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The Stub Barnstar (3)

The Stub Barnstar
I thereby award you with The Stub Barnstar for expanding Buffy hummingbird to a Start-class article. Keep up the good work. Armbrust The Homunculus 06:00, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 July 2014

The Los Angeles Times highlighted a recent Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) course at Pomona College in their article "Wikipedia pops up in bibliographies, and even college curricula". We interviewed Char Booth, the campus ambassador for the course, for additional details.
With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.
Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) has won a Roaring Lion in the category of Internet and cellular for its public outreach during the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia in July 2013.
Six articles, five lists, seventeen pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, the Signpost visited the Indigenous peoples of North America WikiProject.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Wikimedia Deutschland's Toolserver project was switched off, marking the end of one of the Wikimedia movement's longest running Chapter-led projects. The Toolserver, which was in fact a collection of servers, first came online in 2005, hosting hundreds of webpages and scripts ("tools") made available for use by Wikimedia readers, editors and administrators.

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

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The Signpost: 09 July 2014

Last May, James Forrester announced to the world that London had been awarded the 2014 Wikimania conference. Functioning as the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, it is separate from the chapter-focused Wikimedia Conference. The first, located in Frankfurt, took place in 2005 and had 380 attendees. London, the tenth, is now expected to attract 1500. With Wikimania ambition, attention, and attendance rising significantly over the last nine years, how have this year's monetary costs come to be?
After an extremely close race, round three is over. 244 points secured a place in Round 4, which is comparable to previous years—321 was required in 2013, and 243 points in 2012.
The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world; students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. The Education program Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014.
Five articles, six lists, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.
As with the troubled release of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) flagship VisualEditor project, the release of the new Media Viewer has also been met with opposition from the English Wikipedia community.
Unsurprisingly, the World Cup continued to dominate the English Wikipedia's viewing statistics. In particular, the record-breaking performance of US goalkeeper Tim Howard and the tournament-ending injury to Brazil's Neymar drove large amount of views to their articles.

DYK for Etheostoma variatum

Gatoclass (talk) 05:26, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Thanks for welcoming newbies to Wikipedia and helping make the Wiki an enjoyable place! :) Lucas "nicatronTg" Nicodemus (talk) 04:00, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. I always try to give new members a warm welcome when I see them contributing. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 July 2014

On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been withdrawn without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team—but this action is being described as "strategic" so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."
This week it's still more and more World Cup, with five entries out of the top ten (and 14 out of the Top 25).
It all started in late 2005, when we first held lectures about Wikipedia in two educational institutions (universities) ...
Eight articles, three lists, and 28 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week. The newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias, where Lsjbot is also active, and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.

DYK for Halichoeres maculipinna

Gatoclass (talk) 17:23, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

Here's for finding my secret page! (Sorry it took so long. I'm mainly inactive now) buffbills7701 21:58, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

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

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The Signpost: 23 July 2014

"Great success" in Israel universities is leading to collaboration and editing in high schools.
Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.
Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) today are facing fewer barriers to uploading their content onto Wikimedia projects now that the new GLAM-Wiki Toolset Project has been launched. The tool, which is the fruit of a collaboration between Europeana and several Wikimedia chapters, relieves GLAMs from having to write their own automated scripts and gives them a standardized method of uploading large amounts of their digitized holdings.
The English Wikipedia's did you know (DYK) section has been a feature of the site's main page since February 2004. From the beginning, the section has served as a place to highlight Wikipedia's newest articles. But over the last few years, the did you know section has gotten steadily larger and more complex, and non-notable or plagiarized articles have occasionally slipped through the reviewing process, leading numerous editors to call for reforms to the system. We asked two editors to share their views.
Ten articles, five lists, and 25 pictures were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.

The Signpost: 30 July 2014

In Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak discusses Wikipedia from the standpoint of an experienced editor and administrator who is also a university professor specializing in management and organizations. In Virtual Reality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Charles Seife presents a more broadly themed work reminding us to question the reliability of information found throughout the Internet.
Kim Osman has performed a fascinating study on the three 2013 failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, Osman analyzed 573 posts from the three main votes on paid editing conducted in the community in November 2013.
Another hoax on the English Wikipedia was uncovered this week—not by any thorough investigation, but through the self-disclosure of an anonymous change made when the editors were in their sophomore year of college. The deliberate misinformation had been in the article for over five years with plenty of individuals noticing, but not one suspected its authenticity. This leads to one obvious question: how many more are there?
A "program of heroes" is leading the charge in Egypt.
We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the top 10, with Gaza Strip, Israel, and Hamas. The top 25 also includes Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner, the American actor who died on July 19th, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and deaths in 2014.
Two articles, four lists, and seven pictures attained featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.

The Signpost: 06 August 2014

As the start of Wikimania proper on 8 August approaches, the Signpost looks ahead to what its dozens of presentations might offer the technologically-inclined, whether attending in person or taking advantage of what promises to be a strong digital offering.
Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with the Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19.
Eight articles, fifteen pictures, and two topics were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.
"Major growth" expected in Mexican university after a Wikipedia program is formally accepted by the school's administration.
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its first transparency report, covering from July 2012 to June 2014. The move comes on the same day the organization announced that Google, in order to comply with a recent court order upholding the "right to be forgotten", has removed a number of Wikipedia articles from their European search results.

DYK for Lythrurus ardens

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:37, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Your edit

Re: [1] (reverted):

Please be careful with fixing typos in titles: Not all of them are English language. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:28, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Buffy hummingbird

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 August 2014

Slate reports that Tom Scott, co-creator of the emoji social network Emojli, created a Twitter bot called Parliament WikiEdits to automatically tweet a link to any Wikipedia edits made from an IP address belonging to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scott's bot initially did not tweet any links to edits made from Parliament and, according to Scott, an "insider" reports that their IP addresses changed. Despite this, Scott's Twitter bot has inspired similar creations in numerous other countries.
It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
"Education is at the core of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission."
Wikimania 2014 was held last week in the Barbican Centre in London. Below, the Signpost's former "Technology report" writer Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) shares his thoughts on a bustling conference.
Wikimedia Foundation staff members have now been granted superpowers that would allow them to override community consensus. The new protection level came as a response to attempts of German Wikipedia administrators to implement a community consensus on the new Media Viewer. "Superprotect" is a level above full protection, and prevents edits by administrators.
Erythrophobia is the fear of, or sensitivity to, the colour red. Recently, I have seen more and more erythrophobic Wikipedians; specifically, Wikipedians who are scared of red links. In Wikipedia's early days, red links were encouraged and well-loved, and when I started editing in 2006, this was still mostly the case. Jump forward to 2014, and many editors now have an aversion to red links.
The Observer reported (August 2) that Google would "restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new 'right to be forgotten' legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."
Eight article, six lists, and two topics were promoted to featured status last week.

The Signpost: 20 August 2014

Dorothy Howard interviews Michael Szajewski, archivist for digital development and university records at Ball State University.
Comedian Robin Williams' untimely death takes the top spot.
At the plate with WikiProject Baseball!
Denny Vrandečić argues that "We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors."
Ten articles and three pictures were promoted to featured status last week.

The Signpost: 27 August 2014

Journalistic integrity, Congressional edits, and other news.
More discussions about Media Viewer, Superprotect, and software development
"This was a week when an actual virus, Ebola, competed for attention with several viral social phenomena; most notably the Ice Bucket Challenge..."
Sixteen articles, five lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted.

A Typo Team barnstar for you! ;-))

The Typo Team Barnstar
Dear Spirit of Eagle; Thank you for your contributions to the Typo Team! With kind regards; Patrick. ツ Pdebee. (talk) 09:21, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I'll make sure to continue to do my best to hunt down typos. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 17:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2014

"On 1 September, the Arbitrators voted to suspend the Media Viewer case for 60 days. After the suspension period is up, the case is to be closed unless the committee votes otherwise. The case suspension comes in response to several new initiatives and policies announced by the Wikimedia Foundation that may make the case moot. In the same motion, the committee declared that Eloquence's resignation of the administrator right was "under the cloud" and that he can only regain the right through another RfA."
Two articles, one list, and ten pictures were promoted
Doc James and some collaborators are working on quick detection of copyright violations
"This week we saw three of the top ten articles remain in place, with the Ice Bucket Challenge at #1, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at #2, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at #5, all for a second straight week..."
"This week, the Signpost went out to meet WikiProject Anatomy, dedicated to improving the articles about all our bones, brains, bladders and biceps, and getting them to the high standard expected of a comprehensive encyclopaedia."
The latest roundup of research about Wikimedia

The Signpost: 10 September 2014

Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.
Even though it's not quite 3/4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity.
The amazing and strange tongue-eating louse replacing a fish's tongue! Because isopods, the subject of a new featured article, are both awesome and really damn weird!
This week, the Signpost decided to have a look around with WikiProject Check Wikipedia a maintenance project not concerned so much with articles' content, but in all the tiny errors that are to be found scattered within them. Their front page gives a list of things they mainly focus on ...

Full chemical name for titin

It's ok. -- Ababcdc (talk) 01:09, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2014

The Hürriyet Daily News reports on a series of posts on Twitter from Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ömer Çelik.
As Scotland is deciding its future this week, we thought it might be a good idea to get to know the editors of WikiProject Scotland and talk to them about the project.
A prominent Wikipedia researcher has discovered that the encyclopedia's widely used article traffic statistics are missing out on approximately one-third of total views.
There is no unifying theme we can slap on top article popularity this week.
Four articles, two lists, and 51 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.

A barnstar for you!

The Minor barnstar
Thank you for unrotting my links in the article. I didn't know what link rot was, or how to fix it, until you came by. Thank you! Tnophelia (talk) 06:44, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, glad I could help. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:22, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2014

Six articles, four lists, one topic, and 17 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
The Hindustan Times speculates (September 18) that politicians and their supporters are "sanitizing" their articles in advance of the 2014 Maharashtra State Assembly election. The Times notes the absence of significant controversies in the articles of particular politicians and the presence of heavily promotional language.
0.75% of Wikipedia birthdates are inaccurate, reported Robert Viseur at WikiSym 2014. Those inaccuracies are "low, although higher than the 0.21% observed for the baseline reference sources". Given that biographies represent 15% of English Wikipedia, the third largest category after "arts" and "culture", their accuracy is important.
This could be the beginning of a new era for this list. Until now, decisions to remove suspicious content have been largely educated guesswork. This week though, we have a new collaborator who can shine a light on the origins and patterns, sorting once and for all the webwheat from the cyberchaff.
A year and a week later, we're with some of the members of WikiProject Good Articles, who wanted to share the news of their upcoming contest within the project, the GA Cup. The aim of this friendly competition, which is held in the same light friendly manner of the WikiCup and the Core Contest, is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed articles at Good article nominations which has been a constant problem for quite a few years for those running the GA process.
Banning Policy finishes the workshop phase on 23 September. Parties have proposed findings of fact on the topics of the 3RR, the role of Jimbo Wales, and proxying for banned users. A request for arbitration was posted on 20 September about Landmark Worldwide.

Linkrot tag for Roseland Theatre (Nova Scotia)

Thanks for checking out the article I started: Roseland Theatre (Nova Scotia). However I don't understand the link rot tag. I have done citations with all the usual author, title, and publisher info in addition to the wesbite url. How are these citations bare urls? What should I change or add? Dan Conlin (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

There are no problems with the citation, and I have removed the tag. I must have mistaken your blue-linked citation for a bare URL. My bad, and sorry for bothering you. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:16, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
No probs. Thanks for the quick response - and for the vigilance. I hate finding mysterious dead links in article footnotes.Dan Conlin (talk) 22:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2014

Contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do.
This article was first published in the Signpost in 2009. Written by several long-standing editors, including the late Adrianne Wadewitz, the article was subjected to extensive commentary and ultimately influenced the English Wikipedia's plagiarism guideline. With recent debates about close paraphrasing vis-à-vis plagiarism, we feel that this dispatch retains its relevance and deserves a second airing.
The argument on Wikipedia over the benefits of crowdsourcing versus the primacy of "expert" contributors stretches back to co-founder Larry Sanger's break with the project to start the alternative Citizendium.
This week, the Signpost went down to the farm to have a look at the work of WikiProject Agriculture, which has been in existence since 2007 and has a scope covering crop production, livestock management, aquaculture, dairy farming and forest management.
Jews wished each other Shanah Tovah ("Good year") this week as Rosh Hashanah was our most popular article. It was also a week not dominated by heavy news and tragedies, so aside from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (#2, sixth week in the Top 10), our popular article list runs the gamut of current events including new television series Gotham (#3), the 2014 Asian Games (#4), and Reddit-fueled popularity for German director Uwe Boll (#7).
As the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Civil War draws to a close, the race to improve content continues. The Battle of Franklin, fought on November 30, 1864, will, quite appropriately, be Picture of the Day for November 30, 2014, its 150th anniversary. If you want to help commemorate the American Civil War, why not help out at the Military History WikiProject's Operation Brothers at War. Or help out with the World War I centennial, just starting up, Operation Great War Centennial.

Thanks for Your review

Hi Spirit of Eagle! Thanks a lot - i would like to say a few things here, though. I presume you have enough insight. 1. i created the article in my sandbox and had it submitted for review just this morning...the answer was, it might take a month....too long... so decided to create it, but with the "city" in brackets. it worked, as we can see. Initially, i wanted it without brackets, but the creation wizard always redirected to the existing sihanoukville article, which never was clearly defined (city or province). I had it requested for a move to "sihanoukville province" a few days ago, but i have no idea what is going to happen with it. I went through the entire content of the old article around a month ago and decided to make a distinct "sihanoukville province" article out of it. There is still a lot of re-editing and cleaning left. I am going to do it, as soon as it has been moved...whenever this is. I guess, this is ok? 2. There are still a couple of mysteries left for me to figure out, e.g. these source templates - you can see there is some sort of bug on the new article...i will go into it soon. In case i have problems, could i get your or anyone's help? 3. I am not a native English speaker - there are certainly lots of mistakes in the text, although i do my best...i - again - am very grateful for any reviews and help. 4. Cambodia is not precisely the country, that has tons of quality sources. I am working on most of Cambodia's islands articles now - verifiable contents on these topics is very hard to come by.... Anyhow, as i live in Sihanoukville for many years, i speak respectable Khmer and have as a result accumulated knowledge from local people. Is there anything, we can do with that.....

Thanks a lot for your attention and All The best!!! Wikirictor (talk) 07:11, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

1. I see no problem with this. I believe the move would be the best decision, since many of the other articles on Cambodian providences contain the word “province” in the title. Until any decision is made, the title of the city of Sihanoukville is fine. Also, as the city and province are not the same entity, both should get clearly defined articles.

2. I’m really not that good with templates. A user at Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates would probably be more help.

3. I’ll look over the article some more this weekend. I can probably help with wording and whatnot.

4. You can use primary sources such as a historical journal or a written first-hand account of the islands, as long as you do not draw any conclusions from them and only post straight-forward facts that can be verified by anyone with access to the source. However, you can’t include personal knowledge, because that would be original research.

I hope that this is helpful, and I’ll probably be posting a few notes here after I do a more thorough clean-up of the Sihanoukville (city) article. Please feel free to post any follow-up questions during the meantime. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I've been working on cleaning up the article, and I've made many minor corrections here and there. I noticed that several sections, most notably the beach section, read a bit like a travel guide. The language in these sections is rather promotional, and should be edited so it is a neutral description of the beaches given in context of the city. For example "Aloha beach is a welcoming environment with clean sands, sparkling waters and plenty of facilities" is overly promotional while "Aloha beach is one of the largest beaches in the city, and is the location of several tourist resorts" is more encyclopedic. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:43, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Awesome

1.Thanks for your support!!!
Your edits are exactly, what it needed - distinct and unassuming - it is very hard to remain un-biased, esp. when you "protest" against smth. and think this is just fine...as in the traffic section. There is quite some text, which i have in one way or another - from my own site - kohrong-sanloem.com - it has lots of info - in particular the islands. it is -partly - the source of the island section.....you are right - tone, expression and evaluation need constraint at WP
anyhow there remain plenty of stylistic embarrassments,
which are all the more present on the province article as i initially just rewrote a core of text which was truly a mess of simple statements...

2. I have made a translation yesterday...the article had been abandoned - of course - a scientific article - no easy stuff...anyhow - i liked it, because it was on archaeology... - no danger of bias here - but a real challenge to accuracy. i haven't inserted any refs,yet - ain;t sure, whether they are required at all in a translation - and they lead - mostly - to German sources. i had requested native speaker support on the talk page - but so far - nobody. they also have offered a machine translation (probably google translate) to work with - i haven't looked in it, though....
article: Mauer 1
All the best!!! Wikirictor (talk) 19:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


Stats
I saw that you did a few alterations with the staistcs-refs. I still have get more into it. Still, though - there are almost no stats at all on the city - only the province - the 2008 census has stats on urban issues, but these are just general numbers, valid for all urban centers. For example - i never ever found a source with the area of the city - there a hundreds of sites who claim to know - they have, of course, like anyone else the readings of the province - and not even aware of that fact...
mhmmm
well i added up the size of the communities and the port and compared the result with google map measurement tool ...not very subtle but it produced an approximate number - as no one else has anything better - this seems to be the yardstick....somehow
Wikirictor (talk) 21:49, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

To answer your question previous question, translations should be cited. Also, make sure the translation is paraphrased to avoid copyright issues. As for the population, adding up the population for the communities and port is a valid way to get the total population. Just make sure that all of the population statistics were collected during the same year and that the combined population of these places make up 100% of the cities population. Also, I'll check to see if I can find the population of the city. I'll post back if I find anything. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
This source says the population is a little over 250,000 people, although this number seems to vary somewhat from source to source. I hope this is useful. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:13, 12 October 2014 (UTC)


Details

Hi! I was actually talking about the area - the size of the land, anyhow- don't worry about these details. Important is:."..is a valid way to get the total... " thanks for your help!!!
I want to give the "history of - and - geography of Cambodia" articles new structure and content soon. They have high importance classes - but are quite blunt. I went into the geography article a couple of days ago and did a few edits.
I will inform you when i go back to it - ideally we can develop the text simultaneously - i bring the facts - you watch over form and style...
ATB Wikirictor (talk) 09:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2014

Also, Wikimedia Norge and Nobel Peace Center edit-a-thon
2 Featured articles, 4 Featured lists, 62 Featured pictures, and 2 Featured portals were promoted.
The first case of the Ebola virus on US shores sent people into a tizzy, rushing to their keyboards to try and learn what they could.
No seriously, it is.

The Signpost: 15 October 2014

Why does Wikipedia still use the gendered pronouns "she" and "her" for ships?
Ben Koo of the sports blog Awful Announcing investigated how player Joe Streater's name became involved in recent years with a historic sports scandal.
The Banning Policy case was closed on 12 October. Arbcom affirmed that users have "considerable leeway" in terms of how their talk pages are managed.
Nine articles and twenty-six pictures were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia.
This week we sat down with The Earwig to learn about his wikitext parser.
We are pleased to report that the WP:5000 has now been updated to include mobile views, including a column reflecting the percentage of views coming from mobile devices.
Today, it's the turn of WikiProject Ohio to give us an interview probing deep into of how they manage to run a project covering one fiftieth of the United States, and the workings of how they manufacture their successes and other articles.

Break

Hi, noticed you were looking at the 'Qaster' page. I'm trying to cleanup the page and make it work for existing on Wikipedia. Right now there are many pages linking to it. There is citable information/sources that provide neutral information on the company. What else can be done to remove the two boxes at the top of the page? Does it need more information, citations, etc? Any help you can offer would be great and appreciated very much. Thanks! Michaelgr43 (talk) 02:44, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Your article is currently nominated for deletion, so it will be removed from Wikipedia unless it meets notability requirements. The best way to do that (and to save your article) is by finding reliable sources independent of Qaster that talk about the website in depth. Also, what is your relationship to the website? If you are associated with it in any significant way, then there may be conflict of interest issues. Basically, its generally frowned upon for people to write articles about things they have created. If you are associated with the website, then at this point it would be best to declare this on the articles talk page. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

!

I am not associated with Qaster and did not create it. I do research within the startup tech world and am working on putting a blog together where I report about emerging startups. There's a few other companies that I have been working on wikipedia entries for. I think it's important for them to have Wikipedia pages if they'll be included in the startup blog. There's around 6 sources right now supporting content in the Qaster wikipedia article. Would it be better to add in more content inside the article related to Qaster or add in more citation sources from the internet which report on its services? Just trying to learn and be cooperative here and hope you can help.. thank you. Michaelgr43 (talk) 02:26, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

First, I would go into Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Qaster and make an argument about why you believe the page should be saved. You've made comments, but you should also attempt to justify the existence of the article, respond to the delete vote already in place and clarify your connection (or lack thereof) to Qaster. The most effective arguments will follow the criteria laid out in WP:GNG. As for sourcing, I would add the strongest sources you have into the article. Most of the sources you have appear borderline at best, so an article from a mainstream news website such as Forbes would do a lot to improve the article and increase the odds of it being saved. I would expand the article with content, but I would focus on sourcing first. I hope this helps. Spirit of Eagle (talk) [[00:56, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 October 2014

Four articles, four lists, and fifty-three pictures were promoted to featured status.
Our op-ed writer this week opines that the organization of Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" resembles how Wikipedia is organized.
Among many newsworthy stories this week, the Signpost notes the passing of Italian Wikipedia administrator and former Wikimedia Italia treasurer [Cotton
Ebola, movies and television articles appear in this week's top ten.
PaintedCarpet explains that "WikiProject Orphanage aims to connect all Wikipedia pages, so that pages can be found and read more easily."


Potamogeton acutifolius: 25 October 2014

Hi Spirit of Eagle, thanks for your helpful comments. Have now added a header section to this article as suggested. Tristan He — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tristan He (talk • contribs) 10:29, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the "lead missing" tag. Also, good job on the article. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:22, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 October 2014

By the way, there is a monster at the end of this article
Noam Cohen reports in The New York Times (October 26) that Wikipedia's "Ebola Virus Disease article has had 17 million page views in the last month," an indication of the public's reliance on the online encyclopedia.
Rather than the usual WikiProject Report, this week our guest author Jheald is telling us about a campaign to identify thousands of old maps which have been digitised, to make them available for georeferencing and upload
Ebola virus disease leads the Report for the fourth straight week. The rest of the list is primarily a mix of pop culture topics, including movie Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4) whose trailer was leaked early, and the death of Oscar de la Renta (#7). A BuzzFeed article on creepy Wikipedia articles, no doubt well-timed with Halloween (#9) around the corner, was responsible for three articles in the Top 25, including June and Jennifer Gibbons (#10), Taman Shud Case (#17), Joyce Vincent (#25). And the internet-run-amok controversy of Gamergate cracked the Top 25 for the first time at #19.
In new research conducted in light of proposed changes to data protection legislation in the European Union (EU), authors Bart Custers, Simone van der Hof, and Bart Schermer conducted a comparative analysis of social media and user-generated content websites’ privacy policies along with a user survey (N=8,621 in 26 countries) and interviews in 13 different EU countries on awareness, values, and attitudes toward privacy online.

Mauer 1

Hi Spirit! Thanks a lot for your help! All the best!!! Wikirictor (talk) 09:49, 1 November 2014 (UTC)




BTW - Our Sihanoukville (city) article does not show up in Google Search, even when you type: Sihanoukville (city). You have any idea....Thanks Wikirictor (talk) 10:57, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not really sure. I couldn't find the Wikipedia article from a Google search, but it was one of the first results in a Yahoo search [2]. Perhaps its just the way Google conducts searches. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:38, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 November 2014

"Rachel Feltman, in The Washington Post (November 4), examined research in which a team, mostly from Los Alamos National Laboratory, headed by Kyle Hickman developed a model that enabled them "to successfully predict the 2013-2014 flu season in real time" by employing "an algorithm to link flu-related Wikipedia searches with CDC data from the same time." Apparently when individuals search for information about the flu and its symptoms in Wikipedia when they feel ill, this generates data useful in forecasting the the flu season."
"It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break... Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August."

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cabaret (Justin Timberlake song)

Could this perhaps be relisted if not redirected to album article? The "keep" voters all overlooked the notability criteria for songs into account, which says Coverage of a song within the context of an album review does not establish notability. If the only coverage of a song occurs in the context of reviews of the album on which it appears, that material should be contained in the album article and an independent article about the song should not be created. and also has a note saying The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the song/single, its musician/band or of its publication, price listings and other nonsubstantive detail treatment. The last vote was close, but neglected to take into account how the non-album review sources only mention subject in brief. Snuggums (talk / edits) 01:24, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I stand by my decision to close the AfD as keep. I closed the AfD as keep because there was a clear consensus to keep the article and legitimate justification was given. (Specifically, it was argued that the song had charted, it had a few sources that weren't album reviews and that it was a legitimate content fork). If you disagree, you can ask an admin to review my decision per WP:NACD, but I felt that this was a pretty non-controversial keep. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
I realize they all shared the same opinion, but their justifications did not meet up to inclusion criteria (and thus weren't very convincing). Snuggums (talk / edits) 04:36, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
I didn't feel that this was the strongest keep, but there wasn't any support for a redirect despite multiple comments and some of the arguments given for a keep had some validity to them. Perhaps we could get a third party to look this over if you disagree with my assessment.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
I see what you mean, and have listed the discussion at DRV. Snuggums (talk / edits) 05:13, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Utah Fourth Amendment Protection Act

Hello Spirit of Eagle. It has been over six months since you last edited your WP:AFC draft article submission, entitled "Utah Fourth Amendment Protection Act".

The page will shortly be deleted. If you plan on editing the page to address the issues raised when it was declined and resubmit it, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code. Please note that Articles for Creation is not for indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you want to retrieve it, copy this code: {{subst:Refund/G13|Draft:Utah Fourth Amendment Protection Act}}, paste it in the edit box at this link, click "Save page", and an administrator will in most cases undelete the submission.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. GamerPro64 22:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 November 2014

"Technology media outlets are abuzz after the November 6 unveiling of the Amazon Echo, an Internet-connected voice command device"; "The EUobserver talks (November 4) with Dimitar Dimitrov (User:Dimi z) about the lack of freedom of panorama in some European Union countries and its implications for Wikimedia projects"; "Scott Cantrell, classical music critic for the Dallas Morning News, recounts efforts to verify an uncited claim in the Wikipedia article for the Béla Bartók opera Bluebeard's Castle."
This was very much a week dominated by holidays and pop culture over current events, with new film Interstellar taking the top spot followed by holidays Day of the Dead (#2), Guy Fawkes and his Night (#4 and #5), and Halloween (#8, and its third week on the list). And a foursome of television shows, all return visitors, appear to setting up residence on the greater Top 25: The Walking Dead (#11), American Horror Story: Freak Show (#14), Gotham (#16), and The Flash (#18).
Nine articles, two lists, and 55 featured pictures were promoted during the week of 26 October.
We return to our interview format this week, speaking with the participants of WikiProject Hospitals. This project, formed in 2010, has no Featured content and only three Good articles, yet aided by around 30 hard-working Wikipedians covers a topic that is essential to life.

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

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The Signpost: 26 November 2014

Four articles, four lists, eleven pictures, and one topic were promoted.
Numerous media outlets are reporting on a November 14 statement on the website of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library announcing the formation of a Russian "alternative" to Wikipedia, a "regional electronic encyclopedia" dedicated to "Russian regions and the life of the country".
The monthly roundup of research related to Wikimedia.
It's time for this year's edition of the Report looking at possibly our largest wikiproject: Military history. Since our last interview in June 2013, the project has had no break in its huge quest to document everything in their scope, that is, militaries and conflicts of the past. As usual, its participants were eager to answer the questions posed by The Signpost and update us on how they are doing.
Often times in popular culture, a subject will be quite popular among a distinct niche of people or region of the world, but little-known elsewhere -- like a musical artist that is boasted to be "big in Japan". The Traffic Report provides a bevy of examples this week.

The Signpost: 03 December 2014

The Signpost: 10 December 2014

The Signpost: 17 December 2014

Iran National Council

Hi, you yesterday reviewed Iran National Council. Earlier today, some other longtime-user filled in all five bare URLs. The page has since been deleted. Could you restore it. Thanks.--RezaPahavifan (talk) 02:14, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, so I don't have the ability to undelete pages. The page itself was deleted per G5, which allows the speedy deletion of pages created by a blocked or banned user. If you are blocked or banned, I would wait until it expires before attempting to create pages or editing Wikipedia in general. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:00, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

AfD notication

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wilayat_Kirkuk_(ISIL)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilayat_ar-Raqqah_(ISIL) started today.

The Signpost: 24 December 2014

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