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2012

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Noam Cohen

Hi, Sj! I have corresponded with Noam Cohen.

Noam Cohen did say that the Times does have a style guide, and according to that style guide he is supposed to render Japanese names in Western order. In terms of, say, the subject strongly preferring Japanese order, he's not sure how that would be resolved exactly. He said that the NYT would let someone spell the name how he/she would want to (i.e. "My name is Mohammed, not Muhammad") but he is not sure if naming order is affected by that.

I'm still e-mailing him. If you want, I can forward you correspondence and/or get you involved. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay - I sent you an e-mail. Please respond to the e-mail so I can obtain your e-mail address. With that I will forward you the correspondence. Thank you very much :)
• WhisperToMe (talk) 17:15, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • You should now have copies of all three e-mails (my initial e-mail, Noam's reply, and then my reply)
  • Should I also send these e-mails to Aphaia?
  • WhisperToMe (talk) 18:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, ok. I will not e-mail Aphaia then.
    • At the moment I don't know of any other sources that refer to Aphaia's viewpoints and opinions so there's nothing else for me to add. From my understanding the sources regarding the logo and the Japanese Wikipedia are the only ones that discuss analysis and viewpoints from Aphaia. However the questions of "is this information worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia" and "how should one's name be presented" are two separate questions to be resolved separately.
    • In regards to following sensitivities, I'm not certain that following a sensitivity is necessarily the best plan, nor should it be the primary goal of writing for Wikipedia. Keeping in mind, as an example Talk:Muhammad/FAQ#Q1 an argument brought up was that including images would infringe upon the sensitivities of followers of a religion. The English Wikipedia community decided that, even though these followers would feel offended, it would be the best policy to include the images.
      • The FAQ itself says "So long as they are relevant to the article and do not violate any of Wikipedia's existing policies, nor the law of the U.S. state of Florida, where most of Wikipedia's servers are hosted, no content or images will be removed from Wikipedia because people find them objectionable or offensive."
    • This is why I'm interested in hearing how a professional organization would deal with this issue. If there is a consensus among the popular media/RS world that one could make an exception like this, then the community could say "the media would, and did accommodate such demands and have Yamada Hanako's name presented in the opposite fashion consistently. Since reliable sources for Yamada Hanako have done this, this should be reflected on Wikipedia"
    • Regarding concerns about Wikilawyering (AFAIK this was brought up on the Commons), I don't think it's wikilawyering if one follows the underlying spirit of a rule/guideline/etc. rather than simply following it to a letter. The English Wikipedia is intended to be a tertiary source, reflecting what other people wrote. Generally guidelines on naming order/etc. are meant to have Wikipedia reflect the practices of published English-language literature. Having Wikipedia's policies on a person's naming order determined by the policies of reliable sources would fulfill the goal of making Wikipedia a tertiary source.
    • WhisperToMe (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Years

Hi, since your name's down on this project, I'm just writing to let you know that there's a discussion going on at the moment on how to format events – and in particular, events that go on for multiple days – on year pages. Your input would be appreciated. — Smjg (talk) 18:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, good sir!

Was that your voice speaking about wikis at the end of Justin Reich's talk today? I was listening to the webcast, and I thought you (or your doppelganger) made some good points. In any case, hello!

~~Brandon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pingswept (talk • contribs) 18:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was me! I found the talk frustrating; I'm not sure that sort of research does much more than generate provocative talk and paper titles. Limited data, limited disaggregation, no data transparency or reproducability... no basis for drawing conclusions of any sort. I hope that before the work is published in a more formal way those issues are addressed, but worry that in some academic regimes provocative titles are an end in their own right. And how are you doing? I thought of you recently, when OpenGlobe started up. I hope all is well. – SJ + 22:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed about data transparency and reproducability. That seems to be slow to take hold in academia, which is sort of weird. I disagree a little about limited data. Or rather, I agree that the data is limited, but I thought Justin did a good job of presenting his conclusions as uncertain, which seems like a reasonable behavior in the face of limited data. But maybe it came across differently in person. Anyway, stuff is good. I'm working on a new device in Artisan's Asylum. You should stop by if you haven't seen the place before-- I think it's the second-largest community hackerspace in the world, and it's right near Union Square in Somerville. Pingswept —Preceding undated comment added 18:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC).[reply]

MSU Interview

Dear Sj,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Sam

Thanks, it's nice to be here. I'm still learning to ropes, but hopefully I won't allow the negative aspects of my physics training to hinder me too much! Say hi to Zittrain if you see him. terry (talk) 22:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, Sj. You have new messages at Hertz1888's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Comments left at Talk:Jerusalem. Both sections there need your signature! Hertz1888 (talk) 07:11, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ec

Hullo Sj, I believe I may have edit-conflicted with you in trying to introduce copyedits to the Signpost movement roles interview; please accept my apologies and continue revising your answers as you please – I'm looking to publish in about two hours. And thanks again for taking the time to discuss these issues with us, I think it's an important area to explore with the community. Regards, Skomorokh 03:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited! New England Wikimedia General Meeting

	New England Wikimedia General Meeting
	The New England Wikimedia General Meeting will be a large-scale meetup of all Wikimedians (and friends) from the New England area in order to discuss regional coordination and possible formalization of our community (i.e., a chapter). Come hang out with other Wikimedians, learn more about ongoing activities, and help plan for the future! Potential topics: What is a Wikimedia chapter and should we work towards one? Planning of regular Boston meetups (any other New England cities?) Planning for upcoming coordinated events (Wikipedia Love Libraries, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiknic, etc.) Outreach to universities (WikiProject Academical Village) and cultural institutions (GLAM) Wikimania DC is this summer. Your ideas!
	Sunday, April 22 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM	Conference Room C06, Johnson Building, Boston Public Library—Central Library 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116
Please sign up here: Wikipedia:Meetup/New England!

---

Message delivered by Dominic at 08:57, 11 April 2012 (UTC). Note: You can remove your name from this meetup invite list here.[reply]

Hi! I first tweaked the Wikipedia:WikiProject Museums/Guideline sequence, which wound up reverted fairly quickly, so now there's an active discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Museums/Guideline about the sequence of sections. You are invited and encouraged to chime in. Please also see the discussion about consolidating several sections which tend to be especially brief. -- ke4roh (talk) 03:12, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ka4roh, I tried to clean up the guideline page a bit myself, based on the discussion so far. It's something I meant to do last year -- thanks for the reminder. – SJ + 00:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Sj. I enjoyed your recent post on conference scholarships and tried to post this comment there but the comment didn't post, and then when I tried to post it again, I was told it was a duplicate! So here it is.

This is so great. Thank you for writing it. When we run the next big funded hackathon (I'm currently working on sponsorships for the Berlin hackathon in June) I'll keep a lot of this in mind. This year I did a bunch of outreach and specifically reached out to nontraditional attendees (people who work on gadgets, templates, and bots) to ask them to come to the event, and we are spending a big chunk of WMF's volunteer development budget for the current fiscal year to encourage and sponsor such people. Next year, I think it would be good to follow your guidelines, to help avoid turning subsidies for travel to the Berlin hackathon into a default expectation.

Thanks again. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 16:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the comment, Sumana! I don't know what went wrong with my blog, but I added your comment there. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how the upcoming hackathons go. I also appreciate your recent note to internal-l on moving back to public-only mailing lists, and mean to write about how important that is as well. Warmly, – SJ + 01:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I selected you because of Texas history, I have been commissioned to enter 'Orsch' in the wikipedia from the founder of the alternative education school by the same name in Gunnison, Colorado. I have been an avid user of wiki for years, and have always wanted to contribute something, now I have a purpose for doing so. My user page is the article I wish to enter. I am a dedicated autodydactic. Some things come very easy for me, others I struggle with until I give up. It is my intention to publish this article but now I need help switching it to the real on-line article. I also recieve critique well, and strive for excellence in all I do. I would truly like to be a respected editor/creator for wiki and perhaps you would like to show me some ropes. I instruct well, and tend to like to do things for myself. Would you care to help a fellow Texas history fanatic? ~Orschstaffer, I basically know how to access my user page, should you respond to my request, and my talk page which further defines my intentions. The article is related to alternative education. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orschstaffer (talk • contribs) 20:56, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

	Great American Wiknic - Boston
	The Second Annual Great American Wiknic will be an opportunity for Wikipedians across the Greater Boston area to meet for an afternoon of Food, Fun, and Fellowship. Come hang out with other Wikimedians, learn more about upcoming activities, and just enjoy a day at the park!
	Saturday, June 23 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM Boston Common	Food Fun Fellowship
Please sign up here: Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/Wiknic/2012!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Meetup/Boston at 14:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Hello Sj,

About the message you have forwarded on the Wikisource mailing list: Good book for Wiki Source. Thanks for Beluru Sudharshana from Mithramadhyama.com for pointing this out in the right time, I have uploaded the English and the French versions to Commons here in English and here in French. Regards, --Zyephyrus (talk) 22:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted these files on Commons because the licence was not accepted there, sorry. Fortunately the link to the source can be found here on WP so people can have access to it directly. --Zyephyrus (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for following up with this! SJ

Template:Cto has been nominated for deletion. Template:Cto creates a conditional topic overview linkbox for the See also section of an article with links to (1) the topic article, (2) the outline of the topic, (3) the index of topic-related articles, (4) the bibliography of the topic, and (5) the Wikipedia book on the topic. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Cto. Yours aye,  Buaidh  20:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible for a technologically handicapped person to get that wiki-chessboard and invite others to play? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 04:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good question... I think yes :) Worth revisiting. – SJ +

Hello. I was on Wikipedia:Translators available and notice that you were on the list for Spanish to English translators and wondered if you could be interested in translating es:Felipe de Castilla to Philip of Castile (archbishop)? There is a lot of interesting information still left untranslated. Thanks.--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Was a real blast to meet you at Wikimania. I hope you had as good of a time as I did. --David Shankbone 01:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise :-) – SJ +

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Plasma cosmology. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 04:15, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I'm contacting you because you have participated or discussed The Wikipedia Adventure learning tutorial/game idea. I think you should know about a current Community Fellowship proposal to create the game with some Wikimedia Foundation support. Your feedback on the proposal would be very much appreciated. I should note that the feedback is for the proposal, not the proposer, and even if the Fellowship goes forward it might be undertaken by presently not-mentioned editors. Thanks again for your consideration.

Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Adventure

Cheers, User:Ocaasi 16:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update, Ocaasi. I don't have comments specifically on the proposal, but hope it sees future iteration. – SJ + 03:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am a new user. You offered some insight to my erred ways. Thanks.. no hard feelings.

Patrick Miller Booth (talk) 02:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Patrick. I love red and kittens. :) – SJ +

Hi Sj. I'm leaving you this message because you have previously been involved as an adopter with Wikipedia's Adopt-a-user program. A clean-up of this program is currently underway, and as part of the process I am trying to find out who is and isn't still interested in remaining an adopter.

If you would prefer not to be part of the adoption program anymore, you need do nothing; when the overhaul of the project is completed your name will be removed from the list of active adopters. However, if you have current adoptees, an active adoption school or an interest in adopting in the near future, then please let us know by signing here.

If you want to remain in the project and can currently take on more adoptees, there is a serious backlog at Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user; it would be enormously helpful if you could take on one or two of the users there. Please do keep an eye on the project for upcoming changes, we could use your opinions and your help! Yunshui 雲‍水 09:19, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I was on Wikipedia:Translators available and notice that you were on the list for German to English translators and wondered if you could translate and add materials from de:Manuel von Portugal and de:Emilia von Oranien-Nassau to their English articles and create articles for their two children de:Manuel António von Portugal and de:Mauritia Eleonora von Portugal and their spouse de:Johanna von Hanau-Münzenberg and de:Georg Friedrich (Nassau-Siegen). If you can't I will understand. Thank you!--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 23:25, 24 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

interesting! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 05:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC) p.s: time to archive your talk page? :) [yes :) ][reply]

Hello,

My name is Javier Campanini. I'm a student at Cornell University working on a class project for an Online Communities course. Our task is to contribute an article to Wikipedia. There are a total of 3 people on the team and so far, we've started to gather the information and create sections for the article.

The subject of the article is Incentive-Centered Design. The current page (a work in progress) can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jmc242/incentive-centered_design

We would really appreciate any feedback or comments you could provide on our progress so far.

Thank you, Javier Campanini Jmc242 (talk) 22:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The 2012 WikiCup has come to a close; congratulations to Cwmhiraeth (submissions), our 2012 champion! Cwmhiraeth joins our exclusive club of previous winners: Dreamafter (2007), jj137 (2008), Durova (2009), Sturmvogel 66 (2010) and Hurricanehink (2011). Our final standings were as follows:

1. Cwmhiraeth (submissions)
2. Sasata (submissions)
3. Grapple X (submissions)
4. Casliber (submissions)
5. Muboshgu (submissions)
6. Miyagawa (submissions)
7. Ruby2010 (submissions)
8. Dana Boomer (submissions)

Prizes for first, second, third and fourth will be awarded, as will prizes for all those who reached the final eight. Every participant who scored in the competition will receive a ribbon of participation. In addition to the prizes based on placement, the following special prizes will be awarded based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, the prize is awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round.

• The featured article award goes to Grapple X (submissions), for four featured articles in the final round.
• The good article award also goes to Grapple X (submissions), for 19 good articles in the second round.
• The list award goes to Muboshgu (submissions), for three featured lists in the final round.
• The topic award goes to Grapple X (submissions), for three good topics (with around 40 articles) in round 4.
• The did you know award goes to Cwmhiraeth (submissions), for well over 100 DYKs in the final round.
• The news award goes to ThaddeusB (submissions), for 10 in the news items in round 3.
• The picture award goes to Grandiose (submissions), for two featured pictures in round 2.
• The reviewer award goes to both Ruby2010 (submissions) (14 reviews in round 1) and Grandiose (submissions) (14 reviews in round 3).
• Finally, for achieving an incredible bonus point total in the final round, and for bringing the top-importance article frog to featured status, a biostar has been awarded to Cwmhiraeth (submissions).

Awards will be handed out in the coming days; please bear with us! This year's competition also saw fantastic contributions in all rounds, from newer Wikipedians contributing their first good or featured articles, right up to highly experienced Wikipedians chasing high scores and contributing to topics outside of their usual comfort zones. It would be impossible to name all of the participants who have achieved things to be proud of, but well done to all of you, and thanks! Wikipedia has certainly benefited from the work of this year's WikiCup participants.

Next year's WikiCup will begin in January. Currently, discussions and polls are open, and all contributions are welcome. You can also sign up for next year's competition. There will be no further newsletters this year, although brief notes may be sent out in December to remind everyone about the upcoming competition. It's been a pleasure to work with you all, and we hope to see you all in January! J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

nice job on that article. Decora (talk) 00:49, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! – SJ +

The article Jenny Preece has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

May fail WP:PROF

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. SarahStierch (talk) 02:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Awwwww really? Fixed :) – SJ +

The article Blaise Agüera y Arcas has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

person not important enough

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. LMB (talk) 10:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting a bit much... the fact that the only "help fix this article" comments I get are people proposing them for deletion as nonnotable or bots suggests our social norms are lacking. B A y A for instance is a remarkably accomplished creator, director, and developer, who has been renowned in the national media for at least two different phases of his life; as a quick search would indicate. Slapping a deletion tag on an article should not be the default way to improve it. – SJ +

Hi, I contact you as you took part in the discussion on Penyulap's talk page concerning the Ombudsman committee matter. I've started some proposals and discussion on meta about how best to reform the OC to fix the issues it currently has and I would be very grateful if you could drop by and voice your opinion at m:Ombudsman commission/reform proposals. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 12:19, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, SJ. You asked Courcelles to unblock Penyulap's talkpage access (here; already archived). It is of course customary to make such a request — at least, the first such request — to the admin who blocked the access; in this case, Courcelles. But I don't think the unblocking question should be left up to him, since it was Courcelles whose checkuser action Penyulap complained of to the Ombudsman commission, in an open letter he posted on the page immediately before Courcelles blocked him from further posting. To my mind there is a question whether Penyulap's access needed blocking, as well as a question whether Courcelles was the right person to do it. Please unblock Pen's access yourself, or ask somebody else. I would, except that I have probably by now involved myself too much w r t Penyulap to be the best person to do it.

I agree with you that Pen's access to his talk should be unblocked without further delay, so that he can take part directly in the discussion of his ombudsman complaint that has now, finally, started on his page. Frankly, it seems bad enough that his e-mail to the Ombudsman commission apparently got mislaid at first,[1] and that the reminder which I posted for him a month later[2] attracted no attention until another ten days later. (I'm certainly not complaining of Snowolf, the only person who has been effective in this business, and who has started a related proposal on Meta.) The user doesn't need any more delays and attrition, and the present situation where he has to rely on a third party for public communication isn't very satisfactory for him (not so hot for me either). Bishonen | talk 15:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for the comment, Bish. I agree he should join the discussion directly. The simplest way is to move to Meta. For practical watchlist and discussion-continuity reasons I too would like to see the appropriate part of it continue here (in addition to the more general discussion Snowolf started). But as there's no rush, and P. is sensitive to & responds prolifically to drama, I'd rather move gently to help focus discussion on making the OC functional. Let me check w. Elen before adding to the list of minor tweaks in his log. – SJ + 02:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Renewable energy. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 07:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Signups are now closed; we have our final 127 contestants for this year's competition. 64 contestants will make it to the next round at the end of February, but we're already seeing strong scoring compared to previous years. Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) currently leads, with 358 points. At this stage in 2012, the leader ( Grapple X (submissions)) had 342 points, while in 2011, the leader had 228 points. We also have a large number of scorers when compared with this stage in previous years. 12george1 (submissions) was the first competitor to score this year, as he was last year, with a detailed good article review. Some other firsts:

• 12george1 (submissions) was also the first to score for an article, with the good article Hurricane Gordon (2000). Again, this is a repeat of last year!
• Buggie111 (submissions) was the first to score for a did you know, with Marquis Flowers.
• Spencer (submissions) was the first to score for an in the news, with 2013 Houphouët-Boigny stampede.
• Status (submissions) was the first to score for a featured list, with list of Billboard Social 50 number-one artists.
• Adam Cuerden (submissions) was the first to score for a featured picture, with File:Thure de Thulstrup - L. Prang and Co. - Battle of Gettysburg - Restoration by Adam Cuerden.jpg.

Featured articles, portals and topics, as well as good topics, are yet to feature in the competition.

This year, the bonus points system has been reworked, with bonus points on offer for old articles prepared for did you know, and "multiplier" points reworked to become more linear. For details, please see Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring. There have been some teething problems as the bot has worked its way around the new system, but issues should mostly be ironed out- please report any problems to the WikiCup talk page. Here are some participants worthy of note with regards to the bonus points:

• Ed! (submissions) was the first to score bonus points, with Portland-class cruiser, a good article.
• Hawkeye7 (submissions) has the highest overall bonus points, as well as the highest scoring article, thanks to his work on Enrico Fermi, now a good article. The biography of such a significant figure to the history of science warrants nearly five times the normal score.
• HueSatLum (submissions) claimed bonus points for René Vautier and Nicolas de Fer, articles that did not exist on the English Wikipedia at the start of the year; a first for the WikiCup. The articles were eligible for bonus points because of fact they were both covered on a number of other Wikipedias.

Also, a quick mention of The C of E (submissions), who may well have already written the oddest article of the WikiCup this year: did you know that the Fucking mayor objected to Fucking Hell on the grounds that there was no Fucking brewery? The gauntlet has been thrown down; can anyone beat it?

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Sj,

I wanted to learn about Closed-form expression and wanted to read about it in Japanese. From the English page, there was a link to 解析解 in the Chinese Wikipedia (no link to JP WP), from which I got to 微分方程式, which is linked to Differential_equation. I don't know enough about closed-form expression to know what would be an appropriate link from Closed-form expression to JP WP page/section. If you have time, help!

hackfish 16:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

It may not be written yet. See the redlink in this article. Ask a japanese mathematician!

A closed-form expression is a type of Analytic expression (which unfortunately also links to 微分方程式). The idea of being closed here relates to "describable as the combination of a finite number of simple expressions", for a flexible definition of "simple". It's not really related to differential equations, except in the negative sense: most differential equations do not have closed form solutions. (Note that there is a confusingly named closed differential form which is quite different.) – SJ + 18:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sj, first, thank you for your compliment regarding the holiday/Xmas greeting (with 2 children on a swing) I left on Rich Farmbrough's User talk page. On a different note, a while ago I left a post on the Wikimedia Foundation's feedback webpage for a suggested fundraising donation system to help WP bring in extra cash (doesn't everyone want a raise?). The idea likely has merit and can probably accomplish its goal of raising significant extra funds for Wikipedia if implemented (or at least, as Homer would say: D'oh! it sounded like a good idea in my mind at the time ;-).

My original post, "Food for thought, knowledge for change" has been archived, but when I saw your contributions to the organization it appears it would be good to discuss the concept to see if you could advocate it to your colleagues on the WM Board, or at least bring it to their attention. The suggestion's only remarks generated so far can be seen on my user Talk page, as shown here, which notes that "...a micropayment system created by MuCash [on] websites such as Cleantechnica, where you can see a Java-linked 'Donate....' button at the bottom of each article". (Cleantechnica no longer appears to use MuCash, but other sites such as Dailygiver.org do, where the blue and orange donate button can be seen near the bottom of this webpage).

As an afterthought to the concept, I would also permit the proposed system to allow Wikipedians the option to (voluntarily) automatically donate any funds they personally receive to Wikimedia. Doing so this way would generate a bit more cash to the organization, and allow the editors to receive some personal credit for such donations. Best: HarryZilber (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Round 1 is now over. The top 64 scorers have progressed to round 2, where they have been randomly split into eight pools of eight. At the end of April, the top two from each pool, as well as the 16 highest scorers from those remaining, will progress to round 3. Commiserations to those eliminated; if you're interested in still being involved in the WikiCup, able and willing reviewers will always be needed, and if you're interested in getting involved with other collaborative projects, take a look at the WikiWomen's Month discussed below.

Round 1 saw 21 competitors with over 100 points, which is fantastic; that suggests that this year's competition is going to be highly competative. Our lower scores indicate this, too: A score of 19 was required to reach round 2, which was significantly higher than the 11 points required in 2012 and 8 points required in 2011. The score needed to reach round 3 will be higher, and may depend on pool groupings. In 2011, 41 points secured a round 3 place, while in 2012, 65 was needed. Our top three scorers in round 1 were:

1. Sturmvogel_66 (submissions), primarily for an array of warship GAs.
2. Miyagawa (submissions), primarily for an array of did you knows and good articles, some of which were awarded bonus points.
3. Casliber (submissions), due in no small part to Canis Minor, a featured article awarded a total of 340 points. A joint submission with Keilana (submissions), this is the highest scoring single article yet submitted in this year's competition.

Other contributors of note include:

• Sven Manguard (submissions), whose Portal:Massachusetts is the first featured portal this year. The featured portal process is one of the less well-known featured processes, and featured portals have traditionally had little impact on WikiCup scores.
• Sasata (submissions), whose Mycena aurantiomarginata was the first featured article this year.
• Muboshgu (submissions) and Wizardman (submissions), who both claimed points for articles in the Major League Baseball tie-breakers topic, the first topic points in the competition.
• Toa Nidhiki05 (submissions), who claimed for the first full good topic with the Casting Crowns studio albums topic.

Featured topics have still played no part in this year's competition, but once again, a curious contribution has been offered by The C of E (submissions): did you know that there is a Shit Brook in Shropshire? With April Fools' Day during the next round, there will probably be a good chance of more unusual articles...

March sees the WikiWomen's History Month, a series of collaborative efforts to aid the women's history WikiProject to coincide with Women's History Month and International Women's Day. A number of WikiCup participants have already started to take part. The project has a to-do list of articles needing work on the topic of women's history. Those interested in helping out with the project can find articles in need of attention there, or, alternatively, add articles to the list. Those interested in collaborating on articles on women's history are also welcome to use the WikiCup talk page to find others willing to lend a helping hand. Another collaboration currently running is an an effort from WikiCup participants to coordinate a number of Easter-themed did you know articles. Contributions are welcome!

A few final administrative issues. From now on, submission pages will need only a link to the article and a link to the nomination page, or, in the case of good article reviews, a link to the review only. See your submissions' page for details. This will hopefully make updating submission pages a little less tedious. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) J Milburn (talk) 11:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. On December 20th you re-enabled talk page access for the indef blocked editor Penyulap. However, in looking at their talk page, I see no ongoing discussion about their block for the past several months, and there's been no formal request for an unblock since access was granted. Instead, there's a lot of bitching and complaining about Wikipedia, as well as ordinary discussion, as if the editor wasn't blocked at all. My understanding is that talk page access is given to blocked editors in order to facilitate unblock requests and discussions about being unblocked. Since that is not happening here, and since the editor was blocked indef because they were determined to not be here to improve the encyclopedia, perhaps the talk page access should be terminated? (If you look at their block log, you'll see that the granting of access and the termination of access is a continuing thing. Admins keep giving this editor a chance to request an unblock, and the editor keepa misusing their talk page for their own purposes instead.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(Talk page stalker.) No, access to usertalk isn't exclusively for requesting unblock, you're mistaken about that. Penyulap has posted more and more sparingly on his page, for example once, briefly, in the past 30 days. (On 26 February.) If such modest amounts of "bitching and complaining about Wikipedia" bother you, you might consider unwatching the page. Bishonen | talk 21:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Bish, with all due respect (and I actually mean that sincerely, and not simply as an honorific), Penyulap posted to their talk page 100 times since access was granted, and very little of it was about the block. This editor was indef blocked because he or she apparently doesn't share the community's dedication to improving the encyclopedia, and they're using their talk page to continue to give the community the middle finger. I think that's offensive and an insult to the entire community, so it's not about me and whether I read their talk page or not. I just don't see why we should give this person a free forum to expression their derision. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi BMK, blocked users generally retain talk-page access, and are welcome to correspond with others there, unless there is reason to prevent it. Editors are not the only ones who can pursue their own unblock; if Pesky or others want to develop that idea they may, and the user talk is an appropriate place to document that. Penyulap was blocked for losing control and interacting poorly with others. I think claims of "not wanting to improve the encyclopedia" are handed out a bit too freely - a passion for a better encyclopedia is often what drives editors to lose control. At any rate, that is something this user continues to write about, designing awards for the good work of other editors, musing on new horizons for new recruits, and sharing ideas for quality flagging in place of deletion. Interspersed criticism is not unusual; I see no recent reason to rerestrict access. (And hello stalkzilla.) – SJ + 03:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for the response, but in my opinion you're much too generous. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mambo vipi, Sj? Kwangu poa kabisa. And the answer regarding "Kaswahili", no, I do not know him at all. Never heard of him before. But I was intrigued with his effort. Possibly we'll eventually get someone to establish the chapter!--_{Mwanaharakati}^(Longa) 14:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute in which you may have been involved. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we are requesting your participation to help find a resolution.

Guide for participants If you wish to open a DR/N filing, click the "Request dispute resolution" button below this guide or go to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/request for an easy to follow, step by step request form. What this noticeboard is: It is an early step to resolve content disputes after talk page discussions have stalled. If it's something we can't help you with, or is too complex to resolve here, our volunteers will point you in the right direction. What this noticeboard is not: It is not a place to deal with the behavior of other editors. We deal with disputes about article content, not disputes about user conduct. It is not a place to discuss disputes that are already under discussion at other dispute resolution forums. It is not a substitute for the talk pages: the dispute must have been discussed extensively on a talk page (not just through edit summaries) before resorting to DRN. It is not a court with judges or arbitrators that issue binding decisions: we focus on resolving disputes through consensus, compromise, and explanation of policy. Things to remember: Discussions should be civil, calm, concise, neutral, and objective. Comment only about the article's content, not the other editors. Participants who go off-topic or become uncivil may be asked to leave the discussion. Let the other editors know about the discussion by posting {{subst:drn-notice}} on their user talk page. Sign and date your posts with four tildes "~~~~". If you ever need any help, ask one of our volunteers, who will help you as best as they can. You may also wish to read through the FAQ page located here and on the DR/N talkpage. Please take a moment to review the simple guide and join the discussion. Thank you! Bus Routes Just thought you would like to know that there has been a lot more lists which have been nominated for deletion which can be viewed here. Wilbysuffolk (Talk to me!) 12:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Yes. They should really be transwikied - are there any active WV editors who would like to undertake that? – SJ + 21:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Voting in AfDs As an admin I think you'd be aware of WP:AADD. Many of your !votes are WP:JUSTAVOTE. LibStar (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] I was about to come and say the same thing. The point of an AfD discussion is to determine whether or not an article is notable; simply asserting that it is isn't too helpful when it comes to judging consensus. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 15:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] I also came here to mention this. There's no use in just asserting "keep" without any rational behind it. Ducknish (talk) 17:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hello, thanks for commenting. I will expand a bit on my rationales; feel free to ask about specific articles. Closers are of course welcome to ignore comments they consider too brief or not relevant. – SJ + 21:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution noticeboard Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 08:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Lithium burning possible violation There are users claiming that Lithium burning has copy write issues. More specifically it is claimed that it was copied from this page. The title of the page was Brown dwarfs and is essentially a copy of the wikipedia page of the same name but an older version(I have not yet had the time to find out which), and contains information that also first appeared in wikipedia in 2005 in an edit by you. Could you please tell us more if all the text from Brown dwarf were written originally. And help us potentially resolve this issue. Andrew Luo(too lazy to log in) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.115.67.62 (talk) 00:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Thanks Andrew. I guess login should be made 2 seconds instead of 20 seconds :) You're right, it's not a copyvio; resolved. – SJ + 13:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Merge Rules Per Wikipedia:Merging#Proposing a merger, you did not perform Step I in the talk sections of the following articles: Common chemicals and List of commonly available chemicals. It's important to create a section specific for the merge discussion, otherwise people won't respond to a merge request. Also, you need to modify the merge template usage to point to the new section that you create. Thanks. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 01:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Thanks. I see there was already a suggestion to merge a year ago; I'll go ahead and do it. The shorter article has no activity at present. – SJ + 13:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Re: SALT Happy to be of service. :) LFaraone 05:18, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply] Personal comments Your criticism of Doc James and me on the Education Board are insulting. Do you think the most constructive thing to do there was to publicly pick fault with how two editors are expressing their anger? I see nothing from the WMF wrt Joordens comments. I've been called a criminal and a liar. Is that acceptable to the WMF? I guess so. I see you've had the good sense to remove the first you made about James. I can see why the matter has wound you up. But the level of drama in the discussion doesn't seem to be helping matters, nor making you feel better. Hence my agreement with ToaT. James and I are friends; it is not the first time I have teased him about his energetic interaction with those who frustrate him; but it occurred to me that others reading that page wouldn't have context. I don't doubt there is "unrealized potential" in the education programme and wrt psychology articles, but that's the one comment you wished to make about this assignment? That somehow you are sad that it hasn't realized its potential? I'm not sure why you are interested in the education project... I am interested because I think contributing to a repository of human knowledge is a natural part of higher education. So yes, I am sad whenever a teacher, passionate about the same idea, fails to pull it off successfully. I'm here to help build an encyclopaedia of free original content as part of an online collaborative community. Joordens is here primarily to set an exercise for his megaclass that doesn't require human expert marking (see precedent with peerScholar), and secondarily to perform a huge experiment on Wikipedia that he and his PhD student can write up in the academic journals. If Joordens was giving any time/priority towards the "build an encyclopaedia" or "collaborative community" or "original content" bit, then he'd be going about things quite differently. There are successful classes in the education program. They go about it quite differently to this one. By his own admission, he thought it was fine to exploit what he saw as a huge resource that would correct his student's mistakes, and this (edit retention) could be used to mark the students. But it turned out the resource wasn't huge and wasn't so keen to be an unpaid classroom assistant. He doesn't realise his assignment is guaranteed to produce plagiarism and his training to prepare these students is woefully inadequate. Part of why he doesn't realise is that his means of assessing the students is fundamentally flawed. Why should he listen to some Wikipedian saying it is fundamentally flawed, when there several scientific papers built upon the concept of edit-retention=quality (see elsewhere on Education Noticeboard for comment on the most recent). These papers are published by those academically involved in the education program. We pointed this out to him in 2011 but he regards us as amateurs and our data as flawed. You should see the language he used to dismiss us. There's just way too much arrogance there. Combine this with the "oh shit" consequences of facing up to what he's done and how misguided his research metrics are. There are strong motivations on him ignoring us and carrying on. Otherwise, what assignment is he going to give his megaclass next semester? And what is his PhD student going to do with the worthless data they've collected. I keep asking what anyone is going to do about the 900 articles his class edited this spring? Is anyone going to remove the plagiarism. Or is that just fine. Colin°Talk 10:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] The "data" Joordens and his PhD are collecting wrt edit quality is utterly worthless. The analogy I've given elsewhere is that it is like someone studying two skin creams for eczema, and measuring how good they are by counting how many patients die of toxic effects. Measuring reverts (or bot tags, even) is no measure of quality at all. But it is sure an easy measure to make if you have a class of 1900 and have never had any intention of actually reviewing the edits yourself or employing someone to do so. Your comments at the education noticeboard make me seriously question the point of continuing to edit here. Colin°Talk 07:49, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] I know what you mean about those metrics. I suspect there is nothing wrong with their raw data -- data is just data -- it is the analysis that is wanting. You might discuss metrics with him - suggesting better metrics and analysis will have more of an impact than attacking his intentions. A related aside: why do you say your 2011 report was dismissed by some within the ed. program? – SJ + 10:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Well of course data is neutral but still has a worth. They've collected the wrong kind of data. I don't think they want to know that 2-years into their research, it is all to waste. One could do a professional analysis of the student edits made by his classes since 2011 but would it tell you anything different from what we've discovered? Negative results tend not to get published. I doubt very much that "Disasters with an unprepared and unsupervised megaclass" is the sort of paper Joordens wants on his CV. this. Only now its 1900 students and still WMF aren't interested in doing anything about it. Colin°Talk 10:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] The key phrase in that answer is "we couldn't". That doesn't read like a dismissal of your report. – SJ + Lurker/stalker here. Indeed, and the response of the Education Program was officially to wash their hands of the whole thing. (As indeed the WMF is doing with the US/Canada program in general.) To be fair, it seems that Philippe took the situation seriously, enough to talk to Joordens in person. And that has had some effect, if belatedly. As I've said before, we need people such as Joordens inside pissing out rather than vice versa. For me, that's the only problem with showing your anger: it may contribute to the feeling that the way to do these things is to go "under the radar." But as we know, only worse things happen as a result. Personally (as I've also been saying, until I feel blue in the face) I think we need also to look at the big picture. There's pressure within academia to use online resources and technological fixes to increase faculty productivity and student revenue while reducing fixed costs and overheads. (More recently, the way in which we're supposed to go is towards MOOCs: Massive Online Open Courses.) Imagine: it's crazy that there even are 1700-student courses at all. No wonder Joordens is trying to get something out of it by a) offloading some small (to be fair, really rather small) part of the course evaluation to Wikipedia; and b) making this the focus of his research by producing articles celebrating his use of Wikipedia in the classroom. So there are structural conditions affecting academia that tend towards a negative impact on Wikipedia. Again, my feeling is that we need to make common cause. Wikipedia and academia are (despite appearances) in this together. Addressing or at least acknowledging the broader pressures on the utopian project of free access to knowledge is vital. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 12:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hello Jbmurray, nice to see you stalking here. I agree that we need to make common cause. Not only do issues of scale and pressure in academia affect Wikipedia, both communities are experimenting with variations on individual empowerment: including peer writing, review, and teaching. Many courses are taking a similar approach to the development of their class materials. – SJ + 16:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] I certainly won't take the blame for him going under the radar. Other people encouraged him and other people negotiated with him and asked him to stop with the megaclass. Other people continue, it seems, to meet and encourage him. His main problem with transparency and openness seems to be that Wikipedians, when they analyse his class's edits, find they are dreadful. If we hadn't done that analysis, would the idea of a megaclass on Wikipedia have spread to other institutions? Perhaps his "add a random factoid to Wikipedia" assignment would have spread also? Or maybe his "first year undergrads can improve Wikipedia with little training and no supervision" idea would be spreading too? This is someone who has a big problem with being told news he doesn't want to hear. His response is one big "fuck you I'm doing it anyway and my way". WMF should have a response to that too. But all I see here is more encouraging "potential and positive energy" lines and not enough "how dare you". Joordens' and academia's problems with class size are their problems. This is an encyclopaedia. Some folk seem to have forgotten that. Colin°Talk 14:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] No, I don't want to blame you for his going "under the radar," which is a metaphor (and it's Joordens's) that I've always felt is more than a little disconcerting: it does rather suggest that he regards his projects more in terms of invasion than (as he now tells us) immigration. But I do want to ensure that neither he nor anyone else takes that tack again. Nor do I particularly want to encourage "potential and positive energy." I talked of people pissing out rather than in.  :) And in the end, though it would be great if I were wrong, I honestly don't see how a Wikipedia assignment could ever work in a class such as the one he's teaching. But if it is going to work--or if everyone is going to agree that it's impossible--then this will only happen if there's mutual cooperation. (I'd say also it'll only work if it isn't unleashed en masse on the encyclopedia: there's a point to doing things on a small scale. But that's another matter.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] I went looking for the person who wrote (wrt the 2011 class) "I think it is great that this class attempted such a project, and that they are planning to repeat it with improvements." And was kinda disappointed to discover who. Better comments came from Mike Christie: "I'm very pessimistic about the chances of success with such a large class. To be honest, I don't think the experiment should be repeated; instead we should focus on classes where there is some expectation of engagement with the professor online, and where the number of students won't overwhelm the limited number of helpers. " It took Joordens till April 2013 to realise the "limited number of helpers" bit. My biggest issue with your comments at the noticeboard now (and your past comment) is their defensiveness and their "optimism in face of all evidence" stance. The WMF should be angry about this large-scale abuse of Wikipedia and its volunteers, and the fact that around the 22nd March hundreds of our psychology articles got a little bit worse and shortly afterwards one of our most valued experts had to go on wikibreak. Instead, I start my week being told "Calm down, dear". Why not consider why people are angry? People get frustrated when they see nothing being done about a problem, and they get very annoyed when those causing the problem being treated better than those reporting it. Colin°Talk 11:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Colin, from my perspective it's not that you're wrong to be angry, especially after the accusation Woodsnake made against you. It's that your anger and his resistance seem to be feeding each other, and as a result the more you express your anger, the more he defiantly digs down in his trench, shakes his head, and writes off everything we're trying to get through to him because he appears to feel that issues presented angrily don't merit consideration. A bad belief, from my perspective, but we kind of have to work within the constraints we're stuck with. SJ has approached this poorly with you and Doc James, but I suspect what he was trying to get across was basically something I agree with: your current strategy (angry words) isn't working to get you what you want (less disruption from his classes, and/or understanding from Woodsnake), so if you're able, you should try a different strategy, be it more moderated language or just backing away from the conversation for a while. It's too easy for the conversation as it's currently going to be derailed either by us talking about your anger or by Woodsnake writing you off more and more aggressively. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Thanks, Fluffernutter. You put this much better than I did. And you are right, I did not approach the situation smoothly. I've left thoughts on how to improve understanding and address current disruption on the noticeboard. – SJ + 18:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] File:LogoGutza22Jul2003.jpg listed for deletion A file that you uploaded or altered, File:LogoGutza22Jul2003.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Talkback on Jack of Oz's page Hello, Sj. You have new messages at JackofOz's talk page. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template. wik-wik-wikify I think a tiny old-school piece of me just died when I discovered this. A clear case for our old fogeys league, imho. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:55, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Yes... – SJ + 02:26, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Please comment on Talk:Suicide Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Suicide. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 17:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Fixing citation Hello Sj, on the 25th of February 2005 at 11:34 hours you edited Brown dwarf to add [Kulkarni] as a citation. Can you direct me to the proper work to cite so that I can fix the citation? - Fartherred (talk) 02:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hi FR, thanks for catching that. At the time the Kulkarni link was in the "History" section at the end of the article (which didn't have modern-style cites). The author's self-hosted paper has been taken down, but I added a cite to a more appropriate archival copy. – SJ + 04:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Thanks. - Fartherred (talk) 04:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Genre sub-cats do not need to be in parent People in Category:American mystery writers or Category:19th-century American novelists should not be in the parent category Category:American novelsits.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply] Please take a look Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today - A prototype for category intersection, that I tested with Nigerian novelists. It uses the catscan tool. My thought is, we could easily implement this, starting with gendered/ethnic/sexuality/religion cats of bios. Create a cat header template, clean up the output of the tool, make it look a bit more friendly, and then remove all of the gendered/ethnic/etc subcats and just use static cat intersections at the top for any key intersections people want. Best part is, regular editors can do this today, while waiting for wikidata to spin up - and we can maintain most of the existing category tree. Help/support requested. And it would show that we're responsive. Thanks! --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:37, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] WikiCup 2013 April newsletter We are a week into Round 3, but it is off to a flying start, with Sven Manguard (submissions) claiming for the high-importance Portal:Sports and Portal:Geography (which are the first portals ever awarded bonus points in the WikiCup) and Cwmhiraeth (submissions) claiming for a did you know of sea, the highest scoring individual did you know article ever submitted for the WikiCup. Round 2 saw very impressive scores at close; first place Casliber (submissions) and second place Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) both scored over 1000 points; a feat not seen in Round 2 since 2010. This, in part, has been made possible by the change in the bonus points rules, but is also testament to the quality of the competition this year. Pool C and Pool G were most competitive, with three quarters of participants making it to Round 3, while Pool D was the least, with only the top two scorers making it through. The lowest qualifying score was 123, significantly higher than last year's 65, 2011's 41 or even 2010's 100. The next issue of The Signpost is due to include a brief update on the current WikiCup, comparing it to previous years' competitions. This may be of interest to current WikiCup followers, and may help bring some more new faces into the community. We would also like to note that this round includes an extra competitor to the 32 advertised, who has been added to a random pool. This extra inclusion seems to have been the fairest way to deal with a small mistake made before the beginning of this round, but should not affect the competition in a large way. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact one of the judges. A rules clarification: content promoted between rounds can be claimed in the round after the break, but not the round before. The case in point is content promoted on 29/30 April, which may be claimed in this round. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 16:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Role of JW and BoT on decisions per Wikipedia:PNSD Hello SJ, nice to see you again. A Chinese version of Wikipedia:PNSD notes that BoT as the owner of Wikipedia and Mr. Wales as the "benevolent dictator" shall force directives regardless of conclusions from questionnaire, voting, or consensus. Is it true ? Shall you delineate more about PNSD ? According to the template on that page, PNSD in Chinese Wikipedia has not reached a consensus for its implementation so it is not a guideline per se. -- Ktsquare (talk) 03:52, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hello KT, great to hear from you. :) This is not entirely true. The Board does not own Wikipedia communities, nor does it set policies (except where the Board sets very high-level policies, like the Terms of Use, for all wiki-projects - and that is generally done after building community consensus). If you are running a discussion whose outcome requires new software, then after the community decision, the community may need to write the necessary code. And code changes that require someone to update MediaWiki core are of course much harder to implement: that requires WMF staff approval. Sometimes WMF staff may take an action required by law, regardless of community consensus - cf. WP:OFFICE. But in those cases neither the BoT nor Jimbo are directly involved. On the English Wikipedia, Jimbo retains additional fiat power, with the trust of the community -- but this does not carry over to all projects. Warmly, – SJ + 14:48, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] FWIW, that particular version notes that in same "special examples" the BoT or JW will force directives under "some special circumstances" -- Cybercavalier (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Yes, I see that quote. The part about JW should be limited to en:wp. The part about the BoT is not precise (and could be interpreted wrongly). It should say the WMF as maintainer of the sites may enforce directives. (It does say "developers" may enforce them... but this can also happen through the Legal & Community Advocacy department). While the BoT can approve global policy, and can direct the WMF to implement new policy, there are many other ways the WMF could decide to implement a change. It is the WMF overall, not the BoT (which is part of the WMF), which maintains the sites. – SJ + 18:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC) (updated 05:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC))[reply] That particular page was presented in Chinese language so I must guess you understand the language. -- Ktsquare (talk) 04:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Just enough to parse 合适的情况下 :) – SJ + 05:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Please comment on Talk:Dodge City, Kansas Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Dodge City, Kansas. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Proposed deletion of Tt30 The article Tt30 has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern: The Club of Rome exists. This tt30 entity is not referenced by the Club of Rome website. Links to tt30 return error messages or 404 page not found. The article has no sources. While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons. You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page. Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. FeralOink (talk) 13:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Making revision status visible SJ, thanks for your reply over on Meta. You mentioned "better ways to show how trusted a version of an article is, such as: when the last edit was made, how many different major contributors an article has, whether an article has unreviewed flagged revs, how active the talk page is." The authors of this piece at literary magazine talkingwriting.com ("What Should We Do About Wikipedia?", by Martha Nichols and Lorraine Berry) expressed a somewhat similar desire, namely that the article history and contributors should not be hidden behind a History link most people won't click. In most cases it's obviously impossible to list the entire history on the article page, but even having just the last five edits visible on the article page could have multiple benefits: readers could see how old the version is they're reading, and figure out whether it is a stable version or whether there is currently an edit war going on. An additional benefit is that the last few edits would get more scrutiny than they do now: you might get the odd reader who takes an interest in what has recently changed in the article, and thus more eyes on the edit. If you haven't seen it, the talkingwriting piece is a good read, as is the discussion underneath – for once, a civil and cogent discussion in the Comments section of a web article. Regards. Andreas JN466 03:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] It is a fine piece indeed. This sort of feature is something we need, and that other online texts should have as well. I spent part of an evening in the Boston Globe offices, and it was amazing to see how much their workflow looks like that of a small-group of wiki editors. Scripts parsing through feeds of new changes and new articles, reputation tagging for how likely a change was to be reliable, decisions about when to merge or split articles, citation-needed markers. They had a few tools that we don't, but still lacked a clean way to visualize how active a changing article was or where the recent changes came from. – SJ + 02:17, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Interesting. Glad you had the time to take a look. Andreas JN466 13:14, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Tech news: 2013-23 MfD nomination of Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board/USNCOTW during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Kumioko (talk) 01:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Cocktails needing pictures Here's the current list. One of the pictures had been taking so I removed the BLT Cocktail, but the rest still need pictures. User:Faolin42/ReqPhoto11 Faolin42 (talk) 01:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Thank you! I'm going out to a pub for the OKFN meetup tonight, we'll see if one of the bartenders is interested... – SJ + 16:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hunting for embedded outlines I'm looking for outlines embedded in articles. I've run across a number of these over the years. One example is the Outline of fencing, which used to be part of the fencing article. If you know about or spot any structured general topics lists in articles, please let me know (on my talk page). Another thing you might find are articles that are comprised mostly of lists (without "Outline of" or "List of" being in the article's title). If you come across any of these, please report them to me on my talk page. I'd sure like to take a look at them. Happy hunting. I look forward to "hearing" from you (on my talk page). Sincerely, The Transhumanist 07:40, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hello Transhumanist! There are definitely some of these gems hidden in articles. I wish there were an easier way to search all articles for "Outline" in a section heading. For instance: Foundationalism. I think this can best be done by running a script across a dump. – SJ + P.S.: Where do we place votes for WMF? You can vote via Special:SecurePoll. Warmly, – SJ + 16:30, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply] Tech news: 2013-24 20:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC) Tech News: 2013-25