User talk:This, that and the other

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Bug 5645[edit]

Saw this bug report over the signature button appearing in namespaces that editor's would rather it didn't and figured I should mention the "obvious"

Just add

		'filters': [ 'body.ns-talk, body.ns-4' ],

to the signature button's entry in jquery.wikiEditor.toolbar.config.js and your done. The same approach is used for the references button (see that same .js file if you don't believe me)

If you want to allow the signature button's generation in more namespaces, just add their numeric designation(s) to the filter using body.ns-4 in the above as your example (no comma after the last entry btw).

You can also exclude button generation for certain namespaces this way....

		'filters': [ 'body:not(.ns-2, .ns-8, .ns-828)' ],

Hope that helps -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:54, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That implementation method was not something I was aware of, so thanks for enlightening me :) However I don't think it is necessarily appropriate for this situation. It wouldn't be right to hard-code the list of namespaces in this JavaScript code, and it also seems a bit wasteful to be stringing together a 'body.ns-' + namespaceId type thing when we can just delete the entry from the JavaScript object.
The main issue surrounding this bug is that no-one can agree on how we should decide which namespaces get the sig button. I would appreciate it if you could contribute, based on the three options I outlined in comment 19 of the bug. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:31, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Same old, same old. No-one agrees because each has their own embedded bias/perspective by now if they've been a regualar for any noteworthy amount of time by now. I dare say even your poo-poo'ing of the existing filter settings has some trace degree of that too.

Look, it seems like all the wiki-projects at least share the same ~17(I forget what the right # is) core namespaces - that's all you folks should be discussing a default setting for. Period.

Half of those are talk-pages so body.ns-talk or some similar solution should allow the button for those talk namespaces. That leaves "you" with what? ~8 core namespaces shared acrosss all the wiki-projects to bicker over? Out of those remaining namespaces, only the Project: ns (ns-4) would have any legit reason to host talk-page like discussions (a la Village Pump for example) where the button is useful.

Get into the namespaces numbered ~100 or higher from one Wiki-domain to the next, and you'll find using content namespaces to include/exclude button generation will not be as neatly uniform as the core namespaces are. This area is where 'ickypedia blinders' cause developers to make changes that typically don't go over well @ any project BUT Wikipedia or Commons (I can almost bet next week's pay-check that whatever solution is applied at the end of the day, it will conflict with the existing ability to use the filter).

My vote is to set a default using whatever manner or method makes the most sense for the core namespaces that all wikis share and leave the far lower trafficked assignable namespaces out of it - let folks deal with it or solve it on their own locally if the presence of the button so annoying to them. Prost. :) -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We want to be able to configure this behind the scenes on a per-wiki basis. For example, Meta uses signatures in the main namespace, while this wiki does not. It's more about how to determine exactly how this configuration interacts with other wiki elements. For instance, does the presence of __NEWSECTIONLINK__ indicate we should allow the signature button on that page? I don't know the answer to that.
I should also stress that this relates to the MediaWiki software in general, which is used by many others besides the WMF (for example, a lot of companies use MediaWiki internally for planning and collaboration between staff). We need a solution that will work out-of-the-box for all wikis, as well as to be configurable by the server administrator as required. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think you answered your own question - especially if your rationale goes beyond the Wiki foundation projects and into the "commercial" aspects of the software. Again the core namespaces are not likely not be re-tasked into blogs or newsfeeds but additional namespaces might be. If that rationale is true, the logical approach would be set only the .ns-talk namespaces as the extension's default for sig. button generation while leaving deviation or modification of said default a matter left to local administration to wrangle with post-deployment. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I don't think I'm "poo-poo'ing" the existing settings, insofar as there are none. The status quo is to show the signature button in all namespaces, which seems rather inadequate. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well that point on 'showing in all namespaces' goes back to the rather bloated default package of defaults loaded with WikiEditor and the hoops one has to jump through just to customize the basics that are sold as "tools" in a tool-bar. For example, I can appreciate the need to cover Asian character sets along with the others but there should be a way for at least the local administration if not User:s themselves to pick and choose individual sets. Sure, one can add characters to existing sets and add entirely new sets but there is no way to prevent sets in the existing defaults from loading every time the tab is selected - well at least I can't find a way other than removing the entire booklet and rebuilding it without the unwanted sets (I think this is due to the setting 'deferLoad': true, in that same .js mentioned above usurping anything I might have set to removeFromToolbar in my local .js file(s)). If you know better, please, I'm I dying to find out how its done.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that its great to incorporate defaults that allow for a positive "out-of-box experience" but they should not be so embedded in the module that customizing/deviating from those defaults necessitates the negation then duplication of the original coding involved. As the move to more mobile platforms plays out and/or the need for screen-space management increases, it seems things like which default loaded buttons (or tabs) you want loaded by default in which namespace scenario(s) is something that should be standardized in one's User: preferences rather than locked into additional scripting and/or patching as those options currently seem to be. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FtCG[edit]

I loveFtCG, but it would be nice if it could delete templates like {{Category ordered by date|Files licensed by third parties|2013|08|13}}. Thanks! (tJosve05a (c) 00:09, 1 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Josve05a, I'm really sorry it's taken me this long to answer! Do you think FtCG should remove all invocations of the template "Category ordered by date", or only those with "Files licensed by third parties" as the first parameter? — This, that and the other (talk) 02:51, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All instances, since Commons don't have (didn't the last time I checked) that template. (tJosve05a (c) 07:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing[edit]

Is it possible to make FtCG to add:
[[Category:Files uploaded by Josve05a (cleanup)]] [[Category:Files transferred from en.wikipedia by Josve05a]] ‎ to all files I tranfer? (tJosve05a (c) 00:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ping. (tJosve05a (c) 15:26, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the Common Good : run reversely[edit]

Hi, my home-wiki is Russian.

It is rather often it is needed to move files from Commons to ru-wiki: because a set of files is found not corresponding to the free content criteria yet is useful for many articles under fair use restrictions.

Before writing some bot from a scratch I am wondering if For the Common Good can be a little bit changed (or some settings applied to it as it is) so it could transfer sets of files from Commons to ru.wikipedia.org File: namespace?

The relevant discussion about a bot (in Russian) is currently here.

Best regards, Seva — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neolexx (talkcontribs) 16:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

+1. Please help. Details here: Википедия:Запросы к ботоводам#Выгрузка файлов из Викисклада в Рувики (via google translate) --Fastboy (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Fastboy Neolexx: My apologies for not replying any sooner. Such a tool would certainly be possible to create. Indeed, in the past, I used a "lightly hacked" version of For the Common Good to transfer files from Wikitravel Shared (a site similar in nature to Wikimedia Commons) to local Wikivoyage editions after the establishment Wikivoyage in late 2012. So it is certainly possible. I will be happy to look at this in the coming week. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would be terrific! By all other means the app seems fit perfectly to our needs uncluding the ability of an editable "template dictionary". I have translated your answer at our forum - as there is no rush then to do and to debug something from a scratch, it is better to wait then. --NeoLexx (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fastboy and Neolexx, I have uploaded version 1.0.5.11 of For the Common Good to http://atlight.github.io. In conjunction with the instructions at User:This, that and the other/For the Common Good/Reverse transfers, it should now be possible to run FtCG in reverse! If you find any problems or would like additional features to be added, please let me know. Thanks for your interest in FtCG. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you! I will start learning and testing immediately. --NeoLexx (talk) 07:41, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry for silly question, but where does the installation go by default? I installed it on Windows 8, closed and now no signs at Program files. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:18, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, OK, sorry. It is not installed, it is a single exe. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:20, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be clear, what is the license you want to be mentioned for this program? I didn't find it at the download page. --NeoLexx (talk) 08:23, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The current version is released into the public domain. Even so, I appreciate it if you provide attribution if you choose to make copies of the program. I will probably release the next version under a license such as MIT, but for the moment, it is in the public domain. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:25, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello. I tried reverse and it worked. I spent decent time to make a config but then I transferred twenty images very quickly. But I found some obstacles that slowed me down:
  1. FtCG doesn't memorize chexbox settings (I had to ckeck "ignore warnings" every other image)
  2. FtCG doesn't have automating to bypass a ban to create image with a name that already exists in commons. Of cauze admins doesn't have this problem. But I had to rename each image manually. It would be nice if you could set some prefix/postfix to new file name once and FtCG would apply it for each next image.
  3. One more feature I'd like to see: mandatory replacements or replacement groups (one of). If such "mandatory" replacement pattern not found, FtCG must make a very nicely visible error warning.

Could you make some of such features? Or, could I contribute to code? ~Nirvanchik~ ⊤άλҟ 07:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And, by the way, in reverse order you can configure only "source" wiki which is commons and which is English, and you can't configure "destination" wiki, which is not English, so I had to use very coplicated replacement pattarn to change image description template by Russian version of these template, and to move all variables correctly. It would be nice if reverse wiki could be supported in more natural way. ~Nirvanchik~ ⊤άλҟ 07:39, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Btw thanks for that previous support! It really helped! ~Nirvanchik~ ⊤άλҟ 07:43, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

512 character limit for special page titles[edit]

Assuming you are the "tto" on Freenode who asked "just wondering if you could clarify for me why you added the 512-character limit on special page titles in r18220?" I didn't add a 512-character limit, I raised the limit from 255 to 512 bytes on the basis that 255 bytes was not sufficient. 512 bytes was sufficient for use cases then in existence. -- Tim Starling (talk) 09:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That was me :) Thanks for the clarification. So it was mostly an arbitrary choice, then. That was what I was interested in knowing. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Did you notice that this redirect format doesn't work? I'm not sure if it is the page or Mediawiki which should be fixed. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:37, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's the long standing bug 6151. I've been poking around at the MediaWiki title code recently, so I might try to fix it... although the fact that it hasn't been fixed in 8 years isn't promising... — This, that and the other (talk) 23:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Beth Sotelo (September 5)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved. Coin945 (talk) 07:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Beth Sotelo (September 10)[edit]

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved. Coin945 (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A3 template changes[edit]

Hello TTATO,
I don't mean to be pushy, but you said on Wikipedia talk:Twinkle that you would do preliminary work on Twinkle tomorrow (which is probably yesterday now), however Twinkle is still tagging pages with {{db-nocontent}}. Please tell me why this is the case as my new templates are now finished and are ready to be moved. Thanks, Passengerpigeon (talk) 14:54, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Passengerpigeon, this is a bit of a "chicken or egg" problem. But so long as the new A3 templates are set up as redirects to db-nocontent for the time being, there shouldn't be an issue. I can't promise when the change to Twinkle will be deployed, but hopefully it will be available on-wiki not long after I finish writing the code tonight. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:15, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
{{db-a3}} will not change in the move, and {{db-a3-notice}} currently redirects to {{db-nocontent-notice}} but will be overwritten by {{db-nocontent-notice}} once the move takes place, thus everything should work the same way it does currently. Passengerpigeon (talk) 23:32, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright checks when performing AfC reviews[edit]

Hello This, that and the other. This message is part of a mass mailing to people who appear active in reviewing articles for creation submissions. First of all, thank you for taking part in this important work! I'm sorry this message is a form letter – it really was the only way I could think of to covey the issue economically. Of course, this also means that I have not looked to see whether the matter is applicable to you in particular.

The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.

If you don't do so already, I'd like to ask for your to help with this problem by taking on the practice of performing a copyvio check as the first step in any AfC review. The most basic method is to simply copy a unique but small portion of text from the draft body and run it through a search engine in quotation marks. Trying this from two different paragraphs is recommended. (If you have any question about whether the text was copied from the draft, rather than the other way around (a "backwards copyvio"), the Wayback Machine is very useful for sussing that out.)

If you do find a copyright violation, please do not decline the draft on that basis. Copyright violations need to be dealt with immediately as they may harm those whose content is being used and expose Wikipedia to potential legal liability. If the draft is substantially a copyvio, and there's no non-infringing version to revert to, please mark the page for speedy deletion right away using {{db-g12|url=URL of source}}. If there is an assertion of permission, please replace the draft article's content with {{subst:copyvio|url=URL of source}}.

Some of the more obvious indicia of a copyvio are use of the first person ("we/our/us..."), phrases like "this site", or apparent artifacts of content written for somewhere else ("top", "go to top", "next page", "click here", use of smartquotes, etc.); inappropriate tone of voice, such as an overly informal tone or a very slanted marketing voice with weasel words; including intellectual property symbols (™,®); and blocks of text being added all at once in a finished form with no misspellings or other errors.

I hope this message finds you well and thanks again you for your efforts in this area. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC).[reply]

       Sent via--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the Common Good[edit]

Good day.

My name is Sergey Semenov, I'm the administrator Russian Wikipedia. I am writing to you about the reverse transfer images from the Commons in the Russian Wikipedia using a program For the Common Good. Unfortunately, this program is quite difficult to master, and will move quite a lot.

I have uploaded to Commons several thousand images of tombstones set in the cemeteries of Russia. Unfortunately, in our country there is complete freedom of panorama, so these files can at any time be removed. I decided to move them to the Russian Wikipedia template FoP-Russia. In connection with this appeal to you to write the configuration files for the particular transport mechanism to simplify the programming work far from the participants. In today's conditions, the use of mass transfer of files can lead to disastrous results.

P. S. I'm sorry for the mistakes I badly speak English and translate through Google translator. --SerSem (talk) 12:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sergey, thanks for your message, and don't worry about your English, I understand it well! I understand that reverse transfers with FtCG aren't as easy as they perhaps should be. I'll have a moment later today to see if I can prepare you a configuration file that will do what you ask. Thanks, — This, that and the other (talk) 03:40, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I'll wait. --SerSem (talk) 12:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I made this configuration file for For the Common Good: http://atlight.github.io/ftcg/ForTheCommonGood_SerSem.cfg You should download it, rename it to ForTheCommonGood.cfg, and move it to the same location as ForTheCommonGood.exe.
Be aware of a couple of things:
  1. You must turn off the "Tag file with {{now commons}}" check box above the "Transfer" button.
  2. If you want to go through each of your uploads, you can download this text file: http://atlight.github.io/ftcg/SerSem_files.txt and click the "Other source" option to load this text file into FtCG.
  3. There is no template on ruwiki for CC-BY-SA version 4.0 (see c:template:cc-by-sa-4.0). You will need to create this template on ruwiki before transferring.
I would say that, since you have such a huge number of files, it might be better to ask for a bot to perform the transfers. I think you will find FtCG too slow for this work. But if you wish to give it a go, I hope it helps you. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:13, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for your help, I was able to master the program and begin to transfer files with its help. All I do not need to unload, I have old photos uploaded to Commons. With the help of your program I have unloaded in Russian Wikipedia about 700 photos. This is a very important and necessary option in the program. --SerSem (talk) 18:01, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good day. I tried to upload a list of files at once from the category "Literatorskie mostki", but I did not succeed. If I use the text in this form, as provided by you in the file, the program writes the message: "An API error occured. Bad title" File: "". If I add the "File:" at the beginning of each line, the program writes the message: "An API error occured. Bad title:" File: <>. JPG ". What could be wrong? --SerSem (talk) 14:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would suggest that you check the encoding of the text file. For the Common Good expects the file to be stored in the UTF-8 encoding. Alternatively, you could upload the file to the Internet so I could look at it and check it for any problems. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you![edit]

The Technical Barnstar
For assistance in establishing unloading unfree files in the Russian Wikipedia Commons. The administrator Russian Wikipedia SerSem (talk) 18:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Toolserver[edit]

Hi Purodha, I was triaging some old Toolserver migration bugs, and noticed that there is a task phab:T63028 relating to one of your tools. Do you intend to migrate this tool to Tool Labs? — This, that and the other (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although I do not unterstand the phab:T63028 web page, I understand that someone ist asking whether or not I plan to migrate former toolserver tools to tools labs. I do. I only do not have plans as to when I have time to do it. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 19:39, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Bugzilla seems not wo work any more. It redirects to something else. My account to bugzilla was lost in the process. So, for the time being, I am out of this business. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 09:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Purodha: Bugzilla was migrated to the new Phabricator issue tracking system a few weeks ago. You can create a Phabricator account that is attached to your Wikimedia SUL account, if you want to comment on bugs. See mw:Phabricator/Help#Creating_your_account for some info.
In any case I'll update the Phabricator task to say that you haven't forgotten about it. Thanks for the reply! — This, that and the other (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I knew about the migration, and I was on the Phabricator page that should allow me to connect to my old bugzilla account a few day ago. That is why I wrote that my access was lost. Maybe, I just have to wait for it to be migrated, I did not really dive into the details. -- Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#Custom notices on user .js and .css pages[edit]

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#Custom notices on user .js and .css pages. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (etc) 15:04, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting of TfD for Template:Infobox academic division[edit]

TTO, Template:Infobox academic division has been re-nominated for deletion/merger, following a DRV. You participated in the previous TfD discussion, and I thought you would appreciate the opportunity to comment on the newly re-opened/re-listed discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 January 22#Template:Infobox academic division. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 07:26, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now re-re-relisted for more betterness (under the original link), containing the original discussion, but not any comments made in the re-listing. Sorry for the mess. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:13, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RfC - Helper Script access[edit]

An RfC has been opened at RfC to physically restrict access to the Helper Script. You are invited to comment. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Problem![edit]

Hi! In attempt to load the file from Ruvika jumps out the message: "The Internet inquiry isn't executed. The inquiry was interrupted: The inquiry is cancelled." Photo: http://radikall.com/images/2015/02/13/ecRa7.jpg --Dogad75 (talk) 10:43, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle for TRwiki[edit]

I am a technician from TRwiki. I wanna activate Twinkle. I created following pages(from ENwiki) but "TW tab" didnot appeared.

And I made necessary changes in Gadgets tab. Wikipedia:Twinkle/Localisation pages is outdated. Is there a new instruction page? What I am missing? --Mavrikant (talk) 01:27, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mavrikant: Try altering the Gadgets-definition line to the following:
Twinkle[ResourceLoader|dependencies=mediawiki.user,mediawiki.util,jquery.ui.dialog,jquery.tipsy|rights=autoconfirmed]|morebits.js|morebits.css|Twinkle.js|twinklespeedy.js|twinklediff.js|twinkleconfig.js|twinklefluff.js
This, that and the other (talk) 06:28, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nope :( I even tryed before enwiki's Gadgets-definition: Twinkle[ResourceLoader|dependencies=mediawiki.user,mediawiki.util,jquery.ui.dialog,jquery.tipsy,moment|rights=autoconfirmed]|morebits.js|morebits.css|Twinkle.js|twinkleprod.js|twinkleimage.js|twinklebatchundelete.js|twinklewarn.js|twinklespeedy.js|friendlyshared.js|twinklediff.js|twinkleunlink.js|twinkledelimages.js|friendlytag.js|twinkledeprod.js|friendlywelcome.js|twinklexfd.js|twinklebatchdelete.js|twinklebatchprotect.js|twinkleconfig.js|twinklefluff.js|twinkleprotect.js|twinklearv.js|friendlytalkback.js I also tried MediaWiki:Gadget-Twinkle.js of Simplewiki. I haven't seen TW tab near search bar yet. There was old version (2009) of Twinkle stored subpages of User:Vito Genovese/Twinkle, I suspicious that old files sabotages new Twinkle but I cleaned main pages of old Twinkle. Do you need technician rights to look what is wrong? --Mavrikant (talk) 13:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is working. I followed new version of Wikipedia:Twinkle/Localisation page. Thank you Siddhartha Ghai and User:This, that and the other --Mavrikant (talk) 14:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail![edit]

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MusikAnimal talk 03:10, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Did you get my email? I'm eager to move forward with the block module but am having trouble with testing. Should I use the fragmented modules on testwiki (as opposed to one big twinkle.js)? How can I get the perl script to upload there instead of enwiki? I can't get the concatenated twinkle.js to work in my userspace since it requires morebits. Morebits doesn't appear to be a module that I can use with mw.loader.load and mw.loader.using, and even trying putting the Twinkle init stuff in a callback of $.getScript things still don't load in the right order. I feel like there must be an easier way. Thanks MusikAnimal talk 23:45, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I often have trouble getting Twinkle to show up in the UI on testwiki. Normally I will just open my browser's F12 tools and directly call the callback, e.g. Twinkle.protect.callback(). — This, that and the other (talk) 01:34, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Beautiful :) Not sure why I didn't think of that! Many thanks MusikAnimal talk 02:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you wish not to communicate through email? I understand if you do not, there's just some matters I'd rather discuss in private. Anyway, I've been working hard and have the interface for the blocking module more or less done. I thought I'd run this by you before I move on to the actual blocking functionality, just in case something stands out that I'm doing wrong. Pull request is here, feel free to comment. Thanks! MusikAnimal talk 03:13, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation[edit]

A gummi bear holding a sign that says "Thank you"
Thank you for using VisualEditor and sharing your ideas with the developers.

Hello, This, that and the other,

The Editing team is asking for your help with VisualEditor. I am contacting you because you posted to a feedback page for VisualEditor. Please tell them what they need to change to make VisualEditor work well for you. The team has a list of top-priority problems, but they also want to hear about small problems. These problems may make editing less fun, take too much of your time, or be as annoying as a paper cut. The Editing team wants to hear about and try to fix these small things, too. 

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Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail![edit]

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MusikAnimal talk 02:00, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Lua/Modules[edit]

Wikipedia:Lua/Modules, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Lua/Modules and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Lua/Modules during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Steel1943 (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hillary Rodham Clinton - Move Discussion[edit]

Hi,

This is a notification to let you know that there is a requested move discussion ongoing at Talk:Hillary_Rodham_Clinton/April_2015_move_request#Requested_move. You are receiving this notification because you have previously participated in some capacity in naming discussions related to the article in question.

Thanks. And have a nice day. NickCT (talk) 18:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Persondata RfC[edit]

Hi, You participated in the previous Persondata RfC. I just wanted to notify you that a new RfC regarding the methodical removal of Persondata is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Thanks, —Msmarmalade (talk) 08:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some opposers of this move have now contended that there is a "Critical fault in proposal evidence", which brings the opinions expressed into question. Please indicate if this assertion in any way affects your position with respect to the proposed move. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:36, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback on WP:UND[edit]

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You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I thought I'd post this here as well since i assume you were asking about this in order to find Twinkle defects. Steel1943 (talk) 14:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Talkback[edit]

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Community desysoping RfC[edit]

Hi. You are invited to comment at RfC for BARC - a community desysoping process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 July 2015[edit]

very belated reply re Wikiquote 'This Sporting Life' deletion[edit]

Hi there TTO (I hope that abbreviation is ok, I'm very lazy),

I'm just writing to say I've been meaning to reply to your April 2014 heads-up on my talk page regarding the above. Unfortunately I was probably either taking a break from the insanity that is Wikipedia or else just busy with other things when you posted. What a shame that was removed (was it because TSL doesn't meet USA-dominated notability standards or something like that?). Very annoying.

Kind regards,

--TyrS 07:07, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TyrS! Wow, that was a long time ago. I had forgotten about it. If you head over to the Wikiquote link, you will see the page was deleted because it had "no sourced quotes", so I suspect it was not a matter of notability - rather, one of sourcing. If you want to further work on the page, I imagine Wikiquote has a process for requesting undeletion or deletion review, in the same way as we have our processes here. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:10, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Invitation to subscribe to the edit filter mailing list[edit]

Hi, as a user in the edit filter manager user group we wanted to let you know about the new wikipedia-en-editfilters mailing list. As part of our recent efforts to improve the use of edit filters on the English Wikipedia it has been established as a venue for internal discussion by edit filter managers regarding private filters (those only viewable by administrators and edit filter managers) and also as a means by which non-admins can ask questions about hidden filters that wouldn't be appropriate to discuss on-wiki. As an edit filter manager we encourage you to subscribe; the more users we have in the mailing list the more useful it will be to the community. If you subscribe we will send a short email to you through Wikipedia to confirm your subscription, but let us know if you'd prefer another method of verification. I'd also like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute to the proposed guideline for edit filter use at WP:Edit filter/Draft and the associated talk page. Thank you! Sam Walton (talk) and MusikAnimal talk 18:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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please delete the user page for master vijay singh[edit]

please delete the user page for master vijay singh


vijay15:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)Dispuralive (talk)

The Signpost: 30 September 2015[edit]

Thanks for contributions minor-edit filter[edit]

Thank you for working on "Allow minor edits to be filtered out of Special:Contributions"! I'm looking forward to it going live. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks... but I should point out that the code hasn't been reviewed yet. Unfortunately, changes like this normally take at least a month to be approved, quite often longer. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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May I ask what purpose this page serves? —Skyllfully (talk | contribs) 02:30, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyllfully: I was probably trying to debug some problem with the MediaWiki software or something like that. Is the page showing up in some database report or backlog? — This, that and the other (talk) 02:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, I found it in Main Page's WhatLinksHere maintenance report. —Skyllfully (talk | contribs) 02:35, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 November 2015[edit]

TTOBot request re minor league affiliates navboxes[edit]

Hey, after a (brief) discussion at WT:BASEBALL, I'd like to nominate all the templates at Category:Minor league baseball affiliates navigational boxes for deletion, as they are redundant to the main Major League Baseball teams' navboxes (which already include links to all of an MLB team's MiLB affiliates, with a more correct breakdown of classifications). As I've never done a mass XFD nomination before, and I really don't relish dong it all manually, I'd appreciate a pass through with the bot for tagging and some advice on the setting up of the appropriate discussion. If you can, ping me to let me know. Thanks. oknazevad (talk) 03:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'll get TTObot to perform the tagging once the TFD nomination is set up. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_September_11#BTCC.2FPTR_season_templates for an example of how to format a multiple template discussion: simply give it a descriptive heading, and write out one :{{Tfd links|...}} line for each template, like this:
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Blue Jays franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Braves franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Brewers franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Cardinals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Chicago Cubs franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Indians franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Nationals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Orioles franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Phillies franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Pirates franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Rays franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Reds franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Royals franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Arizona Diamondbacks}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Boston Red Sox}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Colorado Rockies}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Houston Astros}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Los Angeles Angels}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Los Angeles Dodgers}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Miami Marlins}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Minnesota Twins}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team New York Mets}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team New York Yankees}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Oakland Athletics}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team San Diego Padres}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team San Francisco Giants}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Seattle Mariners}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Team Texas Rangers}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB Tigers franchise}}
:{{Tfd links|MLB White Sox franchise}}
Let me know once the TFD nomination has been started. Thanks, — This, that and the other (talk) 03:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I made the nominations. It's at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 December 3#Minor league affiliates navboxes. oknazevad (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Done. You may like to notify the following users, who created the templates:
  • Gateman1997
  • Vikreykja
  • SportsMaster
  • Dale Arnett
  • Enkrates
  • JB82
  • Evill72
  • Tommie91
  • NClark128
This, that and the other (talk) 22:50, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 02 December 2015[edit]

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Editors cannot break the site, only (sys)admins can do that[edit]

In regards to this edit, I feel that the intended word was sysadmins, not admins. It seems like the gist of that section is that there is nothing that an editor can do (admin or otherwise, with the occasional but negligible odd occurrence where an admin really screws up) that can break Wikipedia. In order to truly cause permanent damage, you'd need to be a sysadmin — ie. with access to the actual backend/databases/servers/whathaveyou.  DiscantX 13:42, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I removed "sys" is because the text of the section seemed to be talking about admins (as in local users with sysop rights). The first sentence is "In a few cases, there are things sysops can do that will slow down or crash the site". It's clearly talking about sysops on the wiki, not system administrators in the back rooms; it even links to WP:Administrators. Then: "If you get chastised for trying to delete Wikipedia:Sandbox and crashing the site, don't try to delete the same page again". Again talking about sysops. I don't think I agree with the message of the section, but that is beside the point; I think my edit was correct. — This, that and the other (talk) 13:46, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't particularly agree with the tone of the message but the two lines "although there are a few things admins can do maliciously which are very difficult to clean up, it shouldn't ever be possible to do something which will result in permanent data loss or unfixable breakage" and "If you're unsure about something, you can ask a sysadmin on IRC if it makes you feel better, but generally it's not necessary," plus that the preceding sections reference sysadmins rather than admins seems to suggest that the message of the article in whole is not to worry about edits, because non-employees can't break the site in an irreversible fashion — having the section title say admins can break the site and then go on to say that they can't do any serious damage so "don't be afraid to do similar things... This damages Wikipedia far more than a minor temporary slowdown" seems contradictory.
The whole section is a bit vague, but regardless of what the original author intended to say, I think it is true that only a sysadmin could truly break the site, not an admin (you may be a bit more familiar with the backend, but I imagine that even if every admin were to start acting maliciously it could be reversed by a sysadmin by a manual change outside of the normal tools).  DiscantX 14:13, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seasons' greetings![edit]

This, that and the other, hope your holidays are happy, and a happy new year! Steel1943 (talk) 17:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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TB[edit]

Hello, This, that and the other. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Question_about_DIFF_pages.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Signpost: 24 February 2016[edit]

Category:Tennis name templates[edit]

Hi. After discussions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis#Tn template and a "successful" TfD for Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 February 22#Template:Tn Yuki Bhambri, where decision was taken that these articles are not needed, I want to nominate all templates in Category:Tennis name templates for deletion. Is this something you and your bot, User:TTObot, can help with? The templates where only used on a handful articles and I removed them so they are not currently used anywhere and I follow all related pages at my sandbox and watchlist. I would not ask if I would not think a nomination would be successful. Qed237 (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Qed237: Thanks. If you start the TFD discussion, then I can provide a link to that discussion from the edit summary. Otherwise I will just provide a generic deletion summary, like "Nominated for deletion". — This, that and the other (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@This, that and the other: Discussion opened at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 March 4#Tn templates. Thank you. Qed237 (talk) 00:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Qed237: Done (I had to do it in 2 passes because some of the accents in the names of the players played havoc with my script). — This, that and the other (talk) 08:19, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. Thank you very much. Qed237 (talk) 10:00, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Twinkle. An second opinion?[edit]

Thank you for answering my question on Twinkle. That helped and I have been thinking about reporting it. This is not for a second opinion on content or to have the content in the article.This is because I think Twinkle was misused with false summary edits. I just want an second opinion by someone that knows Twinkle and Wikipedia policies better. Just too much to read and take in at one time. The situation is solved but I still question some things. In short what happen, I edited some nonconstructive edits that was half accurate (unknown to me they were in the wrong place) and my edits were done in verified accuracy when I corrected them. Instead of looking at the original edit it was reverted back to them twice by different editors, however, in both summaries did not fit my edits, twinkle was used both times. In the first one the summary had nothing to do with my edits. The second was a little better but still did not match the situation. This whole thing could had been avoided if the original edits were read than being revert back to them or changed when they were made. Also, maybe realize I was correcting what was there and then explain what the original edits should not been there and not made my edits to be the ones in the wrong place like nothing was there before. So, is reverting my good-faith verified accuracy edits back to nonconstructive edits in the wrong place with summaries that did not match my edits and using twinkle abuse? I have felt like my edits were being called vandalism because Twinkle is used for vandalism and nonconstructive. And to me, my edits were to fix nonconstructive edits. Also, When the first editor that reverted my edits, I had wrote on their talk page. no answer. The second editor that reverted my edits, we had a confusing conversation until I understand the original edits I corrected were in the wrong place. That editor did remove most and corrected the rest. The situation is over. If I knew about Twinkle before hand I would had reported it because I feel it is against Twinkle but is it? Truthseeker1022 (talk) 03:33, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 May 2016[edit]

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Twinkle question[edit]

Where should I go to request a uw template be added to Twinkle? The template in question is {{uw-afcaddition}}. Anarchyte (work | talk) 10:05, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Filtering minor edits from user contributions[edit]

[posted to User talk:Jeffq#Filtering minor edits from user contributions]: Hi Jeff. Back in October last year, you asked whether there is a way to hide minor edits from user contributions pages. This feature has finally been implemented in MediaWiki software, and will be available here on 16 June. You can try it out at Wikipedia Beta. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:50, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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A kitten for you![edit]

...meow...

Mountebank1 (talk) 00:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open![edit]

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer - RfC[edit]

Hi This, that and the other. You are invited to comment at a further discussion on the implementation of this user right to patrol and review new pages that is taking place at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC on patrolling without user right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:12, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 November 2016[edit]

There is an (apparent) problem with the addition of the "help=off" parameter that you added to Template:Db-meta in this edit. The problem is that sometimes editors use the "help=off" parameter even without notifying the article author of the speedy delete nomination. Thus, as an administrator, when I am reviewing articles up for speedy deletion, and I find that the author has not been notified, I don't get the help section to provide notice to the author automatically. As I commented at [1], using the "help=off" parameter is like saying, "I didn't notify the article creator that I nominated this page for speedy deletion, and I want to make it more difficult than normal for anyone else to do so, too." If it was your intention that the help=off parameter should only be used or activated once the author has been given notice, it doesn't seem to be working that way. I don't know enough about template parameters to fix the template myself. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:38, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Metropolitan90: As you identified, the parameter was added so that the help section is not shown when the creator has been notified. Twinkle, as far as I can see, only adds |help=off when the creator is about to be notified by the tool. If Twinkle has been asked not to notify the page creator, it will not add help=off. However, in the very rare case that the posting to user talk fails (such as because the user talk page is fully protected), the help=off parameter will be added regardless. I suspect (and hope) this is a vanishingly rare scenario.

If people are misusing the parameter, the solution is not to remove the parameter; it might be to change the template documentation, engage with individual users, or identify if any tools, gadgets or scripts are to blame. If you can provide some diffs of users who have been using the parameter incorrectly, it would help to identify the source of the problem. However, at the end of the day, I can't control what other users are doing with the parameter I added. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:59, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will follow up when I have diffs to provide. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 22 December 2016[edit]

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CSS styling in templates[edit]

Hello everyone, and sincere apologies if you're getting this message more than once. Just a heads-up that there is currently work on an extension in order to enable CSS styling in templates. Please check the document on mediawiki.org to discuss best storage methods and what we need to avoid with implementation. Thanks, m:User:Melamrawy (WMF), 09:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 February 2017[edit]

Addition of un-redirected pages to Special:NewPages and Special:NewPagesFeed[edit]

I'm contacting you because you participated in this proposal discussion. While the proposal was approved, it has not received developer action. The request is now under consideration as part of the 2017 Developer Wishlist, with voting open through the end of day on Tuesday (23:59 UTC). The latter link describes the voting process, if you are interested. —swpbT 18:02, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 February 2017[edit]

Bots Newsletter, April 2017[edit]

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Greetings!

The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

Arbcom

Magioladitis ARBCOM case has closed. The remedies of the case include:

  • Community encouraged to review common fixes
  • Community encouraged to review policy on cosmetic edits
  • Developers encouraged to improve AWB interface
  • Bot approvals group encouraged to carefully review BRFA scope
  • Reminders/Restrictions specific to Magioladitis
BRFAs

We currently have 27 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

There are multiple ongoing discussions surrounding bot-related matters. In particular:

New things

Several new things are around:

Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by:Headbomb 11:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]


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JavaScript RegExp problem[edit]

I noticed you have experience in JavaScript. I'm hoping you can help me with a problem I've run into writing a userscript.

Please see my post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject JavaScript#Nested RegExp.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 12:27, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 June 2017[edit]

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Twinkle help deployment[edit]

I notice that you pushed the code for this to GitHub, but it's not reflected on my Twinkle yet, and it's been a few weeks. Can you deploy from there to here, or does @MusikAnimal: have to do it? – Train2104 (t • c) 22:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Train2104: I'm not an administrator, so no, I can't. MusikAnimal can though. I've been waiting for mw:Gadgets 2.0 for about 6 years - hopefully one day we will get it, and then non-admins will be able to manage gadgets. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
 Done Just ping me whenever it needs to be synced, only takes a few minutes :) I don't think there's a way to get notifications about commits to select repos on GitHub, or else I'd just go by that MusikAnimal talk 23:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 15 July 2017[edit]

Bots Newsletter, July 2017[edit]

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Greetings!

Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

BAG

BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are now members of the BAG (see RfBAG/BU Rob13 and RfBAG/Cyberpower678 3). BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are both administrators; the former operates BU RoBOT which does a plethora of tasks, while the latter operates Cyberbot I (which replaces old bots), Cyberbot II (which does many different things), and InternetArchiveBot which combats link rot. Welcome to the BAG!

BRFAs

We currently have 12 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions
New things
Upcoming
Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]


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The Signpost: 5 August 2017[edit]

Category:Wikipedia bots running on the Wikimedia Labs cluster, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 September 2017[edit]

Marvel Comics characters[edit]

Hello. I would like to nominate a number of templates for discussion, and I noticed that your bot TTObot may help with it. The problematic templates are:

All those navboxes are linking articles by a trivial theme (the first character of their names). There are several templates already that group Marvel characters by more reasonable criteria, such as those that appear in a same publication (like {{Fantastic Four}}), so those ones are not really needed. Cambalachero (talk) 15:09, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Cambalachero: With only 27 templates it's probably easier to do it by hand. If you had, say, 50 or 100 templates to tag, then TTObot might be a good choice. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 September 2017[edit]

Users who do not wish to receive talkbacks[edit]

I have proposed renaming of Category:Users who do not wish to receive talkbacks to "Wikipedians...". – Fayenatic London 10:09, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 23 October 2017[edit]

The Signpost: 24 November 2017[edit]

ArbCom 2017 election voter message[edit]

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 December 2017[edit]

New Page Reviewer granted[edit]

Hello This, that and the other. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.

  • URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
  • Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
  • You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
  • Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
  • Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. — xaosflux Talk 04:53, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to be on the NPP mailing list, sign up at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Newsletter list. — xaosflux Talk 04:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like I conflicted @Alex Shih:, but same message. — xaosflux Talk 04:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Same message. Thank you! Alex Shih (talk) 04:57, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New Years new page backlog drive[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!

Announcing the NPP New Year Backlog Drive!

We have done amazing work so far in December to reduce the New Pages Feed backlog by over 3000 articles! Now is the time to capitalise on our momentum and help eliminate the backlog!

The backlog drive will begin on January 1st and run until January 29th. Prize tiers and other info can be found HERE.

Awards will be given in tiers in two categories:

  • The total number of reviews completed for the month.
  • The minimum weekly total maintained for all four weeks of the backlog drive.

NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.


If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.TonyBallioni (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC) [reply]

The Signpost: 16 January 2018[edit]

Speedy deletion nomination of Offing[edit]

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Offing, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly-defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

  • It is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. (See section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Wikipedia has standards for the minimum necessary information to be included in short articles; you can see these at Wikipedia:Stub. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.
  • It consists of a dictionary definition or other article that has been transwikied to another project and the author information recorded. (See section A5 of the criteria for speedy deletion.)

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Matuko 09:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Offing[edit]

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Offing, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly-defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

  • It is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. (See section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Wikipedia has standards for the minimum necessary information to be included in short articles; you can see these at Wikipedia:Stub. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.
  • It consists of a dictionary definition or other article that has been transwikied to another project and the author information recorded. (See section A5 of the criteria for speedy deletion.)

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Matuko 09:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@Matuko: I think {{wi}} articles ought to be considered more as soft redirects, so that the article CSD criteria do not apply. Let's see what an admin thinks. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 5 February 2018[edit]

New Page Reviewer Newsletter[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your efforts in reviewing new pages!
The NPP backlog at the end of the drive with the number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Red is older than 90 days, orange is between 90 and 30 days old, and green is younger than 30 days.

Backlog update:

  • The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
  • We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!

New Year Backlog Drive results:

  • We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!

General project update:

  • ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
  • Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2018[edit]

Bots Newsletter, March 2018[edit]

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
BAG
BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things
Upcoming

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018[edit]

New Page Review Newsletter No.10[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

  • ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.

Paid editing

  • Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled

  • While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.

News

  • The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.

To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming changes to wikitext parsing[edit]

Hello,

There will be some changes to the way wikitext is parsed during the next few weeks. It will affect all namespaces. You can see a list of pages that may display incorrectly at Special:LintErrors. Since most of the easy problems have already been solved at the English Wikipedia, I am specifically contacting tech-savvy editors such as yourself with this one-time message, in the hope that you will be able to investigate the remaining high-priority pages during the next month.

There are approximately 10,000 articles (and many more non-article pages) with high-priority errors. The most important ones are the articles with misnested tags and table problems. Some of these involve templates, such as infoboxes, or the way the template is used in the article. In some cases, the "error" is a minor, unimportant difference in the visual appearance. In other cases, the results are undesirable. You can see a before-and-after comparison of any article by adding ?action=parsermigration-edit to the end of a link, like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Foss?action=parsermigration-edit (which shows a difference in how {{infobox ship}} is parsed).

If you are interested in helping with this project, please see Wikipedia:Linter. There are also some basic instructions (and links to even more information) at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2018-April/001836.html You can also leave a note at WT:Linter if you have questions.

Thank you for all the good things you do for the English Wikipedia. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2018[edit]

List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability. Since you had some involvement with the List is of South Australian organisations providing support to people with disability redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:54, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 May 2018[edit]

The Signpost: 24 May 2018[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

  • WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

  • Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

  • A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

  • There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

  • Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

  • The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
  • Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

  • A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

  • Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
  • The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

  • As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
  • Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: Special Edition New Page Patroller's Barnstar. Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: 100 review coin, 250 review coin, 500 review coin, 1000 review certificate.
  • Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 June 2018[edit]

Subst and such[edit]

Hi TTO. I've been trying to get a basic grasp on subst and safsubst recently, and I see you have had it for years. Why, do you think, Special:Diff/849795156 ended up looking like that? Did you enter "revisionuser" manually in {{RMassist/core}} instead of using {{RMassist}} that includes a safesubst of REVISIONUSER? Sam Sailor 12:40, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did enter that manually. No idea why it didn't work. Perhaps I had a good grasp of subst and safesubst in 2011 when I wrote that page, but I have evidently lost touch with template substitution since then. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:51, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think you dropped something[edit]

Is this yours? Primefac (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: Yeah, sorry about that. I thought I'd pitch in and enact a non-admin closure, but I was unaware that the destination title was salted, so I ended up having to ask for a requested move. It did get moved eventually. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:50, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, no worries. Primefac (talk) 00:07, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018[edit]

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules
  • New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
  • Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
  • Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.
Editathons
  • Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
The Signpost
  • The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 July 2018[edit]

Bots Newsletter, August 2018[edit]

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.
BAG
  • There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
  • In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

Also

Discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

New things

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 30 August 2018[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018[edit]

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.

Project news
As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.
Other
Moving to Draft and Page Mover
  • Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
  • If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
  • Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
  • The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
  • The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.
List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing

  • Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
  • In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
  • MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
  • User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
  • User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
  • User:Primefac/revdel.js(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
  • User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js(info): Creates a "Page Curation" link to Special:NewPagesFeed up near your sandbox link.
  • User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js: Creates links next to the title of each page which show up if it has been previously deleted or nominated for deletion.
  • User:Evad37/rater.js(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC) [reply]

The Signpost: 1 October 2018[edit]

Some TfD tagging for TTOBot[edit]

Hi. I have a mass Tfd nomination at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 October 7 which consists of 48 pages. Can your bot please tag all the template for deletion. Thanks. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:04, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Pkbwcgs: I may not have time to do this in the coming few days, as I am extremely busy IRL right now. It's not an enormous task, so you might be able to find a taker at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:09, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I am doing it right now with AWB. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:11, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018[edit]

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello This, that and the other, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

Backlog

As of 21 October 2018, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.

Community Wishlist Proposal
Project updates
  • ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
  • There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.
New scripts

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 October 2018[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018[edit]

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello This, that and the other,

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
  • Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.
If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.
We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.
With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2018 election voter message[edit]

Hello, This, that and the other. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 December 2018[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.

Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.

See also the list of top 100 reviewers.

Less good news, and an appeal for some help

The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.


Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019

At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.


Training video

Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.


If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 December 2018[edit]

The Signpost: 31 January 2019[edit]

Mass deletion nomination of templates[edit]

Hey, I was wondering if your bot User:TTObot could help me nominate all templates in Category:Elementbox templates. Template:Elementbox was converted into Template:Infobox element which uses a different syntax and does not use any of these templates which are marked as deprecated. --Gonnym (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 February 2019[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.17[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

News
Discussions of interest
  • Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
  • {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
  • A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.
Reminders
  • NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
NPP Tools Report
  • Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
  • copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
  • The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.


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--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 March 2019[edit]

The Signpost: 30 April 2019[edit]

NPR Newsletter No.18[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

  • Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
  • Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News
Discussions of interest

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250


Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 May 2019[edit]

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.


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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The June 2019 Signpost is out![edit]

The Signpost: 31 July 2019[edit]

Bots Newsletter, August 2019[edit]

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.
BAG

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

BOTPOL
  • Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
  • Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
  • Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

  • 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
  • 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
  • In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
  • Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
  • 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).
New things
Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019[edit]

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog

Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Coordinator

A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.

This month's refresher course

Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.

Paid editing

Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
  • Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
  • Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
  • A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools

Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.

Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.

Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.

DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mass TfD nomination[edit]

Greetings,

the instructions of User:TTObot say that I should request a mass-tagging task here. Is it possible to tag all the templates on Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 September 7 with a tag for Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 September 14#Template:Venezuela Squad 1990 FIBA World Championship? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Frietjes got in before me :) This, that and the other (talk) 01:59, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2019[edit]

The Signpost: 31 October 2019[edit]

New Page Review newsletter November 2019[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 815 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.


To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2019 election voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks![edit]

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to [email protected], so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at [email protected].

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2019[edit]

New Page Review newsletter December 2019[edit]

A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days
Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 Rosguill (talk) 47,395 Patrol Page Curation
2 Onel5969 (talk) 41,883 Patrol Page Curation
3 JTtheOG (talk) 11,493 Patrol Page Curation
4 Arthistorian1977 (talk) 5,562 Patrol Page Curation
5 DannyS712 (talk) 4,866 Patrol Page Curation
6 CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) 3,995 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 3,812 Patrol Page Curation
8 Boleyn (talk) 3,655 Patrol Page Curation
9 Ymblanter (talk) 3,553 Patrol Page Curation
10 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 3,522 Patrol Page Curation

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:11, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 December 2019[edit]

Hi there, I'm HasteurBot. I just wanted to let you know that Draft:Invalid dinosaur, a page you created, has not been edited in 5 months. The Articles for Creation space is not an indefinite storage location for content that is not appropriate for articlespace.

If your submission is not edited soon, it could be nominated for deletion. If you would like to attempt to save it, you will need to improve it.

You may request Userfication of the content if it meets requirements.

If the deletion has already occured, instructions on how you may be able to retrieve it are available at WP:REFUND/G13.

Thank you for your attention. HasteurBot (talk) 01:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for December 30[edit]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited The Offbeat of Avenues, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Michael McDonald (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:28, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 January 2020[edit]

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources
Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 March 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 29 March 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 26 April 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 31 May 2020[edit]

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources
  • A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
  • Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
  • A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
  • Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 June 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 2 August 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 30 August 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 27 September 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 27 September 2020[edit]

Nomination for deletion of Template:No talkback[edit]

Template:No talkback has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 November 2020[edit]

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2020[edit]

New Page Patrol December Newsletter[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

A chart of the 2020 New Page Patrol Queue

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 DannyS712 bot III (talk) 67,552 Patrol Page Curation
2 Rosguill (talk) 63,821 Patrol Page Curation
3 John B123 (talk) 21,697 Patrol Page Curation
4 Onel5969 (talk) 19,879 Patrol Page Curation
5 JTtheOG (talk) 12,901 Patrol Page Curation
6 Mcampany (talk) 9,103 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 6,401 Patrol Page Curation
8 Mccapra (talk) 4,918 Patrol Page Curation
9 Hughesdarren (talk) 4,520 Patrol Page Curation
10 Utopes (talk) 3,958 Patrol Page Curation
Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 31 January 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 28 February 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 28 March 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 27 June 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 25 July 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 29 August 2021[edit]

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021[edit]

New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello This, that and the other,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.


To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021[edit]

November 2021 backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive
  • On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 01:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2021[edit]

Category:Scribunto modules with errors has been nominated for deletion[edit]

Category:Scribunto modules with errors has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Gonnym (talk) 10:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jade Thompson[edit]

I created an article for a Jade Thompson, about 10 years ago. I just read your message today. Michuk (talk) 23:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2021[edit]

Bots Newsletter, December 2021[edit]

Bots Newsletter, December 2021
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

  • Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (Dark red X symbolN2 3 denied, Blue question mark? 3 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
  • Green checkmarkY Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · Dark red X symbolN2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · Blue question mark? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
  • TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
  • Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

December 2019

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

  • What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
  • What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
  • Will reFill ever get fixed?
  • What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
  • Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Template:Circle has been listed at templates for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 12:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 December 2021[edit]

Concern regarding Draft:Invalid dinosaur[edit]

Information icon Hello, This, that and the other. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Invalid dinosaur, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 23:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 January 2022[edit]

Bots Newsletter, January 2022[edit]

Bots Newsletter, January 2022
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with Dark red X symbolN2 8 denied, Blue question mark? 2 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

January 2020

A python
A python
A python
0.4 pythons
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

March 2020

April 2020

Listeria being examined

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

Conclusion

  • What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?
  • Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
  • What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
  • Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
  • What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 27 February 2022[edit]

The Signpost: 27 March 2022[edit]

The Signpost: 24 April 2022[edit]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Bigredbox[edit]

Template:Bigredbox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:58, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue March 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.

Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.

In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 815 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 864 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.

This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.

If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 May 2022[edit]

New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue June 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog status

At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.

Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]

In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).

While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).

Backlog drive

A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.

TIP – New school articles

Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.

Misc

There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:

Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 14010 articles, as of 18:00, 28 March 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot

There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.

Reminders
  • Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
  • If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
  • To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Notes
  1. ^ not including another ~6,000 redirects
  2. ^ The number of weekly reviews reported in the NPP feed includes redirects, which are not included in the backlog we primarily track.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 June 2022[edit]

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on![edit]

New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 July, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 20:26, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 August 2022[edit]

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue August 2022

Hello This, that and the other,

Backlog status

After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.

Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.

Coordination
MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
Open letter to the WMF
The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
TIP - Reviewing by subject
Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
New reviewers
The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
Reminders
  • Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
  • If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
  • To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:25, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NPP message[edit]

Hi This, that and the other,

Invitation

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 August 2022[edit]

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | October 2022 backlog drive
  • On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 21:17, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2022[edit]

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

  • There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
  • Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
  • Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
  • This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 31 October 2022[edit]

The Signpost: 28 November 2022[edit]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:32, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 January 2023[edit]

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 16 January 2023[edit]

Your draft article, Draft:Invalid dinosaur[edit]

Hello, This, that and the other. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Invalid dinosaur".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz Read! Talk! 16:18, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

sandbox/redirect tags[edit]

Hey! Would you mind changing User:This, that and the other/sandbox/redirect tags so that it won't be categorized in Pages with templates in the wrong namespace? Thanks! ~ Eejit43 (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Eejit43 I have no idea what that page was for, so I marked it for speedy deletion. Thanks! This, that and the other (talk) 03:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 February 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 20 February 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 9 March 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 20 March 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 03 April 2023[edit]

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
  • There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 8 May 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 22 May 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 5 June 2023[edit]

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

The Signpost: 19 June 2023[edit]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Tutorial sandbox header VE[edit]

Template:Tutorial sandbox header VE has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:34, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol needs your help![edit]

New pages awaiting review as of June 30th, 2023.

Hello This, that and the other,

The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:

Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 3 July 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 17 July 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 1 August 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 15 August 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 31 August 2023[edit]

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | October 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Articles will earn 3x as many points compared to redirects.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 16 September 2023[edit]

New pages patrol newsletter[edit]

Hello This, that and the other,

New Page Review article queue, March to September 2023

Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!

October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.

PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.

Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.

Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.

Reminders:

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Mediazilla has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Mediazilla until a consensus is reached. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:01, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 3 October 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 23 October 2023[edit]

November Articles for creation backlog drive[edit]

Hello This, that and the other:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 2000 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 November 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 20 November 2023[edit]

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 December 2023[edit]

New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
  • On 1 January 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Each review will earn 1 point.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 December 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 10 January 2024[edit]

The Signpost: 31 January 2024[edit]

The Signpost: 13 February 2024[edit]

The Signpost: 2 March 2024[edit]