countries. The project has a fair bit of work ahead of them with over 4,000 unassessed articles and only one Good Article out of 626 assessed articles, giving the project a relative WikiWork rating of 5.262.

The Signpost: 11 March 2013

I am pleased to announce that the Signpost and Wikizine have reached an in-principle agreement that will see Wikizine published as a special Signpost section at the beginning of each month.
During March, three of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking schemes on Meta will reach important crossroads, which will shape how both the editing communities and Wikimedia institutions handle the distribution of donors' money across the movement.
Twelve articles, five lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including an image of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a front-engine, 2-seat luxury grand tourer automobile developed by Mercedes-AMG.
There are three open cases, and a final decision has been given in the Doncram case.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases.
The WMF has aborted a plan to deploy version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (AFTv5) rolled out to all English Wikipedia articles.

Camp Arcadia Stub

Thanks for the information on where to place stubs. Cheers. Mfribbs (talk) 14:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for Catching Mistake

Hi PamD!

Sorry about my mistake on Seán Óg Ó Ciardubháin. I remember unchecking the "stub" box when I realized it was already marked as a stub but I guess it didn't go through. Plus, I've been having an off day. Sorry again and thanks for letting me know. Hope that was the only case.

Sosthenes12 (talk) 20:23, 18 March 2013 (UTC)Sosthenes12

Thanks for Catching Mistake

Hi PamD!

Sorry about my mistake on Seán Óg Ó Ciardubháin. I remember unchecking the "stub" box when I realized it was already marked as a stub but I guess it didn't go through. Plus, I've been having an off day. Sorry again and thanks for letting me know. Hope that was the only case.

Sosthenes12 (talk) 20:24, 18 March 2013 (UTC)Sosthenes12

I wish I could give you a real cookie to say sorry but this will have to do! Thanks for all your work! Sosthenes12 (talk) 20:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

William Sutton Polstrada

Well spotted! That was quite a plausible-looking one at first glance. I had just done final checks and was reaching for the delete button, but Anthony Bradbury got there first. JohnCD (talk) 21:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The first thing which made me suspicious, though of copyvio rather than anything else, was the reference numbers. And then it was odd that Googling couldn't find the source text (I'd picked a line with "Polstrada" in it - unwise in the circs!). The photo wasn't from any source (the editor's family album I guess). I looked for the two "famous" books in COPAC, and couldn't find either: alarm bells ringing. It seemed highly unlikely that someone I'd never heard of was the second best British writer since 1945, in 2008, but I persisted (the joys of online public library access to The Times) and found Orwell... ! It shouldn't have taken such a lot of time and energy, but I'm pleased to have cracked it. PamD 21:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Last night I was seriously wondering whether to quit Wikipedia after a run-in with unco-operative editors and what felt like general stupidity and unhelpfulness. I'm now feeling more cheerful - that quest was fun! PamD 21:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, zapping a hoax is very satisfying, particularly when it is got rid of within hours like that. Have a look at this AfD - that one survived a couple of months, and I had a lead because the same author had an earlier hoax, but it was an interesting one to check out. JohnCD (talk) 22:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

added the copyleft code to the page in question

I have added the copy left emblem to the bottom of the page in question, let me know if you would like anything else to prove my existence :), and the ownership of ANY of the text I post The Domain http://hillbillgold.com, and all subdomains do in fact belong to me, and I hereby give Wikipedia any and all right to link to any text on this domain. Hillbelly (talk) 11:36, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The inconspicuous and unlinked "Copyleft" symbol at http://hillbillyhomepage.hillbillygold.com/ contradicts the wording on the site which says "All rights reserved", which makes it all somewhat confusing. I see that the Hillbilly jamboree has now been deleted. If you re-create it using the same material apparently copied from the Hillbilly site I expect another editor will query it or deleted it, just the same. Material must not be added to Wikipedia if it cannot then be freely re-used for all purposes including commercial purposes, subject only to proper attribution. If it is copied from a site labelled "All rights reserved", it cannot be so re-used. If you want to put that material into Wikipedia, please see the second paragraph of the copyright message on your talk page, and follow it through. Thanks. PamD 14:50, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Apparently deciding that Wikipedia would provide a wider audience for his information, the owner of Hillbillygold.com has deleted all content from the Hillbilly Jamboree page on his own site in order to avoid any copyright issue. I'm not sure that is a valid move, but we clearly can no longer verify any copyright violations. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 15:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Interesting! Thanks for rewriting it with fewer capitals and fewer links. PamD 15:51, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
You took a lot of efforts in pointing out the mistakes I made. You do have good patience and a determination to maintain the standards of Wikipedia. Now take this hot cup of coffee and forgive me for my disruptive edits. Jayadevp13 (talk) 05:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Also have a cookie with the cup of coffee. Once again Sorry! Jayadevp13 (talk) 05:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Hello, PamD. You have new messages at Jayadevp13's talk page.
Message added 05:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Jayadevp13 (talk) 05:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2013

Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. At the heart of a strongly worded statement, posted both on his talk page and the arbitration notice board, was the claim that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for".
This week, we composed a tribute to WikiProject Composers. The project was created during the final hours of 2004 and finalized in early January 2005. It has grown to encompass over 8,000 pages, including 26 Featured Articles and 23 Good Articles. WikiProject Composers faces a difficult workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.45.
Ask librarians what they think about Wikipedia and you might get some interesting answers. Some will throw up their hands about the laziness of the Google generation and their overdependence on Wikipedia. Some see it as the "competition". And some will tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Nine articles, seven lists, eleven images, and one topic were promoted to "featured status" this week on the English Wikipedia.
On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Richard case.
The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.

Oscar (opera)

It looks like we had an edit conflict, but I put my version into the article since I was in the middle of creating the "Composition history" section and moving material out of the lede. There's more to come. Tried to pick up on things you'd changed, but would be happy to see you make any appropriaye changes/improvements. Just fyi: I'm still working on Comp. hist, as there is plenty of new stuff out there on Morrison's website. Viva-Verdi (talk) 22:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me - I've re-done the little copyedits you missed. PamD 23:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

TOC for DAB

Hi PamD,

sorry for the confusion, I am not so familiar with the en.WP and the differences between your article and dab pages. Investigating a little I figured out that (my) de.WP dab pages have no TOC at all...weired world. Greetings from sunny but cold Berlin
Mws.richter ⇔ bla, бла... 09:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

SS Alba

Hello PamD, I'm dropping by on a courtesy visit to let you know that I have done some extra work on your recent article about the SS Alba. Maybe when you get a chance you could come back to it and give it a review please, to see how the changes sit with you.

I found quite a bit of info on [6], also where you say that 2 or 5 people perished I have ammended it to 5 as per the info I found on that website, so please check how it is for you.

Anyway, wishing you all the best and many thanks. Kindest regards and happy wiki-ing, (MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 12:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC))

Thanks for dropping by. Glad to see the article expanded, though I've cleaned up a few bits and pieces (you might want to check on how to cite a reference multiple times). I might try and find local or national newspaper coverage to see if we can settle the 2/5 deaths query. The phrase you're thinking of is "The fateful night", not "Faithful", but I don't think it is an appropriate section heading for an encyclopedia article even when correct! Is that your own theory about the ship not being able to manouevre? If not, please give a reference. Thanks. PamD 14:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Categories in "see also" section

PamD's note: Arising from Paranoid anxiety

Just asking. Why do you feel categories are not appropriate in the see also section? With the ":" prefix operator they are just regular links. A good portion of users are totally unfamiliar with categories, and what they lead to. They are at the bottom of the page and can be easily confused as a "bibliographic" stamp that does nothing. The use in the see also section calls particular attention to specific categories. Its a specific signal to the reader that there are other pages on Wikipeda that may be of particular interest to someone reading a particular page. It can signal the reader that there are many "closely related" articles available. It's a navigation tool, plus a short cut to avoid listing many articles in the see also section. A "heads up, this isn't the full story" alerting the reader, many closely related, perhaps overlapping articles that should not be missed if more detail is required. I can't find any WP policy against there use as a link, that's what the ":" prefix is for. I've also seen them used in other articles, and in the main text, in hat notes, etc. Is that all wrong? Rick (talk) 02:54, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, WP:SEEALSO says "A bulleted list, preferably alphabetized, of internal links to related Wikipedia articles." and makes no mention of the possibility of linking to categories. But go ahead and replace them if you want. PamD 08:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Pam, Thanks very much for your flexibility. I see you are from the U.K. and the cite was from Melanie Klein, a fantastic U.K. psychologist. Rick (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Saul High

Thanks! I like to be thorough in redirecting things so people come to the right place :) WhisperToMe (talk) 16:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 March 2013

Our travels have brought us to Pittsburgh, the American city known for steelworks and bridges.
Seven articles, one list, six pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, has announced her plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor project has grown to become one of its main focuses. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.
A paper presented at last month's CSCW Conference observes that "Mass collaboration systems are often characterized as unstructured organizations lacking rule and order", yet Wikipedia has a well developed body of policies to support it as an organization.

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks for all your support. You were the very first Wiki user to help me along. Walter J Ference 19:09, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Glad to be able to help! Happy Editing. PamD 19:10, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
it was in reference to this article on wikipedia: EFLU Hyderabad heritage well Ccanton8 (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you - it looked an interesting article in need of a bit of help! PamD 09:30, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Schuch

Has User_talk:Rodeorm ever reacted to your note of 2009? I am persuaded that his/her article is a pile of crap, or more politely: a hoax. See my remarks under discussion to "Schuch" Talk:Schuch and please answer there. Thanks noychoH (talk) 11:21, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Naples

(Misplaced message moved here from user page)

Expand Section Tag: Thanks for the info! Raffaele Megabyte (talk) 7:34 pm, Today (UTC+0)

Whoops! O_o ^_^ Raffaele Megabyte (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Alba

Pam, I personally don't see "Alba" for the Gaelic name of Scotland being more prevalent than other uses. Type in "Alba" under Google, Yahoo, etc, and Scotland's name is not a top hit (excluding the Wikipedia page). However, I have no desire to make a change that is vastly unpopular, or disrupts a number of links, so I have voiced my support for reverting the changes. DavidinNJ (talk) 13:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I see it's all been put back in place now. If you want to propose that the Scottish name is not the Primary Topic for the word "Alba" (which might well be the case), you need to use Requested Moves to propose the multiple page move (and I'm not sure whether ".. (name)" would be the ideal disambiguator... perhaps "... (Scotland)"? Or set it up as a RM to unknown title and see what suggestions are made?). Then there can be discussion, consensus, and if a page move is made someone needs to make sure that all the links currently pointing to Alba are tidied up to point to wherever it ends up. PamD 15:35, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

RE: Proposed deletion of Irvine (Sesame Street)

This page should stay. Go to Muppet Wiki, Irvine is there too!! -- Grouches101 (Send a note then scram!! P.S. Have a rotten day!!!!) 14:59, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2013

The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics about the sites since 2009, but only recently have these been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Dutch-born Erik Zachte is the driver of the WMF's statistical output, and he writes that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".
This week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs.
The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.
The first round of individual engagement grants (IEGs) have been awarded, disbursing about $55.6k (€42.7k) to seven applicants.
A case brought by Lecen involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Users of ten Wikipedias got access to phase 2 of Wikidata following its first rollout to production wikis.

London Millennium Funicular

Take no notice of the crossing outs that is to do with the fact I have a different account name on wikicommons and I accidentally edited this article on Wikipedia with two different user name. As I have retired the user name on Wikipedia which made the deleted the edits, and replaced the text using my current user name. As to the article name please see talk:London Millennium Funicular.-- PBS (talk) 12:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Funicular, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Millennium Bridge (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 19:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2013

Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
This week, we felt the world tremble in the presence of WikiProject Earthquakes. The project was started in May 2008 to deal with articles about earthquakes, aftershocks, seismology, seismologists, plate tectonics, and related articles. While the project has seen success building 14 Featured Articles, one A-class Article, and 21 Good Articles, a fairly heavy workload remains, with a relative WikiWork rating of 4.94. WikiProject Earthquakes maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, a popular pages listing, and an article alerts watchlist.
Last Friday, the Wikimedia movement awoke to news that one of their number—Rémi Mathis, a French volunteer editor—had been summoned to the offices of the interior intelligence service DCRI and threatened with criminal charges and fines if he did not delete an article on the French Wikipedia about a radio station used by the French military.
The arbitration committee is looking for expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language for a case involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Four articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
The deployment of phase 2 of Wikidata to the English Wikipedia, originally scheduled for 8 April but delayed due to technical problems, may be rescheduled again as the result of community resistance.

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - April 2013

Delivered April 2013 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an N to the column against your username on the Project Mainpage.

→ Please direct all enquiries regarding this newsletter to the WikiProject talk page.
→ Newsletter delivered by ENewsBot (info) · 07:50, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Non-free rationale for File:Ides of April cover.jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Ides of April cover.jpg. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under non-free content criteria, but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia is acceptable. Please go to the file description page, and edit it to include a non-free rationale.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified the non-free rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 21:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

 Done

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Woman's Realm, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Woman's Weekly (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 01:54, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

GifBoom

Ok, I agree. That's no problem for me Kagawaen (talk) 15:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)kagawaen

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Thanks for all your advice and guidance! Can'tCopeWon'tCope 22:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I hope I've helped you cope despite the username! PamD 22:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Paul Bedson/Archive. For background, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paul Bedson and [7]. He has stated that he will continue to create sock puppets unless he is unblocked. Dougweller (talk) 16:10, 19 April 2013 (UTC)


GNU C-Graph

Hello. There is currently a discussion at WP:ANI regarding GNU C-Graph. The thread is Complaint Against Summary Deletion of "GNU C-Graph".The discussion is about the topic GNU C-Graph. Thank you. -Visionat (talk) 17:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Starting Dr Witt Company

Hello , I see you are always checking my work . So I wanted a bit of advice - please , if I want to start a new page , like I have done with Tymbark (company) - do I need to always put (company) after it so it will be easier for people to understand the article? Thank you again for helping me! OliwierB (talk) 19:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

  • Hallo Oliwier: No, if the company is called "Dr Witt" and there is no other Wikipedia article with that name, just call the article Dr Witt. You only need to add a "disambiguator" (the thing in brackets, like "(company)") if there is something else with the same basic title. I hope that helps. And please don't use so much bold text - if you want to list a company's products, do so, but they don't all need to be bolded. PamD 19:52, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Catherine Bell

Hello there! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Catherine Bell the actress is undoubtedly the best known of the three individuals sharing that name(at the moment at least), but in the long-term, I have to suspect that the academic shall rise quite significantly in prominence; she really is a very senior academic in the field of ritual studies, and is heavily cited in anthropology, archaeology, and religious studies. So for that reason, I shall go through and start putting in the correct links in all those other pages (here goes the next hour of my life!). All the best, Midnightblueowl (talk) 22:04, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. PamD 22:08, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

E-ACT

Can you explain some of the notability of this charity. I rarely ask but I was considering an AFD here.. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 14:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I was editing Leeds West Academy and read on the school's website that its sponsor is E-ACT. That website gives no info about the organisation, and I wanted to know more about it. Having found its website, it seemed reasonable to create a WP article about it, as "What's E-ACT?" will be a logical question to be asked by readers of articles about the 30 schools it runs (OK, some are primary schools so won't have articles, but ) I found the Guardian article, and there may be more to be said. It educates 20,000 students, so seems to be notable - compare to some of the tiny US school districts which we're told are all notable. I'd never heard of it until an hour or two ago, but I no longer live full time in Leeds and don't have school-age children or a professional involvement in education. PamD 15:06, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:PamD/Archive_6&oldid=1199744143"