USER TALK:Snow Rise
This user is busy with off-project obligations and, with apologies, may not respond to all inquiries quickly at this time.
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Administrators' newsletter – January 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversighter changes
Arbitration
- Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
- The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Notification: Feedback request service is down
[edit]Hello, Snow Rise
You may have noticed that you have not received any messages from the Wikipedia:Feedback request service for over a month. Yapperbot appears to have stopped delivering messages. Until that can be resolved, please watch pages that interest you, such as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines.
This notification has been sent to you as you are subscribed to the Feedback Request Service. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:11, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).
Administrator changes
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.
Technical news
- Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)
Arbitration
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
- Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
- Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
- The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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Administrators' newsletter – March 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).
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Guideline and policy news
- Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
- Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.
Technical news
- The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)
Miscellaneous
- The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
- Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 03:31, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.
Technical news
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
Arbitration
- An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
Miscellaneous
- Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024
[edit]Hello Snow Rise,
Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.
Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.
Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.
It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!
2023 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.
Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.
Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Biographies request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 03:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
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Djong (ship) has an RfC
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Talk:Djong (ship) on a "History and geography" request for comment-- your comment would be greatly appreciated Merzostin (talk) 14:50, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
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New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive
[edit]| New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive |  |
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 01:30, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
The Buk/covina edit
[edit]Let me begin by thanking you for commenting on my case at AN/I. I hesitated about writing here, so it does not seem like I'm litigating the issue further; the fact is that I actually fully agree with 95% of your latest comments, and the remaining 5% that I somewhat disagree I don't think compelled I should be commenting on it without it seeming that I am wasting the community's time. I have read your comment carefully, and you are obviously correct about at least some of those edit summaries being, well, juvenile, even disregarding what behavior I was answering to. I have never in fact said that that the past edit summaries were ever warranted in themselves -- I merely objected that they aren't, as had been argued by one editor who revived them, persistent and disqualifying bad behavior.
I am returning here and taking up a bit more of your attention merely to suggest another glance at one of the diffs you brought up in your analysis. Namely this one. Allow we underscore: you are right in saying that the edit summary had breached WP:CIV, and I have acknowledged as much by that point the AN/I review. However, you defined the summary as "elicited by your taking exception to the spelling of a proper noun/toponym in it's non-native language". This is not the issue I was addressing, though, and it makes it seem (for instance, to an admin reviewing my case), that I am rude to editors who simply have another spelling preference of "Bukovina".
Please take an additional 10 seconds to review the edits I was reverting: here. The edit summary for the one intermediary edit states out the claim that the spelling is "wrong", but this is not simply an issue of "correcting" (or rather, a clumsy attempt at Romanianizing the nomenclature). These edits, which are 100% of that IPs contribution on wikipedia, amount to a degradation of content: they break links by blindly replacing any mention of "Bukovina" with "Bucovina" -- for instance, by creating "Duchy of Bucovina", a redlink instead of a bluelink on Duchy of Bukovina. The redlink could technically be filled as a redirect to the "Duchy of Bukovina" article -- though even then, that extremely Romanianized version, changing the name of the polity (and not merely of the region) to one that was only extremely rarely used in Romanian, and possibly never in English, would probably be extremely exotic.
To resume and close this: the Iacob Zadik article is a B-class one, with me having been the one to bring it there (through expansion of a stubby article). The edits by the IP had went unnoticed for some two months (including by me), with the content effectively degraded for those two months. Again: not the nomenclature itself is at issue, but the blind promotion of the "Bucovina" spelling to the point of disrupting good content. The blindness of the edits was also in proportion to a political agenda: adding "Bucovina" (Romanian-only) or "Bukovyna" (Ukrainian-only) in all-English contexts is not merely a preference, it is a statement about who the region "really belongs to".
I am obviously not right to have called the degradation what I called it, in my exasperation at seeing the claim that content degradation (from bluelinks to redlinks) is presented as a "correction". Nothing of what I'm writing here is along the lines of "come on, both you and I know that the edit was indeed cretinous". But I would appreciate it if you could revisit your description of this dispute between me and the IP: I am not the sort of editor who calls others names just because "I take exception to the spelling of a proper noun/toponym in it's non-native language"; I am the sort of editor who, once in a blue moon, lost his cool at seeing objective degradation of an article, which the IP was using as a pawn in some sort of abstruse political battle. I only insist here (and I do apologize for taking up your time) because an admin reading your good-faith summary of that interaction, and not wishing to revisit the diff themselves, may be promoted to assume that I engage in behavior much more disruptive than it actually was. If, upon reading the above, you see any grounds for marginally adjusting that review of the interaction between me and the IP, I would be thankful to you; either way, thank you for your time. Dahn (talk) 05:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hi again, Dahn. That's an entirely reasonable request, and I'll post an amendment to my observations stating that I do believe you when you say that response was animated by a desire to avoid broken links and not merely a disagreement over the spelling.
- That said, I hope you'll forgive me for telling you something I think you already know when I re-emphasize that I feel the emotional response was unwarranted helpful, irrespective of whether the original dispute arose primary out of spelling conventions alone, or potentially broken links.
- But I have no problem supporting your assertion that the situation tweaked your nose because of a pragmatic concern quite aside from spelling, insofar as I completely believe that. And I want you to know that, anything I said in the ANI discussion not withstanding, I'm sorry things went so roughly for you. I meant what I said when I stated that you seem like an asset. Just do us a favour and try to keep the name-calling out of it. 'Kill them with kindness', my friend--that's my advice when dealing with vandals, SPAs, or even just well-intentioned but wrong-headed editors. Your signal flares attempting to get help will shine much more clearly if the skies are clear of any smoke resulting from the surrounding terrain being torched. If you'll forgive a tortured metaphor. SnowRise let's rap 05:53, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: History and geography request for comment
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Administrators' newsletter – May 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).
Guideline and policy news
- Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.
Technical news
- Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
Feedback request: History and geography request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 11:31, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment
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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment
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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment
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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment
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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment
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Always precious
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Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 11:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 05:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
[edit]You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name. Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
I mean fair...
[edit]I mean fair, but MOS:SMALLFONT says that "[..]the HTML
, that was a side comment, that's why I made it small. If there is consensus against using small at all, please tell me so I can safely put it in my head to not use it anymore. – 2804:F14:80BE:B501:4013:AA93:E6BD:4D (talk) 00:47, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
<small>...</small> tag has a semantic meaning of fine print or side comments[..]"
- Well, the sentence of SMALLFONT that you quote is really talking about rare exceptions to the rule of using the standardized font size in the context of mainspace edits (hence it's location in MoS and the fact that it cites not to a community discussion but to an external page discussing the function of the <small> html tag for the purposes of fine print). For guidance on how to format text in community discussions, see WP:TPG; the relevant language is spread throughout the article, but see for example "Technical and format standards" section, which advises to avoid "font gimmicks" and the "Good practices for discussions" section (advising to
"Keep the format clear: use standard formatting and threading."
). I'll grant you it's somewhat oblique in the second instance, but taken in the context of the rest of the page, I think it very much is meant to urge standardization of formatting of discussion to maintain maximum accessibility for all participants. Remember that not all users (and not all editors even) have access to the site through a PC utilizing a monitor, or through other standard devices with large screens or strong auto-refactoring tools. And of course others have vision impairment. In any event, I can tell you that the longstanding community practice is to enforce standardization of font text in normal discussion posts. The one lingering carveout that has failed to go away entirely is that small font is sometimes used to mark joking comments that are completely immaterial the editorial or community issue being discussed. But there's pushback on even that practice. Long story short, if your comment has any kind of even remote direct bearing on the discussion at hand, it should use standard text formatting (size included), even if you would judge it to be a minor point. This forecloses the possibility of someone being left out of loop on information and the potential for confusion. Afterall, a point you regard as minor may very well end up not being so to other editors or the community at large--particularly in a behavioural discussion. Thanks for stopping by; I hope you have a good day, on project and off. SnowRise let's rap 01:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)- Thank you for explaining, I'll avoid using small. Wish I had looked up the guidance before I did it in many places over the months(or years? unsure when I started doing it), including when asking slightly off-topic questions, pretty sure I just copied someone doing it...
- Anyways, thanks, I wish you a good day too. – 2804:F14:80BE:B501:4013:AA93:E6BD:4D (talk) 02:01, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
- Well, it's honestly not a huge deal: it's the type of thing you can typically expect a gnome to correct, and usually doesn't get more attention than that. :) And you're welcome--happy to be of help! SnowRise let's rap 03:01, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).
Administrator changes
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.
Technical news
- The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
- The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.
Miscellaneous
- WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!
RSP definition
[edit]I don't want to derail the discussion at WP:RSN further, but I have been thinking along the same lines as your recent post on the topic recently, and I have been wondering if the way to address this is by setting clear definitions of reliability, and clear definitions of the evidence required to demonstrate that these expectations are met. This should prevent editors from being able to use RSN to disqualify sources they disagree with unless there is a genuine issue with the source - in which case, we should get rid of it.
A broad definition of a reliable source is one that has sufficiently robust editorial process to prevent major errors and issue corrections and retractions when such errors do occur. Based on this, what I've been thinking for a while now is the following:
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To determine whether a source is reliable we need to be able to assess whether their process at identifying false and misleading information is sufficiently robust. A reliable source should only place true information in their own voice, should attribute questionable information, and should not publish hoaxes. However, sources are not expected to be perfect; errors which a source retracts in a timely manner do not impact the sources reliability. Assessing this requires careful and extensive analysis of the sources publications.
Every effort should be made to permit the continued use of the source in at least some capacity on Wikipedia. This means that when errors are identified editors should determine whether they are systematic to the paper or limited to a definable area. For example, TRT World is considered unreliable for Process[edit]Sources may only be added to WP:RSP through formal discussion in the form of an RfC. At least one month prior to opening the RfC an editor must announce their intention to do so on at WP:RSN. They must at this time publish the systematic review that they will use to contest the current reliability assessment, to give editors who disagree time to review the evidence and counter it. Reviews must be provably systematic. This means the following requirements must be met:
The discussion should focus solely on any reviews posted. To prevent classification in line with the review, editors must demonstrate that either the process to select articles was flawed, the evidence is not significant, or a sufficient number of the errors identified were either not errors or not major errors. For the latter, editors must present reliable sources supporting the claim made by the source under discussion. The closer must first assess whether there is a consensus that the process to select the articles was appropriate and that the evidence is statistically significant. If there is not, then there is no change to the current classification of the source. If there is, then the closer must consider each identified error to determine whether there is a consensus that it is a major error. This then produces the adjusted number of errors:
Dividing this by the number of sources considered gives the percentage, and this is directly used to classify the source. This is intended to provide a structure that prevents cherry picking data and minimizes the ability of editors POV's to impact the result. Previous classifications[edit]For sources classified under the previous system a streamlined process is provided to review them. Editors may dispute a sources assessment by posting at RSN and adding a {{RSP-disputed}} tag to the entry. Editors who support the current rating then have two months in which to provide a systematic review supporting its current classification. After the two months, if no editor posts such a review, the entry is removed from RSP. If such a review is posted, either editor may open an RFC after at least one month has passed, which will follow the process defined above. However, if there is not a consensus that the process to select the articles is appropriate or that the evidence is statistically significant then the result in the source is removed from RSP. Error classification[edit]Minor errors are errors that do not significantly alter the understanding or interpretation of the news story. These errors are usually factual details that, while incorrect, do not change the overall context or meaning of the report. For example:
Major errors are significant inaccuracies that can alter the understanding, context, or perception of the news story. These errors can mislead the audience, change the narrative, or damage the credibility of the news source and the individuals involved. Errors in attributed claims are generally considered minor unless the claim was a major part of the story or was a deliberate hoax, in which case we would still expect a reliable source to issue a correction. Retractions[edit]Mistakes happen. We do not consider these to affect a sources reliable if they correct them promptly and with due prominence. This is based on broadly accepted standards:
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Do you have any thoughts on this? BilledMammal (talk) 10:25, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
- Hey BM. I have feelings too mixed and complicated on the subject to be sharing them in anything approaching an adequate form in the scarce few moments I have available to address such an inquiry today. I promise I'll make it a priority the very next time I can get on project, probably in a day or two. But I didn't want you think I was ignoring you until then. Best wishes to you in the meantime. SnowRise let's rap 12:34, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Edit summary at ANI
[edit]I was a bit baffled by this edit summary. I can assure you it would not even occur to me to "disregard the rules merely to jump the queue and get [my] response higher up". I see that you figured it out a couple of edits later, but can I ask how you managed to jump to such a silly conclusion? If, as I suspect, you were influenced by Grorp's refactor and comment here, then I'll point out that their response was as silly and precipitate as yours. I had responded, correctly, to their assertion at the start of the section, since that was the topic of discussion, and they mistakenly thought I was responding to the collection of "notes" which they had arbitrarily dropped on the talk page (as, incidentally, is their habit – I personally don't think personal 'notes' sections are appropriate for talk pages, particularly in the middle of a focused discussion, but I guess there's nothing in the guidelines about it). They proceeded to move my comment out of place in exactly the way you did, with an equally inappropriate and officious admonition. In my opinion, your summary analysis of what went on at that page is as hasty and ill-judged as your edit summary, although it's nice that you opined "in the spirit of fairness". It was surprizing to me because I "had you pegged", to employ Grorp's charming turn of phrase, as one of the more sensible editors on wikipedia. I won't be editing the page anymore, but I'll discuss it here if you wish to, but it's not important and I'm happy to drop it. Harold the Sheep (talk) 00:50, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Harold. The best I can say to explain my misreading of the situation there was that it was a case of errant pattern recognition. As I recall, your post used one-too-many levels of indent for the message it was meant to respond to, and I momentarily mistook this for being the old trick that some people sometimes use in order to move their responses higher up in the chronology of messages while still making it "clear" who they are responding to--something we see a lot at ANI and other fora where people place a premium on efforts to defend their conduct. This is against policy, of course, because it complicates the normal discussion/thread format, but people still do it from time to time. In reading your message, I thought this was what was going on, because of the extra level of indent. But no sooner had I refactored when I realized that it was clearly an error on my part, so I placed the post back where it belonged and merely corrected the indent level. At least, that's how I recall it. I probably should have known you were too experienced to be employing such formatting, but the misread was a matter of a good faith mistake.Now as for my take on the issues that brought you and the other parties to ANI in the first place, I'm sorry if my analysis feels uncharitable or inaccurate to you, and if it has thus reduced your appreciation for my perspective on such things. Mind you, my first comment and priority there was focused on the fact that I felt the OP had needlessly escalated the matter to ANI and had failed to show due diligence in following normal dispute resolution processes before hand, and that your conduct was well bellow the threshold of anything that needed reporting or correction by the community. I continue to feel that was the case. However, that doesn't mean that I didn't feel there was some blame to be spread around regarding discussion becoming non-productive on the article talk page itself. I do think there were moments there were your tone became a little bit battlegroundish. Again, nothing I thought justified an excursion to ANI (especially without efforts to talk it out with you first), but I can see where your choice of words could have contributed to the other two feeling that you were not super open to contrary opinions. And I continue to stand by that part of the assessment too. It wasn't meant to be a particularly severe or concerned observation so much as a nudge from someone not involved in the dispute which I hoped would therefore give it at least a little bit more credibility. That said, the underlying dispute is obviously moot if you're determined not to involve yourself in that article further. I'm sorry that a more collaborative solution was not achieved, but for what it's worth, I respect an editor who decides that certain disputes represent too much inefficiency in constructive use of one's project time to be worth pursuing them to the end. In any event, best wishes on whatever you're off to work on next. SnowRise let's rap 12:30, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).
Administrator changes
Technical news
- Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
Miscellaneous
- The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more
Thank you for your thoughts at ANI
[edit]Hi SnowRise. I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful posts at the ATG thread at ANI. In particular, your posts in the "off-wiki forums" subsection were very good. I started the thread disagreeing with you, and while I still feel there's some nuance to it, I'm coming down more and more in line with your thinking. The thoughts on outing in particular hit home; however easy it'd be to enforce the civility side of things, it would definitely open a procedural door for malicious outing under the guise of, "This account said a bad thing. Is this you?" All this to say: thanks for sharing your thoughts, they changed my opinion, and I hope you have a great day. EducatedRedneck (talk) 15:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you EducatedRedneck: it's quite thoughtful of you to take the time to come here and say as much, and I very much appreciate it. So often on this project, as with our culture in general (and more and more as the years go on), it can feel like major policy discussions are largely boiling down to two sides lobbing rhetorical mortars at eachother from their pre-decided entrenched positions, with little hope of anyone being persuaded of much. It is very helpful to be reminded of the fact that the situation is not always as severely intractable as it may seem at first blush these days.
- What's more, I'm especially grateful for that feedback in this case because I really don't like being in a position of telling my fellow community members that they just have to suck it up and absorb insults in these situations. It's very much the opposite of my usual stance on such things here. If they talk about me at all on WPO (I don't care to check) I'm sure it's to call me a "civility scold" or somesuch, since I've had people say as much to me here after taking hard lines (sometimes against popular and/or well-respected users) on chronic incivility. It's an increasingly unpopular view, it sometimes feels, but I do think that WP:CIV is every bit as important as the other pillar policies, if not the most important. It's just that in this case, the consequences of reaching as far as some would have us, are so potentially dangerous to the real world safety and wellbeing of our individual community members, and so potentially corrosive to the overall culture of our community and the project's stability.
- But even being as convinced of this as I am, it still makes for saying things I don't like having to say to people who are on the receiving end of often times petty, if not outright bullying, behaviour. So hearing from even one person that I am not saying it for no good purpose is very welcome. Have a great day, ER--and please don't be a stranger to my workspace. :) SnowRise let's rap 16:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Reply
[edit]Well, I checked your reply on ANI [1]. Thank you, but I would like to disagree on one point. When someone's behavior (let's say contributor X) is debated on ANI, I believe it is completely appropriate to discuss the potential issues on the user X talk page and politely explain such potential issues to them. It is frequently the case that a user misunderstands WP policies. Other users have an obligation to explain the specific issue and the policies to user X, prior to complaining elsewhere, for example. And that is exactly what user The Kip (who started the conversation) and me did. There was nothing inappropriate there. As about the responses by user X, I think they were telling in a couple of aspects and as such were also helpful. My very best wishes (talk) 15:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'm sorry MVBW, but I'm afraid I must stand by my assessment of your decision to comment on their talk page in the manner that you did, at the time that you did. Your engagement there and The Kips are not analogous, as indeed I noted in my comments at ANI. The Kip commented as a party not involved in the dispute and as such, despite more than a little bit of a hint of reproach and warning in their comments, JDiala's response was mostly receptive and the discussion productive and moving in the right direction. Your choice of that moment to leap on to the talk page of the party you were currently in a dispute with, when said dispute was already being examined at ANI, in order to re-litigate one of the elements of that dispute, was, I'm sorry, very ill-considered and, if I'm being perfectly blunt, a bad look in the circumstances.
- And all the more so because I'm not at all convinced that you are any more on the right side of the policy you wanted to continue to assert your position about than JDiala is. Based on the extensive forgoing dispute, it's pretty clear that both you and they both understand how BRD operates. Rather the locus of the dispute is clearly around who had the "advantage" of the status quo/consensus version of the article, and therefor whose "bold" edit triggered the BRD cycle. Which, to be clear, is very much something both of you should have stopped arguing about a while ago, in favor of pursuing a standard dispute resolution option to address the underlying content issue. But you instead chose this least opportune possible moment in order to lecture and "explain" BRD to JD, despite the fact that they clearly understand what the policy requires, and merely differ with you on who violated the principle first. This despite the fact that A) you had already gone ten rounds with them on the article talk page over this, and B) they had expressly stated at the ANI that this was the issue that was frustrating them.
- How you thought that this could do anything other than inflame the situation, and are even going so far as to double down on the assertion that it was a helpful thing to do after the fact, is a little beyond me. This wasn't a case of trying to de-escalate the situation before ANI by providing another user with new information that might help them avoid trouble: the matter had already been taken to ANI and had community eyes on it, and there was no reason for you to believe that the other user would interpret any perspective you supplied on the policy as helpful new information. Nor was your situation or approach analogous to The Kip's role there. If anything, you derailed any benefit that was being accrued from his intervention with the user.
- Let me be clear that I AGF that for some reason you thought this was the helpful and right thing to do, but if that's really the case, you seriously need to recalibrate your perspective for any similar situations in the future. Because as an outsider looking in, who has now reviewed all of the previous talk page dispute in addition to the ANI, it is unambiguous to me that the only possible outcome here was that you were going to replicate the same argument that was already taking place in two other spaces, and set the other party's teeth on edge in the process. And much like The Kip, the lion's share of my feedback to JDiala has been critical in nature, and full of warning. But the longer the dispute goes on, the more sympathetic I am to his position that he is not being heard and the more I'm starting to understand why he felt he was not being engaged with in a productive fashion.
- At this point, I can only re-assert, for all three of you, what I ended my ANI comments with: stop bickering over who had/has the right end of the stick with regard to BRD. It's not accomplishing anything. One side needs to give way, or someone needs to RfC this or take it to RSN or DRN or pursue any number of other dispute resolution processes. To pursue the current course that both sides have to this point is to flirt with an AE sanction, and the longer that happens, the less certain you should feel that JD is the one likely to receive it. You're not going to see eye to eye on who violated BRD first, clearly. I also doubt you are going to see a block at ANI for how JD characterized your and ManyAreasExpert's behaviour. So short-circuit this nonsense by doing what you all should have done ages ago, and bring other eyes in to resolve the content dispute. This is not rocket science: if you're that convinced that you have the right read on the sourcing issue, bolster your consensus and shut JD's argument down. SnowRise let's rap 20:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry, but I did not try to relitigate anything, as should be clear from my comments. Did I suggest to sanction this contributor anywhere? No. Besides, that ANI thread was obviously going nowhere, and I only placed a link to discussion for the sake of order. I did not start that ANI thread or even a discussion at the user talk page. My only purpose was to explain the policy to the user because he misunderstood it. Yes, I had a few discussions with him on several talk pages, and I am familiar with the subject. But it does not disqualify me from commenting on this. Quite the opposite. As about "dispute resolution", yes, of course, but I hardly have significant disagreements with this user. The dispute resolution is currently on the initial stage, i.e. just discussing the issue on article talk pages(s). Of course another user who brought this issue on ANI might be in a state of prolonged dispute, I do not really know. There are no "three of us". Happy editing, My very best wishes (talk) 00:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
"My only purpose was to explain the policy to the user because he misunderstood it."
- Again, having reviewed the entire dispute (article talk pages, ANI, and JD's TP included) and watched you go around and around and around on this issue, I feel absolutely confident at this point that they understand WP:BRD every bit as well as you do. It's just that they disagree with you about what the status quo version of the disputed content is, and therefore whose edit constitutes the B in BRD. This is something JD repeatedly pointed out on the article talk, and they also repeatedly emphasized (in the talk page discussion and at the ANI) that the efforts to "educate" them on BRD were the major source of frustration for them in that discussion. So I don't think you could have picked a single thing that was more likely to set them off than showing up in the middle of q discussion with another editor on their talk page in order to again "explain" BRD to them. And frankly, a lot of editors would have popped their top at that point. And please let me reiterate at this point that both of you should have dropped the discussion about who really violated WP:BRD/WP:EW long, long before that point. It was getting nothing accomplished and it was well past time for you both to move on to RfC or some other processes necessary to break the deadlock. But I honestly don't think that you could have picked a single thing to say to them at that point in time that was more certain to tick them off.
"But it does not disqualify me from commenting on this."
- No, of course it didn't and I don't see anywhere where anyone has implied that you were barred from commenting. What I said was that commenting when and how you did on his talk page was ill-advised and almost certain to get exactly the response you did: inflaming matters further with no realistic chance of achieving anything positive. Nobody said or implied that commenting there constituted a brightline violation of policy. My observation is merely that it represented bad judgment on your part and demonstrated that the issues between you two were not coming unilaterally from his approach. And nothing you've said here has caused me to re-assess that impression.
"The dispute resolution is currently on the initial stage, i.e. just discussing the issue on article talk pages(s).
- Well that's certainly better than continuing to fixate on who is on the right side of BRD, but given the protracted back-and-forth there already, can I recommend that you all not sleep on starting an RfC or taking the matter to RSN? Because if you haven't been able to achieve a meeting of the minds between you so far, I don't think it's likely to spontaneously happen, and my concern is the cycle of talking past eachother is going to continue without other community voices involved. Just my two cents.
"Happy editing"
- To you as well. SnowRise let's rap 01:49, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry, but I did not try to relitigate anything, as should be clear from my comments. Did I suggest to sanction this contributor anywhere? No. Besides, that ANI thread was obviously going nowhere, and I only placed a link to discussion for the sake of order. I did not start that ANI thread or even a discussion at the user talk page. My only purpose was to explain the policy to the user because he misunderstood it. Yes, I had a few discussions with him on several talk pages, and I am familiar with the subject. But it does not disqualify me from commenting on this. Quite the opposite. As about "dispute resolution", yes, of course, but I hardly have significant disagreements with this user. The dispute resolution is currently on the initial stage, i.e. just discussing the issue on article talk pages(s). Of course another user who brought this issue on ANI might be in a state of prolonged dispute, I do not really know. There are no "three of us". Happy editing, My very best wishes (talk) 00:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Appreciation for being an intelligent human
[edit]Hello, I am a autistic man who enjoys vicariously living other people's arguments and experiences through reading various internet drama. The last year or so I've noticed that ANI and wikipedia in general can be very good sources of "human drama entertainment" or whatever you'd like to call it.
I'm rambling. The point of writing on your talk page is this:
This reply you made, along with many, many others that you've made, really help me think better of people. You write clearly, empathetically, and with nuance I do not see often. You have a beautiful mind and I hope you keep contributing to whatever strikes your fancy.
I know that it would make me giddy to have someone compliment me like this, but I hope you take it well. Hooples (talk) 19:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- Hooples, I don't know what to say--this is one of the nicest, most flattering things anyone has ever said to me in my time on the project, or in general. And it's very endearing to me not just because it is so complimentary, but also because you observed some of the qualities that I try hardest to bring into our work with the community: reason, empathy, understanding and forbearance. It's also a very timely message for me: the recent months have represented a tough time for me, and though I've tried to make that all the more reason to practice patience and kindness, you never know for sure how well you are doing when you are exhausted and living under the shadow of doubt. Today has been an amazing day: first I received the results of a medical scan that were phenomenally more positive than expected and beyond what I dared hope for. And now, this warm and invigorating missive from a stranger, which has made me feel so appreciated and recognized. Thank you for taking the time to make one of your first edits here such an act of kindness. It's a lovely little boost of extra impetus that merges seamlessly with the thoughts of renewed possibility and purpose that are filling my home right now. If you do a fraction as much for the average person you interact with here, you will be an amazing addition to our community indeed. Please, as you transition from a passive to an active member of our endeavour, if there is anything at all I can do to help, do not hesitate to reach out. In the meantime, you have my kindest regards and sincerest gratitude. SnowRise let's rap 00:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Reply from Hooples
[edit]Sorry for making a new topic, the way your talk page is laid out doesn't let me reply on mobile for whatever reason.
Your reply made me happy all night while I was at work, thank you. I'm glad I can make you feel recognized. Not enough humans are. My wife says you have excellent thank-you note skills.
I have been reading about the RFC page and the whole process,I think I am going to try to participate where I can, when appropriate.
I am pretty nervous about it, however. I lurk... Extensively, and I've seen firsthand all the people who are quick to harass. I read one arbitration where an editor even called another at work after snooping out their info. I would like to avoid that if at all possible. That is just my normal nervousness though, I stay more anonymous than most.
I hope to see more of your writing if I do take that step. Hooples (talk) 18:23, 19 July 2024 (UTC)