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Casualties

I have responded to your points on WW1 & 2 casualties. I only add content on Wikipedia that can be verified, and as a rule of thumb I save a hard copy of the source in my files. With regard to casualties I never post my OR on Wikipedia. Way back in 1951 Gregory Frumkin,who was throughout its existence the editor of the Statistical Year Book of the League of Nations, published the study Population Changes in Europe Since 1939. This study needs to be updated in light of the demographic data that has been published since 1951. The solution to the problem of casualties is to compare total population losses of all the European nations simultaneously using Frumkin's methodology. Frumkin started with the beginning population, then he made adjustments for births ,natural deaths and population transfers. He then compares the result to the ending population per the post war census data to derive the population losses due to the war. Frumkin then went on to provide the details of the losses, military and civilian casualties and their causes. Off Wiki I am working on this issue, for example German official sources claim that 273,000 civilians were killed during expulsions from Czechoslovakia, nobody in the academic community has taken the time to analyze the German and Czechoslovak populations simultaneously. If they did this simple analysis they would realize that the German official sources are clearly in error. I pointed this out to R. J. Rummel a few years ago, his reply was that all data in in socialist bloc was falsified and that his figure for expulsion deaths was correct. I am so glad that persons like yourself in the academic community are beginning to question the published casualty statistics.--Woogie10w (talk) 14:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

A topic that needs further investigation is civilian famine deaths in Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI. In Germany the death rate was higher in the Polish speaking regions because food allocations were lower than in the western regions. The 1928 study Deutschlands Gesundheitsverhältnisse unter dem Einfluss des Weltkrieges did not break out famine dead by region. On this topic and I can cite the article in the Journal of Modern History by Sally Marks "Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918-1921." The Journal of Modern History 85 (September 2013) The author maintains that the German seizure of harvests in Belgium, northern France and Poland caused famine. Editors fluent in Polish may be able to provide sources that would elaborate on this topic. --Woogie10w (talk) 19:11, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CIV, November 2014

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Economy of Asia

We are a group of students working to improve the Economy of Asia article and a little while ago you gave us some helpful advice on the article talk page. We have since made several more changes and additions to the article and would appreciate any feedback. We are aiming to have the article re-assessed and moved up to a B-Class article. Thank you! Mlc299 cornell (talk) 02:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

DYK nomination of The Partisans (sculpture)

Hello! Your submission of The Partisans (sculpture) at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Edwardx (talk) 11:43, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Piotrus. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ProPay.
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NorthAmerica1000 12:25, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Teamwork Barnstar
Thank you for helping me with my Beskid Sadziecki; I will fix the problems addressed and will expand on other articles which directly link with the article to give more information. Thank you for your positive support with this. Arbustum (talk) 16:01, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

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Nomination of Mercenaries (BattleTech) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mercenaries (BattleTech) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mercenaries (BattleTech) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

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The Signpost: 26 November 2014

Orphaned non-free image File:Logo of the International Sociological Association.gif

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

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Re: Please undo your edits

Hello.

Yes, I made a mistake of not adding new category. I wanted to make the order of photos in this category. Buildings moved to the Category:Buildings in Osiedle Tysiąclecia (Katowice). By the way - thanks for these pictures, which I used to article in pl:Wiki Osiedle Tysiąclecia (Katowice) MacQtosh (talk) 08:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: October 2014

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This Month in Education: November 2014

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

Talkback from Technical 13

Hello, Piotrus. You have new messages at Remember the dot's talk page.
Message added 22:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

— {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Clan of Ostoja

Greetings, I have changed part of the art about the Clan of Ostoja to match recent research based on previous publications. Although there is lot more to write in subject, we now can present the origin of the Clan. I think it is almost stunning and maybe worth to publish on page "Did You know..."? They key that confirm the hypothesis are 41 years of research by professor Solecki and new results of DNA tests in the Ostoja Clan DNA project on FTDNA. Furthermore, other DNA projects confirm Sarmatian origin of several other Polish Clans. Key words that we could use in "Did you know..." are: Scythians, Sarmatians, Amazons, Cataphracts, Draconarius, Draco (military standard), Legio VI Victrix with the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur where knights of the round table are presumed to be of Sarmatian Draconarius origin - this was also the main story highlighted in the Hollywood film King Arthur (2004) although there are horrible mistakes done in this so average film. Beside that, it have been now possible to decode the Ostoja Coat of Arms and what every element wish to tell us. Central part is establishing the origin of the Dragon in Ostoja and to be able to confirm Italo-Celtic origin of some of oldest Ostoja families as well as the fact that many old Ostoja families hold Haplogroup I2a. We can in the DNA results of Ostoja see the clash between many cultures ab. 1600 years ago that caused mass emigration of people - in case of Sarmatian Alans, as far as to Africa. Let me know if You think that its worth to publish art on "Did you know...". Maye the time is ready to tell more facts than fairy tells like Lech, Czech and Rus? Camdan (talk) 15:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank You for Your information! In that case there is no other option that get the art to GA standard. To do that, I need to specify pages on the references which will take lot of time to do. Camdan (talk) 12:48, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Hello again. I have just 1 question regarding the art. Jan z Jani - I dont understand what inline citations to improve in the art? Could You tell what it is about? best regards, Camdan (talk) 12:27, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 December 2014

Nominations for the Military history Wikiproject's Historian and Newcomer of the Year Awards are now open!

The Military history Wikiproject has opened nominations for the Military historian of the year and Military history newcomer of the year. Nominations will be accepted until 13 December at 23:59 GMT, with voting to begin at 0:00 GMT 14 December. The voting will conclude on 21 December. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:35, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Nominations for the Military history Wikiproject's Historian and Newcomer of the Year Awards are now open!

The Military history Wikiproject has opened nominations for the Military historian of the year and Military history newcomer of the year. Nominations will be accepted until 13 December at 23:59 GMT, with voting to begin at 0:00 GMT 14 December. The voting will conclude on 21 December. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:41, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

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Talkback

Hello, Piotrus. You have new messages at WT:KO.
Message added 11:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

It will be done this weekend, because I have to get PC with Windows (I use Ubuntu) and I have exams this week. (I shouldn't do Wikipedia at all, but I'm WikiHolic!) — Revi 11:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Sociology Brochure Feedback

Thanks for the feedback! I will be working these in today.

Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:06, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

DYK nomination of The Partisans (sculpture)

Hello! Your submission of The Partisans (sculpture) at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Edwardx (talk) 23:41, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia genealogy project

Just wondering if you have any thoughts re: the idea of WMF hosting a genealogy project. If so, feel free to contribute to this discussion. And apologies if I have made this request before. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Images with Incomplete Description and Location

Can you please provide specific descriptions and location ("Denver Transport Museum"?) for the automobiles pictured in Wikimedia Commons:

  • File:Denver transport museum 022.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 021.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 023.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 050.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 063.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 064.JPG
  • File:Denver transport museum 067.JPG

and kindly remove --description missing-- template. Thank you! Nickrz (talk) 18:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Solidarity Vienna deletion

Dear @Piotrus: I did not see your comments regarding my proposal on the Solidarity Vienna talk page before it was deleted. Would love to hear your feedback. Lukasz Chelminski (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Behavior theory for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Behavior theory is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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

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Talkback for my DYK

Hello, Piotrus. You have new messages at Template:Did you know nominations/The 4 Percent Universe.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SilverserenC 09:45, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Kolejka

Mówisz - masz. commons:Category:Kolejka (board game). //Halibutt 13:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Yu-Gi-Oh!

I Saw your recent edits to the page Yu-Gi-Oh! and thought you may want to join WP:YGO. Just thought you might be interested. TF { Contribs } 18:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 December 2014

I made my own image for 'webtoon'

User:Seoung13/sandbox Professor, Please check my sandbox! I want to receive your feedback :) Thank you~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seoung13 (talk • contribs) 14:23, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

If you include the definition of Webtoon, and contents in sections could be in prose. — Revi 14:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I really made two image by myself, but maybe wikipedia deleted my image in my sandbox.....I insert image again, but one image can't upload again because I deleted in my laptop computer. I want to solve this problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seoung13 (talk • contribs) 11:13, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't see problem on that image. But... @Seung13 Can you tell me where did you get the image of man? — Revi 11:25, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
To clarify: in File:Webtoon second generation.png, did you draw the image of the man yourself? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:31, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Voting for the Military historian and Military newcomer of the year now open!

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Ministry of National Defense

Here it is; Note that their response is not licensed under Wikipedia-compatible license. — Revi 04:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
I went to Template talk:Welcome student to suggest we add a switch to link to applicable course pages, only to find out you created Template:Welcome own student a year ago to do just that. Thanks for solving a problem before I realized what it was. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

DYK for The Partisans (sculpture)

Harrias talk 09:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

moved from top Re Valentina Seferinova

Discussion:

Dear Piotrus

Why is Valentina Seferinova page suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia?

Quite a few reasons come to mind:

I have come across many other entries where (in my opinion & not only my opinion, but others too!) people haven't achieved & have not contributed to our musical knowledge as much as I have & still am trying to do.

Indeed many entries that I see in the Classical Music genre should not be there at all.

It has been my intention to bring back from 'the dead' many composers & their music.

It's composers & music that at their time was a significant part of the concert stage & people's lives. I have recorded and played live many long forgotten composers of different nationalities (Polish, Jewish, Swiss, Bulgarian  etc etc).  I'm not just focusing on Bulgarian music (because I've been born brought up there) but I'm trying to bring to life as many composers from different nationalities & countries that for many reasons were forgotten (or in some cases music was destroyed by Nazi's in their attempt to erase Jewish and Polish music and culture from the face of our planet! Similarly with Stalin in the second half of the 20th century and his attempts to complete Hitler's aims of crushing Jewish and polish culture) as much as I can.

Since the collapse of Communism has allowed these cultures to start investigating and putting things back together in their original and true context.

I'm not sure if you're a musician of any sort, or have an in depth knowledge of musical history but please try and see the significance of the composers listed on my entry.  They have not been chosen on a whim. They all fall into the category of what I'm outlining.  For the Poles - they have yet to re-discover who and what came after Chopin in terms of the development and progression of the classical music form!! (because of the cultural destruction they suffered).

It's absolutely the same for long lost composers with a Jewish heritage - they too suffered horrendously during the 20th Century.

I feel that unless we know of our past & our heritage, how will we be able to find the right path into the future?!

If we don't know where we came from (musically and philosophically) - how do we know where we're going; and what it all means?  The development of modern music forms (both classical and modern) absolutely forms a lineage (like an ancestral tree; one composer/performer learns from his peers then passes on his knowledge and ideas to the generation that follows him or her) over the centuries.

The Polish composers Noskowski, Różycki, and Wieniawski are absolutely in that vein. Similarly the ethnically Jewish composers Raff, Jadassohn, and Brüll are themselves in that vein

Another reason: there have been so many people at concerts, on the Internet,  YouTube, you name it, that have been saying after hearing some of the music I have recorded  & played live: 'Why haven't I heard of this before? It's  beautiful! Where can we find out more...? Thank you for bringing this music to us!. ..'

Well, I'm trying (as others do too) & succeeding: Raff op2 No2 Romance I recorded for the first time ever (in history in fact) in 2002; it is now a well-established piece in the piano literature - included in the grade 6 Trinity exam board! Nowadays many other people are playing & recording the music I've discovered:

The Jadassohn concerto I recorded for the first time ever has subsequently been recorded again by the Hyperion label by another soloist and orchestra.

Similarly the Raff 2nd Sonata that I recorded for the first time ever (the term 'premiere recordings' is exactly what it says) has been recorded subsequently by another artiste by Naxos etc...

My recordings and myself are thus 'notable' in that they are the originals which others are judged by.

At the end I just want to add that I'm doing all this revival in the benefit of the new generation & future generations as when I was a student  I had to learn about the music of composers without being able to hear a single note of it as there were no recordings available.

There are many piano performers who are listed on Wikipedia - and I don't know why it is so - because they do not appear to be 'notable' (your criteria) in any exceptional way for their performances.

May I humbly suggest that I have not just the performance qualifications - but the academic qualifications also - so much missing in others and their entries.

Although writing about my own achievements feels awkward, I feel the facts speak for themselves.

Regards

Valentina Seferinova

Master of Music - Theory; Assistant Professor of Music - Performance

(Married Name = Mrs Valentina Seferinova-Bradley; my British husband has always agreed to my retaining my maiden name for professional reasons - i.e.’ Valentina Seferinova’ has a better 'ring' about it than 'Valentina Bradley' !! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Visb723 (talk • contribs) 07:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Moved from top, by — Revi 07:24, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

MLADENOVA (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)Visb723MLADENOVA (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC) and small corrections by MLADENOVA (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus

Re proposed deletion of Valentina Seferinova on the grounds of lack of clear references.
Have added 2 cite references for 'Valentina Seferinova' and the piano Duo 'Va I Ve' - each from the British & International Music Year Book 2015 - although both have been in this authoritative reference manual for in excess of 14 or 15 years.
regards
MLADENOVA (talk) 10:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 10:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


Dear Piotrus
Re proposed deletion of Valentina Seferinova on the grounds of not notable.
This addresses the question as to whether Valentina Seferinova is ‘notable’ or not.
Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) – a famous French composer, who, together with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, which endeavoured (mostly successfully) to re-create in music what Monet and others were achieving in the painting world.
The French were very proud of Debussy – at last they had a composer of International standing to rank alongside the likes of Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc. So much so that they eventually turned his 3 storey terraced birth house in St Germain-en-Laye (the outskirts of Paris at the time) into a Museum dedicated to his life and works; a ‘shrine’ if you like.
On the top floor was Debussy’s bedroom, together with his piano, which they turned into a small and intimate auditorium.
From time to time the Trustees would cast around the world to invite a performer, or performers, who were known to be of the requisite quality to give the Debussy Anniversary recital.
For Debussy ‘fans’ around the world, the pinnacle was to be seated in Debussy’s own auditorium on the anniversary of his birth – and listening to world class level performances of his music.
Please bear in mind that this arrangement prevents people who want to perform there just ringing up and saying they’d like to play there. Such opportunities were to be by invitation only.
In the autumn of 1998 – Assistant Professor Valentina, together with colleague Prof. Emilia Mihaylova, gave the first ever performance of Debussy’s complete works for 4 hands (1 piano) (known as ‘Integrale’) in Sofia the capital of Bulgaria. This performance was recorded and even today is the first and only CD recording of Debussy’s ‘Integrale’.
I state that this is a notable achievement – and in keeping with her record, outlined above, of being the first pianist to record certain long lost – but important in the history and development of music, works.
However this recording came to the attention of the Trustees of the Debussy House and Museum – and the pair of them were invited to give the 1999 Debussy anniversary recital on 21st August 1999.
I ask you to take a look at website http://www.ot-saintgermainenlaye.fr/fileadmin/omt-site/document/Phototheque/MCD/Plaquette_C._Debussy_2014_GB.pdf - a website devoted to Debussy’s House and Museum. Please read the left hand panel; in the photograph please note the décor, the wall paper, and the photograph hanging on the wall (a photograph of Yvonne Lefebure – a famous French pianist – and to whom the auditorium is dedicated).
Please now go to some YouTube videos on Valentina’s channel (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7sn2BZjso; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvCHHTgbhgQ; there are more). I hope you’ll notice that the décor and picture are exactly the same – thus proving Valentina’s performance credentials at this exclusive venue.
It is true that the performers do not get paid for their recitals. It is simply the honour and professional recognition of the quality of their performances that they are playing for.
There are countless professional pianist, who are perhaps more well-known because of their commercial success - (many on Wikipedia) who would give their right arm to be invited, even though there is no commercial gain – because it would be the professional endorsement to their Debussy performances that, as I say, they’d give their right arm for. But they have not received such an invitation.
Bottom line – “your Debussy knowledge, understanding, interpretation, and performance has to be the best there is – world class. No exception”
Valentina has received this notable accolade from the Trustees of the Debussy House and Museum – not only for her CD recording of Debussy’s Integrale – but her live performance as well.
To give it some more notable context:-
Debussy died in 1918 – Valentina’s performance was in 1999 – some 81 years later.
Take out some years before the Trustees had established themselves and the recital programme; take out say 6 years of the Second World War; take out other years when it just didn’t happen – then there’s probably only a maximum of 60 or so performers worldwide who’ve received such an invitation and accolade. Valentina is one of those.
In my mind that qualifies as ‘notable’.
Regards
PS - how do I know these things ? Because I was there for all of the events mentioned.
MLADENOVA (talk) 14:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 14:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus
Re proposed deletion of Valentina Seferinova on the grounds of not notable.
This addresses the question as to whether Valentina Seferinova is ‘notable’ or not.
Sergei Rachmaninoff - 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
At some time later after he died was formed The Rachmaninoff Society under the patronage of famous Russian Conductor and Pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy. It’s raison d’etre was to keep the memory and music alive of Rachmaninoff (as if this really needed doing!!) It’s membership was worldwide.
Each year it held it’s AGM (Annual General Meeting) – typically a weekend retreat lasting from a Friday evening through to the Sunday evening somewhere in the Northern hemisphere – typically USA/New York – but most often in the UK.
The organisers would cast around for someone suitable to give a ‘closed performance’ of Rachmaninoff’s works for the private benefit of members.
Again it would have to be a musician whose knowledge, understanding, interpretation, and performance was of the highest level worthy of the member’s attention.
Valentina was approached for the first time in April 1999 – her performance diary records:- ‘Closed’ recital performance of Rachmaninov cycles for the AGM of The Rachmaninoff Society (President: Vladimir Ashkenazy), Codshall, Nr. Wolverhampton.
The second time was in April 2005 – her performance diary records :- 2nd Recital for The Rachmaninoff Society's A.G.M (President: Vladimir Ashkenazy), and in the presence of 2 of Rachmaninov's Great Grandchildren - pieces by Rachmaninov (Moments Musicaux No. 3 in B minor, Op.16.; Moments Musicaux No. 4 in E minor, Op.16.): Skriabin (3 Pieces for Piano Op.2 [Etude; Prelude; Impromptu alla Mazurka]): Vladigueroff (Prelude from '3 Pieces for Piano', Op.15. Pessen [Song] from 'Bulgarian Suite', Op.21 No.2.; Rhapsodie 'Vardar' Op.16.).
At this performance (in London) she received a complete standing ovation.
“so what ?” you say. Well 2 of Rachmaninoff’s Great Grandchildren were in the audience – and you only have to ask yourself “just how many performances have they ever sat through to know which are the good performances or not !!”
She was invited back for an unprecedented 3rd time in 2008; but declined in favour of playing with partner Venera Bojkova, as 'Va i Ve', a 2 piano duet, for their September 2009 AGM.

As in the case of being invited to perform at the Claude Debussy House & Museum – exactly the same criteria applies.
It just has to be world class; nothing else will do.
Other professional musicians would give their right arm to be invited jut once to endorse their professional reputations.
But none of those featured on Wikipedia have.
Valentina has been invited, and performed not once, not twice – but three times.
That to my mind is ‘notable’.

PS the International Rachmaninoff Society ceased to be in 2013 – mainly due, it’s believed, to being no longer financially viable.
But the facts of Valentina’s appearances remain.
PPS - How do I know these things?
Because I was there in person.

Regards MLADENOVA (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus

I again address whether Valentina Seferinova is worthy of a Wikipedia entry; although this comment is slightly more difficult.
I have uploaded a private video to YouTube which I do not wish to be in the Public Domain for longer than is necessary.
The reason why is that the person featured is Benjamin Zander. Whilst he was aware of being recorded, I had, at the time, explained that it was for private purposes only. However because his comments were made at an event open to the public I believe his comments to be in the Public Domain (but the video isn’t if you can follow me !?)
Benjamin Zander is a British born American citizen - Conductor, and Musician.
At the time the video was made he was Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a three times Grammy award nominee for various CD recordings made with orchestras under his baton.
A man of acknowledged significance in the Classical Music world.
On 21st July 1997 there was a chance encounter between Valentina Seferinova and himself at the Sinfonia Centre, Ouseburn Park, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.
Valentina was rehearsing and playing Schubert’s Sonata in B flat major in front of an audience.
What happened turned out to be a sort of Master Class from Benjamin Zander.
The video is at Valentina & Benjamin Zander
(Sorry - I’ve had to do it this way to get around Wikipedia’s ‘black list’ of YouTube !)
It is myself behind the camera – and I am the lawful copyright holder of the video.
The video is some 46 minutes long.
It’s probable that you’re understandably too busy to watch it in full – so I will summarise :-
At 0:58 (video time) Benjamin Zander enters the Rehearsal Room/Auditrium.
At 1:50 Valentina is on the piano.
At 2:18 Benjamin Zander is announcing as part of a master Class colleague Valentina will play Schubert’s Sonata B flat major, saying “…I will interrupt because it’s a very long piece ..”.
From 2:46 Valentina plays.
At 7:27 Benjamin Zander rapturously interrupts Valentina with the words “ I’m sure you’re saying ‘What can he possibly say? It’s such beautiful music making. It’s so wonderful what you do.’” And to Valentina he say “What I can say to you – and this is an important thing for you to hear. You are a great artiste , - and a great pianist, - and you understand Schubert, - and you don’t always do what he says .. (with a wry smile), and quite often”. “When we get very accomplished and very masterful – as you are…”
They sit beside each other to investigate and discover what Is Benjamin Zander’s ‘take’ on the piece.
At 15:06 whilst discussing some technical aspects of the piece, Benjamin Zander remarks “There are probably 3 pianists on the face of the Earth who can do this - you’re one of them!” (Possibly slightly tongue in cheek – but said nonetheless.)
It’s interesting to watch as the encounter progresses that whereas in the beginning Benjamin Zander was marginally critical – he becomes more and more ‘besotted’ with Valentina’s playing (25:00 and on) – and in the end is completely won over!! You watch – the body language and attitude changes as it progresses.
32:57 “Beautiful playing!”
Suggest you watch from 44:38
44:59 “That’s about a great artiste and a great musician themselves at the service of the music - 100%.”.
At 45:43 more fulsome praise “this was a great encounter - because you're a tremendous musician; and a great spirit; I mean huge, - and you have everything. Thank you for being available.”


Sooooooo – A 3 time Grammy Award nominee – who must have dealt with hundreds (?) of pianists rates her knowledge, understanding, and playing of Schubert to be amongst the top 3 in the world.

In my mind that’s ‘notable’

The difficulty I have is – how can I cite and prove his words when I don’t want the video to be in the Public Domain (even though his words are!)

Regards
MLADENOVA (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus

So here we have a former child prodigy (her first public performances as a solo piano player, and orchestral soloist were when she was only 12 years of age – that’s notable) who went on to become a highly academically qualified award winning (see original entry) classical Concert pianist - which I suggest is notable in itself (Typically performers have the gift and talent of performance only)
I hope I’ve demonstrated that she is an acknowledged expert – i.e. in knowledge, understanding, interpretation and performance to a world class standard of at least 3 composers (Schubert; Debussy; Rachmaninov) of the Classical Romantic era.
In my mind this is notable; it is more typical that a performer will be an ‘expert’ in one composer only – if any at all.
I hope I’ve illustrated that she has probably contributed more to the further knowledge and understanding of long lost composers than anyone else in recent times – and has helped to fill the void in knowledge and understanding because of the cultural devastation and consequences of 2 of the world’s worst despots(Hitler and Stalin) of the 20th Century i.e. to Jewish heritage music; and to Polish music. She continues to this day with plans to be back in a Warsaw recording studio as early as next spring
She was principally involved in the rediscovery of a ‘lost’ orchestral work of the British female composer Dorothy Howell.
I’m happy for you to have Valentina’s and my above posts reviewed by someone else whose knowledge of such things may be greater should you not be content.
For the Polish music aspect may I humbly suggest a contact with Jan Jarnicki of Acte Préalable in Warsaw, who is the principal in rediscovering, recording, and putting back together again Polish Classical music after Chopin [(email: actepre@wp.pl)].
If you are content – then may I humbly agree that Valentina’s entry be part of the United Kingdom, and Bulgaria Wikipedia projects – but at a higher level/significance than the ‘low level’ you are suggesting.
May I also suggest that if similar projects/portals exist for Poland, and Israel that Valentina’s entry be reflected there too.
AND THERE IN LIES OUR PROBLEM – BOTH Valentina and I are quite quite amateurs at this Wikipedia matter – we haven’t a clue how to go about things; and seek your maximum help and assistance in clearing up the mess of matters that brought Valentina Seferinova to your attention in the first place.
Please – a BIG HELP is needed !.
Regards
MLADENOVA (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus
At the top of the Valentina Seferinova page is this:-
The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Valentina Seferinova" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images (December 2014)

I clicked on newspapers which produced this Google search https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Valentina+Seferinova%22&tbm=nws
It produced some results; you might like to paste it to your browser.

I clicked on books which produced this Google search https://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&q=%22Valentina+Seferinova%22

It also produced some results; you might like to paste it to your browser.

Have also added a reference and link to BBC Radio 3 (BBC's classical radio station.

How are we doing in preserving this article? Please don't forget that we are amateurs who are asking please for some help.
Regards
MLADENOVA (talk) 16:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)MLADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 16:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus
Re Notability issue

Clicking "Valentina Seferinova" -Wikipedia" at the top of the page where you are worried about notability produces a minimum of 23 pages of Google results !!!
Google seems to regard her as 'notable' ! (agreed Wikipedia may have a different criteria)
Regards
MLADENOVA (talk) 14:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)MALADENOVAMLADENOVA (talk) 14:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Piotrus
Meni stvarno nije jasno sta ti zelis!? Ako sam ja sta pogrijesio, ti ispravi. I molio bih da slucajno neko ne bi obrisao stranice koje sam ja napravio. Mogli bi mi samo reci HVALA Pozdrav iz Republike Srpske! :) --Dejan 97 (talk) 14:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).
This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.

Project A-Ko RPG

Regarding the Project A-Ko RPG page, I did have one source that I was able to use to expand it considerably. I know this may not be enough to satisfy the WP:GNG, but would you find it acceptable to have the PROD removed and replaced with the Refimprove tag? BOZ (talk) 17:18, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Pages 271-272. :) They are included in the article body using a template, but if it is easier to deal with, I can move them to the citation itself. BOZ (talk) 02:11, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2014

Macadamia

I had to stop my article work, so here's the draft: Draft:Macadamia nuts controversy. Your help will be appreciated. — Revi 12:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Screenshot showing how to add or remove columns from a table

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "*  " will make the line a bullet list; "1.  " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.

Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world

Harrias talk 00:02, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings and Good Wishes
Best wishes for the season and the new year. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Itaewon Global Village Festival

Dear professor Hi, I'm Jihyun Park. I finished the wiki assignment. The article is 'Itaewon Global Village Festival'. Please check it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jihyun2p (talk • contribs) 15:13, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Kolejka (game)

Harrias talk 00:02, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CV, December 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:51, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Some stroopwafels for you!

Merry Christmas, Wesołych Świąt! Arbustum (talk) 22:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2014

One off the to-do list

I took the privilege of editing your user page by removing the Finnish Relief Fund from the to-do list. (Unfortunately, only a stub!). On a related matter, I know you're an experienced editor with 1939 WWII disputes, if you have the time may I ask for your opinion on the latest Talk:Winter War dispute? It's about whether the Soviet Union intended to conquer all of Finland or not. Is it worth argung for? --Pudeo' 05:19, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Seasonal Greets!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Piotrus, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:06, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:06, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Hi Piotrus, Thanks for the kind wishes. All the best to you in 2015! Regards,

DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 12:02, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Season's greetings!

Season's greetings, and best wishes in the coming new year! Nihil novi (talk) 19:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Alain Ngamayama

Piotrus why you select that Alain Ngamayama is not a Pole? So it is difficult to read the source that gave the text to check it out? source: Place of birth: Poznań. And as you can not read because they do not know the source is acknowledged Polish language, I recommend that you use the google translator. I think that just going on the assumption that a person with black skin color may not be a Pole and that is why so stupid your ways, in this case, the racism. As for your complaint further if this article is suitable for wikipedia so as I stated in the sources that you do not want to read it Ngamayama in Polish first division played 124 matches. It's probably enough to find themselves on wikiepedia?

Wolfgang1212 (talk) 01:53, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

DYK for 21st century economic migration of Poles

Harrias talk 12:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Your RfA

Hi, as I said at your RfA, you're a good user. My issue was with Commons at the time, which you got caught up with. If you were to run again, I'd certainly support you. Black Kite (talk) 17:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Advice sought

I hope to be active on Wikipedia again. Can you point me to rule(s) about off Wikipedia discussions? I don’t want to break the rules when discussing issues related to Wikipedia with others.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jniech (talk • contribs) 03:59, December 29, 2014‎

Thanks for the reply. Jniech (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Macadamia nuts controversy for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Macadamia nuts controversy is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Yoninah (talk) 01:45, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year Piotrus!

Happy New Year!

Piotrus,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006

Hello, what your specific reason for questioning notability of Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006 article? What's wrong about the sources? Happy New Year! --Pwlps (talk) 09:45, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Pwlps

Happy New Year Piotrus!

Happy New Year!

Piotrus,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. NorthAmerica1000 10:43, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.
Sent using mass message sender. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from User:Northamerica1000/Mailing list.

Ad: Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006

Hello, Regarding your answer: the guidelines state that no fixed number of sources is required, but in respons to your doubts I added a few more. IMHO all the notability guidelines in case of the KON-2006 article are met. I see no justification for questioning its notability. If you do, please point out the specific reason for it... Best regards! --Pwlps (talk) 15:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 launch newsletter

Round one of the 2015 WikiCup has begun! So far we've had around 80 signups, which close on February 5. If you have not already signed up and want to do so, then you can add your name here. There have been changes to to several of the points scores for various categories, and the addition of Peer Reviews for the first time. These will work in the same manner as Good Article Reviews, and all of the changes are summarised here.

Remember that only the top 64 scoring competitors will make it through to the second round, and one of the new changes this year is that all scores must be claimed within two weeks of an article's promotion or appearance, so don't forget to add them to your submissions pages! If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which could otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs)
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 December 2014

Question about character articles

I don't mind the content being removed. Usually when I encounter non-notable characters I just replace everything with a redirect to the overall "character" articles. I guess the speedy tags are to make sure it's all official, right? WhisperToMe (talk) 12:42, 4 January 2015 (UTC) ： Ok! In that case I'll just sit back and relax :) WhisperToMe (talk) 13:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Character prods

I am going to deprod some as I can see that the character list articles could use the sourcing merges. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 22:28, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

This Month in Education: December 2014

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Notice

Hello, Piotrus. You have new messages at Kurtis's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Kurtis (talk) 14:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK nomination of May 18th National Cemetery

Hello! Your submission of May 18th National Cemetery at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 22:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Deletion of Interface (journal)

Hi. The article was deleted for a housekeeping move. I'm not involved in the article, but it looks to be all legit..., and has sorted itself out? The JPStalk to me 14:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Request your possible involvement

This probably takes some explaining. At the recent ArbCom case regarding Landmark Worldwide I suggested that maybe it might be possible to get together a group of editors with some broad experience of wikipedia and knowledge of the general topic area to get together and review the sources available on the topic with the intention of ultimately starting a broader discussion, probably through RfC, about the issues involved. It is more or less in line with a proposal I made for something like a "content" committee, which would probably be more reasonably called a "comment" committee, given the role I think RfC and the hopefully wide variety and number of editors might play in the real outcome of the RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 16#Rehashing an old idea - Maybe a "Comment committee" to deal with content?. ArbCom itself requested some broader input in the topic area in its decision.

I was thinking of editors around here who might have some sort of broad experience in the social/religious issues involved and you were one of the first names that came to mind for maybe taking part in reviewing information presented and evaluating sources and the like. If you would have any interest in maybe taking part in this sort of test run for such a committee, I would obviously welcome it. I haven't actually started a separate section on the article talk page yet, because I wanted to see if there were any responses from the individuals I was considering, or, potentially, anyone else who might be interested. John Carter (talk) 16:52, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Franciszek Tepa

Thank you for the suggestion! I'm just a retiree looking for a way to keep his brain working, but it's always very nice to be recognized and appreciated. In this instance, a user named "Poeticbent" made a substantial contribution (the opening paragraph about Tepa's revolutionary activity). Perhaps he would like to do the DYK.

Thank you again! WQUlrich (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 9

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 9, November-December 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • New donations, including real-paper-and-everything books, e-books, science journal databases, and more
  • New TWL coordinators, conference news, a new open-access journal database, summary of library-related WMF grants, and more
  • Spotlight: "Global Impact: The Wikipedia Library and Persian Wikipedia" - a Persian Wikipedia editor talks about their experiences with database access in Iran, writing on the Persian project and the JSTOR partnership

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

religious wars that plagued the rest of the medieval Europe

1500-1800 period which you quote wasn't medieval. Xx234 (talk) 07:46, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Public Art

Following up from your comments, I'm assuming what you mean is that if I take a photograph of one of J.L.K. van Dort's paintings or drawings even if I don't own the painting or drawing then I can post a copy of that image without breaching copyright. I would however be potentially breaching copyright if I posted someone else's image of one of his paintings or drawings. Is that right? Dan arndt (talk) 13:03, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Maximilian Kolbe

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Maximilian Kolbe you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Coemgenus -- Coemgenus (talk) 16:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2015

Ani O'Neill

Kia ora and hello Piotrus. I have noted your message and revised the article on Ani O'Neill. This article meets requirements of the General notability guidelines because it outlines, in reference to published books and external links to major cultural institutions of New Zealand, significant coverage of the artist Ani O'Neill by highlighting her major international and national exhibtions, listing her tertiary education and a list of selected, cited exhibitions of the artist between the years 1994-2012. Peata likes art (talk) 23:25, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Nowowiejski Article Thanks

Thanks, Piotrus. for looking at the Nowowiejski article. I'll work more on it as I have more time.Beau Tibbs (talk) 03:39, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Subsonic Music Festival

Consider yourself pinged. See Talk:Subsonic Music Festival for my rationale in dePRODing the article.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 10:02, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Chi-Mc

Harrias talk 12:02, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for working on Wikipedia Gender Inequality Index

Hi Piotrus, my name is María, I work as community liaison for Program Evaluation and Design team, part of Grantmaking departament at Wikimedia Foundation. I have seen your research project and I find it super interesting. I would like to thank you and Max Klein for putting so much effort into it. I realize the final report is yet due, but it is looking great so far. I was wondering if you were thinking of publishing this on wiki, once it is finished? If you do, please let me know. I would like to add this research project to the Evaluation portal on Meta; we have a section called «Case studies in the movement», where community members share research done within the Wikimedia universe.

Thanks for your time!

Best, MCruz (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi again Piotrus!

Thanks for the super quick response. I'm glad to hear you are looking forward to share. What I meant by «publish on wiki» was either Wikipedia, Meta Wikimedia or other Wikimedia project... but just wondering. Looking forward to it! :-) MCruz (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

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

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The Signpost: 14 January 2015

Your GA nomination of Maximilian Kolbe

The article Maximilian Kolbe you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Maximilian Kolbe for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Coemgenus -- Coemgenus (talk) 16:00, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Most of the points I raised here were fixed by another reviewer, but there are still a few that require your attention. Do you think you'll be able to get to them soon? It's a nice article, I hope to promote it. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK nomination of May 18th National Cemetery

Hello! Your submission of May 18th National Cemetery at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 14:52, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Seeking your help to translate from English

Hello my fellow Wikipedian,

Thanks for taking your time off to help hapless Wikipedians and otherwise stucked-up articles find their way to the forefront of other non-English speaking readers. I would hope that I have approached you the right way.

Nonetheless, I humbly seeks your intervention to translate the following pages from English to your native tongue, since I gathered that it may mean something to Wiki readers in other languages.

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Ten_Letters_to_Obama

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Dennis_Adonis

Thanks in anticipation for facilitating this request.

Webwatchergy (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Maximilian Kolbe

The article Maximilian Kolbe you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Maximilian Kolbe for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Coemgenus -- Coemgenus (talk) 16:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Jeong Seon

Hello! Your submission of Jeong Seon at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 16:35, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the kitty! I appreciate it. Yoninah (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

EucA

Dear Piotrus, Though I am not neutral (I am cooperating with EucA), and actually called Dick (Richard), I am able to ignore all rules so there. I updated the EucA talk page. Regards, Malus Catulus (talk) 17:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Deleting Aleksandar Mladenović article

Piotrus, I have now added several reference quotations. Tell me if it's ok now, that is if that renders the article OK by the Wikipedia standards. Cheers Ulichar (talk) 18:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Michael Snow

Spoke with deleting admin permission was granted due to the lack of discussion in the second AfD and the snow keep outcome in the first AfD. Valoem talk contrib 01:54, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2015

European Route of Industrial Heritage

As you see I have been working up European Route of Industrial Heritage- thanks for tagging one. There are several Polish articles on that page now- some written by people who can speak Polish- then the ones I have added. I won't be offended if you take ownership of any or all of them- you have left a fairly convincing photo-trail to prove you have visited some of them- I still have 12 stubs to write. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 14:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna, company or railway line?

Hello Piotrus, re Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna, your question: I have posted the following reply on the 'Talk Page' of the article, and it's the best answer I can give now::


At this moment, it's a construction project building a railway line! The project is due to be completed either 30 June 2015, or perhaps some details such as governmental reviews are supposed to be completed 1 September 2015, and operation is scheduled to start on that date. Obviously when operation starts there will need to be an operator, but none of the sources that I have seen identify the operator.

My main sources are 'Rynek Kolejowy' and 'Kurier Kolejowy,' two publications covering Polish railways.

So my simple answer is that it's a railway line, and that for me is the interesting aspect of the project. The Pomeranian Voivodeship identifies itself as the driving force behind the project, but I doubt that it will be the operator.Prospero10 (talk) 16:49, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

This is in reply to:

Talk:Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna

Please see my comment there. If you reply anywhere, please WP:ECHO me. Thanks and ,, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 12:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I hope this reply reaches you.Prospero10 (talk) 16:49, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CVI, January 2015

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DYK for Jeong Seon

Harrias talk 01:59, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Nut rage incident

Harrias talk 01:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna, Railway Line or Company? And, please do not re-name

Hello [[User:Piotrus|Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus] Yes, I do speak Polish. The article Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna which I created is about the linia Kolejowa (railway line), not about the spólka akcyjna (company) which is building the line - I understand the distinction. In fact, until you pointed it out, I didn't know that the spólka akcyjna (company) existed. The Polish Wikipedia article is a good article, and it brings up another point: the operator of the PKM is to be selected by a bidding process (przetarg), so that if the selected operator is not Szybka Kolej Miejska (Tricity) which would be a natural but not necessary choice, but is instead a new operator who takes the name PKM, then 'PKM' could refer to not two but three entities: (1) the railway line, (2) the company which is building the line, and (3) the operator (przewożnik). We shall see. Anyway, I am glad that I created the article. It is needed.Prospero10 (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Separate point: please do not re-name.

I hope that nobody re-names the article 'PKP Line No. 248.' This would be bureaucritically correct but uninformative. The name 'Pomorska Kolej Metropolitalna' conveys information, the name 'PKP Line No. 248' gives zero information. A similar re-naming was applied to Central Rail Line (Poland) (Centralna Magistrala Kolejowa) whose title told readers that it is perhaps the most important passenger rail line in Poland, and the article has been re-named 'PKP Line No. 4' which is utterly uninformative and meaningless. I plan to reverse this change if I can find out the necessary computer techniques. These editors seem not to realize that the purpose of Wikipedia is not to adhere to terminology of bureaucracy, but to provide information.Prospero10 (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

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DYK for Maximilian Kolbe

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Source of Easter:

From various sources it seems plausible Easter comes from various pagan fertility goddesses (Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Astarte). It appears to been initiated by Judeo/Christian Culture melding with local cultures. It seems plausible, but in depth study has eluded me. Sincerely yours, RodChugiak (talk) 16:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Slavery in Korea

Allen3 talk 00:26, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

May 18th National Cemetery

I apologize if I appeared heavy-handed by reverting User:Tksgk262's edit, instead of retaining the copyediting that was appropriate and removing the excessive overlinking and superfluous additions. I admit to being upset that User:Tksgk262 didn't respond to requests to fix the article during the DYK process, and that I had to spend so much time fixing it up to get it DYK-ready, and now she suddenly shows up again. I went ahead and added back her edits that made sense, although I did not add back her excessive overlinking and words that she added to someone's verbatim quote. Yoninah (talk) 14:03, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 January 2015

This Month in Education: [January 2015]

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

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VisualEditor News 2015—#1

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. 

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

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The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

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Let's work together

Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

PAL-PAC Article

Hey, I was just wondering how many more sources it would take to satisfy Wikipedia:Notability in the PAL-PAC article for you? There are a ton of Polish sources like TVP and other notable newspapers and magazines, but a majority are in Polish and I didn't want to add more than one source in Polish. I have a few others though and was planning to add more sections in the future about their popular Junior Board and their blog article that went viral about 15 things that wouldn't have existed if not for Polish-Americans. Either way, just lemme now. Are you from the U.S.? Iksnyrk (talk) 08:51, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

January 2012 SOPA vote

May know you? Pff...I've long been an admirer of your work on Polish-related topics. In fact, I believe you were one of the first editors whose name I learned to recognize, way back when. :-)

I'll take a look at the Meta survey and respond when I have some time to consider it at greater length. However, I can tell you basically why I didn't participate in the vote. I was aware of SOPA in some form, but never really took the time to study the legislation in depth. Consequently, I didn't feel qualified to participate in the vote. I'd prefer to skip the discussion entirely if I can't approach it as an informed voter. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 19:31, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I edited a few, yesterday - mostly little Wiki-gnomic things. Jacek Malczewski, Emil Młynarski, a couple of other things. (It's funny...I haven't listened to anything Polish in a while, and yesterday I pulled out my old recording of Młynarski's violin concerto - first time in ages - just before you posted your message. Perfect timing. :-) ) I haven't been doing much article creation of late - just tons of small cleanup things here and there. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 17:10, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 February 2015

Merger discussion for Majorat

An article that you have been involved in editing, Majorat, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. MiguelMadeira (talk) 11:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC) --MiguelMadeira (talk) 11:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1

Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:

  • "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
  • "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
  • "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Raquel Liberman

Hello Piotrus thank you for the tips about WikiProject templates, and I followed your advice and nominated Raquel Liberman to DYK's with a bit of luck this article could be in the main page. Thank you very much for your help, and if I can help you in something please let me know.--Bsea (talk) 03:09, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Fourth Partition

Thanks for the tip. I appreciate the advice! --Orestek (talk) 03:27, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Łukasz Krupiński

Proszę uprzejmie o wyjaśnienie, jaki sens ma uszczęśliwianie na siłę udziałem w Wiki-Project-Poland. Zajmuję się informowaniem czytelników niemiecko-, rosyjsko- a ostatnio też anglojęzycznych o wydarzeniach w polskiej kulturze, ale nie mam ochoty brać udział w wyścigach. A tak przy okazji: zakwalifikowanie artykułu o polskim reprezentancie do Konkursu Chopinowskiego do najniższych grup uważam za cokolwiek nietaktowne. Widzę, że czas wycofać sie z en-wikipedii. Z wyrazami szacunku --Szczebrzeszynski (talk) 05:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Democratic movements listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Democratic movements. Since you had some involvement with the Democratic movements redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Mr. Guye (talk) 22:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

SOPA vote.

I believe my response is 1a and 2c1. At that point I was a student at Eastern Michigan University, working on a master's in history. While I found time to participate in some editing of Wikipedia, it was not as much as at other times. Beyond that, I generally try to avoid the politics of online regulation, because it is too complex for me to figure out which side is right. I see that both make sense. I hope that helps you. In general I create content and try to participate in discussions which directly affect content.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:20, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

SOPA vote

Sure! Where do I put in my responses? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Q1. F. I would say I knew it was important but I figured the community has a whole had a "handle" on the matter and would do the right thing. It's similar to C, but I didn't have an opinion on which outcome was the best. Q4. Yes, I believe they were significantly advertised Q5. In general overall issues such as this one are well advertised. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:29, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Will have my reply in a couple of days Hugo999 (talk) 03:34, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 February 2015

Cat

Thanks for the kitty, Piotrus! WhisperToMe (talk) 15:32, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

ORCID

I see you're a researcher; you may be interested in WP:ORCID. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:04, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Mass messaging

In the future, for your reference, it's usually a lot easier to mass message people by posting a request at WT:MMS. Cheers, --L235 (talk) As a courtesy, please ping me when replying. 23:47, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject assessment tags for talk pages

Thank you for your advice. I'm still learning so it's helpful. I will try to do my future edits correctly and use these templates. DariaPolonia (talk) 18:17, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

GreenEvo

Links in Polish added --Dariusz Szwed (talk) 18:20, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

GetResponse

This company has references form top publications like Forbes, Huffington Post and PC Magazine. They are totally notable. 21:24, 16 February 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamreinman (talk • contribs)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Janusz Radziwiłł (1612–55), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Voivode of Wilno. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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SOPA vote

Hi Piotr - trying to cast my mind back to that time, I can only remember that I was barely aware of the issue. Insofar as I was aware of it, I would probably have thought of it as a principally US-related matter, so I'd have left it to US editors to discuss. Sorry, not much I can tell you. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:04, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 February 2015

The Bugle: Issue CVII, February 2015

Full front page of The Bugle
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If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)


The Japanese School in Warsaw

Hi! I took a look at the notability message at The Japanese School in Warsaw. Unfortunately the school doesn't have a high school component, which would give it automatic notability. However there is an academic document written in Japanese and the author to my knowledge has no connection whatsoever to the school (I can check with a Japanese person to make sure)

  • Teramoto, Manabu (寺本 学; Shimane University, Faculty of Education, Attached Junior High School). "ワルシャワ日本人学校と国語科実践報告(1991年4月から1994年3月までの活動と実態を中心に)." 国語教育論叢 5, 87-104, 1995-09-01. Shimane University. See profile at CiNii.

It's common for newspapers to write reports on Japanese international schools showing how different they are, and these get the schools to meet WP:GNG. I wonder if any Polish newspapers have done writeups on the school. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Lycée Français de Varsovie, on the other hand, does have a senior high school component. It will survive AFD even if no other source is found. Willy-Brandt-Schule (Warsaw) also has a senior high school. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:20, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Re 2012 SOPA Vote

Hi: Piotr: Re the 2012 SOPA vote I cannot now recall hearing of it or what it was about, but I would think that at the time I did not know much about it, and more importantly did not know anything about the people presumably involved, apart from seeing one or wo names on questions up for comment (whioch does not provide much of a guide for supporting or disagreeing with them). Hugo999 (talk) 09:28, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

About your (non)participation in the January 2012 SOPA vote

I did see your request to complete the questions, I thought I could be more helpful to WP continuing to edit. Hope your survey is not incomplete as a result. Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 16:06, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Prod of Chin Chih Yang

I have contested this prod; I think the existing sources provide acceptable coverage to establish threshold notability, and at least merit the wider discussion at AfD, if you are so minded. Notifying you as you requested to be pinged. Regards, Espresso Addict (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Non-free rationale for File:Frampol bombing.jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Frampol bombing.jpg. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under non-free content criteria, but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia is acceptable. Please go to the file description page, and edit it to include a non-free rationale.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified the non-free rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Ronhjones  (Talk) 01:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for creating the much needed and long overdue article about torture of Polish children by German teachers in Wrzesnia. I myself planned it to do it, but like many other articles it didn't get my time. I will certainly try to improve it by adding information. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Września children strike

Hello! Your submission of Września children strike at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Mchuedem (talk) 17:22, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Presentation proposal for Wikimania 2015

How to pick up more women...
Hi Piotrus! Victuallers and I have developed a proposal for a talk to be presented at Wikimania 2015. It's titled, How to pick up more women... -- as in more women editors and more women's biographies. Examples include the Edit-a-thon blitz during WikiWomen's History Month and the "new articles" work underway by WikiProject Women Writers. The Wikimania talk proposal review process has begun and there's no guarantee that our proposal will be accepted. That's where you come in. Please review it and, if you wish, give us feedback on the submission's talkpage or my talkpage (vs. your talkpage). Ultimately, we hope you add your name to the signup at the bottom of the proposal which signifies you'd be interested in the talk if you were attending it (it does not commit you to attending Wikimania). Thank you! Rosiestep (talk) 04:07, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Włodzimierz Kiniorski

Hello Piotrus. I recently declined the speedy deletion request on Włodzimierz Kiniorski, but I was frankly on the fence. The article doesn't assert notability, but I saw a few possible sources in Polish (thoough my translator wasn't working well). The subject also has articles on the Polish and Dutch Wikipedias. So, I'm debating whether to tag or PROD (or something else); care to offer an opinion, as one of our Polish experts?--Mojo Hand (talk) 17:58, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look and for the suggestion.--Mojo Hand (talk) 14:57, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Think Again Conclave

The page was meant to be used as an educating tool for the people who want to attend the conclave or know about it's past history. I have no vested interest in the event and am merely trying to help others like me who were confused whether to attend the event or not. With regards to the correctness and the reliability of the sources, I am of the opinion that they are enough evidence to the existence of the Conclave. Also, the correctness of the data can also be verified at www.bits-apogee.org, which is the official website of the event. I think you were completely unjustified and hasty in your assessment calling the article a spammy piece of 'add'. Also, the essence of an encyclopedia is to make people aware about stuff which I think is exactly what I catered to. I have not attempted to misuse Wikipedia in any way. Also, if you say that organizations that organize lectures should not be allowed to have WIkipedia entries, I would say that would be unjust. By that logic, there should be no page of the TED Conferences, the Royal Society Lectures and others of the like. Please do consider my arguments seriously.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhairikfuletra (talk • contribs) 19:43, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

The Signpost: 25 February 2015

This Month in Education: February 2015

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:25, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 March newsletter

One of several of Godot13's quality submissions during round 1

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. 64 competitors made it into this round, and are now broken into eight groups of eight. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups. Round 1 saw some interesting work on some very important articles, with the round leader Australia Freikorp (submissions) owing most of his 622 points scored to a Featured Article on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within which qualified for a times-two multiplier. This is a higher score than in previous years, as Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions) had 500 points in 2014 at the end of round 1, and our very own judge, Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) led round 1 with 601 points in 2013.

In addition to Freikorp's work, some other important articles and pictures were improved during round one, here's a snapshot of a few of them:

You may also wish to know that The Core Contest is running through the month of March. Head there for further details - they even have actual prizes!

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email)

Thanks for your assistance! Miyagawa (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiCup.

(Opt-out Instructions) This message was send by Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

A Quiet Day in Spring

Hello Sir. I have a question about the 'dubious notability' of this album article that you have proposed for deletion. When I created this I also created six other Larry Coryell album articles to add to the twelve albums already on Wikipedia. What is it about this particular album that you saw as demonstrating lack of notability when all of the others are OK? I added references in exactly the same fashion as on the other six album articles. This album has been selling consistently for 30 years, it has a 3.5 star rating and an enthusiastic review on Allmusic; Google it and it is all over Amazon and Ebay. Larry Coryell and the Polish violinist Michael Urbaniak are famous jazz musicians and it is as notable as any of his other 50+ albums. I am not sure how to further prove it's notability and would appreciate advice. Thanks. Nostalgic34 (talk) 18:58, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid you haven't answered my question either. What I am asking you, Piotrus, is why are you proposing to delete this particular Larry Coryell album article when there are already twelve by that artist on Wikipedia. Each one of these twelve articles has a single reference to an AllMusic review, just like A Quiet Day in Spring. Are you proposing to delete all of these too? I have said nothing at all about wanting to change Wikipedia policies in my post and my question to you is genuine. I do not understand your logic in wanting to delete this particular album when it is no different to the twelve others.Nostalgic34 (talk) 14:46, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Pittsburgh meetup

Pittsburgh Wikipedians are invited to a meet up on April 3, 2015. Meetup Pittsburgh

  Bfpage |leave a message  19:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: About your (non)participation in the January 2012 SOPA vote

I vaguely remember that vote. I don't recall exactly why I didn't participate, but it was likely due to my aversion to participating in anything political on Wikipedia. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:48, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Edward Pomorski

Piotrus, could you take a look at this. To my surprise, I was not able to find him in the Polish WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

List of Shadowrun books/draft

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Books and Bytes - Issue 10

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 10, January-February 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • New donations - ProjectMUSE, Dynamed, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and Women Writers Online
  • New TWL coordinator, conference news, and a new guide and template for archivists
  • TWL moves into the new Community Engagement department at the WMF, quarterly review

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015

Your untagged Meta files

Sources and licenses, please?

--Jusjih (talk) 03:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Response to guidance regarding the notability guidelines for ChemPubSoc Europe

I have rearranged the page and added several more references, of which a couple are suggested above and a 2-3 additional ones come from outside. I have also removed the delete notice. Part of the challenge of coming up with suffient external references for this English language page is the inherently international nature of the collaboration of the 16 European chemical societies. This is particularly apparent in the references added, where it is noted that the language represented include English, German, French, and Dutch. There could potentially be additional outside sources out there in other languages (such as Greek) but my own lack of knowledge of this language makes it difficult to find them. Despite these difficulties, I think that the references provided do provide enough evidence that the ChemPubSoc Europe page meets the notability guidelines for organizations. It is also important to notice the number of the chemical societies and jorunals listed on the page that have their own Wikipedia entries. The creation of this page filled an important hole in the Wikipedia offerings and closed a number of broken links that existed on many of these related pages. Thank you very much for your guidance, and please let me know if you need any further information or if any further edits are necessary. Jjuhlrich (talk) 19:12, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!

Cześć Piotr! Dziękuję! Thanks for the thanks about my Polish School article. Thank you also for your impressive and extensive history of writing and editing articles regarding Poland. As you can see from my history, I, too, try to write and edit article related to Polish music. All the best, Wmh1978 (talk) 14:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)WMH1978 PS, I'll be moving to Sląsk this summer! :-) Do you still live in Katowice?

Thanks a lot for Your messages and for Your advices - I've put Filipinki for Did You Know section – hope that I did everything alright.Selenium1972 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015

Answer in Immigration to Costa Rica

Thanks for your suggestions, and your interest in my article, sorry you do not answer in time, but I blocked two days for telling the truth in the face Taichi, although some took it as an insult, and then I forgot my password for that account, certainly I want you check other articles that I've created such as Immigration to Guatemala or Immigration to Nicaragua, thanks and greetings from Spain (Manuel) 23/12 18:56 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maria Tudor y Felipe II (talk • contribs) 00:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

BOZ (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. If you don't like Christmas or just don't celebrate it in any of its forms, then please accept a generic "Happy Holidays". If you celebrate no holidays at this time of year, then hopefully you will be satisfied with an even more generic "Season's Greetings".  :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by BOZ (talk • contribs) 01:00, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Azimo

Hey Piotrus - I'm sorry but I have to disagree with your request to remove Azimo. This is one of the most referenced technology firms in the world after Facebook attempted to buy it in 2014. The founder is nominated for UK entrepreneur of the year in 2 weeks time. The CNN video was entirely about Azimo. There are currently around 3,000 referenced media articles on Azimo - I'll add more if that helps the cause. All of the businesses competitors, even those smaller with less coverage are included on Wikipedia so I'd ask that you strongly reconsider. I'll add new media links now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thesocialpro (talk • contribs) 19:22, November 3, 2014

Oh and uh, you are wrong regarding the Jewish man that was saved by Maximilian Kolbe. There was a site dedicated to Kolbe that cited many references as to the Polish man being Jewish, but the URL was bought out and is now controlled by...yeah...Jews. The site made it clear that there was an attempt to erase the FACT that the man was Jewish. Looks like it was correct. If you force your lies, that is your error, not mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.191.65.170 (talk) 05:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Your recent PRODs

I have removed your PRODs on the following articles; Wibatech-Fuji and Domin Sport as they meet the Cycling notability guidelines found here: Wikipedia:Notability (sports)#Cycling, specifically they are a UCI continental team (tier 3 ) and are therefore deemed notable. Please check this in future before nominating any cycling articles for potential deletion. Thanks, XyZAn (talk) 11:21, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

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

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Signpost

I wanted to thank you for replying to my second post. I am hopeful that I clarified the first post I made, and I wanted to apologize for what I wrote since in rereading what I originally posted I can see how poorly I phrased my original comment. I should never have commented. I know this, I've learned it repeatedly, but every so many years I have to relearn this lesson the hard way. Better now than later, I guess... TomStar81 (Talk) 03:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Września children strike

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK for May 18th National Cemetery

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:02, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Thank you for all of you help with Kali (fine artist) and for being so nice, it really makes all the difference! Jooojay (talk) 06:38, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

EPs

So, any updates on User talk:-revi/Archives/2015/March#Invitation to become the online volunteer for my new courses? When is students going to come to enroll? — regards, Revi 08:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

  • Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
  • WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

.

Precious again

coverage of Polish themes
Thank you for your profound coverage of Polish history, art, and especially people, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:36, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Three years ago, you were the 68th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:38, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Asprise OCR

Hi Piotr, I've edited Asprise OCR and add a few more references. It is notable as many people are using it - see results in Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.sg/scholar?q=asprise

Please review it. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocr-ninja (talk • contribs) 03:01, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Piotr, more sources (mainly books) have been added to demonstrate that it meets the following two notability criteria: 1) The software is discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field; 2) The software is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs.

Especially for 2), it is not "merely used in instruction" as many researchers not only use it, but also analyze its workflow, implementation and modify it to create innovative solutions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocr-ninja (talk • contribs) 06:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CVIII, March 2015

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

concerning the article tomasz skweres

Hi Piotrus, i removed the references in German and added relevant references and external links in English. please, take a look. thanks in advance, Ute73 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ute73 (talk • contribs) 10:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

This Month in Education: March 2015

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

The Signpost, 1 April 2015

Thanks but quite busy

Thanks for the ping, but I'll respectfully defer to the judgment of other editors in the community. Quite busy at the moment in life with other ongoing projects. Good luck, — Cirt (talk) 03:05, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Celebrate

Clownscloudsblahblah Yoor Know Phool
Have a humorous day filled with lots of PHUN on this April Fools Day 2015. Any annoyance is purely coincidental.   Bfpage |leave a message  21:10, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2015

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:


Screenshot of Citoid's first dialog


Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:


Screenshot of Citoid's initial results


After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.


The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
  • The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
  • File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

skweres article

hi Piotrus, could you explain, please, what is the problem with the article "skweres" in your opinion? Shall i add more references or - by putting the entry "noticable" - you mean the references should come from different sources? (i wonder because there was no similar problem in German wiki) thx in advance and have a nice holidays, ute73 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ute73 (talk • contribs) 18:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Alain Ngamayama

Hello! Is there a way to restore Alain Ngamayama article? He is not only Warta's hero but I liga is fully proffessional as wrongly stated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alain Ngamayama (I've amended the list of pro leagues too).Abcmaxx (talk) 21:44, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Happy Easter!

File:Chocolate-Easter-Bunny.jpg
All the best! "Carry me down, carry me down; carry me down into the wiki!" (talk) 02:01, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

about draft

Hi Piotrus, I like your opinion piece draft! It's great in providing many quantifications of the promo/commercial articles. I like how you narrate your WikiProject Poland experience and develop from that. I like how you call for a major cleanup drive.

At the end, though, you ask the readers to go off separately and do a little bit towards solving the problem. IMO that is not enough, and you've motivated something bigger, a big cleanup drive, but that should be a lot more.

Maybe you should compare your proposal to the big drive to address Un-Referenced Biographies of Living People (URBLP)s, a problem that was recognized more and more during 2009, and then blew up in controversy in January 2010, I think it was. There was one editor deleting them by the hundreds, I think, which made others mad. And Wikipedia was hammered in the outside news coverage about some salient bad incidents. The problem was addressed by a big drive, with one element being wp:URBLP Wikiproject's efforts that I happened to join. The drive was well-focused because there was a known number, 52,000, of unreferenced BLPs in a category, to be addressed, (although there were new ones coming in, and more old ones being discovered of course). And that one editor agreed to back off, IF the number was reduced by half in six months. That's my very imperfect understanding of the situation before I joined.

The drive I participated in worked well. I tried to help keep focus on the goal, and in several other ways, but some others had far more direct impact than I did. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Archive 2#Goal statement. Every day we could see the current number, and it moving or not, and some big changes were made to reduce the number of new URBLPs coming in, and some other targeted efforts were tried and some clearly made a difference while others did not. Overall, having the big, numeric public goal that we wanted to meet, and having immediate feedback/gratification in seeing the total category's number change, was key. It was rewarding and frustrating and a team effort going on, etc., not just a bunch of people working completely separately. In the end the 6 month goal was finally met though it was very close. Then I and some others dropped out but the overall problem had been somewhat "solved", and it's been better since, and the number was brought all the way down to 0 effectively, and is at about 2,000 now, I see.

I'm not saying you should talk much or at all about that URBLP problem and its drive, in your opinion piece. But I think your calling for accurate measurement of the current problem, by a one-month effort to get all of the problematic articles tagged, say, the same way, would be reasonable. There would have to be an enforceable rule made up, that prevented the paid PR persons from deleting the tags on their articles. There was something like that with the URBLPs...I think anyone seen deleting the URBLP tag was warned and blocked as disruptive if necessary. And then you can call for something aggressive: like bringing the "real" number down to 100,000 tops within a year, or whatever. Your estimating the problem size to be 150,000 is helpful towards setting that up. Or you could call for something quite different. My main reaction, anyhow, was that I expected at the end for you to call for something big. Asking people to separately make efforts that would not even be measurable, would not be enough, IMO. You've earned the right to call for a bigger more organized effort.

Also I'm not sure "Spam" is the right title. You do clarify you don't mean external links spamming, but that's what I think of. What is the right name for this problem? You have the opportunity to name it, maybe, perhaps some acronym. Business Puff Pieces By Paid Editors Probably = BPPBPEP? Nope. The problem is talked about at Talk:Jimbo Wales and elsewhere, though, and there may be a good name for it already.

Hope this helps...my two or three cents. I'll get to the other thing i owe, but probably not until the weekend or next week. --doncram 02:30, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Glad you found it helpful. Your adopting "artspam" seems fine, but the term is not known, so actually you need to define it early in the article, to explain its use in the title. "Spam" is in general English language. "Artspam" appears to be a Wikipedia-coined internal term, wp:neologism?. I didn't know it and thought you were making it up, until i tried searching on wp:artspan which worked. I do now see your article includes link(s) to that, but not soon enough. You want readers to understand it quickly. And, what's explained at wp:artspam is a bit confusing. I wonder: What does "advertising masquerading as articles" have to do with "artspam"? Hmm, shouldn't that be "advmasq" or something? And I see at the right that "admasq" is a shortcut too, which makes sense to me while I'm still scratching my head about "artspam". Only after staring at it for a while do I construct a solution: artspam probably means "articles that are spam", which probably once was how it was described, or "article-spam" perhaps.
If you're using "artspam", your defining it could be done, in your piece, late in the first paragraph where you now have (version 0):

But looking at them now, a big chunk of my tools are paste-in prods for biographies and companies. It is a sad testament of what I thought I would need ..."


I suggest making that into (version 1):

But looking at them now, a big chunk of my tools are paste-in prods for biographies and companies articles that are merely spam: wp:ARTSPAM (also known as "advertisements masquerading as articles", wp:ADMASQ goes to the same passage within wp:SPAM). It is a sad testament of what I thought I would need ..."


or (version 2):

But looking at them now, a big chunk of my tools are paste-in prods for biographies and companies "ARTicles that are merely SPAM" (wp:ARTSPAM, also known as "advertisements masquerading as articles", wp:ADMASQ). It is a sad testament of what I thought I would need ..."


Version 2 may be better. Either is kind of longish in explaining the term, but helpful and worthwhile, answering or heading off many questions/difficulties for readers getting into your piece. That position is late enough for you to have grabbed attention with your interesting personal experience already, so reader is willing to do the work to read a definition. And soon enough that they're not mad at you yet, for your not having explained what you mean by "artspam" in the title. And the reader like me also forgives you for imposing a definition upon me when I realize, perhaps from following the link, that "artspam" is not some new term coined by you, rather it is in use. For readers who do know the term, your providing a definition doesn't bother them, it doesn't make work for them to understand, they can just take it in as a reminder perhaps unnecessary for them but no problem.
Okay, that's all I'm good for, in terms of trying to get into your prospective readers' heads.
By the way, on Jimbo's talk page (perhaps within User talk:Jimbo Wales#NPOV) I noticed one person using "Promotional articles, paid articles" which I saw could be "PAPA". But it's far better for you to elevate an existing good term, than for you to present a new term that makes you seem to think that you are cute or clever for having coined it.
Good luck, cheers, --doncram 07:07, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Right, the Art sounded like fine art to me too. ADMASQ is complicated, uses "masquerade" which i don't even know how to spell. Article-Spam? None of those use "promotional". If you were talking to a non-wikipedian, how would you describe it, which words? My trying right now: "There's a problem with too many overly-promotional articles about companies/businesses, often written and defended by one or two persons associated with it." (non-grammatical and all). I agree we don't know if they're paid or not, in many cases. They may be an employee not paid specifically to do this, or the owner. Should the term include nonprofits, all organizations, probably yes. I think of one fringe church's article and a few bed & breakfast's and one small organic bread company cases, none of which had hired a PR person. Hmm, how you described it before was "big chunk of my tools are paste-in prods for biographies and companies. It is a sad testament of what I thought I would need (rewards and words of encouragement) and what I ended up needing..." You included biographies and products, while my focus is on organizations only, you seem to be focusing on the articles being promotional in the same way, whether for a person or a product or a company. Thinking about it, I don't myself deal with articles about actors and porn-stars that others do, but yes those are problems the same way as for companies, in being depressing to encounter, time-consuming to deal with, overwhelming in number. You should use term descriptive of what you want to talk about, not limit to just companies. Just "promotional articles" and gradually shorten it to "promo-articles"? without calling attention to it, without using any jarring new acronym? Whatever you choose to use, a footnote raising the question, pointing out the problem of there being several terms no one of which covers all you mean, no one of which is accepted, would be good. To talk about it, to quantify it, a term is needed.
And, I'm sorry if I might have come across as patronizing, in spelling out too much. You are obviously skilled in communicating in English, I actually think better than I am, you seem more fluent...I don't write easily. But then also you have a few odd gaps that appear to mark you as not having English as your first & only language (lose vs. loose appears to me to be a "tell" that way, though that also is misspelled by not-overly-educated English-first-language persons). Or maybe you're just being informal, slangy. Anyhow I don't yet get how to read you and I may be calibrated wrong in understanding where you are at. Honestly i am puzzled because you do seem really more fluent than me, really, while maybe having some gaps. I am used to helping young non-native-English speakers who are really smart and learning fast, but always less fluent in English than me. Okay, enough, really done, signing off. Cheers, --doncram 08:52, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

A new reference tool

Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2015

thanks for the opportunity to put my comment somewhere. I;ve been preparing it for a while. DGG ( talk ) 04:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

WEP

Hello Piotr,

Just wondering, the class we are maintaining mainly focus on wiki or on-class activities? — regards, Revi 06:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

RE: Featuring your work on Wikipedia's front page

Thank you very much for your kind words! However if I understand the rules correctly, the article can be nominate to DYK only within a week since its creation (Palmiry massacre was published 10 days ago).

I was wondering if I could ask you sometimes for a help with grammar and spelling check of my articles on en.wiki? Unfortunately my English is quite good but definitely not perfect... Double check will be very helpful. Cheers.Dreamcatcher25 (talk) 09:08, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, I nominated this article to the DYK. Cheers.Dreamcatcher25 (talk) 08:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Vladimir Berdnikov

Hi. Piotr. Thank you for your comments. I added the article links and information. How to put a note that the translation should be checked? I used Google translator. --Oresh247 (talk) 14:56, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

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