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File:TVtropolis 2011.png

Would you please restore this file and add the {{KeepLocal}} tag to it? Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 23:39, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done — foxj 09:53, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

The Tea Leaf - Issue Five

Stop by for a tasty glass of wiki-iced tea at the Teahouse, today!

Hi! Welcome to the fifth edition of The Tea Leaf, the official newsletter of the Teahouse!

  • Guest activity increased in July. Questions are up from an average of 36 per week in June to 43 per week in July, and guest profile creation has also increased. This is likely a result of the automatic invite experiments we started near the end of month, which seeks to lessen the burden on hosts and other volunteer who manually invite editors. During the last week of July, questions doubled in the Teahouse! (But don't let that deter you from inviting editors to the Teahouse, please, there are still lots of new editors who haven't found Teahouse yet.)
  • More Teahouse hosts than ever. We had 12 new hosts sign up to participate at the Teahouse! We now have 35 hosts volunteering at the Teahouse. Feel free to stop by and see them all here.
  • Phase two update: Host sprint. In August, the Teahouse team plans to improve the host experience by developing a simpler new-host creation process, a better way of surfacing active hosts, and a host lounge renovation. Take a look at the plan and weigh in here.
  • New Teahouse guest barnstar is awarded to first recipient: Charlie Inks. Using the Teahouse barnstar designed by Heatherawalls, hosts hajatvrc and Ryan Vesey created the new Teahouse Guest Barnstar. The first recipient is Charlie Inks, for her boldness in asking questions at the Teahouse. Check out the award in action here.
  • Teahouse was a hot topic at Wikimania! The Teahouse was a hot topic at Wikimania this past month, where editor retention and interface design was heavily discussed. Sarah and Jonathan presented the Teahouse during the Wikimedia Fellowships panel. Slides can be viewed here. A lunch was also held at Wikimania for Teahouse hosts.

As always, thanks for supporting the Teahouse project! Stop by and visit us today!

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here. SarahStierch (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Notification about unblock request

Hi Foxj, seeing you posted on Kmarinas86's talkpage regarding his block, I thought it would be prudent to let you know about WP:AN#Unblock request from Kmarinas86. Cheers, Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:52, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 August 2012

At this year's Wikimania, I [Brandon Harris] gave a talk entitled The Athena Project: Wikipedia in 2015. The talk broadly outlined several ideas the foundation is exploring for planned features, user interface changes, and workflow improvements. We expect that many of these changes will be welcomed, while others will be controversial. During the question-and-answer period, I was asked whether people should think of Athena as a skin, a project, or something else. I responded, "You should think of Athena as a kick in the head" – because that's exactly what it's supposed to be: a radical and bold re-examination of some of our sacred cows when it comes to the interface.
On August 1, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) portal was launched on Meta. The FDC will implement the Wikimedia movement's new grant-orientated finance structure in accordance with the WMF board's recent resolutions. As a volunteer committee, the FDC will make recommendations to the WMF board on a $11.4 million budget for 2012–13.
Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin proposed a motion for a procedure on the alteration of an editor's previous username(s) in arbitration decisions to reflect their name change(s). ... The Devil's Advocate initiated an amendment request for the controversial Race and intelligence case.
This week the Signpost interviews Casliber, an editor who has written or contributed significantly to a startling 69 featured articles. We learn what makes him tick, why he edits, and why he can write on everything from vampires to dinosaurs, birds to plants. He also gives some advice to budding featured article writers.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for July 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). ... At least one fibre-optic cable was damaged at the WMF's Tampa site on August 6, leading to a sharp downwards spike in traffic lasting over an hour and almost three hours of disruption for readers around the globe.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Martial Arts. Since April 2004, the project has been the hub for discussion and improvement of martial arts articles, including all disciplines and national origins. The project maintains a variety of conventions for handling the names and descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Sikh, Filipino, Okinawan, and hybrid martial arts. WikiProject Martial Arts has spawned or absorbed several subprojects focusing on boxing, kickboxing, sumo, and mixed martial arts.

Court Bauer

Can you please explain why you basically deleted this article by doing a redirect? --NeilN talk to me 20:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirecting an article is not even close to deleting it. Looking over the article, the subject seemed only marginally (if that) notable, and redirecting to the only really notable thing the person has done is perfectly acceptable. Foxj hasn't done anything here other than being bold in dealing with a BLP issue like this. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
I think you're looking for a response here so I'll reply here. :) This was a rather complex situation; essentially, the subject emailed us about potential BLP violations within the article. Noticing that Bauer doesn't seem to be independently notable outside of MLW, and that the article looked to be a bit of a battleground, it seemed that the ideal solution here would be to redirect it to MLW's article itself, which is much more notable. Of course, this is subject to review, as with any other admin action, but I think I did the right thing here. — foxj 20:58, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
The issue I have was the edit summary referred to a OTRS ticket number instead of providing an explanation regular editors could view. I'm certainly not going to revert an OTRS action which I (and most editors I would think) view differently from an admin action. If OTRS says it needs to go, it's gone. Admin redirects, as you say, are treated as regular edits and are subject to WP:BRD. --NeilN talk to me 02:38, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, that was my mistake. Linking exclusively to the OTRS ticket is definitely not the thing to do in situations like this, and I apologise for that. Thanks for understanding though, I appreciate it. — foxj 10:39, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Fox. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge.
Message added 23:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SarahStierch (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Rfc on Youreallycan/Off2riorob

You may be interested in commenting on this this RfC. A prior decision you made to unblock this editor has been mentioned.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not, but thanks. — foxj 13:17, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Eurovision: Recent changes

Hello,

Please note that there have been some changes to operations surrounding Eurovision articles, these being that:

  • Template names have now been modernised and/or megred into super-templates, for example Countries in the Eurovision Song Contest has now been merged into Template:Eurovision Song Contest making it even easier to find everything under one template. If you are planning to create a new template, please keep the standardised titles in mind. Other templates have been modernised and a full list of them can be found here.
  • The Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest articles have now been standardised to keep a consitancy throughout the project and to the genral reader too. Skeleton article drafts can be found for Eurovision Song Contest by Year and Junior Eurovision Song Contest by Year.

If you have any questions, please ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Eurovision.

You are receiving this message since you are listed as a member of WikiProject Eurovision. If you are no longer interested in contributing to Eurovision articles, please remove your username from this page.

Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 14:33, 12 August 2012 (UTC) on behalf of Project Eurovision

Can it help?

Regarding your comment, are you put a threat? If blocking for longer time can settle the problems, then you can proceed, but it seems the final loser will be article itself. I see somebody does better job to advice rather than sysoping. --Aleenf1 14:13, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 August 2012

In a certain way, writing Wikipedia is the same everywhere, in every language or culture. You have to stick to the facts, aiming for the most objective way of describing them, including everything relevant and leaving out all the everyday trivia that is not really necessary to understand the context. You have to use critical thinking, trying to be independent of your own preferences and biases. To some effect, that's all there is to it. Naturally, Wikipedians have their biases, some of which can never be cured. Most Wikipedians tend to like encyclopedias; but millions of people in the world don't share that bias, and we represent them rather poorly. I'm also quite sure that an overwhelming majority of Wikipedia co-authors are literate. Again, that's not true for everyone in this world. Yet we have other, less noticeable but barely less fundamental biases.
The Bangla language, also known as Bengali, is spoken by some 200 million people in Bangladesh and India. The Bangla Wikipedia has a very small active community of about ten to fifteen very active editors, with another 35–40 as less active editors. The project faces particular challenges in being a small Wikipedia, and Dhaka-based WMF community fellow User:Tanvir Rahman is working to understand these challenges and to develop strategies that can improve small wikis that have strong potential to expand their editing communities.
A request for arbitration was filed late last week, ending the three-week long absence of pending cases.
Six featured articles were promoted this week, including Business US Highway 41, which was a state trunkline highway that served as a business loop in Marquette in the US state of Michigan.
Three weeks into a month-long evaluation of code review tool Gerrit, a serious alternative has finally gained traction in the review process: Facebook-developed but now independently operated Phabricator and its sister command-line tool Arcanist.
This week, we interviewed the lively bunch at WikiProject Dispute Resolution. Started in November 2011 to study and discuss improvements to Wikipedia's resources for resolving disputes between editors, the young project has supplemented dispute resolution efforts currently handled at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, Mediation Committee, and other venues. Over 40 editors have signed up to provide feedback, a variety of ideas have been proposed, and a manual for dispute resolution has been created.
Current proposals and requests for comments include a competition to redesign the main page ...

An AFD you participated in has been started again

List of UK Singles Chart Christmas number twos has been renominated by the same nominator 11 days after it closed as "no consensus". I'm contacting everyone who participated in the last AFD, who hasn't found their way there already. Dream Focus 21:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Please read this. — foxj 21:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Reporting User

I am here to report User:Sir Wrestler because he is deleting content on pages and starting edit wars on diffent pages, I told him the if I keeps do that I would report him. --SCWA Ladies Champion (talk) 20:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

While I'm flattered you've come to me for this I'm not exactly where you want to be reporting this. I'd instead suggest noting this on the edit warring noticeboard for a third opinion. — foxj (in the wild) 09:50, 17 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.

GOCE news and September drive invitation

Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors

The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in its events:

  • The August 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is currently in the submissions stage. Submit your best August copy edit there before the end of the month. Submissions end, and discussion and voting begin, on September 1 at 00:00 (UTC).
  • September 2012 Backlog elimination drive is a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy edit backlog. The drive begins on September 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and ends on September 30 at 23:59 (UTC). Our goals are to copy edit the articles tagged longest ago and to complete all requests placed before the end of August. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who copy edits at least one article, and special awards will be given to the top six in the following categories: "Number of articles", "Number of words", "Number of articles of over 5,000 words", "Number of articles tagged longest ago", and "Longest article". This drive features a much easier signup process. We hope to see you there! – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest.
>>> Sign up now <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 18:51, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Fox. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge.
Message added 06:20, 24 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SarahStierch (talk) 06:20, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:Eurovision Newsletter (September 2012)

This newsletter was delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 03:17, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't forget to make your new host profile!

Hi Foxj! Thanks for being a host at the Teahouse! We're working on the Host lounge renovations and we've created a new way for hosts to become hosts. Please take a few minutes and test it out here, by creating your new host profile. It's also a good excuse to update your image, quote, and information about yourself :) You can join in on the host discussion about the new feature here. See you at the Teahouse! SarahStierch (talk) 20:04, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I figured I'd already done this. Done it again anyway! — foxj 21:56, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Project Eurovision

Hi Fox,

So sorry to bother you at this moment in time. I would normally have asked fellow project member and admin CT Cooper (talk · contribs) but he is currently away in Turkey for a couple of weeks rest. A user Ruslanovich (talk · contribs) is constantly trying to force WP:ESC from removing a project banner of ABU Song Festivals 2012, despite the fact that 3 users have told him to cease his disruptive behaviour, and also ProjectCouncil stating the same. He has been informed that the article is of a similar genre as Eurovision, and that CT Cooper advised me to place it under WP:ESC. Ruslanovich is continuously accusing me of solely placing a project banner without consultation with the rest of the project and that the project members must !vote on each and every article before placing such banners on them. Would you be so kind as to wander over to the article's talk page (near the bottom) and provide any additional information. Much regards, Wesley Mouse 22:10, 27 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.
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