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Archive 1Archive 2

Notability of ...Make You Breathe

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For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. CobaltBlueTony 18:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:9612L1.jpg)

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If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. NotifyBot (talk) 15:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

April 2008

Hi, the recent edit you made to Guns in the Ghetto has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thanks. Sceptre (talk) 14:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi

SEE PP Burdett Victuallers (talk) 15:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image (Image:Image:GoodApollonovel.jpg)

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Redirect of Four Words To Choke Upon

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Four Words To Choke Upon, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Four Words To Choke Upon is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Four Words To Choke Upon, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 16:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling reference sections

Why did you revert a change which was justified by policy? Please read MOS:SCROLL, which specifically prohibits the use of overflowing divs to scroll reference sections. I've reverted this. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

List of fictional anti-heroes

Sorry about that. I never even saw your edits and thought I was doing a routine revert, so I'm not sure what happened. Thanks a lot for making the table, it looks much better. Cheers. --TM 20:33, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Your new template

Hey, thanks for creating a new template! Just so you know, there's a discussion here regarding the naming of the template. Thanks, Politizer talk/contribs 01:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Adeimantus of Collytus

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Orphaned non-free media (File:One.Way.Ticket The. Darkness Single.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:One.Way.Ticket The. Darkness Single.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

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Your signature

Seems to a load of wikitext being spewed out at the moment. Per WP:SIG, you'd be better off just substituting it once, then copying and pasting the result in as a raw signature. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 19:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I know. Was just experimenting a little before, I have changed it back yeasterday. The Ministry (talk) 20:09, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

FAC

Thank you for your comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Marriott School of Management/archive2. I have addressed your concern and would invite your further participation in this FAC. —Eustress talk 06:57, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarification

Re this question. What is "gross" about the picture. Which would you prefer and why? It may be too late to change now. Colin°Talk 19:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Cabinet of Ingvar Carlsson

Hello, just a note to say that First cabinet of Ingvar Carlsson was a very good addition. I addded the relevant category, interwiki link and project template. Keep up the good work, and don't be shy about adding categories and iw-links yourself to future articles! :-) Tomas e (talk) 13:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! The Ministry (talk) 23:03, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of The Great Debate (song)

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is The Great Debate (song). We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Great Debate (song). Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Image question

An image you uploaded back in October 2009 commons:File:Population density of Ireland map2002.svg to the commons does not provide a source of where the data actually came from. I am reviewing all the images in the Ireland article for a future GA nomination and wonder if you recall the source location. It says that it is "Based upon Republic of Ireland - 2002 Census results" but finding the exact source is difficult and where did the Northern Ireland information came from. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 06:06, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to be a pedant but the Irish census of 2002 does not appear to have any population density statistics. Did I miss them or did you create them from the census and some land mass data? If you did that would that not be synthesis? The Northern Ireland stats do have density figures but these don't coincide with the county boundaries. Can you please explain some more? I would like to keep this image in the Ireland article but as we are trying to get it to GA and possibly FA, such matters as questioned sources tend to be an issue. Thanks in advance. I am watching this page for a while so there is no need to drop me a {{talkback}} note. ww2censor (talk) 14:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Here is the original source, that I based the map on. [1]. That in turn were supposed to be based on the above two. I assumed it was right and never checked though. In hindsight I probably should have checked. Feel free to remove or change the map. The Ministry (talk) 19:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Brilliant. I will dig deeper with the source you provided as I like the image and would like to keep it in the article. Thanks again. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 19:58, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

thanks for your help with Johann von Klenau, which was promoted to FA yesterday. Auntieruth55 (talk) 19:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Great, congratulations on the FA! P. S. Burton (talk) 08:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

File:Map of Nueva Esparta.svg fixed

P. S., I fixed the File:Map of Nueva Esparta.svg map, and made a few upgrades along the way. Check out Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Map workshop#Nueva Esparta. Hope you like it, MapMaster (talk) 15:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Great, big thanks! P. S. Burton (talk) 19:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

History of citizenship in the United States

Unfortunately Tomwsulcer has decided to leave the project. FYI please see User talk:Tomwsulcer#Terrorism prevention strategies moved to user space. I had problems with this article, largely because Tomwsulcer was inexperienced and did not write in a NPOV style and had real problems with being unaware of a systemic bias in his writing. The article I moved was well over 150k, so all in all I could see no other quick solution. (See User talk:Tomwsulcer/Terrorism prevention strategies for my conversation on the article with Tomwsulcer)

Because more people have contributed to the article History of citizenship in the United States you might like to open up a discussion on its talk page of what to do with the article now that the principle author has left leaving so many problems behind. I would have thought that the subject is notable and drastic pruning may allow the article to remain. However if the consensus solution needs an administrator to carry out an action let me know. -- PBS (talk) 03:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Tomwsulcer also wrote Criticism of American foreign policy, which is even worse, so I've sent it to AfD. At least some of the "History of citizenship" article might be salvageable, although it seems to contain large swaths of WP:COATRACK stuff by making citizenship mean whatever you want it to mean. I recommend deleting most of the contents. I'm honestly considering nominating the entire article for deletion as well. Pcap ping 17:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Resource request

A bit late, but your request was filled.--droptone (talk) 16:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Resource request

Hi, I found your name listed in the resource exchange list. I've been working on the article about Tošo Dabac, a Croatian photographer whose photos were included in a few group exhibitions held in the United States in the 1930s and I was wondering whether you could try looking up if The New Yorker had published some exhibition review or any piece of text that might mention Dabac. I think some of these exhibitions must have been a notable enough event for The New Yorker to cover it, and I'm hoping some citation could be extracted if they did.

This is the list of exhibitions in the US which featured his works:

Also, it may be helpful to keep in mind that Croatia was at the time part of Yugoslavia, and if he is mentioned somewhere, they probably classified him as Yugoslav(ian). I know this is a long shot but I had to try it. Many thanks Timbouctou (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, sorry for my late answer. I have been looking in the New Yorker's archive, so far I haven't found anything, and I don't think if will. If you give me your e-mail address, I can send you my login code for the New Yorker and you can have a look for yourself. Cheers P. S. Burton (talk) 20:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry to hear that. Still, that login might come in handy for some other articles I'm currently working on so I'd be happy if you'd share it with me :-) My e-mail is timbouctou (at) gmail.com. Cheers and many thanks! Timbouctou (talk) 23:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I have no sent you the password via email. Cheers —P. S. Burton (talk) 18:15, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Pat O'Daniel and His Hillbilly Boys

You may be interested in some discussion I launched regarding the arbitrarty tacit deletion of the Radio show article of this name. here: talk:W. Lee O'Daniel here User_talk:Eusebeus and here Wikipedia:WikiProject_Radio K3vin (talk) 07:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

File:Falklands, Campaign, (Distances to bases) 1982.jpg

I think the map is great!, but it should have an arrow from Belice too, HMS Exeter as I recalled came from there --Jor70 (talk) 22:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Fanny Brate

Sorry to see your user page pic go, but it was determined that Fanny Brate's paintings aren't eligible for public domain until January 1 of next year. That's based on assuming that Sweden's copyright regulations apply to her paintings (she died in April 1940, +70 years, +end of year clause -> copyrighted until Dec 31, 2010 inclusive); if you know otherwise, please let us know! Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 16:04, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem. will just take it back in December :). P. S. Burton (talk) 18:17, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Sokratis Giolias

Hey, I won't revert back, but would you mind looking at the talk page for why the quote was emboldened? If you still feel compelled to have normal type-font, that's fine but just see my reasoning first, as a favor. Thanks Cwill151 (talk) 23:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

WOW, a reasonable editor on Wikipedia???... amazing. Thanks for your consideration and logical commentary and for what it's worth, I agree with you on both counts; it does establish a potentially dangerous precedent, and is not necessarily merited by the facts at hand. I'll revert it back now; it's been long enough, and again, I appreciate your understanding. Cheers! Cwill151 (talk) 16:17, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

A picture of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil

Hi, Burton, good night. I was wondering if you have any photoediting skills (or know someone who has). There is a picture of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil that I tried to color it (See [2]). However, my skills are close to... none and I was unable to make his beard and hair blond. And I believe his skin color is not close to how it truly was (See [3] or [4] or [5]. And I am going to nominate the article for featured status so wanted everything to look perfect. Is there any way you could help me out? Thank you very time, --Lecen (talk) 00:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Lecen, unfortunately I don't have the skills to do that either. I would recommend asking at Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop. They have helped me several times. Good luck with the FA. P. S. Burton (talk) 00:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Don't worry, you just've helped me a lot. I did not know that there was a group in Wikipedia who does that kind of thing. Thank once gain. Regards, --Lecen (talk) 00:45, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Burton, could you do what you did with those pictures in Pedro II of Brazil article with these [6] [7] [8] [9] and [10]? Thank you very much, --Lecen (talk) 20:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi, I think I might be able to fix it this upcoming weekend. P. S. Burton (talk) 14:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Louis-Marie Autissier
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted
Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Louis-Marie Autissier, Self-portrait edit.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 23:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Yorkshire captaincy affair

Are you still planning on reviewing the article? It is a little lonely at the moment! Thanks for you work on the images. --Sarastro1 (talk) 19:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

HI, I have commented on the FAC now. P. S. Burton (talk) 19:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Review request

Hi P. S. Burton, you reviewed George Orwell bibliography several months ago when it came to featured list candidates. The list has been re-submitted at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/George Orwell bibliography/archive2; if you have the time, would you mind taking a second look? Thanks in advance, Dabomb87 (talk) 02:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Nomenclature

Am I mistaken, or wasn't P. S. Burton one of the names George Orwell used while tramping around?

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 18:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that's were I got it from. See George Orwell#Teaching :).

...Down and Out in Paris and London which he wished to publish under an assumed name. In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932) he left the choice of pseudonym to him and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms P. S. Burton (a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, and H. Lewis Allways.[29] He finally adopted the nom de plume George Orwell because, as he told Eleanor Jacques, "It is a good round English name."

Best wishes to you as well. P. S. Burton (talk) 18:07, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I kinda thought I knew that, but was quite expecting to be mistaken. He is my favourite author. I don't edit much on that article because it turns into a minefield of useless information every time a student has to read Nineteen eighty four or Animal Farm. Si Trew (talk) 18:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Weather the storm

Please keep your Arnolfini Portrait nomination open. So what some people shot down another other nomination. Gut Monk (talk) 22:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Monk. I withdrew the nomination, because I think we should be raising our standards not lowering them. In hindsight I actually think my nomination was a little hastened, since I knew that the file came from the Yorck Project, which is usually not very good. Cheers, and best wishes. P. S. Burton (talk) 16:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

inre Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fatal Vacation

I might ask that you revist the article to note that your concern with the IMDB copyvio has been addressed.... and that what began as THIS unsourced stub is now a somehat better article. Thanks, Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 21:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Lager Nordhausen
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted
Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Corpses in the courtyard of Nordhausen concentration camp.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Not sure

What are your thoughts? Featured_picture_candidates/Portrait_of_Maurice_of_Nassau? Gut Monk (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted
Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Holbein-ambassadors.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. I'ḏ♥One 21:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/The Arnolfini Portrait
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted
Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 23:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

New DNB WikiProject

For information: I have set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography, since the time has certainly come when there should be a place for collective discussion of the DNB adaptation effort. Please come and participate. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:45, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

MOS and flags

I see you are systematically removing flags from all the tennis infoboxes citing wiki MOS. I read it and don't see where it is required that the flags be removed. Maybe I missed the exact wording but it seemed that birth/death flags was out but the flag the player played under seemed appropriate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, my interpreted of "As with other biographical articles, flags are discouraged in sportspeople's individual infoboxes."[11] as meaning that the flag doesn't belong in the infobox. Cheers P. S. Burton (talk) 18:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
If the Tennis project wants to include flags, I won't oppose. As long as sub-national flags isn't being used. And they are not used to indicate date/birth/residence/, but only nationality.
Yes, discouraged because like most general biographies wiki doesn't want the flag to represent where a person was born or lives. But in tennis you also represent a nation and sometimes a national team or squad as in Davis Cup/Fed Cup. The very next sentence in your link takes care of that aspect and why it is not a bad idea to leave it in the tennis infoboxes. All the Major tournaments and the Olympics require and list your country in their records. MOS does not ban it's use regardless. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:19, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I think I might have misread the MOS. P. S. Burton (talk) 19:23, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't say misread... it is certainly ambiguous. Proper flags have been an issue here for years. Retired player Alex Olmeda's flag will be USA since that is what he played under in all the major events. He was from, and was a citizen of Peru, but entered under USA and is listed in Wimbledon's and Davis Cup records as USA. As you said, MOS is clear that the infobox is not for flag use of where a person is from... the rest is a bit sketchy to be sure. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I have to agree because tennis is an olympic sport and they represent national sporting bodies their like Nadal did Spain in 2008 and Federer and Wawrinka in doubles for Switzerland. Furthermore, their is Davis Cup competition that Roddick loves and competes for the United States and they won it in 2007, and Fed Cup for the women which is a international sporting competition in tennis, not even to mention the Hopman Cup! I think flags are necessary to the intrinsic nature of the articles, which me an Fyunck agree on this matter! I love your enthusiastic editing of tennis related articles!69.137.121.17 (talk) 23:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

September 2010

Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Peter Karlsen (talk) 02:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


GA request

Please see Talk:Dictator novel. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


POTD notification

POTD

Hello!

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte, Prince de Ponte-Corvo, roi de Suède, Maréchal de France (1763-1844).jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on October 20, 2010. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2010-10-20. howcheng {chat} 21:37, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

MOS on block quotes

Hi, concerning this edit on Niccolò Machiavelli, I am not sure I understand what the purpose was. I have been using the {{quotation}} template which is one of the recommended methods mentioned at the relevant section of MOS? To quote:- "Block quotations can be enclosed between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags; or use {{quotation}} or {{quote}}." My reasoning for preferring this format, with its framing around the block, is to avoid confusion about where the block quotes are especially in areas where there are images - and of course for consistency. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Mea culpa. I was just following the MoS from memory, but apparently {{quotation}} is allowed as well. I guess it all boils don't to a matter of personal taste then. I think my changes my the article flow better instead of making it "blocky". Especially when there are so many long quotations. If you feel strongly about using {{quotation}} instead, I won't argue. Cheers. P. S. Burton (talk) 10:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
No, don't feel strongly. Second opinions welcome. If you think it looks better fine by me also, but I wanted to be sure about my understanding. I'll consider it as something we can change if necessary. Thanks for your reply.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:One.Way.Ticket.to.Hell...And.Back The.Darkness.back-front.jpg

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:One.Way.Ticket.to.Hell...And.Back The.Darkness.back-front.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk 06:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Poltava, by Martens

The canvas hangs in the picture gallery of the Catherine Palace. A better illustration is here. Another Martens' painting on the subject is exhibited in Poltava. --Ghirla-трёп- 13:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! P. S. Burton (talk) 14:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


Merging

Hi, I want to merge this article. Black Buddhist Check the talk page please and give your opinion Zaza8675 (talk) 08:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

French Protectorate of Tunisia

The planned augmentation of the History of French era Tunisia has not been accomplished, but remains high priority. Unfortunately, my scheduled October trip to Tunisia resulted in a massive information intake that I have not, so far, fully understood. This has temporarilly interfered with my continuation of the article. Of course, I regret having to extend the date; I expect the article to be substantially complete during December. Elfelix (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Roger Waters FAC

We could use your input at the Roger Waters FAC. — GabeMc (talk) 04:16, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Angola ethnic map is completed

And the link is here:

Jon C (talk) 18:35, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Clint Eastwood

I have no understanding of why you don't feel "Clint" should be included in the Clint Eastwood WP:LEAD. The only reason to remove it, IMO, is if you think there should be a WP:RM to Clinton Eastwood.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 19:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tony. For my reasoning please see Talk:Ed Miliband#Interrupting his name to insert the shorter version of it is ugly and contrived. Other examples includes Tony Blair and Max Weber. P. S. Burton (talk) 20:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
See WP:FAs Jake Gyllenhaal and Brad Pitt. Also see Bill Clinton (one of the four examples at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Names). Note no clarification at WP:MOSBEGIN or WP:COMMONNAME. I understand the debate you pointed me to, but it does not seem to be the prevailing sentiment at WP:FA or WP:MOS.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 20:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

War of the Triple Alliance

Hi, Burton. You seem to enjoy the War of the Triple Alliance article. Out of curiosity, why? Regards, --Lecen (talk) 19:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I sort of stumbled upon it. Once from one of your very interesting Brazilian FACs, and once from here Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Photography workshop. P. S. Burton (talk) 19:58, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: Requesting an image of Studs Terkel

Hey. Essentially, what you need to get hold of is an email from the rights holder or a representative of the rights holder, stating that they are the rights holder and how if it's not obvious, and selecting the license under which license they want the image released. Obviously, not everyone is going to be willing to release- news agencies and the like which make a living out of their photographs will not be keen. In biographies, the subject themselves or agencies representing the subject will often be willing to release a picture (though they don't always own the ones they try to give us) but that's not much help in this case. For the Chicago Museum pictures, the real question is who they belong to, as it's not immediately obvious that the rights belong to the museum, especially for the older images. It's certainly worth a bash though- find an appropriate email address, and send one off! I've found it's very helpful to be fairly formal (although, of course, they will probably reply somewhat less formally) and mention that you're a Wikipedia editor. There is this and this page which give advice, but I've not read them. Hitting people with a wall of legalese is very off-putting; I typically just mention Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 and point them to this page. Hope these thoughts have been helpful. J Milburn (talk) 10:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Your Graphic Lab request

Hi. I completed your request here. Let me know if it's good enough. I can convert the text to make it thumb better, if you'd like. Makeemlighter (talk) 09:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and did the conversion. I figured 10 seconds was worth it :P The SVG version with good-looking text is now in the article. Let me know if you have any questions, need any fixes, etc. Best, Makeemlighter (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Looks very good. Thank you :) P. S. Burton (talk) 09:26, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: Good article/recent

It seems to be a GA now...? Maybe it was just your cache. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 22:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

AFAICT, the British Pakistanis call was a good one. Patna wasn't, from a human point of view, but the bot assumed that Boolyme knew what s/he was doing here, hence the listing. Not sure there's anything I can do about that, but a good spot anyway. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 11:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/The Castello Plan
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted
Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Castelloplan.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 01:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


Black Tide

Please can you provide reasons as to why you believe that this article needs reassessment at Talk:Black Tide. Thank you. Jezhotwells (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Likewise for United States Code Congressional and Administrative News. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Ha en bra dag

Thank you for reviewing Have a nice day at Talk:Have a nice day/GA1. You mentioned the phrase "Ha en bra dag!" which is Swedish equivalent of "have a nice day". Are any of the sources in this Google Books search link usable for the article? Or the sources in this Google News Archive search? I cannot read Swedish so I hope you can take a look at the sources for me. Maybe there is something about "Ha en bra dag" becoming more common. Please reply at Talk:Have a nice day if you've found any usable sources. Thank you! Cunard (talk) 01:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I got three hits that all seams to be relevant Språket lever!: festskrift till Margareta Westman den 27 mars 1996, http://books.google.se/books?ei=inpgTYGeKIyu8QPu15xa&ct=result&hl=en&id=-g0pAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22ha+en+bra+dag%22&q=nice+day#search_anchor, and http://books.google.se/books?id=tH9cAAAAMAAJ&q=%22ha+en+bra+dag%22&dq=%22ha+en+bra+dag%22&hl=en&ei=CXlgTcqZMcKX8QP_yLHnCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBg although the limited preview makes it hard to tell. They all appear to be critical of the increased use of English loan-words and english expressions directly translated into Swedish, and uses "have a nice day" as an example. I also found a motion to the Swedish parliament by conservative/moderate politician [Lennart Fridén in 1995. link. A rough translation based on google translate:

The Swedish language

The Swedish language is, from a linguistic and cultural point of view, subjected to negative influence from, for example our use of international Internet-communication and multi-national advertising campaigns in Swedish commercial television. It is foremost the English language, often in bad translations of the Anglo-American, that is prevalent. This finding does not constitute an condemnation neither of modern technology or advertising. However, many of these expressions gives rise to problems. In a situation where we as members of the EU is to protect our national identity, and its primary expression, our common language, it is essential that the protection of the language and its development is formalized and given high priority.


The language is living, ie. it is in constant and continuous natural development. A pure language, known as purism, like that the of a century since late Viktor Rydberg sought is not possible nor desirable. Neither Iceland's system of protection of their own language should be fully applicable for us. However, language, unless it is to be damaged, must developed in accordance with its own structures. We need a body (organ/agency) that is continuously working with the daily evolution of the terms and concepts wich represents the linguistic expression of new phenomena. The Swedish Acdemy were given the duty, from the founding king, to work with the Swedish language and to publish a dictionary and a grammar. The grammar, the first official Swedish is to be published, hopefully, by 1996. The dictionary, which, given on what has been said about the development of language, never really can be completely finished, have been in issue since more than a century and is likely to be completed to the last letter by the start of the next century.

It is therefore unlikely that it would be appropriate for the Academy with their current obligation as stewards of the linguistic heritage, to be responsible for actively working with the linguistic renewal. The Academy's independent status does not admit such an obligation from parliament. There is, however, given the linguistic assault, as we daily can see in both spoken and written, a need for a institution with a direct mandate to both provide guidance and as an authoritative body deliver powerful reactions to the occurring madness.

It is also important, in view of those who must learn language from scratch, our youngest school children and our immigrants, they do not face unnecessary difficulties by language signals from schools and mass media. Laxity and relativism in language reinforces communication problems and thus increases the tension between generations and between different social and ethnic groups. It is a social handicap no to master language. That such problems are created are not acceptable. Lack of feeling for language, a craze for the Anglo-American and non-responses from authoritative direction has led some TV employees to conclude shows with Det var allt för nu (That's all for now), we are imperatively ordered (!) to ha en bra dag (Have a nice day!) or to us through advertising on their breakfast cereal X asked:You have not forgotten how good X is, did you? (Have you?) It provides not in itself confusion, but impairs our sense of language and style. When the marketing people had nowhere to go for a name for a new product, for what should have be called a pocket stereo", so they created the English (?) word free-style, as none of the English-speaking part of understand the world, for which it means many other things. I want describe this as a linguistic embarrassment, worse than advent of Samhall, Gul och Blå and Skanska.

In Parliament, there is talk of hearing rather than utfrågning, and traineeutbildning, which is almost to consider as mix-linguistic tautology. Allmän-Tv:n and corresponding radio is called public service companies, in enquires they write about PublicAccess and Management, when there may be more purely Swedish options, officials in the economic sector are employed as Controllers, and in today's newspapers can I find wanted ads where teknisk support is look for. The list is infinitely long. Precisely therefore it is expedient to establish a authoritative body, which, in concert with linguistic institutions is given the task of caring for the Swedish language.

Request

With reference to the foregoing the following is requested

that the parliament to the government announces as their opinion what been given in the motion in regard to action for the care and protection of the Swedish language.

Stockholm January 25, 1995

Lennart Fridén (m)

It might be useful to bear in mind that commercial television was only a few years old in Sweden at the time of this motion. Cheers. P. S. Burton (talk) 03:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the research and analysis of the sources about "ha en bra dag". I have added a paragraph about the speech by Lennart Fridén to have a nice day. Would you translate the brief snippet at this link. Would it be useful for have a nice day? Thank you for your help! By the way, is it okay if I copy this discussion to Talk:Have a nice day so that discussion about the article can be kept in one place? Cunard (talk) 07:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Ouch. Sorry about that embarrassing mistake. Thank you for fixing it. Cunard (talk) 08:02, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
No problem. Feel free to copy the discussion to the appropriate talk page. It's hard to tell from the snippet if the text is relevant. I will take a look at the books for you next time a visit the library. Probably in the upcoming week. P. S. Burton (talk) 08:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I've copied this discussion to Talk:Have a nice day.

Wow, if you could take a look at the books at the library, it would be great. :) Thank you for helping me so much. Cunard (talk) 08:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

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File:Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_-_The_Ambassadors_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Is an "upgrade" to File:Holbein-ambassadors.jpg. Not sure whether you to look to update existing links around the featured text. billinghurst sDrewth 02:02, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

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Map : Invasion of Anjouan

Hello, the map that you have requested to the lab map is done. Regards, Bourrichon (talk) 18:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Iraqi Kurdish Civil War Map

Hello, P. S. Burton. A reply to your request at the Map workshop has been made. You may view your reply here.
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Fallschirmjäger ✉ 12:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Erwin Rommel

I noticed the change in spacing that you did at Erwin Rommel and reverted it, not realizing, though, that the actual title of the article was Generalfeldmarschall, and that there was a red link for General Field Marshall. What I did was created a redirect at General Field Marshall to take care of the spacing issues for the Rommel article. Just letting you know, but in reality I'm pretty sure that Generalfeldmarschall should use the common English name of General Field Marshall, per wikipedia naming conventions.--Jojhutton (talk) 12:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

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Resource Request

Hi P.S. Burton,

I've responded to your request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request and posted links to the Times obituaries you requested there.

GabrielF (talk) 15:22, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Milhist FA, A-Class and Peer Reviews Jan-Mar 2011

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resource request: the statesmen's yearbook

Hi,

I wanted to let you know that I posted a response to your request for The Statesmen's Yearbook over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request in case you're no longer watching that page.

Best, GabrielF (talk) 22:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

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Birger Jarl

Lovely addiditon to the article. Why not go all the way? Folke the Fat's Ingrid was a daughter of Adela of Flanders and through her and Judith of Flanders we go all the way back to Charlemagne (from where the Swedes named Magnus got that name). SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:59, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

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resource request

Hi P.S. Burton,

I've responded to your resource request for the Cambridge History of Scandinavia at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. GabrielF (talk) 14:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Moved: Mark Singleton (MP) → Mark Singleton (politician)

I moved Mark Singleton (MP), which you created, to Mark Singleton (politician), as per WP:QUALIFIER, a disambiguator in parentheses should be a "noun indicating what the person is noted for being," and where possible should be "a single, recognizable and highly applicable word." "Politician" works fine as long as there is no other article on a politician named Mark Singleton (which there isn't). Additionally, "MP" does not intuitively mean "Member of Parliament" to English speakers in countries that don't have a parliament (to me, it defaults to Military police).

On a side note, I wonder if it would be prudent to move Mark Singleton, the actor, to Mark Singleton (actor), and turn Mark Singleton into a dab page. I don't see the actor or the MP as a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and a Google search turns up several unrelated people before the actor's IMDb page. I'll leave it up to you. Cheers! —KuyaBriBriTalk 14:21, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I also think (politician), works better. I was just clicking a red link, and following a standard I have seen before for MPs. Good call. Creating a dab page sounds good as well. P. S. Burton (talk) 15:03, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

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GoCE logo -File Conversion Request

Hello! I'll be remaking the GoCE logo, per your request on the Graphic Lab page. What is the font that you wish to be used? I'm unable to deduce what was the original font choice. DustyComputer (talk) 20:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for doing this. I dosen't really matter. Just pick one you like, which looks somewhat similar. I think Baskerville or Times New Roman will work. Cheers. P. S. Burton (talk) 11:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Top 4 requests

Once you've completed a request, you have to fill some parameters in the Top 4 template in order to get the credit and let us know that the request is done. This time I did it for you (take a look here), now you know how to do it yourself :). --Sisyphos23 (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

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Ottoman Empire map 1900

Hi the names of the provinces you asked in the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ottoman Empire, are as follows. (Whenever necessary I used saw alternative names in paranthesis.)

  1. In European (Rumeli) section:Bosnia Vilayet - Kosovo Vilayet- Shkodër (İşkodra) Vilayet - Ioannina (Yanya) Vilayet - Monastir Vilayet (Manastır, Bitola) - Salonica Vilayet (Thessaloniki) - Edirne Vilayet (Edirne, named Adrianapol on the map) - Crete (Girit) Vilayet - Cezayir-i Bahr-i Sefid Vilayet (Aegean islands and Cyprus)
  2. Both sides of Bosphorous: İstanbul Vilayet
  3. Anatolia:Hüdavendigâr Vilayet (Bursa) - Karesi Vilayet (Balıkesir, unnaned on the map at the north west Anatolia) - Kastamonu Vilayet - Ankara Vilayet - Aydın Vilayet - Konya Vilayet - Adana Vilayet - Sivas Vilayet - Trabzon Vilayet - Mamûretü'l-Azîz Vilayet (Elazığ) - Erzurum Vilayet - Diyâr-ı Bekr Vilayet (Diyarbakır) - Van Vilayet
  4. Both in Anatolia and Syria: Aleppo (Halep) Vilayet
  5. Arabic lands: Syria Vilayet (named Dımask on the map) - Mosul Vilayet - Deir ez-Zor Vilayet - Baghdad Vilayet - Basra Vilayet - Beirut Vilayet - Hejaz Vilayet - Al-Hasa (Lahsa ) - Kuwait (Nominal dependent country) - Jerusalem (Kudus, named Kusus'u sherif on the map)
  6. Africa: Mısır Eyalet (named Misr on map, nominally dependent)- Tripolitania Vilayet (Libya,named Tranlugarp on map)
  7. Missing on map:Yemen Eyalet. Happy editting Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 12:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

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Treaty of Lödöse review...

Hi! Just to say that there are some comments on the the GAR for the Treaty of Lödöse for you. Cheers! Hchc2009 (talk) 19:11, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

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Re: Marx

Thank you, it was a challenge, but such an important topics needs to be GA at least. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:21, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

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POTD notification

POTD

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Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Louis-Marie Autissier, Self-portrait edit.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on July 14, 2011. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2011-07-14. howcheng {chat} 17:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

FP delist

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Milhist FA, A-Class and Peer Reviews Apr–Jun 2011

 Military history reviewers' award 
By order of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, for your good work helping with the WikiProject's Peer and A-Class reviews for the period April-June 2011, I hereby award you this Military history WikiProject Reviewers' award. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:44, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

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Hello. Concerning your contribution, Mark Singleton (politician), please note that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images obtained from other web sites or printed material, without the permission of the author(s). This article or image appears to be a direct copy from History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790-1820. As a copyright violation, Mark Singleton (politician) appears to qualify for deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. Mark Singleton (politician) has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message.

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A New Year for the DNB, and launch of "volume of the month"

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Proposed deletion of Sir Samuel Garrard, 4th Baronet

The article Sir Samuel Garrard, 4th Baronet has been proposed for deletion because, under Wikipedia policy, all newly created biographies of living persons must have at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

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Uh, yeah, the fact that I've made an honest mistake doesn't give you the right to burst out me with that WP:OWN attitude. Khvalamde :   Holla at me   09:45, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

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Community input required: lowering delist bar at FPC

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Courtesy link: Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Delist procedure changes. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 15:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Portrait of Sir Thomas More (Google Art)

You were mentioned in this nom. I felt you should be let know. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 09:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

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The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger
The Ambassadors (1533) is a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger in the National Gallery, London. As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. The most notable and famous of Holbein's symbols in the work is the skewed skull, rendered in anamorphic perspective, which is placed in the painting's bottom centre. It is meant to be a visual puzzle as the viewer must approach the painting nearly from the side to see the form morph into an accurate rendering of a human skull.Image: Google Art Project
Archive – More featured pictures...

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Gilbert Thomas Carter

Thanks for adding the picture - a much better one than I had available to me during my work on the article!

Good find -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\[alternative account of Phantomsteve] 19:15, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. The Natinonal Portrait Gallery is always a good place to look when writing about British people. All the best. –P. S. Burton (talk) 22:23, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

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Sincere thanks...

... for quality edits like this. I wish we could get them all. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

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Wikipedia has a long history of collaborating with educational institutions. The Schools and universities program — international and in many languages, but dominated by US institutions — started in 2003 and evolved case by case with little system. However, that changed in 2009 as Wikimedia embarked on its formal strategic process, and outreach in higher education came to be seen in terms of achieving explicit goals — especially that of increasing editor participation.
The Russian Wikipedia has been blacked out for 24 hours, ending 20:00 UTC Tuesday, as a protest against Russian State Duma Bill 89417-6, a bill currently before the Duma (the Russian parliament). Visitors to the Russian Wikipedia are confronted by the sign above in protest at a draconian internet censorship bill before the Duma. The Russian word for Wikipedia is crossed out in this banner, and the text says: "Imagine a world without free knowledge. The State Duma is currently conducting the second reading of a bill to amend the "Law on Information", which has the potential to lead to the creation of extra-judicial censorship of the Internet in Russia, including the closure of access to the Russian Wikipedia. Today, the Wikipedia community protests against censorship as a threat to free knowledge that is open to all mankind. We ask that you oppose this bill."
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During Wikimania (July 12-15), the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) board finalized and enacted long-discussed reforms of the movement's financial structures, and considered procedures for creating new ways for Wikimedians to organize themselves into offline communities. The board moved on the controversial image filter issue, approved the 2012–13 annual plan, and issued a statement on the wikitravel proposal. It also appointed the two new chapter-selected trustees and elected the four office-bearers.
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Nearly 1400 Wikimedians and others from 87 countries descended on the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., for Wikimania 2012. Even with an unprecedented number (1400) of conference attendees — the previous two Wikimanias, held in Gdańsk (Poland) and Haifa (Israel), were attended by fewer than 1100 people combined – Wikimania 2012 was a complete success, with attendees' reaction to the conference coming out as ecstatic and laudatory.
Eight featured articles were promoted this week, including Paul McCartney by GabeMc. McCartney (born 1942) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and composer. He gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and his collaboration with John Lennon is highly celebrated. After the band's break-up he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings. McCartney has been described by Guinness World Records as the "most successful composer and recording artist of all time", and his song "Yesterday" has been covered more than any other song in history.
As Wikimania, the annual conference targeted at Wikimedians and often well attended by those with a technical slant, draws to a close, comments have already begun to come in from attendees regarding the many tech-related features of the conference.
No cases were closed or opened, leaving the number of open cases at three. A new remedy in the Fæ case calls for him to be indefinitely banned from the site after his attempts to solicit intervention from the Foundation, claiming that publicly listing all his accounts would be too onerous due to "ongoing security risks." He was further criticised for attempting to dodge good-faith concerns; the committee believes that if Fæ's claims are valid then he must be removed from the community.

Good Article Reassessment

I have commenced a reassessment of Pink slime at the GAR page here. I have flagged this also at the FAC page. Regards, hamiltonstone (talk) 12:59, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 July 2012

Does Wikipedia pay? is an ongoing Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues... by speaking openly with the people involved.
The Signpost's goal is to provide readers with essential information about the Wikimedia movement and the English Wikipedia – both of which have become large and extremely complex institutions that require timely, balanced and in-depth coverage.
Two weeks ago the Signpost reported that the Russian Wikipedia had just begun a 24-hour blackout in protest at a bill that was before the Russian parliament that proposed mechanisms to block IP addresses and DNS records. The protest, implemented after on-wiki consensus was reached during the preceding days, concerned the potential of the amendment to the information law to allow extra-judicial censorship of the internet in Russia, including the closure of access to the Russian Wikipedia. Among the questions now are how effective the blackout was and where we go from here in terms of internet freedom in one of the world's biggest and most influential countries.
With the 2012 Summer Olympic Games beginning this weekend in London, we decided to catch up with the chaps at WikiProject Olympics. The last time we interviewed WikiProject Olympics was in February 2010 when the project was gearing up for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. We wanted to know how the project has grown since then and whether preparing for a Summer Olympics was more grueling.
For the second time this year (and the third in the history of the committee), there are no open cases, as all three active cases were closed last week.
There has never been a better time to improve the behavior of marketing professionals on Wikipedia. For the first time we're seeing self-imposed statements of ethics. Professional PR bodies around the globe have supported the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) guidance for ethical Wikipedia engagement. Although their tone is different, CREWE and the PRSA have brought more attention to the issues. Awareness among PR professionals is rising. So are the number of paid editing operations sprouting up and the opportunity for dialogue.
One featured article was promoted this week, Melville Island. A small peninsula in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, it was discovered by Europeans in the 1600s and initially used for storehouses. The land was purchased by the British and used to hold prisoners of war, then to receive escaped slaves from the United States. After being used as a place of quarantine and later a recruitment centre, the land was granted to Canada in 1907 and used to house prisoners of war. It is now home to the clubhouse and marina of the Armdale Yacht Club.
In the first of a series looking at this year's eight ongoing Google Summer of Code projects, the Signpost caught up with developer Harry Burt.

Reenactment images

Please see Talk:Red coat (British army)#Red coat usage in Britain. By coincidence about the same time as you did I removed a picture of some reenactors. I was not aware it had guidance at WP:MILHIST, please could you add the detail of where it is to the talk page of Red coat? -- PBS (talk) 08:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

GA review for Renaissance Scotland

Any movement on this review? It is starting to hold up my grand scheme a bit now.--SabreBD (talk) 15:25, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 July 2012

From the modeling of social dynamics in a collaborative environment to why the number of Wikipedia readers rises while the number of editors doesn't.
Wikimedia Foundation published its Annual Plan, focusing on technical improvements, editor retention, and structural reforms over the coming year. The movement's total revenue, including almost all chapter funding, is slated to rise by 35%, from $34.2 million to $46.1 million, and global spending to more than $42.1 million. The foundation's own core spending will grow by 15% to $30.2 million in 2012–13.
We continue our Summer Sports Series this week with WikiProject Horse Racing. Started in November 2005, the project has grown to include nearly 8,000 articles maintained by 34 active members. There are 10 Featured Articles and 19 Good Articles included in the project's scope. In addition to preparing articles for GA and FA status, the project attempts to create requested articles and locate requested images. We interviewed Redrose64, Montanabw, Tigerboy1966, Ealdgyth, and Cuddy Wifter.
Eight new featured articles, five new featured lists, and eight new featured pictures. The highlights include a new featured picture of Frank Sinatra, created by William P. Gottlieb and nominated by Tomer T. Sinatra (1915–98) was a highly successful American singer and film actor whose career spanned 60 years. This image dates from around 1947.
In the light of recent questions over the long-term reliability of Wikimedia wikis, the Signpost caught up with CT Woo, the Wikimedia Foundation's director of technical operations.
Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin proposed a motion requiring the alteration of any instances of an editor's previous username in arbitration decisions to reflect their name changes. The Devil's Advocate has initiated an amendment request for the controversial Race and intelligence case.

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.

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 ...

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.

POTD notification

POTD

Mr. Burton,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Castelloplan.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on August 28, 2012. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2012-08-28. —howcheng {chat} 07:11, 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.

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

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

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
Three hip hop discographies were promoted this week, alongside seven other lists.
After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment).
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

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

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

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

Orphaned non-free media (File:Love Metal.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:Love Metal.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Hazard-Bot (talk) 04:09, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2012

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

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

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

The Signpost: 15 October 2012

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

The Signpost: 22 October 2012

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

The Signpost: 29 October 2012

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

The Signpost: 05 November 2012

J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
The Signpost's weekly roundup of topics for discussion on the English Wikipedia.
This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.

The Signpost: 12 November 2012

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

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

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

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The Signpost: 26 November 2012

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

File transfer

Hello. I tranferred file AnimalFarm 1stEd.jpg uploaded by you to Wikimedia Commons. Here's it: [12] SLRTDM (talk) 19:34, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 December 2012

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

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

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

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

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

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

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

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

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

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

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

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

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