User talk:Tothwolf/Archive 5

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Response to 1 minute block

I noted your reply and responded. Just because a short block isn't standard, it doesn't mean it can't be useful:

Blocks are preventative, not punitive

One of the most misleading statements on WP. Blocks are, by definition, punitive. Action A will result in a block (i.e. violation of 3RR). They are punitive. However, their goal is to prevent future problems. In this vein, I proposed a 1-minute block. It permanently shows delta that his actions are noted and are not acceptable. It also permanently logs this community disapproval of his actions without being unduly harsh. By showing that level of commitment, future blocks would be easier to initiate and, since he knows this, he is less likely to lapse into recidivism. — BQZip01 — ^talk 22:31, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I understood your reasoning, and I wasn't trying to disagree with you, I was simply trying to point out what recently happened with a similar "notation" in another editor's block log.

I also noticed your reply of "People continue to be opposed (not obsessed) to such behavior because it is the point of contention that causes the most trouble." and I think you may have misinterpreted what I meant when I asked "Why is it some people become so obsessed with this particular area of Wikipedia?". I wasn't referring to Δ specifically when I asked that question, I meant why some editors in general seem to get overly obsessed with that subject area and can't see the forest for the trees, to the point of being disruptive (and in some cases sanctioned). (Also, feel free to unhat that section and move this there if you like. Someone else had hatted the entire discussion so I split off the active discussion into a new section below that one and then restored the archive templates to that section.) --Tothwolf (talk) 23:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed language

I'll propose the language here as I am not sure you'd consider this neutral. "Can this source be considered an independant third party reliable source to establish notability on Natami?"--v/r - TP 01:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable enough to me. The only thing I might add is a link to the imprint information [1] (although I just now noticed it also lists the editors). --Tothwolf (talk) 02:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Posted it Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Natami. The result is unlikely to affect the AfD this far into it, but it's enough to change my !vote.--v/r - TP 14:17, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It probably would still have an effect on it since AfD isn't based on a headcount. It would certainly make a difference for a discussion over merging vs keeping the material as a standalone article. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Clean-up templates

I saw your comments on the recent AfD, and to me the key metric we are missing is the long term workflow. The progress boxes I created for the clean-up categories give a snapshot of the current situation, but we really need to freeze a few snapshots, and some analysis to see whether the trends are such that clean-up is either getting a bigger and bigger backlog, or being more or less kept up with. There are of course a lot of factors to consider in any such analysis, not least saturation, in that, for example, while the number of {{random clean-up template}} may be growing, it may be applied to only X% of new articles and be on the whole on a decreasing percentage of articles of the encyclopaedia over time.

There are a number of things we can do to facilitate the actual clean-up, but without the data we can't measure the effectiveness or otherwise of those things.

Does this make sense? Rich Farmbrough, 12:14, 24 June 2011 (UTC).

Something else to possibly consider would be to see how cleanup templates are removed from pages. For example, were the templates removed without addressing the issue, was the issue resolved, or was the issue non-existent? --Tothwolf (talk) 15:52, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

To add a further thought, it might even be a good idea to note if the issue was indeterminable vs simply non-existent. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Tothwolf. You have new messages at TParis's talk page.
Message added 18:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I copied your message from M.O.P.'s talk page, I hope you don't mind. v/r - TP 18:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC) x2

That Amiga clone article that simply won't die

Ha! I'm not exactly shocked to see that AfD close at DRV. Indeed, I was somewhat surprised that it closed as a consensus to delete (although please don't infer from that any notion of my disagreeing with the close). Regardless, my purpose in writing is to gauge your interest in merging the Natami article into the Amiga section on hardware clones. I note that your vote was "Keep or merge," and I am almost 100% confident that I wasn't the only delete voter who would have been perfectly satisfied with a consensus-to-merge outcome. This isn't me trying to make some pointless end-run around the currently running DRV; I'm mainly concerned with putting this damn issue to bed, and it strikes me that the DRV is going to end in one of two outcomes: endorse or overturn to no consensus. If the latter occurs (and that appears likely at the moment), the article's going to end up at AfD again sooner or later (probably sooner), and this pointless merry-go-round will just continue.

So...(I'm babbling)...are you still at all interested in considering a merge? I'd actually love to work on merging it if that's a possibility...I've always had a geeky interest in Amiga topics and NatAmi is a pretty interesting project. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 21:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I think my reply in the DRV might help explain why it is at DRV. We don't close "no consensus" discussions such as this as "Delete but uhm, maybe someone will want to merge this? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?" ;P --Tothwolf (talk) 22:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I certainly agree with that :D. My question is very simply if a merge outcome is (still?) something you'd be okay with. Less interested in separate discussion of why this is at DRV; I can easily see why you'd want to send it there. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 22:23, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a merge, however that would mean a full merge and not a "copy part of one sentence and delete everything else" merge. I think pretty much everything in the article is verifiable, but far too often someone will come along and claim "this is WP:UNDUE" and delete the entire section. That said, I think this particular topic is only going to continue to gain coverage and we quite likely haven't even found everything as of yet because much of it appears to be non-English. It probably won't be too long before it will need to be split back off again anyway. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:40, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Agreed on all counts. Anyway, if it comes to a merge I'm happy to help work on it; including working to build clear consensus that its inclusion in full is supported. In the interim, we'll see what happens with the DRV. Appreciate your willingness to discuss this! Best, ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 22:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Someone else also brought it up merging here although I think it would be best to wait until the DRV is closed. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:57, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Definitely. Just trying to anticipate the best way to handle the two most likely outcomes of the DRV (overturn to no consensus or endorsement) (for what it's worth, I think the vast majority of DRV discussions are pure bunk but, in this case, I think there's a valid argument to be made for overturning, even if I don't subscribe to it). ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 01:45, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Wire wrap

Regarding this: the article currently has four different images of wrapping tools, three of which show basically the same thing; four different images of backplanes (two of which are the same image at different zoom levels), looking like so much coloured spaghetti; and on higher user image thumbnail sizes the right-hand images stretch the entire length of the page. The tag is perfectly appropriate, and tags like that help me catch the issue on my next pass (as I'm currently doing a broad sweep of related articles). Do you mind putting it back? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 06:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No, those photos do not show the same things. If you were familiar with the details of this circuit construction technique you would know this. I won't be restoring that tag because as I explained in the edit summary, the images can be moved to other sections of text as the article is expanded later. The article itself actually is missing quite a bit of information. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Really? A photograph which is simply a zoomed-in version of the image before it doesn't show the same thing? Never mind. The article needs references more direly than it needs images removed I suppose. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:53, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed the article does need more references. I would like to expand the article and begin to fill in some of the missing information but finding references would take so much time that I've avoided doing so. I don't think this is how Wikipedia is supposed to work, but that seems to be how it is these last several years. I know which two photos you are talking about, and I think the pair are helpful to someone trying to understand the subject, although many of the photos could use much better captions --Tothwolf (talk) 02:22, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

KRONE LSA-PLUS

Why was KRONE LSA-PLUS moved back to it's informal name, Krone LSA-PLUS? --Juventas (talk) 04:41, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't. I tagged it as {{db-move}} and the redirect was deleted, but the article was not moved. I'll leave the admin who deleted the redirect a note. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:23, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

ERC DYK

ERC got to the WP front page DYK. Is that the first IRC DYK? You haven't been answering email... --Lexein (talk) 13:00, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

News and progress from RfA reform 2011

RfA reform: ...and what you can do now.

(You are receiving this message because you are either a task force member, or you have contributed to recent discussions on any of these pages.) The number of nominations continues to nosedive seriously, according to these monthly figures. We know why this is, and if the trend continues our reserve of active admins will soon be underwater. Wikipedia now needs suitable editors to come forward. This can only be achieved either through changes to the current system, a radical alternative, or by fiat from elsewhere. A lot of work is constantly being done behind the scenes by the coordinators and task force members, such as monitoring the talk pages, discussing new ideas, organising the project pages, researching statistics and keeping them up to date. You'll also see for example that we have recently made tables to compare how other Wikipedias choose their sysops, and some tools have been developed to more closely examine !voters' habits. The purpose of WP:RFA2011 is to focus attention on specific issues of our admin selection process and to develop RfC proposals for solutions to improve them. For this, we have organised the project into dedicated sections each with their own discussion pages. It is important to understand that all Wikipedia policy changes take a long time to implement whether or not the discussions appear to be active - getting the proposals right before offering them for discussion by the broader community is crucial to the success of any RfC. Consider keeping the pages and their talk pages on your watchlist; do check out older threads before starting a new one on topics that have been discussed already, and if you start a new thread, please revisit it regularly to follow up on new comments. The object of WP:RFA2011 is not to make it either easier or harder to become an admin - those criteria are set by those who !vote at each RfA. By providing a unique venue for developing ideas for change independent of the general discussion at WT:RFA, the project has two clearly defined goals: Improving the environment that surrounds RfA in order to encourage mature, experienced editors of the right calibre to come forward, pass the interview, and dedicate some of their time to admin tasks. Discouraging, in the nicest way possible of course, those whose RfA will be obvious NOTNOW or SNOW, and to guide them towards the advice pages. The fastest way is through improvement to the current system. Workspace is however also available within the project pages to suggest and discuss ideas that are not strictly within the remit of this project. Users are invited to make use of these pages where they will offer maximum exposure to the broader community, rather than individual projects in user space. We already know what's wrong with RfA - let's not clutter the project with perennial chat. RFA2011 is now ready to propose some of the elements of reform, and all the task force needs to do now is to pre-draft those proposals in the project's workspace, agree on the wording, and then offer them for central discussion where the entire Wikipedia community will be more than welcome to express their opinions in order to build consensus. New tool Check your RfA !voting history! Since the editors' RfA !vote counter at X!-Tools has been down for a long while, we now have a new RfA Vote Counter to replace it. A significant improvement on the former tool, it provides a a complete breakdown of an editor's RfA votes, together with an analysis of the participant's voting pattern. Are you ready to help? Although the main engine of RFA2011 is its task force, constructive comments from any editors are always welcome on the project's various talk pages. The main reasons why WT:RfA was never successful in getting anything done are that threads on different aspects of RfA are all mixed together, and are then archived where nobody remembers them and where they are hard to find - the same is true of ad hoc threads on the founder's talk page.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 16:05, 25 September 2011 (UTC).

Nomination for deletion of Template:Latest stable software release/ClicksAndWhistles

Template:Latest stable software release/ClicksAndWhistles has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Safiel (talk) 20:39, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

UnrealIRCd f' sourced, restored to main space

Tired of the ridiculous, lazy, bad faith deletion reasons given at AfD. Fixed it but good. John Hodgman might say, "You're welcome" but I won't do that. ;) --Lexein (talk) 19:36, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Heh. That AfD was a mess but we've had much worse. Have a glance over the mess linked from Talk:Natami for example. I suppose I should eventually update the WikiProject's article status tables so others will know where to find more of these past deleted articles which could be restored and improved. Sigh. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:23, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Machine design in game engines

Hi Tothwolf, I think your solution was an excellent one! It wasn't a new article, though. It has been created and deleted twice since last August under various permutations of its title. See Role of machine design in game engines and Role of machine design in gaming engines. It's a class assignment under the Wikipedia:India Education Program. The problems being encountered there are outlined at Wikipedia talk:India Education Program and Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors. Unfortunately, some of them are fairly serious, and the students don't seem to be getting adequate support. Their campus amabassadors are overstretched given the large number of students involved, and their instructors don't seem to be participating actively at all. The result has been that an awful lot of them are now being caught in the crossfire. It's a real pity, the exact opposite of what this outreach program by the WMF was trying to achieve—encouraging an increase in new editors. Voceditenore (talk) 08:53, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't seen those ...and both were speedy deleted under A10 too. Sigh. I sure do wish more people would review the results of Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion. --Tothwolf (talk) 10:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Request

Could you please move your AE comment from "uninvolved administrators" section please? You are not an administrator, unless I am mistaken. Thank you. Biophys (talk) 03:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Cite IETF

Dear Tothwolf, could you please enlighten me about the purpose of the Cite IETF template? It seems to me that this is a very welcome template (for me anyway) but the status is still "for testing purposes only" after many years. The output of this template seems OK to me, so why not change its status to "production". What needs to be done to change its status so we can use this on main pages? —— _D^an_d^or ⁱ_D (talk) 20:12, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

{{Cite IETF}}'s documentation probably explains the purpose of the template better than I can summarise here. The template is probably safe to use (it is used in probably a couple of dozen or so articles now as it is), but it currently has a few limitations when using certain combinations of options together, which can prevent it from displaying certain information. Somewhere I have an in-progress version saved which I was correcting, but I stopped working on it when the stuff at the top of my talk page was going on, and just never picked back up with it. The plan had been to finish correcting those limitations and then see about getting the bot which handles citation tasks to fully deploy the template. We currently have dozens of ways in which IETF documents are cited, along with numerous URL formats. If you are interested in taking on some of this task, I can try to find all of the information I had saved away and see what it would take to finish the few remaining issues with the template code. --Tothwolf (talk) 04:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, here we go, if the template is called in this manner: {{cite IETF|rfc=4677|fyi=17}}, only the "RFC" is shown: RFC 4677. doi:10.17487/RFC4677. If a title is included {{cite IETF|title=The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force|rfc=4677|fyi=17}} it works correctly: The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force. doi:10.17487/RFC4677. FYI 17. RFC 4677. Link generation is also somewhat affected. It should be possible to autogenerate links for "FYI", etc along with the main link, but I never finished the code. It should also be possible to autogenerate a page anchor for the first page given to the |pages= parameter. Linking to the first page of a range currently requires both |page= and |pages= together. If you have a look over {{Cite IETF/testcases}} you'll spot some of these limitations. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:03, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

"CENSORED" image?

Hello, may I ask how you got the "CENSORED" image in place on your user/talk page? I'd like to also add that I support you and found myself disillusioned with how your concerns were handled, despite reading about it well after the fact. All the best. 68.195.21.220 (talk) 21:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The censored image is done with CSS:
<span style="position:absolute; top:-128px; left:-175px; z-index:10">[[Image:Censored rubber stamp.svg|175px|link=en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-05-10/Commons deletions]]</span>
The downside to positioning an image in this way is that it can sometimes require minor adjustments when MediaWiki or Wikipedia's user interface are updated.

What is documented above with the ArbCom case and such is really just the tip of the iceberg. I didn't publish everything on-wiki because doing so would out one of the individuals involved (although technically it wouldn't be considered outing, as they themselves published the information here on Wikipedia with one of their former accounts). At some point it may be worth having ArbCom review and reevaluate what ultimately happened, but for now just having most everything documented (even though not all of it is public on my talk page here) will hopefully help prevent such a sequence of events from happening to someone else. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Expand/testcases

Template:Expand/testcases has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• You can collapse it if you want. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 04:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Collapsed. Yeah, I was starting to be mean there. You and I have had our share of disagreements over the years but I think my IRC comment there might have been a little overboard. --Tothwolf (talk) 06:25, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Invitation

WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron Hello, Tothwolf. You have been invited to join the Article Rescue Squadron, a collaborative effort to rescue articles from deletion if they can be improved through regular editing. For more information, please visit the project page, where you can >> join << and help improve Wikipedia articles considered by others as based upon notable topics. Northamerica1000(talk) 14:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments at DRV

Would you please stop accusing me of trolling ARS? I don't have any problem with people who improve articles, but in the two cases I was involved with that prompted me to go to ANI there was no real effort to improve the nominated articles at all by the members of ARS. All they did was go there, vote keep, and make a few insubstantial adjustments that did not even remotely address my concerns. That is what I don't like. To claim I am trolling because I want discussion about that type of activity to last more than a few hours is ridiculous. I am more than happy to own my frustrating persistence, but not uncivil suggestions that I have ulterior motives for raising my concerns.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 05:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Notice of Wikiquette Assistance discussion

Hello, Tothwolf. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 20:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Name parameter

The idea behind "name", I think, was to allow an Ambox to "know" that it was displaying on the template page. Thus template tags that were relevant for template space would not categorise themselves. Moreover wrapper templates could use it too. Like all suppression mechanisms (from includeonly to namespace checks, to "cat" parameters) it is a bit of a kludge. Rich Farmbrough, 11:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC).

I think you are right. Passing the |doc=no parameter to Ambox at least took care of the documentation page placement issue. I guess this is just another weird quirk to keep in mind when using templates such as Ambox. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Response to AN comment

You were more than a little grumpy dude. You should know, WQA is not about giving out sanctions or anything like that. It is not a place that gets users in trouble, but a place where incivility is to be resolved through amicable discussion with outside parties. If you acknowledge now that your comments went too far and you don't intend to repeat them then that is all I care about.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 06:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Honestly, I'm not sure how to even reply to this. Do you realize that others may consider your demeanor off-putting and rude? While you probably are not aware of it, my experience with WQA has not been very positive. In the past it was used as a means to attack me and I've seen it used in this way against numerous editors over the years. As far as my comments go, you really were being majorly disruptive with the MFD, DRV, and repeated AN/I discussion threads. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't "biting off your arm" by noting that I objected to more than you hatting the discussion. You know that was not my sole objection. Should you strike out or amend the misleading comment at AN I will be happy to do the same with my response to that, then you can do the same to the response you gave to that comment.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Clarifying, if you strike out the sentence starting with "You immediately turning around" then I will strike out my response to your comment. Then you can strike out the comment about "biting off your arm" and I will consider the matter settled.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:42, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

You didn't like the wikilinks I used when I hatted the comment, that much was clear. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

For your cordial response to this editor's concerns. The Devil's Advocate (talk) wishes you peace!

Spread peace and goodwill by adding {{subst:WikiPeace}} to other's talk pages with a friendly message.

--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 08:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Further discussion

Just so you know, I have been reading your e-mails, though not responding to them. A few things that I think can be noted on-wiki is that I wasn't basing my actions on anything but my own concerns and observations about the group itself due to interactions I had with them following two separate nominations I made. While members and sympathizers often try to claim North as the issue and not the ARS, it is not my chief concern. One thing I said pretty much as soon as that argument came up is that North is merely a symptom of a larger issue with the ARS. Given the amount of contention I wouldn't be surprised if I can find more than a few people to certify an RfC on this dispute.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I figured you might be a little busy. That is beginning to sound like you are proposing that ARS itself is somehow a problem? Considering that there are quite a number of ARS members who do not engage in problematic behaviour, unless you have hard evidence, you may really be sticking your neck out on this one. From what I've seen, the individual members of ARS genuinely feel they are improving Wikipedia in whatever subject areas they are familiar, just like all the other editors which make up Wikipedia's community. While there may be individual ARS members with whom certain other editors disagree or tend to get in conflicts with, such things would be considered personal disputes and wouldn't have anything to do with the ARS concept. While it's certainly possible you may be able to get an RFC certified, I'm still not sure if this is a wise idea. If you do end up getting yourself in over your head on this one, I doubt it will stop with a topic ban on AN and there won't be much any individual community member will be able to do to help you. --Tothwolf (talk) 06:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Canvassing is incredibly problematic behavior and I have a hard time seeing how ARS involvement at deletion discussions can be described as anything else, regardless of the intentions of its members. Assuming good faith does not mean assuming good behavior. Saving articles on notable subjects from deletion is certainly a valuable purpose, but leaving biased notices at a page already targeted towards people of a certain POV is not valuable behavior. If you want a bit more idea of my perspective, not complete perspective as I try to adjust my considerations based on new information, you can check out the archived discussion at the village pump, particularly my comments after it got placed there (most of the comments were when the discussion was taking place at ANI). It also might give you a bit more of an idea about the broader community concerns regarding the ARS as well.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you that ARS is intended for canvassing. As other editors have already discussed and pointed out, ARS is really no different from deletion sorting or any of the other working groups on Wikipedia. You should probably also check out Wikipedia:Article alerts (see Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscription list) and Wikipedia:Copyright problems for a few more examples. Going with your reasoning, Article alerts for example is nothing more than a vehicle for canvassing WikiProjects for AfD and other XfD !votes.

While there is always a possibility that there could be individual editors within ARS who engage in canvassing behaviours, unless you have evidence of it, others will consider such accusations to be personal attacks. I've seen a few editors "go down in flames" when they tried this, so again I strongly advise you to drop this issue unless you have actual hard evidence of wrongdoing, and if so, you need to file an RFC/U. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

That argument has been made a lot, but I don't think there's any validity to it. Canvassing refers to something specific, perhaps the better word to use is "campaigning" since that more accurately describes the behavior. Saying "this article is being discussed at AfD, please help reach a consensus" to a group of people with no clear partisan affiliation is not the same as saying "this article facing deletion is notable and should be rescued, please help save it" to a group dedicated to stopping the deletion of notable articles. One is a neutral notice to a group perceived as impartial, with the other being a call for a group to insure that the article is kept, a group perceived to be favorable towards keeping the article. From what I can tell, most delsorts, article alerts, and other AfD lists essentially just tell people in a given wikiproject that there is a deletion discussion going on within their topic area. That is not what the rescue list does. It is dedicated to a specific outcome in a deletion discussion and tries to persuade people in order to achieve that outcome.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you familiar with the wikitable at Wikipedia:Canvassing? As I said above, I simply cannot agree with you. After reading the entire VPP discussion you linked to above, it also appears to work against you. I still think you should drop this before you get yourself into even more hot water. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am quite familiar with the policy on canvassing. I think message and audience clearly apply in this respect. The messages are not neutral and it is hard to see how they could be neutral under the circumstances. Regardless of what may be said about "deletionists" looking at or maybe joining the group, the audience is clearly meant to be geared towards a certain POV to whom these biased messages are meant to appeal.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I am curious. Do you really think the appropriate response is to bar me from raising concerns about the ARS and anyone involved with the ARS? Think about it, if I nominate an article for deletion and the ARS jump in and start voting keep while making no significant contributions to the article or addressing my concerns, do you think it is appropriate that I be muzzled from speaking out about it or mentioning this in a DRV of that article should it be kept as a result? Both cases recently have been prompted by incidents such as that.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

User:Tothwolf/XiRCON

Hi Tothwolf,

Someone has nominated User:Tothwolf/XiRCON for deletion, probably because you once tagged it db-u1. Please see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tothwolf/XiRCON.

I hope you are well. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:39, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

New Pages update

Hey Tothwolf/Archive 5 :). A quick update on how things are going with the New Page Triage/New Pages Feed project. As the enwiki page notes, the project is divided into two chunks: the "list view" (essentially an updated version of Special:NewPages) and the "article view", a view you'll be presented with when you open up individual articles that contains a toolbar with lots of options to interact with the page - patrolling it, adding maintenance tags, nominating it for deletion, so on.

On the list view front, we're pretty much done! We tried deploying it to enwiki, in line with our Engagement Strategy on Wednesday, but ran into bugs and had to reschedule - the same happened on Thursday :(. We've queued a new deployment for Monday PST, and hopefully that one will go better. If it does, the software will be ready to play around with and test by the following week! :).

On the article view front, the developers are doing some fantastic work designing the toolbar, which we're calling the "curation bar"; you can see a mockup here. A stripped-down version of this should be ready to deploy fairly soon after the list view is; I'm afraid I don't have precise dates yet. When I have more info, or can unleash everyone to test the list view, I'll let you know :). As always, any questions to the talkpage for the project or mine. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage/New Pages Feed

Hey all :). A notification that the prototype for the New Pages Feed is now live on enwiki! We had to briefly take it down after an unfortunate bug started showing up, but it's now live and we will continue developing it on-site.

The page can be found at Special:NewPagesFeed. Please, please, please test it and tell us what you think! Note that as a prototype it will inevitably have bugs - if you find one not already mentioned at the talkpage, bring it up and I'm happy to carry it through to the devs. The same is true of any additions you can think of to the software, or any questions you might have - let me know and I'll respond.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference Update & Survey (your opinion requested)

Credo Reference, who generously donated 400 free Credo 250 research accounts to Wikipedia editors over the past two years, has offered to expand the program to include 100 additional reference resources. Credo wants Wikipedia editors to select which resources they want most. So, we put together a quick survey to do that:

• Link to Survey (should take between 5-10 minutes): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8FQ6MM

It also asks some basic questions about what you like about the Credo program and what you might want to improve.

At this time only the initial 400 editors have accounts, but even if you do not have an account, you still might want to weigh in on which resources would be most valuable for the community (for example, through WikiProject Resource Exchange).

Also, if you have an account but no longer want to use it, please leave me a note so another editor can take your spot.

If you have any other questions or comments, drop by my talk page or email me at wikiocaasi@yahoo.com. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Page Triage newsletter

Hey all. Some quick but important updates on what we've been up to and what's coming up next :).

The curation toolbar, our Wikimedia-supported twinkle replacement. We're going to be deploying it, along with a pile of bugfixes, to wikipedia on 9 August. After a few days to check it doesn't make anything explode or die, we'll be sticking up a big notice and sending out an additional newsletter inviting people to test it out and give us feedback :). This will be followed by two office hours sessions - one on Tuesday the 14th of August at 19:00 UTC for all us Europeans, and one on Wednesday the 15th at 23:00 UTC for the East Coasters out there :). As always, these will be held in #wikimedia-office; drop me a note if you want to know how to easily get on IRC, or if you aren't able to attend but would like the logs.

I hope to see a lot of you there; it's going to be a big day for everyone involved, I think :). I'll have more notes after the deployment! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

New Pages newsletter

Hey all :)

A couple of new things.

First, you'll note that all the project titles have now changed to the Page Curation prefix, rather than having the New Pages Feed prefix. This is because the overarching project name has changed to Page Curation; the feed is still known as New Pages Feed, and the Curation Toolbar is still the Curation Toolbar. Hopefully this will be the last namechange ;p.

On the subject of the Curation Toolbar (nice segue, Oliver!) - it's now deployed on Wikipedia. Just open up any article in the New Pages Feed and it should appear on the right.

It's still a beta version - bugs are expected - and we've got a lot more work to do. But if you see something going wrong, or a feature missing, drop me a note or post on the project talkpage and I'll be happy to help :). Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

New free research resources, FYI

See here to sign up for free access to Questia and Credo. Cheers. --Lexein (talk) 21:03, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation update

Hey all :). We've just deployed another set of features for Page Curation. They include flyouts from the icons in Special:NewPagesFeed, showing who reviewed an article and when, a listing of this in the "info" flyout, and a general re-jigging of the info flyout - we've also fixed the weird bug with page_titles_having_underscores_instead_of_spaces in messages sent to talkpages, and introduced CSD logging! As always, these features will need some work - but any feedback would be most welcome. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter

Hey Tothwolf. This will be, if not our final newsletter, one of the final ones :). After months of churning away at this project, our final version (apart from a few tweaks and bugfixes) is now live. Changes between this and the last release include deletion tag logging, a centralised log, and fixes to things like edit summaries.

Hopefully you like what we've done with the place; suggestions for future work on it, complaints and bugs to the usual address :). We'll be holding a couple of office hours sessions, which I hope you'll all attend. Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

We're (very shortly) closing down this development cycle for Page Curation. It's genuinely been a pleasure to talk with you all and build software that is so close to my own heart, and also so effective. The current backlog is 9 days, and I've never seen it that low before.

However! Closing up shop does not mean not making any improvements. First-off, this is your last chance to give us a poke about unresolved bugs or report new ones on the talkpage. If something's going wrong, we want to know about it :). Second, we'll hopefully be taking another pass over the software next year. If you've got ideas for features Page Curation doesn't currently have, stick them here.

Again, it's been an honour. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

LeafChat

Do any of your IRC books or other resources which stubbornly resist Google searching contain any mention of LeafChat? I've done some expansion. Got a bunch of one-word mentions in 9 books, just looking for one (more) substantive review to definitively answer an AfD. Nearly there. Thanks! --Lexein (talk) 13:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll check and get back to you. Do you know when LeafChat first came out? It might be too new to have been covered in the books that I have. The majority of the clients that are covered in dead tree format only get a few sentences or a small paragraph of mention in an individual book. A much smaller percentage get a larger paragraph or two or multiple pages of coverage. I suspect that this is most likely very similar to the amount of coverage given to other types of foss/freeware/shareware computer software as well.

I still think we need to create a dedicated article about IRC clients where we can break them down by type and do a better job covering them than we currently are. This would also deal with Wikipedia's notability guideline, which as most of us are well aware, doesn't work too well in practice for topics relating to computing and computer software. LeafChat for example, would fit well into a section about cross-platform clients, specifically Java based clients. The much disputed IRCjr on the other hand would fit well into a section about MS-DOS compatible clients (there are more than a dozen such clients). This would probably also help us straighten out the mess with Comparison of IRC clients since there would be no "red links" for someone to complain about. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

LeafChat goes back to 1999 or sooner, not sure. It ain't new. It was first listed as a useful client (per Google) in 2001 in a CUE paperback, as listed in the deletion discussion. At the moment, any two or three sentences will support Notability, given the other coverage now in the article, IMHO.
I like the idea of a full article, vs the comparison chart. --Lexein (talk) 23:35, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• First Usenet mention I could find in alt.irc.mirc FAQ Feb. 26 1999. This corresponds roughly with www.leafdigital.com/Software/ from May 8, 1999, which states that leafChat 1.51 was released March 12 1999.

( The oldest Archive.org of www.poboxes.com/SoftwareForge of 1998-12-03 links to http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~sm277/Forge which isn't archived, sadly. However leafdigital.com of December 12, 1998 links to the Leafdigital/Leafchat microsite (archived as of May 8, 1999). So December 12, 1998 is the earliest mention I've found so far.

This makes me think it's the first full-fledged Java IRC client. Am I out to lunch? --Lexein (talk) 04:35, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Earliest found changelog for version 1.5D, archived November 5, 1999 --Lexein (talk) 13:54, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, 1998 would have LeafChat predating PJIRC by 4 years, so you may be correct with it being the first Java-based IRC client. That would also date it from around the time of Windows 98, Intel's P55C based Pentium and Deschutes core Pentium II processors, all which were important in terms of Java-based applications becoming mainstream (see Java version history for the version history of Java). For that fact, 1998 would also mean it predates the Perl-based CGI:IRC client. mIRC was first released in 1995, which is only 3 years earlier, so in terms of Internet-time, LeafChat is pretty darn old. That would also make LeafChat one of the older clients which is still being actively developed.

I'm not having any luck in finding LeafChat mentioned in any of the IRC books that I have. I think it is just a little too new to have been covered in the IRC-specific books. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:43, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

This is another example of the frequent problem of semi notable articles, which would logically be a section of an article, and neither a subject of a separate article nor a mere list mention. Despite our statements in WP:N that notability does not necessarily imply a separate article, in practice we do accept that we ought to make a separate article each time. The reason has something to do with the prestige of having a WP article, our inability to include subarticles in categories, the instability of links to them, their much decreased ranking in Google, and the consequent loss of visibility and findability. We could conceivably try to convince Google etc to rate our subheadings more heavily, & figure out how to handle categories, get people to put in proper anchors for links to subheadings, but the prestige still won't be there. This might even be beneficial, for it would decrease the use of Wikipedia for promotionalism. DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC)