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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.

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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...

Dutch general election, 2012

Having looked it up to re-confirm, it does appear that 'majority' and 'plurality' do not mean the same thing in non-US English. See here: "In UK constituency elections, which typically feature three or more candidates representing major parties, a plurality is sometimes referred to as a "majority" or a "relative majority" while the terms "overall majority" or "absolute majority" are used to describe the support of more than one half of votes cast." 'Plurality' would therefore be confusing to non-American readers. Perhaps it would be better to include an explanation on the election page of just what exactly is meant by a "plurality". 94.168.219.133 (talk) 22:17, 27 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

File:40th_Can_House.svg

Hi,

I'm wondering how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:40th_Can_House.svg can be modified. What program was originally used I'd like to change the seat colour for the purposes of explaining voting systems. I've opened the file in Inkscape 0.48, but the fill can't be detected or modified by inkscape.

jlam (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2012 (UTC)


No need, I figured it out. Had to dereference the objects from its original jlam (talk) 21:38, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

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

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The Signpost: 15 October 2012

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

Nomination for deletion of Template:Multimoveoptions

Template:Multimoveoptions has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:11, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

maybe more accurate

Chief_Whip#United_Kingdom rather than plain Chief_Whip? Leaky Caldron 19:35, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Cheers! Leaky Caldron 19:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

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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.

"Presidency pro tempore"

I'm fine with "office of president pro tempore," but it is actually both grammatically correct and widely accepted to use the phrase "presidency" to refer to an office whose occupant is a "president," even if followed by a modifier such as "pro tempore." Google the phrase "presidency pro tempore" if you'd like. "Ghastly" is an entirely subjective judgment on your part. JTRH (talk) 10:13, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It is grammatically correct and widely accepted to use the other form, or else there would be no such phrase as "office of president". I'm not sure you can legitimately claim your preference is "widely accepted" since it is so seldom used. "Presidency pro tempore" is so uncommon that, having searched Google as suggested, I found it only comes up 37,300 times and triggers a "did you mean president pro tempore?" By contrast, "office of president pro tempore"—not a phrase you'd expect to see used terribly often—has 693,000 hits. There is no reason to use an unfamiliar twist on a common phrase when the circumstances don't absolutely require it. As for "ghastly" being subjective, all I can say is "no shit". It is my opinion that it is ugly and should be avoided; though I think it is objective fact that it is distracting, which is less than desirable. I'm sure this has been a hugely important exchange of ideas, but was it really necessary to discuss this? If you had no problem with the edit, couldn't you have left well enough alone? -Rrius (talk) 10:25, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It didn't say "The office of president pro tempore," it said "The president pro tempore is an office." The president pro tempore is not an office, but a person who holds an office. JTRH (talk) 18:24, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Even granting that, "presidency pro tempore" turned an awkward construction into an ugly one. -Rrius (talk) 00:02, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Disagree, but your rephrasing is fine. Peace. JTRH (talk) 00:18, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

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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.

Hi Rrius

What exactly is the request here? I'm a little confused. Teammm talk
email 05:43, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

To delete the redirect to facilitate a move back to that title. Currently, it is impossible to move back to Maryland same-sex marriage referendum, 2012 (the title that is both understandable by readers and inline with the ", YYYY" naming convention). The only way to accomplish the move is for the blocking redirect to be deleted. -Rrius (talk) 05:55, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Question 6 is more recognizable for Maryland's referendum than "Maryland same-sex marriage referendum, 2012" and it has over 4300 views in two days. That's the reason I moved it a while back. It was fine when the referendum was not yet on the ballot but it now has a name that is quite well known. Similar to Washington Referendum 74 (2012). Teammm talk
email 06:03, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Absurd. "Question 6" could only be recognizable to Maryland voters and people who have obsessed about about SSM. The "Question 6" title violates WP:COMMONNAME and is unintelligible to a general readership. -Rrius (talk) 06:05, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
As proof, "marriage referendum" maryland gets 2,150,000 hits on Google, but "question 6" maryland gets 200,000. That is a substantial disparity. -Rrius (talk) 18:26, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

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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.

DelBene incumbency not yet?

I think it was premature to add Suzan DelBene as the incumbent in Washington's 1st congressional district; she hasn't been sworn in yet, and the election hasn't even been certified. That's why I was careful in the wording yesterday. I don't actually know when the swearing-in will happen. Can you hold on until it actually happens? David Brooks (talk) 21:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of the oath or certification, her term started on election day. There is no doubt about the outcome, so certification won't actually matter at all; she will be seated long before it occurs, but the date of seating is irrelevant. Also because there is no doubt, there is no harm in updating the district page. If you feel strongly enough to bother about reverting, you had better use the November 6th date when you add it back because terms for House special elections start on the date of election. -Rrius (talk) 01:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Harriet Harman

Had you bothered to actually look at my edits properly you would seen that my edits were all either grammar and punctuation corrections or improvements. I suggest that you don't make any further false and sarcastic comments in your edit summaries. Thank you. Anglicanus (talk) 10:07, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I did look, and nothing was actually a correction. You made changes that reflected your stylistic preferences and cleaned up a bit of code, which has fuck all to do with grammar or punctuation. Changing ", who is" to ". She is" did not correct something that was wrong; it enforced your opinion of how strong of break was best between two thoughts. Removal of the comma was an improvement, but not really a correction. The next thing fixed was the way the code looked, but certainly wasn't a punctuation or grammar correction. The last thing you did was add an unnecessary "as", which isn't even close to a correction. So my comment was not false. It also wasn't sarcastic as I meant exactly what I said. If you think it was sarcastic, you may want to open your dictionary. Had I been feeling sarcastic, I would have said, "Nice corrections, that last one was great!" In any event, I suggest you think before you waste the next person's time making false and ignorant accusations. You're welcome. -Rrius (talk) 10:21, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

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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.

A bit complicated

Thanks for your helpful edits to Casimir Pulaski. As you can see from that article's edit history and its talk, I am the primary contributor of it, and I am in the slow but steady process of expanding this to GA. As I was doing some maintenance edits on this (standardizing new refs I have added to a LDR format I introduced there months ago and fixing a disambig), another editor whom I encountered just recently, and who strongly dislikes LDR, reverted my edits (ref fixing and disambig both). Then before I had a chance to do anything, you did your date fix edit, which I am assuming is script assisted. I am now in a difficult situation. I wanted to fix another disambig and do a little expansion, but the article refs are into too much mess for me to comfortably edit it without restoring the LDR edit; sadly, SudoGhost who never edited this article before seems ready to revert war with me over the LDR issue. Also, restoring LDR (and my disambig fix) in the easiest way for me would involve reverting your helpful edits. I am really in a bind here, I want to keep improving this article towards GA, but I don't want to revert war on my own GA candidate. Therefore I would like to ask you if you'd be willing to consider the merit of my LDR/disambig fixing edits, and a request from the primary contributor to this article (in the process of GA writing...), and revert yourself, restore my edit, and run your script again? I try to adhere to 1RR, and asking you to revert is difficult for me, but I just don't know what else to do, and either way, your edit makes undoing one's edit difficult - and I don't have the script you used for date fixing, neither. I hope I made my case for why I'd like to ask you to revert there (once only), and that it is not to help me edit war, but to allow me to improve the article towards GA. I apologize for this difficult request, and I'll understand if you chose to not edit this article. If you'd have any other suggestion or advice to offer, I'd be glad to listen to it. PS. Actually, SudoGhost just indicated the willingness to self-revert, but he also doesn't know how to do so without undoing your edits. I'll ask him to comment here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:24, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Just show me where he said that, and I'll do it all myself. -Rrius (talk) 05:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Don't worry about it Rrius, since I caused the problem I went ahead and manually fixed it. Feel free to double-check to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I'm pretty sure I was able to manually combine Piotrus's edit with yours without missing anything. - SudoGhost 05:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Bullshit is bullshit

Please keep your edit summaries civil. (See this edit.) If you want editors to agree with you, you should be polite. —GoldRingChip 01:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

If I had called you a shit, I would apologize, but saying that your position was bullshit is just true. As already pointed out, the dates are subject to change by Congress (and it is fairly routinely done), not something true of other dates, despite what you said. Can Congress change the dates a particular Congress begins or ends on? No. Can it change the date a presidential term begins or ends? No, of course not. I wouldn't have been as pissed by your persistent editing to create the misleading impression that we are reasonably sure the first session will begin on January 3 and the votes will be counted January 6 if you weren't also to act like the near certainty regarding the leadership. Daniel Inouye does not face an election for PPT. There is no doubt Democrats will control the chamber, so the major source of doubt is whether he will be alive when Congress reconvenes. But that exists for all the names listed. Biden in the infobox; Obama and Biden in the "Major events" section; and all those senators, representatives and delegates that you insist on keeping on the page despite guidelines. As for the speaker, the Republicans have the majority and have elected their nominee for speaker, so he is effectively in the same boat as Inouye. Once we do know for sure when the first session will start, it make make sense to give Boehner a parenthetical "to be elected Jan. X), but this "TBD..., likely to be elected" is unnecessarily cluttered and fussy. And in light of treating as certain dates that are clearly tentative (with at least one almost certain to change), it is just weird to insist on treating the near certain PPT and Speaker as though there is a ton of doubt. -Rrius (talk) 01:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

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

Just want to clear something up

"Are we having fun yet?" is the catch phrase of Zippy the Pinhead, very much not for children. It used to be pretty common for coworkers to pose that question during some particularly grueling part of their day. When I asked you that, it was meant as an inside joke, referring to our previous conversation two weeks ago, when I predicted that guys like NatGertler would show up to cause trouble. It was a way of rolling my eyes in commiseration with you. To let you know you're not alone in your frustration. That was the point of the joke, but I guess the line is more esoteric than I realized.

The hair-splitting you are dealing with over there is annoying, but if you can't have a sense of humor about these arguments then they'll just get the better of you. You and I are on the same side of the argument. I absolutely guarantee you he's not going to get his way just because you stop arguing with him. Quite the opposite, in fact. You can laugh about it, and eventually the article will find its stable state regardless of all arguments, or you can rage about it, and eventually the article will find its stable state regardless of all arguments. Since the result is the same either way, and our paychecks are the same either way, then you might as well just work on the things you enjoy. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 15:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Whether or not the line is more esoteric than you thought, I've never heard of it. That doesn't mean a whole lot because my exposure to popular culture is weirdly random. For instance, I didn't see The Princess Bride until 2007 even though every American within five to seven years of my age in either direction saw the movie as child or young adult. I've also never seen that math movie with Donald Duck (or is it Daffy; I don't remember). So I think if I clicked on that link I'd still have no idea what was going on. Anyway, I realize that we are on the same side of the main argument, but not having the context you assumed I did, the "Are you having fun yet?" came across the way I explained—at least after I asked you what point you were trying to make; before that, I was completely baffled. You may as well have said, "The peas are really orange today," for all I understood. As for the rest, I edit at that talk page infrequently, so I don't have a full feeling for who the trolls, malcontents and fellow travelers are. And since Nat was trying to dress his flummery up as something reasonable and someone (Teammm?) was responding as though it was reasonable, there was sort of a last-straw reaction. I say the last straw because at the same time I had one person reverting things at a completely different article based on a surprising lack of understanding of the content and that editor's sense of ownership there (which is what made the knowledge gap surprising), and a third editor pushing a POV at a third and fourth article and disruptively editing during the discussion. All of this was happening at exactly the same time, making my patience level for ill-informed and nonsensical arguments essentially zero. -Rrius (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, I'm sorry for my part in adding to your stress. Hang in there, try to have some fun, and feel free to drop me a line if there's anything you need. Happy Thanksgiving! Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 03:13, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Talkback: Proposed political status for Puerto Rico

Hello, Rrius. You have new messages at Talk:Proposed political status for Puerto Rico.
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—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 17:25, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Seniority in the United States Senate#New review

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Seniority in the United States Senate#New review. …regarding John Kerry's seniority. —GoldRingChip 04:02, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 November 2012

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

US Supreme Court members

Wouldn't ya know. Somebody went & reverted my edits to all the associate justices bio infoboxes. He/she restored the confusing numbering scheme :( GoodDay (talk) 20:11, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle

Decemmber 8 - Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle - You're invited
Seattle Public Library
  • Date Saturday, December 8, 2012
  • Time 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
  • Location Seattle Public Library Meeting Room 1 on Level 4, Central Library, 1000 4th Avenue, Seattle WA, 98104
  • Event An editathon on Seattle-related Wikipedia articles with Wikipedia tutorials and Librarian assistance on hand.
  • Hashtag #wikiloveslib or #glamwiki.
  • Registration http://wll-seattle.eventbrite.com or use on-wiki regsistration.

Yours, Maximilianklein (talk) 03:17, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

British Columbia general election, 2011 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect British Columbia general election, 2011. Since you had some involvement with the British Columbia general election, 2011 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). 117Avenue (talk) 08:19, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback: Template talk:Infobox officeholder / Telephone, email, and Public Information Officer

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—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox

Hi,

is there any particular reason you created above article in the mainspace ? Travelbird (talk) 17:50, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox

Hello Rrius,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox for deletion, because it appears to duplicate an existing Wikipedia article, [[:{{{article}}}]].

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. Thanks, Travelbird (talk) 01:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Rrius. You have new messages at Talk:Treasury Select Committee.
Message added 18:29, 4 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Widefox; talk 18:29, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I watch the page, so this is unnecessary. -Rrius (talk) 21:20, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

RE: 2011 BC election redirect

thought so, thats why i crossed it off. pERHAPS MERGE some content into 2013. Althuough, for future purposes, try creating it as Next general election (like we did for isael (now confirmed in jan 2013))(Lihaas (talk) 07:13, 5 December 2012 (UTC)).

My bad to enter that discussion, i too have been involved in international elections outside the anglo-world (havent encountered you before? guess youre in domestic elections). i crossed off my vote, so should be deleted anyhoo.(Lihaas (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2012 (UTC)).
Ah, i was there and on the UK for a bit, mbut mostly off the english speaking world.(Lihaas (talk) 11:03, 6 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.

DeMint and the 113th

Oh, ok. Sorry about that. --Bad Graphics Ghost (talk) 18:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Criticism of the Federal Reserve

Please be careful with personal attacks. The IP user had previously been warned, so was blocked this time. Your comments about the IP can also be viewed as a personal attack. If you feel their behaviour is disruptive, it's better to take those comments to ANI or to RfC rather than attacking the user in the article talk page. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:56, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

It is not a personal attack, and there is no "if" or "feel" about IP's being disruptive. It is clear at this point that that person is either ignorant or a troll; saying so is a statement of what is now undeniable fact, not an insult. It has been increasingly clear over the past months, and the mutually exclusive ways the editor has used Friedman on the talk page and in the article lays bare that the editor either doesn't understand the topic or is just trying to cause trouble. If you read what I said on the talk page, rather than homing in on a few words, then you will have also read that the context was asking other editors when it will be time for an RfC. I have never started an RfC/U, and I have no intention of doing it alone. -Rrius (talk) 23:17, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
The statement which crossed the line was in calling the IP "a truly ignorant fool". You can call their edits into question and ask others if it is time to request an RfC without the personal attack. Do not do it again. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:31, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Except that's not what happened. I said (in the context of how the modern Fed handles our money supply), "Only a troll or truly ignorant fool would say deflation is better than modest inflation and try to base the argument on pre-industrial, gold-based money." That leaves those two possibilities and allows IP to argue that my understanding of his argument is not what he is trying to say. And it did smoke out what he truly believes: that we should be on the gold standard, not that our fiat money supply should be managed like money was when we were on the gold standard. The former is nutty, but the latter is exactly what I said was. Taking the apparent meaning of what IP has said and giving the verdict I did is not a personal attack. It is certainly nothing like the constant disruption and abuse issuing from that IP for months now. -Rrius (talk) 02:43, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Rationalize it however you wish. If you do it again, I will block you. You can then try to rationalize it to a reviewing admin in an unblock request.
Or, better yet, don't do it again. Then it becomes a non-issue. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
It's not rationalizing. It's what was actually said rather than what you have decided to take it as saying. It is simply a fact that no reasonably informed person could have made the argument he appeared to be making. And he went on to clarify, in an unambiguously aggressive way, that he wasn't making that argument. So what you are telling me is that you aren't too bothered about whether something is an attack on a person or an argument because having the power means you don't have to care, and you'll leave it to other admins to sort out whether what happened was actually violation of policy or not. Good to know. -Rrius (talk) 03:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Not what I said - unblock requests are reviewed by other admins, who you would then need to convince.
The other person's actions are not relevant - the fact that the other person's edits may or may not have been inappropriate does not excuse your violating policy. You made a personal attack, that's all that matters under policy. If you feel I am abusing my admin authority, feel free to bring it up at WP:ANI. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
It wasn't a personal attack. I attacked the credibility of the argument, not the editor. Blocking someone because you don't like the way they did it rather than because they actually attacked the person is an abuse, regardless of whether there is a backstop. So I am not accusing you of having abused your authority but of threatening to do so. Aside from saying you will think on the comment at issue in light of the actual text of the policy rather, I doubt there is anything I need to hear from you, so I would appreciate it if you left me alone. -Rrius (talk) 03:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

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

Senate Seniority list

Just for the record, you and Travelbird were both a little bit right and a little bit wrong. A page like the one you created for the upcoming senate session's new seniority rankings is certainly permissible in articlespace — but it has to be titled and treated as a full standalone article, not as a subpage with the "/sandbox" suffix in the title. Accordingly, I've moved the article to the new title Seniority in the 113th United States Senate — if the intention is for the information to be merged back into the parent article once the new Congress takes office, then that title can certainly be redirected back to the main one when the time comes, but in the meantime it isn't allowed to sit in articlespace, not even temporarily, with "/sandbox" in its title. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 03:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

First, the chosen title is nonsensical: there is no such thing as the "113th United States Senate". Second, it was never intended as a live article. It is a sandbox to allow for the massive amount of updating that must occur before the new Congress. It is unsourced, unfinished, and entirely unready for prime time. I don't see where you get the idea that a subpage sandbox can't exist from, it sounds as though you made it up, but if the article space was such an affront to you, why couldn't you have moved it to being a subpage of the talk page? If you want to be helpful, move it back or to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Senate seniority table sandbox. If you don't do it relatively quickly, I'll do by cut-and-paste since you seem to have left the thing unable to be moved back or anywhere else. -Rrius (talk) 11:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
I've just gone ahead and done a cut and paste move. The history isn't especially important, because once again, it is not an article. On January 3 it will simply be cut from whatever sandbox it is in and pasted over the existing table. So you can either merge the history if you feel the necessity, or just delete the thing. It is an article title that will never be used because, again, it is nonsensical. -Rrius (talk) 11:14, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Subpages is actually quite explicit that temporary subpages are allowed in non-article namespaces, but that "Writing drafts of major article revisions, e.g., Example Article/Temp in the main namespace" is a disallowed use of the functionality. Rather, every page in articlespace has to function as a complete article, subject to the same rules as all other complete articles. And if the page was "never intended as a live article", and was "unsourced, unfinished, and entirely unready for prime time", then it should never have been getting linked to from the main article Seniority in the United States Senate, either — regardless of what the intention was, and regardless of whether it was really ready to be seen as such, its presence in mainspace, as an article that was being directly linked from another article in mainspace, meant that it already was a live article that was already in prime time.
Frankly, I don't know where you get the idea that I'm just making up my own quirky little rules, because this is all straight out of standard Wikipedia process. And I'm glad you've found an alternative that works better than what I originally did, but it wasn't my responsibility to be able to read your mind, either. People are allowed to have less extensive knowledge than you do about what constitutes "sensical vs. nonsensical" naming of an article related to the United States Congress — especially given that while I may have somewhat more knowledge of American politics than the average Canadian bear, I'm still a Canadian bear who can hardly be expected to be an expert on how sessions of the US Senate are or aren't ordinated. Bearcat (talk) 14:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
First few sentences noted.
It certainly should never have been linked to. And I have trouble seeing how mind-reading is required to understand "sandbox" (I suppose you must think I linked it, but I was not aware that bit of idiocy had been done). As for coming up with a rational title, knowing that you are "still a Canadian bear who can hardly be expected to be an expert", wouldn't it have been more logical to go to the main article's talk page than just blunder in then leave a note here? No attempt to read minds is necessary when you just go to the page and ask.
In any event, will you clean up the trail of pointless pages? It's up to you whether to undo the cut-and-paste and merge history, but the old pages need to be deleted in either event. -Rrius (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Deletions done. For the record, though, you'd actually be surprised just how often people move sandbox pages into articlespace with the intention that the page is now a completed live article, but forget to actually remove the "/sandbox" suffix in the process — so the fact that "sandbox" is present in a title doesn't imply anything about the actual intention or the "correct" solution. If a page shows up on the uncategorized articles list as this one did, then my job while working with that list is to get it off the list as close to "immediately" as possible, not to leave it lingering there while waiting for clarification that may or may not actually come for several days. I made a simple judgement call, and it wasn't the right one — but that was quite easily fixed. Whether or not my initial replacement title for the page was the best possible choice is a secondary issue, because a page can be always moved again — getting a page out of the untagged uncats queue in the first place is much more important than how many steps it takes to get it to the best final destination. Bearcat (talk) 17:01, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Seniority in the 113th United States Senate for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Seniority in the 113th United States Senate is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seniority in the 113th United States Senate until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. —GoldRingChip 16:14, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

United States v. Windsor - Clarification BBC newsreport US Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage cases

Thank you for your explanation why the 2012-12-07 BBC newsreport US Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage cases is wrong regarding the Supreme Court options in the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by P3Y229 (talk • contribs) 14:49, 10 December 2012‎ (UTC)

The word "you"

I find your comments at Talk:Treasury Select Committee to be a personal attack. I'm not sure how wise it is of you to use words like "shit" and "bloody", let alone the long rants. Please stop. Widefox; talk 11:51, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Personal attack? Where? And I don't particularly care whether you like naughty words. I said "MOS:Tables doesn't say shit about citation formats" and "what is so bloody difficult about...". A personal attack is an attack on you, not the use of words you don't like or pointing out that you don't understand the guidelines and templates you are attempting to use.
The only long contribution I made was long of necessity because you threw out so many templates and links. And your position on whether it is "wise" to make long contributions is frankly irrelevant to me. But I hope you are happy to have gotten that opinion off your chest.
And my last contribution isn't long, let alone a rant. But again, I'm glad you've had the chance to come here and make pointless complaints; I hope you feel better for having done it. Anyway, my contribution was far from a rant. It contained an explanation and an offer. I've told you I'll make the changes to all select committee articles once the current Parliament is dissolved (expected around April 2015). That will mean adding a few keystrokes to an already necessary edit at each article instead of a hundred or more changes all at once.
If you have a response to that offer, I'm glad to hear it. If you want to make those hundred or so changes yourself, have fun. If you just want to complain about something, I hope your above contribution will suffice. If not, I have no interest in hearing from you at all. -Rrius (talk) 12:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
For starters, opening with "Actually, you are quite wrong.", and "What you seem unable to understand, though I can't see how," in total using "you" 57 times when talking about a couple of references - WP:AVOIDYOU. Widefox; talk 03:11, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
None of that was an attack. I told you exactly the terms under which I was willing to continue this conversation. Instead of talking about the article, all you want to do is complain about the second-person pronoun. Don't bother responding because I will delete your contributions without responding. -Rrius (talk) 14:13, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Prince Charles

Really? Didn't know. William was "William of Walles" until his wedding. Sorry.--Minerva97 (talk) 18:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

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

Senate committee chairs

The Democratic Caucus this afternoon "ratified" Mikulski as Chair of Appropriations. The committee has issued a press release stating that she "is" (not "will be") its first woman chair. Does her becoming chair require further action by the Senate, or does being selected by the party caucus suffice? I don't remember ever seeing a formal election on the floor, or a formal resolution being passed, making someone Majority Leader. JTRH (talk) 03:02, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The Senate has to pass a resolution. For example, when Ted Kennedy died, that opened up the HELP Committee. Harkin took it over, leaving Blanche Lincoln to take Agriculture. S.Res 257 was necessary to effect the change. What the Democratic Caucus did was authorize/order the leadership to propose a similar order for Mikulski and the Appropriations Committee. -Rrius (talk) 05:29, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Original research

How do we cite some claims without using original research? —GoldRingChip 14:02, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

What is this about? -Rrius (talk) 19:02, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Ah, now I see what you're talking about. Claims can be OR, but not citations. -Rrius (talk) 19:08, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

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

John Griffith Williams

Hello. I moved Griffith Williams (Judge) to John Griffith Williams and made minor corrections. In doing so I think I have also messed up some of the persondata you inserted. My limited skills don't extend to correcting this without rv the whole thing, and re-editing, which I don't want to do. Sorry! Ironman1104 (talk) 09:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Brian Schatz

Why is Schatz's seniority dated December 27, 2012? Shouldn't it be his appointment date, December 26?—GoldRingChip 04:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure which article you mean. I've been cagey about the date everywhere but 112th United States Congress, where I thought the "installation" date was supposed to mean oath. If I remembered that wrong, then it should be changed, but we may need to get proof of what is probably the case (i.e., that the certificate of appointment is dated December 26). -Rrius (talk) 05:03, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
There's also the consideration that the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii is prohibited from holding "other paid positions" (such as being a Senator). Thus, much like the case of Kristen Gillibrand a few years ago, despite being appointed on one day, they couldn't take their Senate seat until they resigned the other office. Brian Schatz's page currently says he resigned as Lt Governor on December 27, so their seems to be some confusion about that too. Also, the official Senate website has not yet listed him as being a Senator yet.Canuck89 (converse with me) 09:41, December 27, 2012 (UTC)
Gillibrand was constitutionally prohibited from being a member of both houses at once. State law does not control qualification for federal office, so the state law should be of no consequence as far as the Senate is concerned. The lack of an update is wholly unpersuasive. -Rrius (talk) 09:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
State law controls whether he can simultaneously be Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii while holding any other office, state or federal. JTRH (talk) 14:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
What should his page say? I'm honestly fine with either Dec 26 or Dec 27, as long as it's consistent across every page. Should his article say the 26th then? Canuck89 (what's up?) 09:49, December 27, 2012 (UTC)
Honestly, we shouldn't be quick to state either is the case. For all we know, the certificate of appointment is being signed today (the 27th) and faxed to DC. As for the resignation, there isn't actually a ref for that date; it looks like someone just assumed that since he is being sworn in tomorrow, that's when he becomes a senator, so that's also when he'll stop being lt. gov. -Rrius (talk) 09:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I guess we'll find out the dates soon enough for both offices. Canuck89 (have words with me) 09:59, December 27, 2012 (UTC)
Indeed, it may be some time before we get a final answer. At some point the Senate Historical Office's seniority list will be updated, but if it shows the 27th, they'll have to be questioned because they often get that wrong. -Rrius (talk) 10:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, now it looks like User:Therequiembellishere is using the Senate website to go and switch the dates of appointed senators from the day of their appointment to the date of their swearing in. What do you think of this? Canuck89 (chat with me) 06:29, December 29, 2012 (UTC)
The Senate Historical Office, who prepares those lists, is not necessarily expert on the rules, and we have found them to have been mistaken time and time again. The law, the Senate's past practice, and a document prepared by the Secretary of the Senate about this exact topic all contradict what the SHO researchers have done. -Rrius (talk) 13:29, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
You are probably right, Rrius, but that would amount to WP:OR. We go by other people's research, not our own.—GoldRingChip 14:53, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Rrius, why not e-mail the Senate and ask them to confirm or clarify the date? Unless there is another creditable source that outweighs the Senate's own website, then the date is the date. Also, the article you are talking about does not address this particular situation. It refers to three cases, and the only one that comes close refers to a issue with Strom Thurmond, but the details are not the same. And the article is about pay, not actual tenure in office.Revmqo (talk) 14:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
@GCR: Except a report from the Secretary of the Senate is not OR. @Revmqo: E-mail already sent. -Rrius (talk) 17:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
If the report has the info, then cite it and we're all set.—GoldRingChip 00:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
I already used it at Schatz, and it was deleted. I'm not going to worry about this now becasue I am on vacation. -Rrius (talk)

December 2012

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware, Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Gage (talk) 10:10, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I've added the refs, so if you consider that edit warring (especially when you are the other "warring" party), there is a huge problem with what you're doing. -Rrius (talk) 10:13, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
No references were added when this message was posted. Gage (talk) 10:17, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I was correcting the information and assembling the references to back it up. There was no call for your rapid-fire reversion based on ignorance (despite my noting the main source in an edit summary) and an irrational reliance on a supposed source that said nothing about his becoming a senator on the 27. -Rrius (talk) 10:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Oh, and noting that I'd added the refs was an allusion to the fact that I had edited again after the warning. I thought that was self-evident, but silly me. -Rrius (talk) 10:23, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Sarcasm and browbeating doesn't help the situation either. Next time don't remove information if you're still "assembling" references. Gage (talk) 10:26, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
What you seem to be forgetting is that the the 27th was never reffed. I initially tried to simply remove the date but you decided to jump in and "browbeat" based on your false belief that you knew what you were talking about. And sarcasm was not entirely absent from your contributions either. In other words, pot, quit calling me black. -Rrius (talk) 15:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
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