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ArbCom

Hi Wugapodes. I just wanted to say that your comment here is one of the most incisive analyses of the ArbCom/ADMINCOND/community DR dynamic I've ever read. Imbalances in power and social capital make sanctioning an administrator by community consensus outrageously difficult and opens the reporter up to further harassment is right on the money and not something we acknowledge often enough. Probably because it's easily overlooked by those of us that have that social capital (i.e. arbs and sysops). Anyway I don't have much of substance to add, just thanks for taking the argue it out so cogently, and that I hope you'll consider putting your name forward in the next ArbCom elections! – Joe (talk) 14:27, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I, too, found it an interesting and helpful comment (along with the meatball links; I went down the rabbit hole and found some interesting ones, like meatball:HumaneInterface). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:14, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm glad you both found good takeaways! This turned into a long essay, so to avoid burying the lead: I'll consider putting my name in the running, but ultimately might not depending on where my thoughts are at around December. Xeno first asked me to run in late 2018---I still like Ike---but my current organizing goals are community-based. I think our biggest problems are not at ArbCom--er--rather, what makes it to ArbCom are symptoms of wider systemic issues that ArbCom cannot legislate away. In 2018, the vanishing of BU Rob was fresh on my mind, but now I think my main fear is how it will affect my ability to continue community organizing. Of course, if I'm needed, I will take my turn at the millstone, but at the moment I don't feel like my work is drawing me to the committee.
With that out of the way, I wanted to wax about the issue further. My ArbCom statement was tailored to the matter at hand, but the implications reach much further. Social capital gives us a framework to understand a lot of problems on the encyclopedia, and that allows us to tailor our solutions to the cause rather than the symptoms. So I do want to push back and say the community does acknowledge the imbalances, but often without the academic language or social theory to connect all the dots. That's actually what fascinates me about MeatBall: the depth of social theory that the community developed is remarkable for being done by a decentralized group of amateurs. That said, our "original sin" is the exclusionary bias of early internet culture that served as the foundation for the wikis like ours. That is what I think we need to grapple with more, and it's something that took me time to accept. Robert Fernandez wrote a wonderful article for the Wikipedia@20 edited volume republished in the Signpost that at first, frankly, angered me because it touched on uncomfortable truths; but he is correct.
If you're interested, there are two important takeaways from Fernandez (2019) that radically changed my thinking on the community's role in preventing and addressing abuse. The first is volunteer entitlement, and the second is structural bias. Fernandez notes that "altruistic" volunteerism can lead to sense of entitlement within the volunteers which manifests in harm to the organization they support. He cites anecdotes from Kennedy Center staff who recount their gift shop volunteers stealing. Having provided hours of free labor to the Center, they felt a sense of entitlement that allowed them to self-justify stealing from it and ultimately harming its cash flow (and by extension its ultimate mission). Fernandez says WP:BITEing is an example of this, I'm not so sure, but since reading, that framework has helped me understand phenomena such as WP:OWNerhip of articles (leading to edit wars and blocks/protection), WP:UNBLOCKABLEs (both in their behavior and in the community's response), and opinions regarding paid editing (volunteers do not want to help someone who is getting paid for their work). We are able to self-justify actions that plainly harm the project because we feel entitled to the product rather than beholden to the mission. But knowing the cause and the symptoms, I think, will allow us to better respond to these issues structurally rather than as isolated incidents.
The second takeaway is our structural bias, or what I called our "original sin" earlier. The internet is hostile to marginalized groups, and sadly it used to be worse. Early netizens where overwhelmingly white, male, and of-means because access to technology and the arcane knowledge required to operate it was gate-kept by existing racial and economic hierarchies. I think Fernandez actually says it best: In practice, to have a voice in a Wikipedia discussion requires a combination of stubbornness and privilege. This led to the reproduction of those systems online and in the early WikiPedia which helped centralize social capital from the beginning; at its extreme, this was known as the meatball:GodKing WikiFounder role (which Wales largely eschewed). Because of our consensus-based decision-making model, structures are relatively inert. Changing anything requires a great deal of social capital which is hard to marshal and even harder to amass. I've thought about this in the context of RfC closures. At Wikipedia:Non-sysop closures, I am developing the idea of a "cline of stability" where greater deference is given to closes by elite editors---essentially the stability of a close is related to the closer's ability to marshal social capital against those who opposed the ultimate outcome. Where the division between sysop and non-sysop closures comes then is in the implicit threat of violence (c.f. meatball:NonViolence): as a sysop I not only have social capital but also the tools to silence dissent through technological means. Non-sysops can only manage dissent through capital, but sysops have both capital and violence. This distinction is hidden, and hiding it reproduces the power disparities between an aging admin corps (reflective of early power disparities) and relatively younger and diversifying editor corps. In other domains, understanding our "original sins" I believe will help us understand the factions that form in our discussions and how to effectively work across the divides: who are we not hearing from and why? It's why I think recruitment is such a dire need. I believe Levivich has been saying that one of our biggest existential threats is editor recruitment, and that perspective has drastically changed how I understand and frame the consequences of the phenomena described by Fernandez
Anyway, sorry for the long essay. It's a big problem: as a social scientist I find it exciting, and as a community member I fear the consequences of not finding a solution. Maybe I'll copy this to a subpage and turn it into an essay eventually. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:47, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Damn 😂 Moneytrees🏝️Talk/CCI guide 21:56, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Great sociological analysis, Wug, and I definitely agree with the conclusion about editor recruitment. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
That was quite a good read, thank you for taking the time to write all that, the Signpost piece was interesting as well. –xenotalk 02:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The hiding of this dynamic is the most pressing problem, I think. Most people would probably understand that joining an existing community takes some investment in learning its norms and proving yourself as a contributor – if you look at other successful user-generated sites like Stack Overflow or Genius, for example, they explicitly advertise that with a system of points that lead to privileged user rights. But we tell people (completely dishonestly, at this point) that Wikipedia is open to anyone to immediately contribute and participate in decision making. So new users naturally get frustrated and angry when they discover that in reality, there's a nebulous group of power users control both these processes. At the same time, not being up front about our power dynamics let's those people who do have social capital get away with not using them responsibly, because WP:NOBIGDEAL etc. – Joe (talk) 08:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm still torn on whether to characterize it as a "problem" and you'll find various comments by me arguing both sides. You're spot on about the enculturation aspect, and I think the important concept is "most people". It seems likely that there's a sizeable contingent who simply don't grasp the consequences of jumping into a social group without experience or understanding, leading to a kind of culture shock. A few days ago I read this allegory on Hobit's front lawn, and I think it's useful to continue here. Joining Wikipedia is like going to the beach and trying to join others in making sandcastles. If you show up and start telling people how to build sandcastles, they're gonna get pissed and kick you off the beach. Most people get that, even without being told, but some don't because they're young, socially awkward, or inebriated. For some people, figuring out how to navigate that can be hard. Where I waver, I think, is on locating the "problem". Like in the allegory, we've gotten very protective of our sand sculptures (rightly), but this leads to a culture of exclusion so newcomers get scared off. Most immediately I think about patrollers tag bombing new pages, or RC watchers being overzealous with warnings. My thinking is still in flux on this, but you certainly get at the heart of the issue. I wonder how a concept of Karma (a la Reddit and Stack Exchange) would function on a wiki? Lower down we were musing about granting usergroups automatically to editors who reach a certain threshold of edits, like bundling rollback with extended confirmed. It has trade-offs itself (e.g., meatball:KarmaWhore), but being very explicit in how we meatball:RewardReputation is something to seriously consider. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:50, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
If anyone wants to edit these into something coherent, I've compiled the comments at User:Wugapodes/How volunteers are paid. Go to town. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:48, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Help

Hi I may be blocked but I would like a bit of help with this article please?

I am trying to make the article with the life peers according to these links:

I have done the Bishops, but the female Hereditary Peers and Law Lords are last.

Hope this helps. Mr Hall of England (talk) 19:02, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Mr Hall of England, sorry for the delay, I've been spread thin the last few days. Thanks for your work, and I'd be willing to make the change, but there are some errors that I don't know enough to fix myself. For example, there are 4 sections for "Created by Tony Blair" with overlapping dates: 1997-2005, 1997-2001, 2001-2005, 2005-2007. Is this intentional? Also, User_talk:Mr_Hall_of_England/Archive_99#Created_by_Tony_Blair_(1997–2001) has some text at the bottom that look like notes. Do you still need to add those? — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:22, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, I know I am blocked, from the Blair Years I have not done yet.

I am doing it gradually.

Mr Hall of England (talk) 17:59, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

P.S. Postmaster General of the United Kingdom needs to be all in one!

Also I know that the BBC (Blair, Brown and Cameron) Years are the harder ones to do as they created more than the previous 3 PM's, I doing them in slow speed, as I like to take my time, but if you want to do them, fair play, the others under the Blair ones are not on the template but will be soon. Mr Hall of England (talk) 19:58, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: Take your time! You are suggesting big changes to the article structure, so I would rather wait for you to be finished first. You can still keep working on your draft at User talk:Mr Hall of England/Archive 99 because your block is only from articles. You can still edit everywhere else. When you are finished, give me another message and I will copy it to the article. If you need help, you can ask at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Peerage_and_Baronetage since those editors know more than me about the topic. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:16, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, I would like you to do a check on the Life Peers 1958–1997 for me please, these have ? markings because I think they may be errors. Mr Hall of England (talk) 18:04, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
@Mr Hall of England: What exactly do you want me to check for? It seems like the "?" are hard coded rather than template errors. If you need citations you can find them on the peer's article and copy them over like I did with this edit. That citation is for the creation date, though I'm not sure if the date in your table is correct. The article is dated 23 September, but states the letters were received 22 September, so I don't know what the proper creation date would be. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:28, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, the question mark ones are incumbent members, but I think that I will be finished by mid April. Mr Hall of England (talk) 22:40, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

It is mainly the dates they joined the House of Lords which is the one thing I need the help. Hope you understand. If you edit on the page, I will not object. Mr Hall of England (talk) 18:38, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


Hi how are you doing today? I hope you are well and safe, I might be finished in about 3 weeks time, I have advised a couple of editors on a few things. Stay Safe. Mr Hall of England (talk) 23:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Foreign Secretary

Hi how are you doing? Hope you are well and safe, as the Foreign Secretary is now the same as the Home Secretary should all the holders have this on their templates? Mr Hall of England (talk) 19:14, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: thanks and same to you! I've been busy off-wiki so haven't had much time to look into this. I don't know what the foreign or home secretaries are, but in general, we use old names when discussing historical contexts where the old name was used. So if the template is specific to the Foreign Secretary and is in the context of how the position was when it existed, then it should still use Foreign Secretary, but if it's a shared template, and the two need to be distinguished, it might be worth changing. I wouldn't know without a specific example. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:06, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
The Foreign Secretary is a key UK Government Minister, as is the Home Secretary but not every Home Secretary has Secretary of State for the Home Department, that is what I want with the holders of the Foreign Secretary. Also I am nearly complete with the lady peers. Mr Hall of England (talk) 22:04, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [1][2]
  • If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [3][4][5]
  • Advanced item Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [6]
  • The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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16:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost - can you finish today!

The opinion looks good so far at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Opinion, but we publish in 24+ hours. If you can't finish today or want to withdraw the submission. please let me know asap. Otherwise I'll need to cancel it or finish it myself! Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:47, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@Smallbones: Sorry, I've been busier than expected this week and haven't had the time to spend writing that I thought I would. I'll do my best to finish in the next couple hours. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:43, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
@Smallbones: It should be ready for a copyedit. Let me know if you need anything else from me, though I might not be able to get to it until a few hours from now. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:01, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
Thank you. Other than a bit of copy editing, it's perfect. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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  • Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [7][8][9]

Changes later this week

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21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

well?

are you planning to update WP:AAB to reflect your rfc close or would you prefer it be done by someone else? 78.28.55.108 (talk) 06:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

 Done — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:15, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, but there's one small issue. "Blocks may be appealed only by the editor subject to the block." is redundant to (and clashes with) the sentence right after it, and it also directly contradicts your closing statement (you closed the discussion as "option 2" which you summarized as "Third party appeals are allowed but discouraged" which is just about the opposite of "blocks may only be appealed by the blocked editor"). The easiest way to fix it would be by just getting rid of that redundant first sentence, the rest is perfectly fine. 78.28.55.108 (talk)
The wording seemed off to me, but since the RfC proposed specific text, I just implemented that. I think you're right that it should be clarified though, so I made the change you suggested. Let me know if there are any other tweaks you want made. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:11, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

House of Lords

I was wandering if you could do me this favor for me please? Could you add this to the following, Add #89CFF0 this to

Because these are for Lords who are alive but retired from the Lords not died.

Mr Hall of England (talk) 21:17, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: Add it where? You need to be specific about what changes you want me to make. I don't know this topic, so it's hard for me to figure out what you want done. I recommend that you read Wikipedia:Edit requests especially WP:EDITXY — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:53, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I have an example fro the Law Peerages 1990s:
  Extant
  Extant but left the House of Lords
Date of creation Name Title Territorial qualification Date of retirement
(if applicable) 		Date of extinction
(if applicable)
1 October 1991 Nicolas Christopher Henry Browne-Wilkinson Baron Browne-Wilkinson of Camden in the London Borough of Camden 1 March 2016 [1] 25 July 2018
10 January 1992 Michael John Mustill Baron Mustill of Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire 24 April 2015
11 March 1992 Gordon Slynn Baron Slynn of Hadley of Eggington, Bedfordshire 7 April 2009
1 October 1992 Harry Kenneth Woolf[a] Baron Woolf of Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames
1 October 1993 Anthony John Leslie Lloyd[b] Baron Lloyd of Berwick of Ludlay, East Sussex 27 March 2015 [1]
11 January 1994 Michael Patrick Nolan Baron Nolan of Brasted, Kent 22 January 2007
3 October 1994 Donald James Nicholls[c] Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead of Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey 3 April 2017 [1] 25 September 2019
11 January 1995 Johan van Zyl Steyn[b] Baron Steyn of Swafield, Norfolk 28 November 2017
21 February 1995 Leonard Hubert Hoffmann[c] Baron Hoffmann of Chedworth, Gloucestershire
1 October 1996 James John Clyde Baron Clyde of Briglands in Perthshire and Kinross 6 March 2009
6 January 1997 James Brian Edward Hutton[b] Baron Hutton of Bresagh, County Down 23 April 2018 [1] 14 July 2020
28 July 1997 Mark Oliver Saville[d] Baron Saville of Newdigate of Newdigate, Surrey
1 October 1998 John Stewart Hobhouse Baron Hobhouse of Woodborough of Woodborough, Wiltshire 15 March 2004
1 October 1998 Peter Julian Millett[b] Baron Millett of St. Marylebone in the City of Westminster 4 May 2017 [1]
12 January 1999 Nicholas Addison Phillips[e] Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers of Belsize Park in the London Borough of Camden

Hope this helps. Mr Hall of England (talk) 16:58, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I responded at User talk:FollowTheTortoise#Help — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:33, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Accordance with Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014.

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

  • Botswana The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs.
  • New York (state) Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points.
  • Republic of Venice Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
  • Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews.
  • England Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews.
  • England Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews.
  • Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations.
  • Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items.

Please remember that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of Round 2 but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in Round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [10]
  • Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [11]

Changes later this week

  • Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [12][13]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [14]

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15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Please provide your input on Gerrit change If171cb

Hi Wugapodes! If you have a moment, please weigh in on If171cb. I'll be reaching out to Kipod as well. Cheers, --ATDT (talk) 19:45, 5 May 2021 (UTC) (Ori)

I agree with Danny that while I like the autoplay feature, it's hard to maintain and if needed in the future can be re-implemented to meet the needs of the requesting wiki. I went ahead and gave it +2 but if Kipod points out a good reason to keep it then I can revert it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:22, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

removed Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

removed Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

3rd party appeals [15]

Just read your close on that RFC, it was linked in the admin "newsletter". Really nice close. Lot of information and opinions flying around there and I think you summarized it well, and as concisely as you could given the wide range of opinion. Very well balanced. Just thought it was worth noting. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:55, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

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15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Nikki_Amuka-Bird RFC Infobox?

I just noticed you closed the RFC about the Infobox as "rough consensus not to include", even though there were three people against including, and five in favor of including. How did you get that conclusion? --GRuban (talk) 02:44, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@GRuban: My understanding of MOS:INFOBOXUSE is that the decision to include or exclude is made on a case-by-case basis, and by extension arguments should be specific to the article at hand and not infoboxes generally. Because of that, I did not give much weight to opinions based on other articles. While opposition was in the minority, the main argument was specifically tailored to the state of the article: the prose is short and readers can find nearly all of the infobox facts in the first sentence of the lead. This undercuts the support argument that an infobox would help readers find the info, and the remaining arguments were about precedent or use in other articles which is inconsistent with project-wide consensus. To be clear, the close shouldn't be read as prohibiting an infobox forever (which is why I included "at this time"), and if the article is expanded or more information is able to be included in the infobox, then I would expect it to stick. But given the MOS and discussion, it seems that there was a rough consensus to exclude an infobox until that time. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate your answer, but I don't think that means that consensus was achieved, considering that a majority of editors disagree, including rather experienced ones that are reasonably knowledgeable of our policies and guidelines. I think we'll need to ask WP:AN for a close review. --GRuban (talk) 17:15, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [22]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Growth Newsletter #18

Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

A screenshot of "add a link" feature in development in beta.

"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.

Oh wow this is super cool! Reminds me of the squib at User:Wugapodes/Advice on editing Wikipedia for academics and experts#RedLinks. Looking forward to the results. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

News for mentors

Mockup of the Mentor dashboard.
  • We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
  • We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.

Community configuration

Community configuration editing form under development

We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.

Scaling

  • Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
  • A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
  • After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Question from DoctorTexan (23:43, 17 May 2021)

Can you give me some feedback about how this Talk:White_House_press_corps/Archive 1#Notable Former Correspondents could have been handled better? Thank you, mentor. --DoctorTexan (talk) 23:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@DoctorTexan: Thanks for reaching out! I'm sorry things went off the rails there, but my first bit of advice is to revert less. Edit wars are harmful partly because they can lead to personal disputes instead of discussions about content. When two editors are going back and forth with reverts tempers run hot and we all lose. For that reason I tend to follow a "zero revert rule": if someone reverts my edit I don't revert until I've had a conversation with them and we've come to a clear agreement. Usually this works out and sometimes the person will be nice enough to self-revert. There's a really good section of the edit war policy with similar advice at Wikipedia:Edit warring#How experienced editors avoid becoming involved in edit wars which gives similar advice.
My second bit of advice (more of an observation) is to avoid burying the lede; I think your main point got lost in the discussion despite being something worth considering. To me, it seems that you wanted to discuss the selection criteria for the list which is reasonable enough. One common criterion---and the one used at that page now---is "notability". On Wikipedia we have a very specific definition for notability (found at WP:GNG) that might differ from someone's intuition. For more experienced Wikipedians, your question seems like an easy one and they'll just point you to WP:N, but what it seems you really want is to discuss whether notability is the best selection criteria for the lists.
I hope that helps, and feel free to get in touch with any other questions or ask me to clarify. Sorry that you had such an unpleasant interaction, but I'm glad you're trying to learn from it! — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:45, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

DS 2021 Review Update

Dear Wugapodes,

Thank you for participating in the recent discretionary sanctions community consultation. We are truly appreciative of the range of feedback we received and the high quality discussion which occurred during the process. We have now posted a summary of the feedback we've received and also a preview of some of what we expect to happen next. We hope that the second phase, a presentation of draft recommendations, will proceed on time in June or early July. You will be notified when this phase begins, unless you choose to to opt-out of future mailings by removing your name here.
--Barkeep49 & KevinL (aka L235) 21:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia, Volhynia and Northern Bukovina on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Question from Tariqarshad (16:56, 21 May 2021)

Please Look my Edits which was given reference Please guide me --Tariq Arshad (talk) 16:56, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

@Tariqarshad: Hi Tariq, nice to meet you! I looked at your draft for Md Ahmed Qamer. It looks like a good start, but you should be aware that writing a new article is one of the hardest things to do on Wikipedia. New articles have to meet our rules for inclusion: for Qamer (or anyone) to have an article included in Wikipedia, we need to have multiple news articles written about him written by people or news organizations unrelated to him. Looking at (English) Google and Bing, I don't see enough articles to meet that requirement, but you probably know more than I do. It looks like Qamer writes a lot in Urdu. Do you know of Urdu language newspaper articles written about Qamer? The sources can be in any language, so if you do have Urdu language sources adding them would help show Qamer meets our inclusion criteria. Let me know if you have any other questions, and I hope you enjoy editing! — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:44, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2021-21

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Question from Pindiespace on Draft:Game Public Relations Agency (18:30, 24 May 2021)

How do I change the page I am editing? Don't have a move tab, and have done multiple edits. --Pindiespace (talk) 18:30, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

@Pindiespace: Welcome to Wikipedia and thanks for your draft article! You can submit your draft through the Articles for Creation (AFC) process by adding {{subst:submit|Pindiespace}} to the top of the draft and saving it. As for moving pages, you need to be autoconfirmed and it can take the software some time to update that. Do you still not see a move tab? You might want to check Wikipedia:Moving a page#How to move a page as well for detailed instructions. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:25, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi

Hi how are you doing? I hope you are well, I am ok, I have been to hospital and I am well now, it was about my diabetes, not Covid-19, I will be back to edit the Woman Peeresses, also how do I get back to editing? Stay Safe. Mr Hall of England (talk) 17:43, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: I'm glad to hear you're doing better, and especially glad that you're keeping safe from coronavirus! As for me I'm well; I've been on leave the last few weeks and with all the time on my hands I've been distracted by some kooky offline projects.
As for unblocking, my main concern is whether you will follow WP:NOTBROKEN. I unblocked you last time based on your unblock request where you said I commit to ignoring redirects and will not try to "fix" them from here going forward, so I hope you understand why I'm hesitant to unblock again---once bitten twice shy. That said, you do good work otherwise, and I would like to let you get back to that.
So how about this: would you be willing to try a conditional unblock? That policy says that if we can agree on some wikt:bright-line rules for you to follow, I can unblock you, but if you break the rules we agreed on any administrator may block you (and likely for a longer time).
So as a first suggestion, what would you think of a rule like Mr Hall of England may not change links in articles. He may still add or remove links.? This would let you, for example, add links to articles, but if a link already exists you either have to leave it alone or remove it entirely---nothing in between. If it's really bad, you can ask someone to help you and they can make the decision. That should let you get back to editing while also having clear, objective rules about what you may and may not do. If you're willing to follow that rule (or something similar that you suggest) I would be willing to unblock you and let you get back to writing. What do you think? — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:58, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Good Morning, thanks for what you said, I will got with the flow with all the context. What I really want to do is change the colour of the Life Lords, which I recommended someone do, but they haven't done it yet. Mr Hall of England (talk) 08:44, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Also my list of life peers idea with a different colour has not been done yet. Mr Hall of England (talk) 20:41, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: Sorry that task stalled out; I was excited when you had found someone to help and hoped it would work out. And sorry for the coming formality, but I want to avoid any misunderstandings or clerical errors. Do you agree to follow this condition if unblocked: Mr Hall of England may not change links in articles. He may still add or remove links.? — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:19, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I had quite a long discussion with Mr Hall of England about WP:NOTBROKEN back in November and December 2020. Mr Hall of England, you said you were going to stop "fixing" these things that weren't broken. —valereee (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
    • @Valereee: I had seen which is why I'm rather cautious now; it was very good advice! Like most of our policies and guidelines, NOTBROKEN has a lot of grey areas that can be difficult to get used to. I'm hoping the restriction above will remove the ambiguity for both Mr Hall and for admins who may be asked whether particular edits to links are acceptable. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)


When or if I come back I would like to do the following:

  1. Add my colours for the the Life Peers who have retired.
  2. I feel that the middle names are not needed as the Peerage of the United Kingdom Hereditary Peers don't have this and I see no reason why the lifers should have this.
  3. I feel that the 'Territorial qualification' section should be either changed or reformed, as there are some errors in all the articles.

Your thoughts? Mr Hall of England (talk) 17:43, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: To be clear, I'll need a yes or no answer to the question in my last message. As for your plans, 1 and 3 sound like good ideas. The unblock condition I'm proposing would not allow you to do #2. You can make an edit request on a talk page and see if others will agree with you, but for now I think you should not do that one. — Wug·a·po·des​ 18:38, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Fair comments, I have left my draft in the talk pages for the first two at the moment. I think I will leave 2 for the time being. Mr Hall of England (talk) 22:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: Good to hear, but under our policy I cannot unblock you without a clear yes or no answer to the following: Do you agree to follow this condition if unblocked: Mr Hall of England may not change links in articles. He may still add or remove links.? — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:52, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Tell you what let me make the edits (as I have left them on the talk page for the Law Lords and '58-'79 and '79 and '90) then I want to do back. I do follow the T&C but let me finish this draft first. Mr Hall of England (talk) 17:20, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mr Hall of England: I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking me to hold off on unblocking until you finish the draft? If so, that's fine with me just let me know when you're ready. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:23, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, also this is how the template for the Life Peers should be:

I would like your opinion on it, I also think that the Life Peers should be given a link to say if they are a son or daughter or husband and wife of a Peer and in remainder of a Hereditary Peerage. Mr Hall of England (talk) 16:55, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Also use this as a reference to make sure the dates are 100% 

http://www.peerages.info/index.htm
http://www.peerages.info/peerages5.htm

Thanks for the Law Life Peerages edit. I haven't done the 1990s and 2000s though.

Ah, no problem, just let me know when you do get around to it and I'll look it over again. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:42, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I have finished the Law Life Peers now, please start a page for the 1958-1979 please. Mr Hall of England (talk) 19:57, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:29, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

MHoE

So, do we think this is a person who can do a ton of fairly tedious but helpful content creation as long as they aren't allowed to edit article space directly due to their inability to ignore things that need to be fixed? Because that's kind of what it's looking like to me. —valereee (talk) 20:11, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I placed the original p-block: get the useful edits as edit requests and prevent the disruptive ones. The goal, I think, is to simply meatball:DelayAction as it allows self-review and dissuades interaction with random RC patrollers who aren't familiar enough to effectively navigate the exchange. I'm not even that concerned by cosmetic changes, personally, but it's controversial enough that it causes useless conflict that wastes time and resources that would be better spent elsewhere. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Message regarding Capricorn from BrandonXLF

The script seems to work well and is very comprehensive with the list of categories it has (unlike Twinkle), but I do have suggestions.

1) When using the script, the edit summary implies the redirect target was changed when only the categories where modified. For example, this edit has the summary Redirecting to Roller coaster#Strata coaster (♑) When it should be something like Removing/adding categories (♑).

2) The script still runs of when viewing diffs (as you already know). This can be fixed by not running the script when the url contains &diff in the query string.

3) Implement a search bar, so it would only show matching checkboxes and presumably removes the headings.

4) Add a save button near the top (after the redirectText input area)

5) Have a button in the top right corner to hide/show the UI.

– BrandonXLF (t@lk) 23:46, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I also just realized there's no way to goto the destination page of the redirect. You could add a button after the text input or maybe add a link beside the title.– BrandonXLF (t@lk) 23:54, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @BrandonXLF: Thanks! I've added them to the To-Do section of the documentation so that I don't forget about them. Some thoughts/notes on each:
  1. This has been something I've wanted to fix but kept forgetting about since I don't view the histories often. It should be pretty easy to implement though, just check if the target has changed, and if not say that it's only modifying categories.
  2. I need to think about this. In the same way that we can edit old revisions to undo recent ones, this allows modifying previous revisions as a more powerful undo. I may add it as a configuration option. In the meantime, the work around is to put the logic in your own common.js page.
  3. This may be difficult. I'd need to look at the code for things like the stub sort script, but it may not port well to this code. What I do is use my browser's built in search feature using ctrl+f to look for the particular template, though that may not work for everyone.
  4. This should be relatively easy. There is an advantage to the button at the bottom, though. Because a save button at the bottom encourages users to look through the categories when they edit a redirect, it's more likely that redirect categories will be added or corrected.
  5. This should be relatively easy and might be able to piggy back off our existing show/hide javascript.
Wug·a·po·des​ 00:06, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
For adding a button to go to the target, that may clutter the UI since it is redundant with the "Article" tab. Even if you're on the article page, clicking the article tab will take you to the target of the redirect. I'll think about that one as well. Wug·a·po·des​ 00:07, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I didn't even realize the article and read tabs goes to the target, but it still not very clear that they do so and seems like an weird functionality (that could change?). You could also add it as an option in configuration. You could also add the option to show the second save button near the top in the configuration too, so first time users will likely go to the bottom of the page, showing them the categories. – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 00:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
If you're concerned about space when for adding the button to the target, you could make the arrow act as a link by adding an absolute link after the li in the ul.redirectText element, or you could always just append a link to the page title.– BrandonXLF (t@lk) 00:31, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
@BrandonXLF: Concerning 4): You can use enter in the redirect target field to save the page. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 17:39, 9 March 2020 (UTC)


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