User talk:PamD/Archive 8

William Abney

Your retargetting of William Abney to a disambig page made several good links into ambiguous links. In general, if you retarget a redirect, you need to fix all of its uses. I have fixed them, but I also contested your request to make Sir William Abney not primary for this name, since there's nobody else prominent enough to have an article. If you feel strongly about it, use WP:RM. Thanks. Dicklyon (talk) 03:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Apologies for not fixing the links in the two school articles - I remember seeing them as incoming links , must have forgotten to follow through. I'm usually careful about clearing up after my pagemoves. But you left things such that William Abney (actor) and the high sheriff were not linked from the base name by any route, which seems to me to be much more serious than a couple of links going to a dab page. I have added a hatnote to the photographer. Note that his article may be more read, but if it is at the right title only a minority of those readers will have come via the redirect from the plain WA name. PamD 05:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hello Pam. I have declined the technical move and brought your move request to Talk:William Abney (disambiguation) since it appears that the photographer-chemist could be the primary topic after all. A discussion is needed. I don't understand your point about 'not linked from the base name by any route' since William de Wiveleslie Abney has a hat note pointing to the DAB page. This often happens when one article is perceived to be the primary topic. EdJohnston (talk) 06:08, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@EdJohnston:: Yes, there's a hatnote now: I added it (OK, replaced it: I had removed it when I retargetted the redirect: it became necessary again when that edit of mine was reverted.) PamD 18:06, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Pam, I was not previously aware of the existence of the actor, the redirect, or the disambig page, which is why I "left them" that way. Thanks for the hatnote. Dicklyon (talk) 19:32, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: I don't understand: there was previously a redirect from the base name to the photographer, and a hatnote at the photographer to point to the dab page. Yesterday afternoon I retargetted the redirect to point to the dab page, while stub-sorting the actor. I removed the "redirect" hatnote from the photographer, as it no longer applied. You then retargetted the redirect back to the photographer, though with an edit summary which suggested you hadn't noticed the existence of the actor, and without replacing the hatnote which was now necessary again to provide navigation to the dab page and thus to the actor (and the sheriff). Now you say you didn't know of the existence of the redirect? Strange. PamD 20:51, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I said I had not previously known of the redirect; if I knew of it association with the hatnote, I forgot. And I don't recall exactly how I noticed your edit, but when I saw you had redirected the redirect and left ambiguities there, I fixed that. I'm sorry I didn't fully undo your edits; my bad. Dicklyon (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:PamD reported by User:Calvin999 (Result: ). Thank you.  — ₳aron 17:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Note: the result was "Declined". PamD 08:34, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

This is just to thank you for dropping by and helping with my articles. Cheers! Ashish Lohorung (talk) 12:49, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

This is just to thank you for dropping by and helping with my articles. Cheers! Ashish Lohorung (talk) 12:50, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Lesser or Greater Extinctions

I agree that Lesser or Greater Extinctions is premature and self-promotional, and I will say so on the AfD. On the other hand, "don't bite the newbies" is a thought for User talk:Animalarmageddon, where there are plenty of bites and little welcome for an intelligent and fairly literate editor. Can we both follow Wikipedia rules, and provide more welcome? We may not succeed, but we should try. As a very senior editor, I would like your advice.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I've been aware of this editor for some time - and I don't see this edit as "bitey". It's now time that he stops trying to use the encyclopedia to promote his own activities, and learns a little more about the fact that this is a grown-up international encyclopedia which has no room for an enthusiastic but misguided young person's personal creative project. PamD 06:52, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Message

Hi friend. The reasons I deleted the ISBN from the article regarding Halder diaries was because I didn't feel it was reasonable to have it listed there. I believed, and still do today, that it should be listed as a book reference. Jonas Vinther (talk) 23:16, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

talk p

you are of course right. Perhaps I became a librarian because of my recognition of my own tendency to let them slide into chaos, and the only way I can compensate is over-organization: where I actually organize my work here is in the absurd form of many thousand Safari bookmarks--and I'm now confronted with the problem that the new version of Safari will not support them in a usable way & I need to upgrade to a machine which will in practice only run the new version.. So I shall need to do something. I've tried various temporary holding pen methods, as you suggest, but they never get worked on; you will also find in my workspace a remarkable number of alternate attempts at organization. Pls look again next week. DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Well thanks for that

Yeah on one page I put possibly living-it was getting late and I was not reading it correctly, was trying to find more info-I think the guy needs more pages linked to it is all-I didn't want to say AFD as it seemed a bit unfair. (I always seem to have the most problems with these articles for Asian people for some odd reason-IE always seem to find these pages lacking in something ha ha) Well good luck editing today and have fun. Wgolf (talk) 14:34, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

For helping me with my Page patrolling pointing out my errors Dudel250 (talk) 23:52, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Stub

I was looking over how short it was-I just noticed quite a few refs, so I guess not a stub ha ha, oops! Wgolf (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Allied Quality Assurance Publications

Hi,

I notice that this page has been deleted. This was a serious page that I have invested a considerable amount of time in. I feel that nominating this page for deletion was wrong and unjustified. If this deletion stands and is not reverted, it will mark the end of my contributions to Wikipedia. Jono799 (talk) 07:51, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hello, I'm Bladeor and was wondering of some of my edits being reverted. I understand that one on that Stephen Hawking book was against Wikipedia rules. I'm sorry I actively didn't listen to that one. However, I put the stub template on Turbo, Colombia because all it said was a brief overview and only information about the climate. There isn't any information about the demography, history, etc. I know some editors limit stub pages to like 100 or 200 words or something, but I think the article just didn't have enough information.

On the 2012 Buenos Aires rail disaster, I admit my mistake of removing a source. I just thought it was out of date, because February happened earlier this year. I didn't know of a guideline about something like that.

On the thing concerning the Dalal disambiguation page, it is a last name, and I realize that it should be linked to people who have the last name of Dalal or something. I do not see why you plainly reverted that one, rather than improved upon it or ruling against it.

If there is anything else concerning me, please contact me on my talk page again. Also, if you are going to revert any more of my edits, please leave a message on my talk page concerning that or edit your edit. Thank you. Bladeor (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

@Bladeor: I found Turbo, Colombia while stub-sorting, and I think it has enough content not to be a stub - and if you look at the page history you'll see it was labelled as a stub until Dec 2013 and then unstubbed. Anything short of a Featured Article will always have scope for expansion and/or improvement: stubs are extremely short articles with very little content.

Disambiguation pages disambiguate articles which include content specific to the title. Your link to name was more like a dictionary definition of "Dalal", so was inappropriate. I've now added a "See also" link which helps readers to find people of that name. If you like you could add the individuals with the surname to the disambiguation page. See WP:MOSDAB for more information on what is and is not appropriate on disambiguation pages.

When I see an edit I disagree with, I sometimes look at the editor's edit history in case there is a pattern of edits which need to be improved. I'll sometimes make comments on the editor's talk page, other times just make changes with, I hope, informative edit summaries. PamD 08:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Apols!

Apologies! I didn't mean to post in triplicate! I was just trying to figure out the signature thing (I'm still not sure I have), and didn't realise my earlier submissions had gone through. Jillsg (talk) 11:58, 16 May 2014 (UTC)jillsgJillsg (talk) 11:58, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry - there's a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia: but it can be fun and potentially addictive! I've removed the first two, as you successfully signed the last one! Um, twice, I see. Ah well. PamD 12:03, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Deletion of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

Hi Pam Thanks for your New User guidelines. Much appreciated. I tried to make it clear that I was a staffer on the magazine, but will do the extra bits you've suggested. HOWEVER, I can't do that until it is reinstated. I tried to write the page as independently as possible, with no fluff or marketing speak, but it was still deleted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Randykitty, despite the fact that ALL of our competitor titles have pages.

Do you know how I can get it reinstated? Then I can make the changes you've suggested. Otherwise, do you know if Wikipedia / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Randykitty will be removing all competitor pages, too?

Any advice gratefully received.

Cheers Jill Jillsg (talk) 11:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)jillsgJillsg (talk) 11:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jillsg: You need to talk to @Randykitty:, as she's the administrator who deleted the page, and I'm not particularly familiar with the procedures for COI editing, draft articles, etc - just a passer-by on her talk page who spotted that you were having a problem. I think she may be in USA so her time zones for editing won't match ours in UK, so you may have to wait for a reply - as is always the case, as editors have lives outside Wikipedia and aren't always online. On the surface it looks to me as if the magazine probably merits an article, but I had a look at your draft and it looked a bit like a business-to-business promotion: ordinary encyclopedia readers (as opposed to advertisers) aren't interested in how much your readers spend on their holidays, and the "best-selling" right near the start rang alarm bells: it needs a reliable source to support that statement, and probably shouldn't be so near the start of the article. It's difficult for someone closely, professionally, financially, involved in a publication to put together a neutral encyclopedia article about it. If you feel that the other magazine articles are inappropriate you could propose them for deletion at Articles for Deletion, though I have a feeling you need your account to have been around a little longer and done more edits to be able to do so. Point out to Randykitty which of the articles you feel are no more encyclopedia-worthy than yours was, and ask her about them. PamD 12:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

@PamD: Ah, thanks! I removed loads from the draft when I submitted the actual article, and also added the source for the "best-selling" (the Audit Bureau of Circulation - the UK's independent auditors on this). The draft was quite fluffy, but I think the final was just the dry facts. Anyway, your help is much appreciated. And this time, I'm going to try to sign only the once, but suspect I will still mess it up ;) Jillsg (talk) 12:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jillsg: Nearly right - indenting takes a bit of practice! I've tidied up x2: added another line of indentation so that your reply is indented from my reply, and reattached the sig to the text. You can sign on a new line, or add a second para, but you need to do as many colons-worth of indent as the previous para to line up tidily! PamD 12:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Padutirupathi

I appreciate the inclusionist intent, but an (admittedly quick) search has been unable to find any RS upon which to justify even the existence of the article, let alone its extent. Meanwhile, there are WP mirrors (such as Books LLC) turning the unfounded content into pseudofacts. If you want to keep the content visible, please do something to find reliable sources beyond just tagging the article. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@LeadSongDog: I came across it while stub-sorting, and in the state you'd left it the title had no apparent connection to the lead section. There were also several external links in the chunk you'd commented out, and it had been tagged as having no sources. This seemed excessive. Yes, there's a vast amount of bloat in the article, and it needs trimmed drastically. I'll see what I can do. (I thought I'd added a ref this morning, but had forgotten to hit "Add cite" after "Preview cite"). PamD 21:31, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@LeadSongDog: I've tidied up some of it, tagged unreferenced sections, and left a note at Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#Temple_in_need_of_cleanup. PamD 22:11, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Let's hope then that someone can find something about it. It's incredibly frustrating that the editors who create these things without citing sources just disappear afterwards. If this is a real topic, it would be a shame to have to AFD it. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:22, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your work at RfD

Note for curious talk page stalkers: this relates to Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2014_May_19#Raiders etc PamD 06:45, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all your contributions to RfD. Hope you become one of the regulars. I probably sound very harsh on you but we have kinda a very vigourous arguing style there – always polite but as with any clique it tends to then evolve its own kind of language. So if I sounded harsh on you, please don't be offended: I will certainly sometimes disagree with you but thank you sincerely for your contributions and please do continue to join in, the more the merrier. I am not an admin or anything just a gnome so I tend to do a lot of the background checking when people list with their toys then don't do anything about it (I don't mean you). For me the hardest thing on Wikipedia is doing all the background checking, reffing and so on: writing the text is relatively easy. Please reply at my talk if you want to: no need to, the thanks are sincere. Si Trew (talk) 10:38, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@SimonTrew: (I prefer to keep a conversation in one place): Thanks for the thanks, but I still don't see your point. I made no change to the function of the redirect, so rather than "pulling the rug out from under you" it was more like cleaning it a little without moving it. If the rfd fails, the rd is improved. If it passes, then whoever updates the rd can fix, replace or delete tags as need be. I see no problem. As an rfd regular, what problem do you see? PamD 10:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@PamD: I also like to keep the conversation in one place: it's a toss of a coin which place it is, though!

I have this general uneasiness with anything being changed (on the redirect, if it is a redirect, or an article, if it were at AfD) while it is under discussion. At a GA review, of which I have done several in the past, if someone other than the contributors to that review changes it, it means one has to then review or delete those changes or incorporate them while the review is in progress. GA reviewers are encouraged to fix minor slips without mentioning them – just fix them and be done – but were someone to insert or delete a wodge of material it invalidates the review. And the same applies mutatis mutandis to redirects, which are in a sense a "GR" (Good redirect) review.

I know others feel differently, but I feel it makes it very difficult to argue one's point if the ground is moving under one's feet. Plenty of others, not just you, have different views and say I just tidied it up and so on: and I can do that, I am a gnome after all. It just seems to me wrong: maybe as a long-standing editor in real life (well I am a software engineer but have must of blue pencilled and written millions of boring words, most of which are probably in the bin) that once something comes to discussion we should discuss it before changing it.

I suggested before, a few weeks ago, that when Twinkle or whatever is used to bring something to RfD, it should tag the version number. That is how it works for {{translated page}}, for example, you tag the version numbers of the translation, so it is clear when it was translated and nobody can say "that's not right, it now says this" – probably does but it didn't when I translated it. Do you think it would be a good idea to suggest that to Twinkle etc to add version numbers on the template? I have no idea how to even suggest that or who to. Si Trew (talk) 11:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

By the way this {{ping}} thing is brilliant. For years we struggled with tying up conversations. That is a bloody masterpiece by the folks over at Wikimedia I assume they had to change the back end to accomodate it. It will become overused to the point where it is useless, but at the moment it is brilliant. My hats off to whoever designed, proposed, and built that. The template is not complicated but a couple of years ago it would just not have been possible. And for once they got the right name for the thing too! Si Trew (talk) 11:09, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@SimonTrew: Don't forget that the AfD template added to an article says "Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed." (Example). I suspect that the AfD process, and its templates, has gone under far more scrutiny over the years than the RfD one. I think your view about editing redirects is out of line with the philosophy there. Changing the target of the RD would be the equivalent of blanking the article, it's that sort of change, but I see no reason to refrain from edits which are merely adding useful classification tags. I will continue to do so if I happen to look at a redirect which is at RfD and spot a missing category tag: I'm afraid I'm not convinced by your arguments. The ground isn't moving under your feet, I've just done a little tidying up around them. PamD 13:27, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The philosophy (at least if I have my way) at RfD is how do we make the encyclopaedia better?. Sometimes it is better to delete, to encourage creation of the article and let the search engine take care of it. Sometimes it is better to retarget. Sometmes it might go to an alternative target. I think RfD's philosophy, as mine, is "what would an intelligent but ignorant reader try to find when he types this in". (Sorry about the "he" but English is absolutely rubbish gender-neutral pronouns: and aslo I get fed up with people using "gender" when they mean "sex" but that is fighting a losing battle, gender is for language and sex is for living creatures). Since I seem to be the king of RfD at the moment, unwontedly, I might have a go at expressing that sentiment on the guidelines – other editors can soon enough take it out. Si Trew (talk) 06:27, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

One problem is that on Twinkle and XfD it is listed as "Redirects for deletion". Now, the title is "Redirects for discussion". AfD is "Articles for deletion", not discussion. So people bring things to RfD for deletion without saying Delete. My homework then – which I am happy to do – is to check up the links, check up the external sources and so on. But that mistitle as "deletion" with the analogue at Afd, Csd, et cetera is misleading. The D does not mean "deletion", it means "discussion", at least at RfD. I've turned a few into article stubs for others to improve or translated one the other week – even got one to GA – from a bad redirect. Si Trew (talk) 07:01, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

@SimonTrew: Sorry but you still haven't said anything which explains why adding those classification tags to redirects while they're under discussion is in any way undesirable.

I've added a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Plurals_and_disambiguation to alert disambiguation geeks to the discussions on plurals, as they may have views on Primary Topics etc. PamD 07:24, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we should agree to disagree. But it is because it is tring to hit a moving target. It goes quicker now even at RfD, but generally it goes about seven days and in the mean time if it is changed then one person is discussing one version of the article, another another.

Let's say for the sake of example that the redirect List of lakes on the planet of Mars exists (soddit, I bet it does) and then it was redirected to Mars and someone suggested it should be redirected to Mars Bar. We would have to discuss that. If someone then comes in and does the gnoming – and thank you for – while it is under discussion then it invalidates the discussion. That's what I mean. Maybe don't express it well. Si Trew (talk) 10:06, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

@SimonTrew: I don't think it invalidates the discussion at all: the discussion is about where the redirect should point, not about whether or not it's got a few classification tags added to it. But we're clearly not going to agree. You carry on in your way, but I'll carry on in mine. (On the rare occasions I look at an RfD!) PamD 12:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

My Y key doesn't seem to work too well. But exemplia gratia: the {{inuse}} template. I use this occasionally when translating, but it is not observed much because everthing is instant, nobody takes time and consideration any more, so it is basically redundant. Si Trew (talk) 10:19, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Umm ... not sure how this fits in. Did you mean to add it somewhere else? PamD 12:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

No, no, I was giving the example of {{inuse}} basically says stand off for a couple of hours. Wikipedia goes too fast now because everyone gets mobile phone texts an so on and they don't look before they leap. I make my errors slowly, like planting a garden. Si Trew (talk) 13:01, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah. But I don't see this as an error - if I see something needing fixed and I've got time and inclination I'll fix it there and then and not think "Well, in a week's time I must remember to go back and see what happened to the RfD and add those tags if still appropriate". But you and I differ as to whether adding those tags damages the RfD debate, and neither of us is going to convince the other. You're suggesting that I don't consider my edits carefully, that I don't "look before I leap": that's mildly offensive. Let's call a halt. PamD 13:09, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I didn't mean anything offensive. Thanks for all your hard work – and I truly appreciate it which sounds patronising. I hate that things that when spoken would sound reasonable sound so harsh when written, and that is my fault, so I am sorry about that. Usually when I am making a sarcastic comment I am actually making it against myself but without the ability to kinda do a tongue in one's cheek or a litle ironic smile or raised eyebrow it an come across the wrong way and I have to learn that. In articles of course I would never make jokes like that but in discussions I frequently throw in a one-liner or something so that people realise I do actually have a sense of my own faults.

We obviously have different editing styles, but then it takes more than one person to make this encyclopaedia better, and I am glad you are one who makes it better. I don't know how better to put it.

I certainliy did not mean to offend you, and sorry that I did. I thought twice before replying as I don't want to cause you misery; but I wanted to offer my apology for offending you. It was by accident but it is not my business to go around offending people. Sorry. Si Trew (talk) 11:11, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Specifically when I said "they look before they leap" I was not referring to you (hence the "they" rather than the "you": do you want me to do "thee" and "tha"?). I hope everything is fine in Yorkshire – most of my family live there. I think it is just a misunderstanding, but it is my fault and I say sorry. 13:04, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Simon Henry Gage

Dear Pam....Thanks...I thought I was working in my "private" sandbox...now I know better!!! thanks again, randy — Preceding unsigned comment added by BinaryPhoton (talk • contribs) 21:36, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

@BinaryPhoton: Yes, Wikipedia can be a confusing place! There's a lot to learn but it's an intersting journey - Happy Editing! Please remember to sign any comments you add to talk pages: so that readers can see who you are, and the date and time so that if the page is archived automatically the "bot" can detect the date and time. Just typing ~~~~ adds both name and timestamp. Thanks. PamD 21:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

BinaryPhoton/Spanswick

Thanks again for the advice! — Preceding unsigned comment added by BinaryPhoton (talk • contribs) 12:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Template:R to disambiguation page

It could be better named, perhaps, but this Rcat is intended only for redirects with (disambiguation) in the title. It doesn't belong on redirects like Orioles or Red Wings. See Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages for correct uses. Not a big deal, just thought I'd let you know the name is a bit misleading; there isn't an Rcat the goes on any redirect to a disambiguation page. --BDD (talk) 18:05, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Some bubble tea for you!

for being my talk page stalker! Please keep it up! Ευχαριστώ! Magioladitis (talk) 11:51, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Alfred Bendixen

I have known Alfred personally for many years. The information that I correctly cited is accurate. Have you spoken to him before you changed to info? Chaos4tu (talk) 21:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

@Chaos4tu: No, I've never met him or spoken to him, though I created the Wikipedia article on him after creating one on the American Literature Association. You did not give any sources for your information, and some of it contradicts what is on the Texas A&M website. Wikipedia does not accept personal knowledge or "Original research" as a reliable source for its information, especially about living people.

You wrote that after his doctorate in 1979 "he decided to take a break from literature and began writing and publishing articles on gardening. ... Returning to literature, after accepting a position as Professor of English Literature at California State University, Los Angeles, ...": his official webpage at the university says "after serving ... nine years at Barnard College (1979-1988). ... While at Barnard, the women’s college of Columbia University, Professor Bendixen became one of the pioneering scholars engaged in the recovery of works by American women writers, producing several collections that have enlarged the literary canon, ...". The university webpage lists him as a current member of staff, with contact details and office hours. The two don't tally, and Wikipedia has to use the more apparently reliable source. If you have sources which show that he is retired, and that he spent 9 years outside academe working on horticulture, then please add that information, citing your sources. PamD 22:09, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, he was at Barnard for nine years, but he was writing on gardening during that time & not focused on literature. You see, he is an extraordinary individual who has numerous interests. You, on the other hand, have created a very narrow view of him purely as an academic & not as the creative force that he is & how he has inspired his students. But, his most impressive work was during his time at Cal State, LA. This is where his wife at the time, Mary Anne, encouraged him to create the ALA. If it were not for her, he would have never started the ALA. I mean, where did the idea of the ALA come from? Furthermore, he became extremely interested in 19th century California Literature & that is how Yda Addis was rediscovered. Again, you "sketch" of him is insulting, & very poorly written without further research other than the ALA website. Chaos4tu (talk) 03:54, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit count

Wmflabs says that you have 90,000. Wikichecker said it is above 85,000. What is the right number? OccultZone (Talk) 06:24, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Don't ask me, ask whoever runs those two counters! I haven't a clue. Let me know if you get an interesting answer. And remember that "edit count" is a very poor measure of activity anyway: some people edit each sentence as a separate edit, some use "Preview" a lot and make a load of different changes within one counted "edit". I tend to the latter, though sometimes consciously split up a group of changes for clarity of edit summaries, and reversibility. PamD 11:38, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

@OccultZone: I see your own edit figures on the two systems are different too: 69,618 (or 69,143 excluding deleted - I guess this means edits to pages which have since been deleted, eg successful CSDs), or 69,579. There must be some discussion or information somewhere about how edits are counted, I'm sure. PamD 11:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

It shows a huge difference of 7k edits(83k, and 90k). But you don't have that many deleted. You may want to updated the stat on your userpage anyway :=) There's whole list about the reasons. I suggested a 10th point as well, check Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#Suggestion_for_the_10th_point_on_Caveat_lector this thread. At least to me, it is just like like any other listings, be it of forums, games or any other. Yes because even on these bases, there are people who have multiple accounts, and there are people who use their account for some specific activity, list goes on. OccultZone (Talk) 12:28, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm at it again

You might be interested in another move request I have just made. See Talk:Pussy#Requested move. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 00:07, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

"University of Booni" and Booni itself

Hi PamD!
When I first saw "University of Booni" I thought it might have been a cricket in-joke. (On the subject of cricket, I'm considering offering some sort of prize for correctly counting the number of cricket in-jokes here as well as a special commendation for anyone who picks up what the "18 Brumaire" joke is about.)
It looks like there are a a few colleges affiliated with the University of Malakand in that area.
It also looks like there really is a village called "Booni" (so spelled) in Chitral District.
It may well be that the English is the third language of the people who are making the changes. I'll keep looking into it. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

I'd just like to say, I've had a look through your userboxes, and I really appreciate that you've given blood 77 times. Quite a lot, I personally really like that there are people willing enough to help people they may never meet, whether that's giving blood or something else...

Basically, thank you, I think it's amazing.

m8e39 06:36, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Years

Thanks for notifying.[1] I had lost touch with these pages due to huge rise of new pages on my watchlist. But never too late, I've opposed that proposal. Seemed pretty childish too.

I want to tag more articles for years wikiproject, but list is too high, have a view.[2] OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 10:22, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Patan, Udaipur

Hey I saw your edit of Patan, Udaipur I'm having some trouble with this article. The creator is set on including every person who lives in the village to the page. I cannot have it deleted because its a village but I am also on my second revert so my hands are tied. What do you recomend? --Youngdrake (talk) 17:06, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Youngdrake: I know how you feel, Boraj Tanwaran (talk · contribs) has recreated the page Boraj Tanwaran(BT) and then added a lot of genealogical information to it. AGF but I suspect this is sourced to a page the editor wrote themself. They have stopped removing the speedy tags, but keep asking if they can remove them. I have advised them that they arent allowed to.

I'm not sure about "can't have it deleted", as the 'BT' village page they created was taken to AfD here and deleted because its existence was not reliably sourced. Even the Hindi version of the page was nominated for deletion.

3RR doesnt apply to vandalism, though that's debateable here, or IIRC to unsourced content. 220 of ^Borg 09:24, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

The BT page has 'just' been deleted. :-\ 220 of ^Borg 09:45, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot I had given up hope! Sorry if I was inncorect about the policy I'm still quite new. --Youngdrake (talk) 11:47, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't take anything I say as 'gospel' I haven't read a lot of WP policy in detail, just 'picked it up' as I went along. :-o At least the editor here isn't malicious. (Just not listening.) See here for an account hopping 'spammer' that created a pile of pages about themself today under BS page names. Don't be surprised if the 'BT' page is re-created. --220 of ^Borg 12:48, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Said so! Boraj Tawaran, slight spelling change, created @ 16:30! --220 of ^Borg 16:54, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of personal guarantee

I felt your proposing of deletion of personal guarantee was a bit fast. I mean, yes, it was a very short item, but you proposed the deletion of the article either on the same day I created it or the next day. Seriously, that's a bit fast to make such a proposal. I suspect virtually every article on Wikipedia would have ended up destroyed as stillborn ideas that were never given time to gestate and receive reasonable opportunity to be properly expanded if this sort of practice was carried out on a regular basis. I noticed the concept was missing and I wanted to add it, and it's a little more complicated than a dictionary definition, which I disagree with your dismissal of the article as such. I have added more material, and was planning to flesh it out more as I had more time, but may I suggest in the future that when proposing to delete an article that (except in the case of articles clearly lacking content or are essentially vandalism or thinly-disguised advertisements) you wait at least a week after its creation - to allow time for the original creator to let the concept percolate in their brain and allow for improvement - before deciding it is totally worthless? - Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) (talk) 01:47, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Reading the above I realize it might sound a little harsh. My point is that you practically proposed deleting it almost immediately after it was written. I've edited over 6,000 articles and probably created several hundred in the nine years I've been an editor here, and if you check the history on probably almost any article, it started with a small piece in order to flesh out the idea. For example, consider the article chess, about the board game, which I have done the two readings of over the last 4 years and takes over an hour to read at normal speech speed. The article currently is over 100,000 bytes, call it the equivalent of maybe 25 pages, but the original article back in November 2001 was 10K and about one page. I mean, I appreciate that you want to see Wikipedia as a high-quality product, but brand-new articles do need time to be fleshed out, and I think most people start them the same way, they get an idea and start the page, then they or someone else come and add to it, and eventually the article becomes something reasonable. But this takes time and I feel you were a bit fast in recommending deletion of a brand new article that hadn't even been up for 48 hours. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) (talk) 01:58, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Rfc1394: When chess was created, Wikipedia was much more relaxed about sources. Nowadays it's recognised that for WP to be respected by readers we need to show reliable sources for our content. I don't know whether you're a longterm finance expert or a school child. Nor does any reader. Even your expanded version has no sources, so I guess it's all "stuff I know". That's not how to write an article. The new version is quite confusing (can a "personal guarantee" really be made by a corporate body?) and I don't see how this topic differs from guarantor to which it should probably be redirected.

I'm not going to apologise for Prodding your newborn stub. If I find problems while stubsorting I tag as I go. This wasn't a speedy delete nomination. Prod allows a week for anyone to object and, one hopes, to fix the problem. You've upgraded it from a dicdef but the main problem remains. If I remember I'll check it again in a while. The encyclopedia does not need unsourced additions. PamD 06:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Jack Burkman

Hi PamD. Regarding your decline of my CSD G6 nomination, I think I may be a little confused. Apparently the help information in Twinkle is inconsistent with policy. In any case, I wish to create a primary topic article Jack Burkman corresponding to the first entry on the DAB page. Once I do this, there would only need to be a disambiguation hat note at the top of the bio pointing to the congressional candidate entry on Washington House of Representatives elections, 2006.

Is is not uncontroversial to delete the DAB page to make way for a the new article?- MrX 16:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@MrX: I don't think in this case you need to formally delete the Dab page: just over-write it to create your article there as the primary topic, and include a hatnote to link to the other chap. There are no incoming links to worry about, though you might want to take the redirect Jack Burkman (disambiguation) to RfD as it won't serve any useful purpose in future. PamD 17:25, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

OK, I thought that might be the answer. I will proceed accordingly. Thank you.- MrX 17:30, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Re: Average Earnings Index (horse racing) error

Thank you for pointing out my error- it was an automated move, so the title was the same as the draft. I'm still learning all this Kafkaesque stuff, but I'll remember it better now because you got my attention. JacobiJonesJr (talk) 22:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

One last issue related to Legend disambiguation

Since you took the time to consider the issues at Talk:Legend (disambiguation)#Merger proposal, I am hoping you might help us consider a related issue at Talk:Legends (TV series)#Call for a vote on hatnote for this page.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

FYI, You are now the only person who was involved in the original debate who has not commented on this.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Advice request

Pam,

I was wondering if I could get your opinion(as you seem rather versedin this sphere) on this AFC, or at point me to someone who can do so. At first I suspected editor :affiliation with the subject; however when I combed over the reviews I noticed that they were—for a lack of better words, coded for referral kickbacks.

My questions :

1. Would you say reviews with 'RefId shennanigans' are definitely unreliable(do legit reviews get clickbacks)?
2. Do you think the afc article has ulterior motives? Like he runs the reviews?

I still have much to learn.

Thanks

JacobiJonesJr (talk) 03:30, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

@JacobiJonesJr: Hallo, I wouldn't say that either AfC or financial companies are my specialist areas, and I'm not sure what "referral kickbacks" are.

I think that the article needs to be at a different title if/when it gets moved to article space, as a decision has already been made (implicitly at least) that the primary topic of "XM" is XM Satellite Radio (there's a redirect from "XM", ie it's been agreed that although the most common name, hence best article title, for the Radio service is "XM Satellite Radio", that service is also the most commonly sought topic for the title "XM"). If you or anyone else wanted to argue that the financial company was the Primary Topic and should be at the title "XM", you'd need to request at Redirects for Discussion that the existing redirect from XM should go to XM (disambiguation), and let this be discussed and agreed. In the first place, if/when the article goes into article space it should be as XM (company) or similar, and be added to XM (disambiguation).

On the article, and your concerns about the refs, it might be useful to ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Companies or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Finance where you'll find subject specialists. Good luck. PamD 12:03, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your help.JacobiJonesJr (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Judges(') Lodgings

Hello, I'm just back from a 50-year-ago do at Worcester College, Oxford. I first looked at the index in Patrick Nuttgens's "The History of York". The index has Judges' Lodgings, but on p. 228 [Chapter 7, by Alison Sinclair] it's "the Judges Lodgings" and then on her p. 231 it's now the Judges' Lodgings (tsk, tsk). The York Book (see the bibliography on my user page) has "Judges' Lodgings", and (a clincher, in my opinion) Pevsner's York and the East Riding (1995) has "The Judges' Lodgings" (p.222). Nuttgens's other book ("York, City Buildings Series", 1970, p.42), however, has "Judges' Lodging". A spanner in the works is HMSO (1981) "York, Historic Buildings in the Central Area", where the index, page v, has "Judge's Lodging" and the photos on pp.113-115 have "The Judge's Lodging". It's not clear to me whether there was one judge at a time or a gang of judges. Take your pick! BTW, there is a Judge's Cave in the US (West Rock Ridge State Park) and there's also Judges' Lodgings, Monmouth... P.S. I was involved in an editathon at the ROH and also, more recently, a meetup in central Leeds [[3]] - with photos. --GuillaumeTell 18:30, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

@GuillaumeTell: I think more than one judge used to come for the assizes: the Lancaster setup had bedrooms allocated for the senior judge and junior judge. I'll be bold and move the York article ... done. The Lancaster editathon was fun - first time I've consciously met any regular WP editors except yourself. PamD 19:18, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Referencing Kindle

I have downloaded some books to my Kindle. I would like to use these books as references in some articles, but Kindle only provides location numbers and not page numbers. How can I cite a book in Kindle? Thank you ahead of time for considering my questions.

Another question: Are you able to get this article for me in its entirety? I only have access to the abstract. I really would like to read it - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13812.html

Best Regards,

  Bfpage |leave a message  12:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Section 4 (NYSPHSAA)

It seems you were quite hasty in your speedy deletion of Section 4 (NYSPHSAA). I can't see what it was in the article that you saw that made it appropriate for a speedy. Frankly if the content is what I expect it to be, what a prepared editor should be able to make it to be, it is an appropriate subject for wikipedia. So not only should it not be subject to a speedy, but it should not be subject to deletion. If you are so inclined to delete it, then do it right. Please restore the article, take it to AfD and give people a chance to discuss it. By giving it a speedy, you have left no opportunity for debate. Its your opinion, which other editors now must combat--vs a speedy deletion warning on the attempt to recreate the article. Trackinfo (talk) 06:01, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

@Trackinfo: I didn't delete it: I tagged it as an article appropriate for speedy deletion. It was deleted by an admin: they're the person you should address if you want to discuss it further. PamD 07:18, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	thanks Saadkhan12345 (talk) 11:10, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

A reply to your Wikipedia:Hatnote revert

I will not edit war with you; that is not the style of a WikiGnome. I will not say "no" to you as your summary did to me, regarding my 22:22 UTC 19 Oct 2014 Wikipedia:Hatnote one-letter, minor edit from convenience to conveniences (while I made other grammar edits to improve the page):

"In many cases the hatnote also includes a brief description of the subject of the present article, for readers' conveniences:"

The New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd edition by Oxford University Press, Inc.) gives the following definitions and example of usage for the word convenience:

Definitions:

• the state of being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty
• a thing that contributes to an easy and effortless way of life
• [British] a public toilet

A dictionary example (also from the Oxford Dictionary of [British] English (3rd edition by Oxford University Press, Inc.)):

Voicemail was seen as one of the desktop conveniences of the electronic office.

Therefore, the following is correct also:

Hatnotes were seen as one of the readers' conveniences of the Wikipedia site.

By the way, your summary stated, "conveniences in plural = toilets". As an American, I first read your summary as rude, until I researched and determined that you are a British librarian, and in British, convenience means toilet.

Overall, this exemplifies several of the principles of Wikipedia etiquette:

• "Be careful choosing the words you write: what you mean might not be what others understand. Likewise, be careful how you interpret what you read: what you understand might not be what others mean."
• "Assume good faith."
• "Remember The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would have them treat you."

• "Be polite."
• "Do not hesitate to politely let the other know if you are not comfortable with their tone."

• "Avoid reverts whenever possible, and stay within the three-revert rule except where exemptions apply."

Please ensure that you make Wikipedia an enjoyable place for everyone.

Have an awesome day!

I'm finished editing for awhile; it is not worth the inconveniences. You could have thanked me for my other edits on the page, but you chose to revert an "s" and told me "no". CM2G0005 (talk) 04:01, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@CM2G0005: I am sorry that my edit summary was a bit curt and has obviously upset you. Plesde don't let this one incident stop you from continuing your valuable wikignoming.

Rather than "no; conveniences = toilets; the convenience can be shared by multiple readers", a better edit summary would have been "plural inappropriate as "convenience" here is a mass noun not a count noun - and in UK English the plural most commonly refers to toilets".

But most of us are pretty brief in our edit summaries.

The first dictionary definition you cite is the sense here: a state, rather than a thing. We wouldn't say "for readers' happinesses". Voicemail is a thing, and "readers' conveniences" is correct in the example you give but that example doesn't match the "for readers' conveniences" case where I reverted your addition of the plural "s".

As for thanks: I don't thank every editor who makes a constructive edit to a page on my watchlist, nor do I expect thanks for everything I do. If I'd been leaving a comment on your talk page I might have thanked you for your work, but this was just a quick edit with summary. Sorry to have upset you.PamD 06:08, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Mail

I've dropped you a line. Dennis - 2¢ 14:56, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Note to self - 4 August

Time to remove any still-unsourced BLP content from Uncredited background singer - givng 2 weeks from today's {{cn}} tagging. PamD 14:16, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Manchester Village Spartans RUFC

Thanks for your help/corrections for the new page for the Village Spartans.

Can bother you to check the new content to make sure it's all ok? I've tried to uploadthe club logo but it wont let me - any chance you could help me out here? a Thumbnail of is http://www.igrab.net/images/logos/manchestervillagespartans.png or the larger one is at http://images.pitchero.com/club_logos/21958/1352188644.jpg

Thanks

@Btvs4232: (Don't forget to sign any talk post pages by typing ~~~~) - I've uploaded the logo (you have to copy it to your own computer and then upload it using the "Upload file" link on the left of the page), and tweaked the page quite a bit. I've used the standard template at {{Infobox rugby team}}, copying the usage from Bristol Bisons. There's scope to include diagrams of the kit, but I don't know how your rainbow striped arms would work out. I'm sure if you can't figure out how to do it you could find someone at Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union who could help. Good luck. PamD 18:14, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Stub

The section "Reception and Controversy" on http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modernism_(music)&action=history is a stub though 118.90.50.2 (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

@118.90.50.2: But that's no reason to label the whole article as a stub. Add {{empty section}} (as I've done) or {{expand section}}. There's a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia but it's an interesting journey. Happy editing! PamD 09:23, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Slovakia (disambiguation) for deletion

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:23, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Many Thanks

Thank you for your patient notes. As you can tell, I am beginning to enter the world of reviewing new articles. Your instruction and intention is well-received. I will re-read the guidelines for reviewing new articles and stick with the backlog of older articles that already have been tagged. Thank you again.

Regards, bpage (talk) 13:45, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Signature examples

Greetings! I am sending this to everyone who has posted to the talk page for WP:Smurrayinchester's signature tutorial, has a customized signature, and appears to be still active. I have created a section for real-life signature examples and I'm soliciting a few more contributions to that section. If you would like to add your signature, simply edit the new section and sign it. Have a nice day!   Mandruss |talk  01:53, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 July 2014

Since it was discovered,gold has evoked many emotions, the foremost of which is greed. When this precious metal was discovered in South Africa it was no different, and countless men have risked all trying to get their hands on it...legally or otherwise. The need to protect the gold on it's journey from deep within the bowels of the earth to bank vaults and jewellers' workshops was, and is, is paramount importance. Mark Corby was one of the men employed in the endeavour and his book takes you behind the scenes to meet the colourful characters who spent their days guarding it, the men from a myriad of tribes and cultures who mined it, the people who tried to steal it, and the people who controlled all. Mark's stories form an integral part of the South African mining industry, culture and history. Note to Editor: This is the back cover of the book I have authored - the 'bot' found it on scrib and I really don't understand why I cannot post the article??? Markcorby (talk) 11:05, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi,

I make apologies in advance as I am really not sure how this all works! I have submitted text but apparently it needs permissions or something. I am the author and copyright holder of the text.

Could you please kindly explain what I have done wrong or not yet done.

Many thanks.Markcorby (talk) 11:11, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Hallo Mark, and Welcome to Wikipedia. (I've taken the liberty of moving your signature to the end of your words, as it had got into the midst of the last couple of lines)

There are various problems here:

1. For some reason you were trying to edit my personal User Page. It's "semi-protected" so that it can't be edited by anonymous or very new editors - in fact there's no reason for anyone but me ever to edit it. I don't know why you were trying to edit it, but it was the wrong place for you to be editing. The semiprotection, set up against vandalism, has prevented an accidental edit.
2. You shouldn't be creating an article about your own book. Please read WP:COI. If your book is reviewed in "Reliable sources" (Newspapers etc, not just blogs), wins a recognised award, or otherwise becomes "notable" (see WP:Notability (books)), then you should start an article as a WP:DRAFT and ask someone else to review it before it becomes an official article. Or wait for someone else to create the article because they know about the book and think it worthy of an article (though if they can't show evidence of "Notability" it will probably be deleted). Not every book which has been published is appropriate to have a Wikipedia article.

Ah, going to your talk page to notify you of this reply I see that you've already created a draft article with this text. I've still no idea how you came to be trying to add it to my personal user page! PamD 12:46, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	Thank you for answering a few questions on my talk page when I was on my wikibreak. Your help is appreciated! A2 17:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Request for a review

I understand that you have a lot of experience in reviewing articles. You helped me to understand that it was not required to 'double tag' a new article. Thank you. I have continued to review articles, mostly from the oldest end of the list. You suggested that I take my time and not hurry through the review process. I have reviewed an article and have tagged it for deletion. I spent quite a bit of time assessing the references and found them to prove that the subject of the article is not notable. I am asking you review the article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Jarvis (author). We can't seem to reach a consensus. bpage (talk) 13:49, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Bfpage: I haven't nominated many articles for AfD, and would usually go for PROD first - takes up less of everyone's time. It's also generally better to save other editors' time by being succinct. In this case I think I might have nominated for PROD with the rationale "Non-notable: nothing to indicate that he passes WP:AUTHOR or WP:GNG". The first of those is part of WP:CREATIVE, a general listing of what creative people need to do to be considered notable; the second is the General Notability Guidelines. There seems nothing here to indicate that he passes either. (If you want to record your researches, you could add them to the article's talk page - though that does have the disadvantage that if the article is deleted the talk page goes too, so the comments are lost, whereas AfD discussions stay around forever, which I suppose is an argument for putting all your evidence there, useful if the article is ever re-created and needs to go to AfD again ... but a summarising first sentence would be appreciated by those who don't want to read further.) With PROD, if neither the original author nor anyone else bothers to challenge it within the one week allowed, the article is likely to be deleted if the first admin who looks at it after that week agrees with your rationale. AfD comes to the attention of many more people, and can drag on.

I'm not sure why you say "We can't seem to reach a consensus": one other editor has said "delete", and another has pointed out that the fact that you nominated it for deletion counts as your "!vote" for deletion, so you don't need to say so again. No-one much has joined in the discussion because ... well, perhaps because the man seems inherently non-notable! I've added my "!vote" (read as "not a vote", since AfD closers are supposed to look at strength of policy-based arguments, not just numbers). PamD 14:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

BSAC

PamD, I have no problem with maintaining inaccurate redirects (you just deleted my request to delete it), but is it sensible? The page was created by a new user who got stomped on by some uncivil editors with the result that after a day's work they gave up and (afaics) have never returned to WP. The small mistake of a preposition in the title is easily explained by its use in the journal of the society. I sent the new editor a welcome (4 months late) but doubt there'll be a response. I also changed all links except one on a talk page. Chris55 (talk) 21:32, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Chris55: I just saw it as a "plausible typo" redirect, better kept than deleted. It's so easy to get those little prepositions wrong. I agree that the initial tagging was very badly done (a) one minute after creation, and (b) going too fast to notice that it was thoroughly referenced, just not using inline linked cites. Some new page patrollers do a lot of harm to the encyclopedia by, as you say, "stomping" on new editors. We'll never know just why she didn't come back. Rather than change all the links, you could just have left the redirect to handle them - and the talk page link is another good reason not to delete the redirect, as it would have been broken by deleting the rd. But basically, there's no reason to delete it, it's not doing any harm and will potentially help someone, or avoid the article being re-created accidentally: if one editor could make the mistake, so could another. See Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Common_outcomes#Typos PamD 22:04, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the policy link. There was only 1 link that I changed, no double links, and the new article picked up several red links. Is there a policy on uncivil editors I could follow? Chris55 (talk) 07:48, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@Chris55: I've left a note at User_talk:BiH - and their talk page archives show several similar "hang on a minute" comments. There's stuff at Wikipedia:New pages patrol about not adding CSD tags within first few minutes of an article's life, but I can't quickly find anything more general, beyond WP:BITE. PamD 13:34, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Pam, an excellent tutorial in what to do. It's slightly depressing that exactly one minute after finishing his (I presume) answer to you he repeated the behaviour, including generating a long piece on the user's talk page. And indeed that page shows that another patroller had done exactly the same half an hour before on a similarly named page which the user may not have known what to do with. Looking at his scalp list, it's obvious that someone has to monitor these pages (tho not having the admin privileges to inspect deleted pages it's impossible to tell whether the deletions are justified). But it does seem to me that a speedy deletion request is the wrong weapon. What might be more appropriate would be some type of 'draft' status for new articles that don't meet some obvious requirements. (Personally I think new users should be discouraged from creating a new article before they have experience in editing other articles, but somehow 'new articles' is the only metric WP seems to understand.) Most of these new articles won't have any links pointing to them anyway so nobody will see them. Still I suppose I should look at what's currently promoted before proposing anything. Chris55 (talk) 20:18, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal

As a discussant at Talk:Legends_(TV_series)#The hatnote, I am calling your attention to Talk:Legend_(disambiguation)#Merger_proposal.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:22, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Contribution was constructive

My contribution to the Yorkshire sports section was constructive because it said Yorkshire City twice & both hyperlinks lead to the same page.

"Football clubs founded in Yorkshire include Barnsley, Bradford City, Doncaster Rovers, York City, Huddersfield Town, Hull City, Leeds United, Middlesbrough, Rotherham United, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and York City" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.208.118.232 (talk) 18:32, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. Next time please use an edit summary to explain your edit. PamD 21:54, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

St. Mary's

Good catch. I never even thought of looking for the church. I will apologize to the contributor. DGG ( talk ) 17:13, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@DGG: it was Demiurge1000 who suggested on User talk:Missvain that the church would be notable, which gave me the idea of looking for it. This thing has sprawled around far too many pages in the last few days! PamD 18:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for your note on my Signpost article. It's a small world- I grew up in Askam (next stop on the railway after Barrow) and did my first two degrees at Lancaster University, so I've passed through Silverdale plenty of times. Beautiful part of the world! J Milburn (talk) 20:23, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

St Mary's cont.

Dear Ms. Pam D,

Reference: your assistance with the book about St. Mary of the Visitation Church - Huntsville, Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_of_the_Visitation_Catholic_Church_(Huntsville,_Alabama)

Thank you so much for your kind research and assistance with this. It was very clever of you to discern the connections and we certainly appreciate the "further reading" reference.

I did not know there was an article about the church and having read it I suspect one of the researchers of the book contributed the article. He is a friend and retired engineer who researched and published the architectural aspects of the building in the history book, I will contact him to verify it. If it is he, I know he will be delighted about your efforts and message.

Interesting- I made the picture of the front of the church used in the article. It was made to document the funeral drapery marking the mourning period when Pope John Paul II passed-away.

I am delighted you discovered a way to reference our important history book; interested history researchers will appreciate your efforts.

p.s - There is a Leeds, Alabama, it's a few miles from our Birmingham!

(@DGG:, @Cullen328: - this is to share my response – Dear DGG and Cullen 328 we also appreciate your guidance and professionalism to keep Wikipedia a reliable source, I'm impressed.) Wikisjt3 (talk) 05:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@DGG:, @Cullen328: - as the above "pings" won't work ... PamD 06:32, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

PamD, I commend you for checking, finding the article, and adding the book as "further reading". I wish I had. The building itself is clearly notable, and adding information about the congregation itself would be a good addition. Drmies resides in Alabama. Perhaps he might take an interest, but that's up to him, of course. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:39, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• I'll be glad to have a look later today. Also, Jimbo is on vacation; perhaps he's spending some of it at home and you can ask him to drop by the library or, of course, the church, to take some pictures. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 14:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
• Hmm. I can't really find anything that has any kind of substance, besides the occasional wedding announcement. It's the local papers that have that, maybe, but it will take me some time to dig anything up. I'll give it another try when I'm back on campus; our library may have something. Drmies (talk) 19:48, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Untitled reply re St Mary's

Dear PamD

Thanks for your nice reply and additional information. I'm amazed at the complexity of Wikipedia. I had no idea about this, the protocols, codes and the ethical aspects. I have a new perspective.

I submitted my picture for the church web site gallery. So it’s possible the copy came from there. Also a possibility; it could have been taken by another photographer about the same time. I may research the source more and if it’s mine and I'm almost sure it is – I would be pleased to have the credit for it.

I’m interested in this Wikipedia world and may attempt another article. Now let me see, what will it be?

“Y’all” keep up the good work as “keepers” of the world’s knowledge!

Best regards, from north Alabama Wikisjt3 (talk) 22:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Ref. St Mary of the Visitation-Huntsville picture in question.

Dear Ms. PamD I apologize – it is not my picture. I checked my files and, in my picture the church has black mourning drapery. I see the picture in the article does not have the black drapery but in fact appears to have Christmas decorations. The picture is very similar to mine except mine has added text explaining the drapery. I apologize. I’m trying the “pingy” thing you mentioned earlier to also alert @Spyder Monkey of my confusion. I hope I did it right. If not could you kindly alert him? Regards, @Spyder Monkey: Wikisjt3 (talk) 22:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC) Wikisjt3 (talk) 22:48, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Nearly right: you don't need to type "@" within the {{ping}} (as I see you realised). Also, don't start a line with a space, or it ends up formatted weirdly, as yours did. And remember to use a proper section heading! There's a lot to learn about Wikipedia, but I've found it really interesting over the years. Good luck. Glad we've cleared up about the photo: I suppose if there's one viewpoint from which the church looks at its best, there will be a lot of photos taken from that point which look pretty similar! PamD 22:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Hit By Lightning

I nominated article for AfD. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hit By Lightning  SmileBlueJay97  talk  09:37, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@SmileBlueJay97: So I see: I see also that one of our more aggressive fellow editors is involved. I won't be getting involved in the discussion: yes, it's allowing incivility to win, but it's not worth my stress levels the day before taking a wikibreak. Good luck. PamD 15:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, until I'd linked all the names and found them going blue, I was quite expecting this to be some film-school production: the stub as written gave no evidence of any sort of notability. If they'd all been redlinks I'd have tagged it for CSD under "made up"! PamD 15:05, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Enjoy your break! Take a chance to read the points I've raised at the AfD discussion to increase your competence for when you return. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:02, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

This response from you was archived pretty quickly by Boleyn. I've no idea why, especially since you asked a question yourself, but thanks for trying anyway. I will mull over how best to treat all of the 306. It might be that a list would be the best temporary solution, with potted bios for each of them. As, if and when, entries in that list might be linked to specific biographical articles. we already have some, of course, eg: for Harry Farr. - Sitush (talk) 00:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Rose Ann(e) McGreevy biographical entries

Hi PamD, thank you so much for helping with this project being of a standard to be published. I am already in a bit of a spin about putting and "e" on her middle name..... and the fact that published material about Rose might have Ann either spelt differently or not included in the reference to Rose McGreevy.

I have just tried to edit her name in the only existing mention of Rose in Wikipedia in the article "Gay Star and Upstart" as well as my first attempt at an edit by including her then incorrectly spelt name in "List of Australian Artists" which I have subsequently attempted to edit with the deletion of the "e" that will break the link the the now queried "Rose Anne McGreevy" entry. Phew!

Anyway I am wondering if the most functional approach to all this is to have the disputed "Rose Anne McGreevy" page deleted and I go back to establishing the article again without the middle name in the heading..... and any subsequent links without the middle name. Thanks for reading all this Zaftiglet (talk) 02:28, 27 October 2014 (UTC)zaftiglet

@Zaftiglet: Don't worry. Wikipedia has a "move" facility and another editor has moved the article to the right spelling. This automatically creates a "redirect" from the former title, so no links are broken. When I'm on a real computer next I'll also make a redirect from the form without middle name - can't do on mobile. Several sources seem to use "Anne" - I don't know whether she changed it or they were just wrong!

The article is still a bit thin on sources to show notability. Were her works reviewed in any national newspapers or magazines? Not necessarily online: references to old hardcopy reviews are fine. Also, you have not yet contributed to the AfD discussion, only its talk page-but your coments there should be about Rose's notability, not about creating a memorial article for her widow etc. See WP:NOTAMEMORIAL or something -can't easily check on mobile. PamD 05:53, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

@Zaftiglet: OK, I have made that redirect, so she's findable on all reasonable variations - Anne, Ann, no middle name.

The article would be improved if there was a photo of Rose and/or of one of her works. There are copyright problems, especially with photos of works, but if you know someone who has themselves taken a photo of Rose which they would be happy to make freely available for use elsewhere with attribution to themselves via links, they could upload it to Wikipedia and you or they or another editor could add it to the article. It's much easier in copyright terms if it's the person who took the photo who uploads it, as "own work". PamD 08:39, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

@PamD: Thanks for all your help. On wednesday I will be sharing this project with many of Rose's colleagues, friends and family. I have good reason to believe that there will be much more information, images and other media that will not incur copyright claims. As far as I am aware it is OK to use content from Rose's blog http://roseannmcgreevy.blogspot.com.au/ I will find some pics of Rose and will work out how to put them into the sandbox Zaftiglet (talk) 13:01, 27 October 2014 (UTC)zaftiglet

@Zaftiglet: If you feel that Rose would have appreciated having a Wikipedia article about her, then please encourage people you meet on Wednesday not just to enhance this article but to join us in creating and improving articles about other topics - perhaps notable Australian women artists, or Ulster University alumnae, or whatever else catches their imagination - people, places, things, ideas. Some people are worried that there is a gender gap amongst Wikipedia editors and also in its content, with under-representation of women as subjects, and under-representation of women among the editors and thus perhaps under-representation of topics which are more of interest to women than men. Me, I just edit randomly, though I suppose articles on women tend to catch my interest more readily. You can see the range of articles I've started if you look at my user page, along with why I started each one: a motley range of topics and rationales.

Unfortunately we can't just add images on the basis of "As far as I am aware it is OK to use content from Rose's blog". There are laws about copyright, her copyright will now be owned by someone else according to her will, and Wikipedia is scrupulous about not infringing copyright (eg I can't add a photo of an illustrated pub sign because it's the copyright of the artist who painted it). But a photo of Rose, uploaded by the photographer, would be problem-free. For photos of her works, someone would need to sort out the copyright position: there's her copyright in the subject matter of the photo, as well as the photographer's rights - it's not an area where I've got any expertise. PamD 13:29, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

@PamD: What you have suggested is what I had in mind as well. I began this article after sharing initial conversations with Rose's partner and mutual friends at Articulate Project Space gallery where she had been exhibiting. I have alerted outside of Wikipedia regarding images and text attribution and copyright. Let's see how this grows Zaftiglet (talk) 23:50, 27 October 2014 (UTC)zaftiglet

@Zaftiglet: Sounds good. I hope you manage to introduce a whole new group of people to Wikipedia editing: some of them are sure to enjoy it once they get past the initial stage where it's all just a mass of rules and jargon. It can get quite addictive. Good luck. PamD 23:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Davis Strait Stub

Thank you for your consideration in helping me learn more about Wikipedia! I must have misread the stub article, (I might have then gone around the wiki spamming in stub templates) but i went back, and you're right. Davis Strait isn't a stub. It might require more info, but it is not a stub. Thank you for your help! P.S you may want to consider using nicer language to new people on the wiki. Just a thought. I never meant to "waste the time of other editors by adding inappropriate tags." BigRift (talk) 03:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

@BigRift: I'm sorry that you thought I didn't word it nicely enough. I never suggested you were doing anything wrong deliberately, but asked you politely to take more care. PamD 06:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd like your opinion

...before I take THIS live. Thanks, Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 12:52, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelQSchmidt: Why mine, I wonder? I'm no expert on social media, fashion/beauty websites, etc. (And I'm not a redhead!) Anyway, I've made a couple of tweaks to your draft - added a category, given a geog context. Not sure about the "has been ranked as one of the "top 50 Beauty Blogs" in the United Kingdom": by whom? It's sourced to the sisters' local (US) newspaper, which states it but gives no more information. I've just wasted too much time looking for a source, and the best I can find is this where a UK newspaper shows the list drawn up by a UK discount voucher site in 2011, of "the top 50 UK and international cosmetics sites.": this one is number 7 in the "Professional beauty blogs" section. Over to you. PamD 15:47, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I asked out of respect... because your account makes it appear you are likely female, and because you have great digging skills. Thank you for your tweaks. I am not myself female nor redhead and only wrote this in response to a search on an entirely different topic. Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 17:49, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelQSchmidt: Sorry if I sounded a bit negative there. I've created articles on all sorts of things or people I'm not particularly interested in, when they've shown up as red links or otherwise come to my attention. This one seems fairly well sourced, though I'm in no position to opine on the "Reliable source" status of Shape magazine, and the Daily Mail is considered questionable. PamD 18:03, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Your research allowed me to do this edit. Thank you. Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 18:57, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

It's live: How to be a Redhead. Schmidt, ^{Michael Q.} 19:07, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Error in language

On your userpage you have mentioned that you are looking after your late mother. I thing that there is an error involved here. It implies that she is not there anymore. I am sure that it is not the case. Just thought of letting you know. Diptanshu^Talk 16:38, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

@Diptanshu.D: No error: just read it more carefully, and note the change I made in this edit, with its edit summary. I think you missed the word "after". PamD 21:54, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I still could not understand. Anyway, it is ok if you have done it on purpose but still probably there is some error in syntax. Diptanshu^Talk 02:45, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

@Diptanshu.D: I could have said "... but currently mostly in Silverdale after spending 5 years caring for my Mother who lived there and has now died", but I chose to be more concise, and perhaps slightly elliptic. I'm sorry that you can't understand my English. PamD 16:10, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like 'I saw a dead cow walking on the road.' I prefer saying 'While walking on the road, I saw a dead cow.' The choice is yours. I just thought it worth pointing out. Whether I understand rightly or not, does not matter anyway. Diptanshu^Talk 19:37, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

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Speedy deletion nomination of Top o Selside

Hello PamD,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Top o Selside for deletion, because it seems to be inappropriate for a variety of reasons.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. ubiquity (talk) 22:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Top o Selside

I think you forgot to put the redir code in... It's sorted now. Peridon (talk)

@Peridon: Oops. Thanks for rescuing it! PamD 23:23, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Merge thanks you

		The Merge Barnstar
		For making Peter McDonald the (poet) and (critic) whole after eight years apart! – Wbm1058 (talk) 03:30, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Thanks. Is there a known record for "longest existence of two parallel articles on one topic"? I doubt that 8 years would crack it, but would be interested to know! PamD 09:15, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't know of any records, and am not aware of any statistics that might be kept in this area. I've done some analysis of the history of merging on Wikipedia, and feel that the processes went off track when "Duplicate articles" evolved into "Proposed mergers". We should be putting top priority into avoiding BLP content forks, but the identification of these has been lost in a sea of merge requests that are over issues of WP:Summary style, rather than true content forks. I'd like to find a way to separate those, so that the true forks get tended to with higher priority. – Wbm1058 (talk) 13:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hutchinson Middle School

Hi Pam. I've just spent over an hour investigating the editing histories of some of the creators/!voters. Intuition tells me that there may be a closer relationship between them than 'meats' the eye. Thoughts? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:52, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's interesting when a "an old user with a new account" just happens to come across an article whose deletion is proposed... and is so interested in editing the encyclopedia that they've made no other edits except to their own user page and talk page. And the article creator claims to be an experienced editor but seems very low on competence. Hmm. Worth watching. PamD 23:16, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Hannah Allam

I recognize and can agree with most of your cat deletes, but it seems to me that we need cats for:

• journalist - what the subject is
• Nieman Fellows - that's IMO a very important distinction, and she earned it, and we do have the category for it.
• Year of birth missing (living people) - so, where IS that data, and who is going to research it?

MaynardClark (talk) 14:34, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@MaynardClark:

• Journalists: we don't need the broader category when we have Category:American newspaper reporters and correspondents, a "child" category of Category:Journalists
• Nieman Fellows: I removed one of the two listings of this category
• Year of birth missing: standard practice. Ideally every article on a person includes their birth date. The category is added to those which don't. PamD 19:18, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

• Year of birth missing: I don't see Hannah Allam's birth year (but I could guess at it - ~1977???). MaynardClark (talk) 19:24, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@MaynardClark: Absolutely not: if you have the information from a reliable source, then add it and source it; if not, then don't. Guesswork has no place in an encyclopedia, most particularly when we are talking about living people. If she is truly notable, I would expect there to be an article somewhere which either gives her date of birth, or refers to her by age which, with the date of publication, gives us a "this year or the next" date of birth. But if the information is not available, just leave the category there. PamD 19:32, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@PamD:* Birth year: Are you using the difficulty (my? difficulty?) finding her birth year as a suggestion that she's not notable? I just don't find it, and I had hoped others might 'go after' that information. I merely said that I COULD guess her birth year, and I did NOT suggest that I could insert it.MaynardClark (talk) 19:40, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

• Birth year: This article [ http://newsok.com/oklahoma-reporter-strives-for-truth-safety-in-iraq/article/2874725 ] tells how she survived her 26th birthday in Baghdad (as Bghdad bureau Chief for McClatchy). By that reckoning, her birthday would be in November 1977. Of course, there's a reference to uly 2013, which would make her birthday uly 1976. That suggested 'range' only helps us search out whatever hypotheses we develop. Other online publications suggest circumstantially that her birthday is in July (because her writings in Julys of succeeding years mention her birthday - with the numbers increasing, but without pinning down a date or year. MaynardClark (talk) 19:45, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@MaynardClark: (by the way, there's no need to ping anyone on their own talk page, and it takes a pipe not a colon - I've fixed the above) That article looks to me to say that her 26th birthday was at least a year before she wrote in Nov 04, and after July 03, so it was July-Nov 03, so her birth was July-Nov 1977. Year of birth is all that matters, so we've got it. Nice find. I'll add it to the article. (I didn't see what you were meaning about July 13, or even July 03...?) PamD 23:36, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	You're doing a nice job! MaynardClark (talk) 20:02, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@MaynardClark: Thanks! PamD 16:44, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Davis

I know, i didn't redirect it though, someone else did [4]. The article wasn't linked in any of the roster templates and had the wrong disambiguation. I just assumed it didn't exist. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:18, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

@WikiOriginal-9: Sorry about that, yes, I'll drop a note on that editor's page. But in creating your article, you surely looked first at Todd Davis and noticed the hatnote there? (Which I added myself, on 14 Nov - and avoiding creation of duplicate articles is one of my motivations in adding hatnotes like that, along with helping readers find stuff they're looking for). Ah well, the existing article doesn't seem to have included any content that wasn't in yours, so it's probably not worth trying to do a retrospective merge, but please check a bit more carefully in future. I renamed the article from "Todd Davis(Linebacker)" to "Todd Davis (linebacker)", correcting spacing and capitalisation, but perhaps I should have checked myself that the detailed disambiguation was needed, something I've learned from this. There's always something new to learn about editing Wikipedia. PamD 16:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

See User_talk:Yankees10#Duplicate_articles. PamD 16:42, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

If the article does exist it is usually on the front page after goggling "Todd Davis NFL" for sources or whatever. I usually add the names to the disambiguation pages or hatnotes after i make the article. I forgot to this time. If I saw the linebacker one I probably would have copy and pasted the new text over it and then moved it. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:51, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome to request a merger. I don't find it all that necessary, but I don't care much either way.--Yankees10 17:39, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

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Amy Tan Award

	Amy Tan Award
	Thank you for participating in the First Annual Litquake Edit-a-thon on October 11, 2014 in parallel with Litquake, the San Francisco Bay Area's annual literature festival. Your content contributions and community collaboration helped make the event a success, and are appreciated! Rosiestep (talk) 22:49, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

"Collaboration"

Sorry about my "collaboration" snark a few days ago - I was grouchy at the people instantly proposing deletion for everything that contributor was trying to do, and I took it out on the wrong person. Squinge (talk) 09:24, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

@Sqinge: Thanks - good of you. Yes, a whole raft of people had been slamming templates on his/her articles, and I'd actually left messages suggesting improvements (though forgot to add a Welcome template ... perhaps subsconsciously assumed it would be at the top because there were already so many messages!). I hope Drmies' latest message will have an effect, though I doubt it and await the next stub. I demand no high standards for our minimum content for a stub, except that I really think every stub needs to have a single sentence of text - strongly implied in MOS even if not explicitly stated. We'll see how it goes now. Thanks again. PamD 09:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

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WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - December 2014

Delivered December 2014 by MediaWiki message delivery.
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01:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

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Your post to WP:ANI about abortion

In my experience, posting to WP:ANI about disruptive or biased editing in areas subject to discretionary sanctions is less useful than making a request at arbitration enforcement. That is just my opinion, and I don't claim to be unbiased. (That is, I know that I don't approve of abortion, but I do approve of treating different views on abortion in a pluralistic society with respect.) I suggest that you try Arbitration Enforcement. Have you template Marie Warren yet? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:01, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I wasn't sure where to go - as I said, I've had no dealings with sanctions before. Yes, I templated MW just as I hit "save" on my epic at ANI. I wasn't sure whether at this stage a warning from an admin about POV editing was all that was needed, or what. I was wary of reverting her when my first edits would presumably count as reversions of her original edits so that any further editing would breach 1RR and get me into bother. So I thought I'd let the admins lose on it. The statement at Talk:Abortion says "The Arbitration Committee has permitted Wikipedia administrators to impose discretionary sanctions on any editor editing this page or associated pages." which suggests that Admins, presumably via ANI, are the people to go to. I think at this stage I'll just see what happens. I've got to go out shortly, anyway. Thanks for your interest. PamD 18:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The place to request sanctions is generally at arbitration enforcement, which is monitored by particular administrators who specialize in enforcement of discretionary sanctions. In my view, they are very good at it. While WP:ANI is a place that conduct issues in general can be reported, posts there can get a lot of "drama". That is why I suggest that, if the disruptive editing continues, you go to arbitration enforcement rather than to any other noticeboard. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: Thanks. PamD 18:19, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for your help with wiki. I don't even know if this message is appropriate. I hope it is.

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New Wikipedia Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)

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VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

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

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

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

Llanbadarn Road

Dear PamD,

I have recently found a deleted page called Llanbadarn Road Ghost. On the page it stated that you wrote the original article. I am messaging you today to ask for any information you can give me related to the article as I am a previous tenant of the address mentioned in the article.

Many thanks and I look forward to your response.

Eburrows3291 (talk) 14:16, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

@Eburrows3291: Sorry to be slow in replying - it's been a busy week. The title is very vaguely familiar, but I'm sure I didn't create the page. I might have moved it to a better title at some point in its history. I don't know anything about this ghost, sorry, can't help. Where did you find a copy of the deleted page, I wonder? Perhaps the wayback machine or similar? It seems it was deleted as a hoax, so presumably whatever was in the article was unconvincing. If there really was a story about a ghost at your address, you might be able to find something through the archives of your local newspaper. (Or, if it's in a student area, the local uni or college newspaper). Good luck. PamD 23:54, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Ahah: rummaging around further I see that I didn't create the article: it was me who nominated it for deletion as a hoax. See User talk:RogerEmanuel - he was the editor who created the article. PamD 23:58, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Banned and Blocked

When you say banned,[5] you are talking about ban, BKPATIL1234‎ got indefinitely blocked from editing, not banned from this website. Bladesmulti (talk) 05:09, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

@Bladesmulti: Thanks for the reminder: that was careless of me. PamD 05:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The discussion is about the topic Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Calibre(unit). Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! War wizard90 (talk) 06:31, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

At the request of the DRN volunteer, I have moved this discussion to WP:ANI. War wizard90 (talk) 23:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

ANI Notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The discussion is about the topic Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Calibre(unit). Thank you. War wizard90 (talk) 23:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Strange units

I just chanced on your AfD for 'quarter yard' -- you made some comments about the contributor, which turned up some oddities. Everything is sourced to an "Encyclopaedia of units..." by some Cardarelli, F, said to be published by Springer, one of the "Academic publisher" barons. Well, searching for this encylopaedia on Google, I could not find anything, other than people selling it, which was not a unit article at WP. Perhaps by the same chap. I noticed they want something like 153 quid for this book, and also that it is said to be an expansion(?) of something by the same Cardarelli, F called "Scientific unit measurement". Well, all I found on the Springer website was a real curiosity (This seems to be an article in a journal on photosynthesis, but it is not *by* Cardarelli, it somehow has Cardarelli in the title): http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1006987512900

Title: "Cardarelli, F.: Scientific Unit Conversion" (colon and all) by Z. Šesták in Photosynthetica (1998)

This all seems very suspicious -- I just found the following page showing the supposed earlier version http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22641712-scientific-unit-conversion

How could M J Shields be the co-editor one time, then the translator for the expanded version? I see there is a "sample chapter" on the talk page for this contributor: is this sufficient to prove this is not an elaborate self-publishing scam?

Sorry to do a brain dump on your user page. I just found Quires, which is an immediate delete, because quire is already there, but I can't get the curation tool to work currently, and manually following these wikiprocedures just takes too long. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:46, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

After finding another 8 new articles with strange units I decided to dig more and noticed your name pop up, the ANI and the other fun. Just wondering what the status is. fyi... articles showed up on my radar because of a syntax problem that can cause Visual Editor to barf. Bgwhite (talk) 09:12, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Status? Well, here's Cardarelli's website: [6]. Who knows what is real these days, apart from money. I think this "encyclopaedia" should be regarded as tainted, and everything deleted. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:10, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Best wishes for a very Happy Christmas to all my talk page stalkers who celebrate the day, and for a healthy and happy 2015, with minimal Wiki-dramah and maximal constructive editing all round, to you all. PamD 00:26, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2014

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2015 already

Hi Pam. No frills - just a quiet ‘’all the best’’ to you for 2015 and I hope you’ll continue to be around on Wikipedia for a long time to come. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:46, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Thanks, and best wishes for a dramah-free 2015 to you and all of us! PamD 15:49, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year

		Happy New Year !!!
		Michael Q. Schmidt talkback is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and aHappy New Year, whether it be someone with whom you had disagreements in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings. - MQS

((ping|MichaelQSchmidt}} Thanks, and Happy New Year to you too. PamD 15:50, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

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thanks for the cleanup

I usually notice when I'm working too late, but apparently I didn't this time; I will take it as a warning. DGG ( talk ) 20:59, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Stub sorting

Hi. You recently recategorized Uezu House with Template:Japan-struct-stub. While this building is in Japan, it is not of Japanese origin i.e. a Japanese building. This just made me curious about categorizing buildings with similar circumstances. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 15:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

@Sturmgewehr88: I think "Japanese" in the stub label can be taken as the first of the senses on the dab page Japanese: "Something from or related to Japan,...". Being built in Japan relates it to Japan. The "structure" stubs are a child category of "geo" stubs, ie buildings and structures considered as geography, place-dependent, rather than as part of a culture. Does that help, I wonder? If there was a stub tag for "Ryukyuan culture" it would be appropriate to use it too, but there isn't. I'll add that category, though as it seems perhaps more useful than the existing "Category:Ryukyuan Kingdom". PamD 15:25, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The building was built before Japan controlled the island, so I wouldn't say "built in Japan". Territorial changes make things confusing, but I don't think a Ryukyuan building becomes a Japanese building just because Japan owns it currently. But the new category is very good. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 15:35, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I guess a better example of this would be a British fort in India. Is it Indian because it's in India and India controls it currently, or is it British because it was built by the British and Britain controlled India in the past? ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 15:40, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

@Sturmgwehr88: The building exists in a place which is currently Japan, India, etc, and stubs are pretty broad-brush. But categories are much more precise and can reflect national military history, national architectural styles or whatever. There are similar issues about someone of nationality X who's an established academic in country Y. Where there are multiple relevant stub tags, they can all be added, but there doesn't seem anything else here. PamD 16:37, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For being such a nice guy on talk pages. Clubjustin4 (talk) 12:43, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Clubjustin4: Thanks. I try to be helpful while avoiding aggravation! PamD 12:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 9

The Wikipedia Library

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

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

Read the full newsletter

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

WikiProject Yorkshire Newsletter - January 2015

Delivered January 2015 by MediaWiki message delivery.
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01:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2015

• In the media: ISIL propaganda video; AirAsia complaints

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Nomination of Cold start (automotive) for deletion

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Rezin (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 January 2015

• Op-ed: Articles for creation needs you

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Woodie

Please leave the "discussion ongoing" tag on the page until the discussion is closed. The discussion is still ongoing. Thank you 24.179.184.46 (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2015 (UTC) Please do not remove the discussion tag until a consensus is reached and the discussion is closed. Thank you. 24.179.184.46 (talk) 21:17, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

No, there is no relevant discussion. PamD 21:21, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 January 2015

• From the editor: Introducing your new editors-in-chief

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Untitled Trivikram Srinivas project

Hi. Someone moved the page to S/O Satya Moorti and you moved it to Son of Satya Moorti. No reliable source is found and thus i reverted those changes. But the edit history has been erased completely until the last edit. Please help me. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 08:53, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I Googled and found several hits for the title, though none of them looked particularly reliable - not my specialist area - but went along with the editor who'd given it a name, just expanding it to what seemed to be the full form. Yes, perhaps I should just have moved it back to the "Untitled project" title, apologies. But cut and paste moves are not the way to do it, so I've reverted your changes. See Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests#Requests_to_revert_undiscussed_moves. Apologies for an early-morning misjudgement. PamD 09:21, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

@Pavanjandhyala: As you've seen, an admin has moved the article back to its original title. I'm sorry that I made matters worse, after another editor's initial move, by my attempt to tidy it up by moving to a fuller version of the unreliably-sourced title instead of reverting the move. But you should not have tried to fix things with a "copy-and-paste" move: that is almost never the solution to anything in the encyclopedia, unless done in limited circumstances with great care and complicated record-keeping so that the history of the article is not lost. I think all is now well. I find it very strange that a film due for release next month hasn't yet got a title, but I guess it's all good for publicity, as it keeps the fans talking about the film/project! PamD 16:35, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I just wanted to restore but in the process made this mistake. Regarding the last lines, The film is almost complete but is still untitled. It is expected to be a summer release and is not yet titled. I purposefully left that release date as 5 February 2015 as i want the makers to release a press note that the film would be a summer 2015 release. If you can observe Trivikram's past works, you may not fell strange that the film is not yet titled though filming is almost complete. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 16:51, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Michael Rizzello

Hello and thanks for what you added to the Michael Rizzello article - that article is certainly outside of what I would normally edit but last summer on a beautiful sunny day when I was in London for a niece's wedding , a group of us were walking down Oxford Street and I was struck by a sculpture on the side of a striking looking building - to my eye it looked 'Art Deco', 1930s ish and so I did a bit of 'research' on it - turned out I was very wrong , it was rather modern, and designed by someone called Michael Rizzello, so I had a kind of stub article on a subpage for a while and then thought I'd move it to article space , fairly stark as it was, and I'm glad I did now , because you've added to it, and I think his work is good really - I moved from Yorkshire aged 2 so unfortunately I don't really know the area but I've stayed loyal in sporting allegiances at least! Sayerslle (talk) 15:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

No

I am not a beginner, so do not patronise, if you don't mind. I have started these articles. If you would like to add to them with relevant info, then you can. Please feel free to make helpful additions - but negative deductions are not helpful. Jgrantduff (talk) 23:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jgrantduff: "... not a beginner ...": in that case I wonder why you create unsourced, unlinked, stubs, including those about living people? PamD 23:24, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Inter-American Journal of Philosophy

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, and it appears to include material copied directly from http://ijp.tamu.edu/journal/node/1.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. The article will be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues.

If substantial content is duplicated and it is not public domain or available under a compatible license, it will be deleted. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. You may use such publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.) CorenSearchBot (talk) 17:29, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi PamD, I'm following up on some of your advice from last week. I quote it here below:

And a comment for Kim: that banner image is an amazing artwork: I'm surprised that there's (a) no acknowledgement of the artist, and (b) nothing written about it on the website: I can see it going south to north as left to right, with all sorts of images of the Americas, but some hints as to what I'm seeing would make it even better. Could I suggest that you (ie the editorial people) include some information about it on the journal's website? Just as print journals with interesting covers (well, perhaps I'm thinking more of magazines) will have a note somewhere inside the cover to give information about the cover image.

I won't be using the image from the website, it's too big for the Wikipedia entry. Instead, I have a logo for the Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, that is ours to use. I'm wondering how to upload it to the Wikipedia page for the journal. I first tried using the upload wizard, but I'm not authorized to use it yet. Then I looked into the picture tutorial page. I welcome any guidance you may have. Again, thank you very much for you help ! - Kim — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diazk3 (talk • contribs) 02:34, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	I spend a lot of time researching at University of Sheffield central library. Jgrantduff (talk) 10:57, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

• starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog:  blue ,
• takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation:  green ,
• might remove or lose your work, like removing a link:  red , or
• is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window:  gray.

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
• Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
• Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.

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

Urban Districts

Creating basic articles on the Urban Districts arose out of developing the London Wiki (on Wikia) and an interest in the history of local government in general. In part starting things off to encourage others to get involved as it is a very large field.

I don't know to what extent London's local government is 'a special case' but there have been quite a few 'interesting characters' involved - from George Bernard Shaw and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson to a circus owner and a chimney sweep mayor (and one person had a run-in with a ghost story) - other regions are worth exploring. Jackiespeel (talk) 10:58, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

As I say on the Urban Districts talk page, I am adopting one line of approach - 'thin slice development' and will go back and develop those which have not been improved. Jackiespeel (talk) 14:16, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jackiespeel: I can't find any mention of "thin slice development", so not sure what you mean. Please reconsider your current practice of creating masses of articles which don't start with a sentence, and which don't have much in the way of useful links, categories, etc, when it would be so simple for you to create much better articles. The total effort involved is so much less if you add stuff routinely to these stubs as you create them, rather than leaving them for other editors to find them randomly and improve them one by one. Alternatively, please consider creating the mini stubs in your user space and working them up to a reasonable extent before putting them into the encyclopedia. Thanks. PamD 19:08, 2 February 2015 (UTC

You say you have 'created a motley collection of articles or stubs' - I am being slightly more systematic. Developing the article is likely to require 'a number of people' providing 'thin slices' of information/development.

Quite frankly - #it does not actually matter to me# whether I create start articles on WP or develop the material in a different format elsewhere on the Wikiverse. Jackiespeel (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

People have different ways of 'systematically improving an area of Wikipedia', depending in part upon the amount of time they can spend on such activities and the resources available to them/the amount of information available - and so long as the method/plan is clear it does not necessarily matter which is selected. In this case some of the geographical areas are monitored by persons and bots - and I am considering various options as to presentation.

Do you wish to collaborate on developing the articles? Jackiespeel (talk) 10:41, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jackiespeel: I've just upgraded Yeardsley cum Whaley Urban District from [[7]]. It took a fraction under 10 minutes, and that included finding it at TNA, and working using Madron UD, in another county, as a template. For another editor coming at it randomly it would have taken a lot more to produce an equivalent improvement. For you to have just simply created a better stub in the first place would presumably have taken that 10 minutes or less, once you got into the swing of it.

If you're "systematically improving", please take the time to create better little stubs. At the least, give them an opening sentence, and a source for your information: if you know what happened to them in 1936 or whenever, you presumably have a source, so please cite it. (And note that "MB" in 1930s context is Municipal Borough not "Metropolitan ...", and that Wikipedia seems to have an established style for these as "Municipal Borough of X" rather than "Penzance Municipal Borough". I made a redirect from Municipal Borough of Penzance to the section of the Penzance article where local govt was discussed, as being more useful than a red link.)

You say that the method used to improve the encyclopedia "does not matter", but I think the consensus is that all articles must have sources and complete sentences. Your stubs have neither, and it would take so little extra time to provide those - even if you can't spare 10 minutes to produce as good a stub as we can do from the limited info in Vision of Britain and TNA, with sources.

You ask if I wish to collaborate on developing these articles: I've collegially offered you some suggestions, and I reckon that in the ones I've worked on you've got a template you could easily use to develop future new articles by copy-and-pasting the framework (there's too little text in there to count as any sort of copyvio). If you'd agree to create future articles along something like those lines, I will add to my "to do list" the job of upgrading the ones you've already created (did it start with Amlwch on 7th Jan?). I'm not going to get stuck into it right now because I have promises to myself to get some real life stuff done before embarking on any Wikipedia projects. PamD 13:13, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

And I've just rescued Alnwick Urban District because someone had redirected it to Alnwick District from its previous minimal state. PamD 13:53, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

You assume that I have plenty of time to fish around for information etc on 'rather a lot of red links' - the entries are a side-product from other research. What I can provide at the present is what I have been doing now - and it is as practical for me to create these entries here #or# create lists of districts by county on Local History wiki (which will then have to be converted to WP entries). 15:48, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I make no such assumption and I didn't mention red links. I do assume that you've got a source for each article, rather than knowing all the dates and successor authorities off by heart. If you've got a source, please cite it. It takes only seconds to do readers the courtesy of starting the article with a real sentence "X is a ...", rather than littering the encyclopedia with non-sentences. But I'm clearly not going to persuade you of anything. I predict that your stubs will get plastered with unsightly tags pointing out their deficiencies, by editors who enjoy tagging rather than fixing things. More and more of them will be turned into redirects to their successor authorities, losing some of the content you've added. Eventually some more constructive editors will spend time on cleaning up and enhancing some of the stubs, but you could have done some of the fixing yourself with minimal extra effort while constructing the stubs. Sad. PamD 15:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

From what I can see the material on the Urban and Rural Districts is based on reliable sources - which would probably include the Municipal Yearbooks (which I have seen in The National Archives). The links I provide are from TNA's website - which, like the MYB is a reliable source.

I will develop the relevant material on the Local History wiki - I do not see any point in continuing this discussion. Jackiespeel (talk) 18:51, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

SPI

Hello. Thanks for all your reversions of template damage by IP sockpuppets on various Super7 and 7icons articles. You might be interested in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Natly 88. If I've left anything out, please feel free to add to "Comments by other users" there. Thanks, Dai Pritchard (talk) 06:49, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@Dai Pritchard: Congratulations on an epic posting to SPI! I've just been dancing round the edges of the mess after finding a couple of the articles while stub-sorting and yesterday wimped out and took them off my watchlist out of exasperation. Well done for persevering. PamD 08:38, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

LOL my first epicness, ever. Thanks :-) Dai Pritchard (talk) 08:45, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 10

The Wikipedia Library

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

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

Read the full newsletter

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

Thanks for catching my DAB error

Hey, thanks for catching that DAB error I made on British Annals of Medicine, Pharmacy, Vital Statistics, and General Science earlier. Guess I was moving too quickly for my own good. It's a good reminder to slow down and edit more scrupulously. wia (talk) 01:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015

• From the editor: A sign of the times: the Signpost revamps its internal structure to make contributing easier

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation and OTRS team both publish reports, indicate operating changes

• Editorial: Conspiracy theories distract from real questions about grantmaking report

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• Interview: Meet a paid editor

• In the media: Kanye West rebranded; Wikipedia in court; editors for hire

• Featured content: Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Precious again

outlying walks
Thank you, womenkind editor who fells for the "fascination of an infinite jigsaw puzzle", for quality articles such as South West Coast Path and Leeds Country Way, in team and solo effort, for gnomish care of biographies in page moves and corrections, for 'please stay', - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (26 August 2010)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:39, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

A year ago, you were the 789th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words, @Gerda Arendt:. Unfortunately I can't celebrate World Women's Day by joining an editathon as I'm off on a trip with the local WI to visit the Manchester home of celebrated woman novelist Mrs Gaskell! PamD 08:09, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The day doesn't matter too much ;) - Did you see the strong woman on top of my talk? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:13, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015

• Special report: An advance look at the WMF's fundraising survey

• News and notes: WikiWomen's History Month—meetups, blog posts, and "Inspire" grant-making campaign

• In the media: Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West

• In focus: WMF to NSA: "stop spying on Wikipedia users"

• Traffic report: Wikipedia: handing knowledge to the world, one prank at a time

• Featured content: Here they come, the couple plighted –

• Op-ed: Why the Core Contest matters

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

R. Zygmunt Pawlowski

Hello PamD,

As the editor of the article I put in on myself, I appreciate your input. I did not want to make this an autobiographical article, but as a reference to my contribution as being the designer of the Nevada State Tartan. For nearly two decades I have been designing and researching tartan and its significance in American culture. I was asked to add my name to the list of Polish Americans in Wikipedia from the Clan Wallace Worldwide of which I am a lifetime member because of my designation as the designer of the Nevada State Tartan. In creating a page with my name, I saw that nearly all of the people referenced in the List of Polish Americans had personal articles about themselves. There were also notations that citation was needed or that the name appears in red stating that there was no information on the name listed.

This is my first contribution to Wikipedia so I was sure that I was not going to make the article about myself totally correct. It really is not as important that my name is not associated with an article, but it gives my contribution credibility as a Polish American. I have several third party sources that I can site and I would really appreciate any input you have to assist me in the best way in which I can be represented.

I have attached the third party links, articles, and government verifications to my legitimacy:

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Again I thank you for your insight on my submission, and I await your reply Ziggy Pawlowski (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 05:07, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ziggy Pawlowski: No-one's denying that you designed the tartan (and I tidied up the entry for the tartan in List of U.S. state tartans while looking at it). But I'm not sure that designing a state tartan is sufficient claim of WP:NOTABILITY for a Wikipedia article. I haven't time to look at all of those refs: do any of them say anything about you beyond the fact that you designed this tartan? If so, then someone else might like to create an article about you. You could add a note at Talk:Tartan to describe yourself and how you think you measure up against WP:Notability (people) or WP:CREATIVE, but it's not your job to create an article about yourself, or even to add yourself to the list of notable Polish-Americans. You say "I was asked to add my name to the list of Polish Americans in Wikipedia", but that's not how it works here. See WP:AUTO and WP:COI. If you are interested in improving the encyclopedia, please find some other articles to edit. If you are only here to promote yourself, please find another website to do so. Thanks. PamD 08:23, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Boss of Wikipedia?

Hi PamD!

I want to tell you something. Your messages sound insulting and mean, as if you're the big boss of Wikipedia. Can't Nicky handle all this? I was just trying to make Wikipedia better when I was linking words like "Beater". And why can't you leave "Bulgaria" alone? I know very well that sometimes Wikipedia links country names. Please, DON'T act like the big boss of everything! And if I did do something wrong, I'm sure you're able to make your messages nicer. See, doesn't this sound mean and unkind?

Please refrain from making test edits in Wikipedia pages, even if you intend to fix them later. Your edits do not appear to be constructive and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. None of the links you made led to anything useful - they were either completely irrelevant or disambiguation pages, except for "Bulgaria", and we don't generally link country names. Please take more care when linking.

That's what you wrote to me! So please, just be nicer in your messages and don't act THE BOSS.

Thank you, Snowy Eagle. Snowy Eagle (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Quick note: I blocked Snowy Eagle for vandalism. I considered deleting this section but realised that you would see it anyway, so I felt I might as well let you decide - feel free to also remove my comment, as you prefer. Samsara 02:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Atkinson, Peter, born 1735

Hello Pam - hope all is well at your end. I've started to improve the earlier Atkinson article but can't work out how to change his date of birth in the header from 1725 to 1735 - you can tell that I'm rather rusty! The other Atkinson's dates are 1780-1843. Best wishes GT

@GuillaumeTell: Good to hear from you. Have moved him to Peter Atkinson (architect, born 1735), and updated the Peter Atkinson dab page for both of them. Thought I might have seen you in Leeds last week at CDWS's memorial service - RPC was there, and lots of other old faces, and Melvyn Bragg and Simon Armitage spoke. Quite a gathering. We've settled for rural life in Silverdale, though still have the house in Leeds until we get more sorted out. PamD 23:16, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

PS I see the dates of the son were altered without edit summary in the sole edit of an IP editor: do they need amendment? I leave it to you. PamD 23:21, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

• FYI, I was working on the home of another Atkinson architect today - Silvermere, home of William Atkinson (architect). I've no idea if they are related but it's a curious coincidence. Andrew D. (talk) 01:08, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I was just passing by-and thought I ld mention that I have a limited edition 1933 privately printed genealogy by Harold W. Atkinson of the families of Atkinson of Roxby and Dearman of Braithwaite., a notable Quaker. In its 515 well indexed pages there are very few William A. and fewer Peter A. s. He divides the Atkinsons up iton the A. of Roxby, Lincolnshire, Coniston and Applethwaite, Crake Hall near Kendal, New Hutton and Kendal and sundries. If you have an specific queries- you know my talk page.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 12:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015

• From the editor: A salute to Pine

• News and notes: SUL finalization imminent; executive office shake-ups at the Foundation

• In the media: NYPD editing articles regarding allegations of police brutality and misconduct

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.

Invitation

Thank you for using VisualEditor and sharing your ideas with the developers.

Hello, PamD,

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

You can share your thoughts by clicking this link. You may respond to this quick, simple, anonymous survey in your own language. If you take the survey, then you agree your responses may be used in accordance with these terms. This survey is powered by Qualtrics and their use of your information is governed by their privacy policy.

More information (including a translateable list of the questions) is posted on wiki at mw:VisualEditor/Survey 2015. If you have questions, or prefer to respond on-wiki, then please leave a message on the survey's talk page.

Unsubscribe from this list • Sign up for VisualEditor's multilingual newsletter • Translate the user guide

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

Orphaned non-free image File:Sutton High School logo.jpeg

⚠

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

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 20:38, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

@Stefan2: The school has a new logo, File:Sutton High School logo 2015.jpg, which is used where the old one previously was - with hindsight I should probably have loaded it as a replacement at the existing filename. The old orphaned one should be deleted. Thanks. PamD 22:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Celebrate

	Yoor Know Phool
	Have a humorous day filled with lots of PHUN on this April Fools Day 2015. Any annoyance is purely coincidental.   Bfpage |leave a message  21:19, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 April 2015

• In focus: WMF's latest strategy document shows successes, vagueness, and the need for better data

• In the media: Wiki-PR duo bulldoze a piñata store; Wifione arbitration case; French parliamentary plagiarism

• Featured content: Stop Press. Marie Celeste Mystery Solved. Crew Found Hiding In Wardrobe.

• Traffic report: All over the place

• News and notes: New edits-by-mail option will "revolutionize" Wikipedia and its editor base

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VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

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

Disambiguation link notification for April 4

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

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Better late than never

This is old news, and unimportant news, but on the off chance you find it useful...

I just saw an old thread from a few months ago where you said there was no on-wiki evidence that a particular user was male. FYI, there's a template, {{gender}}, which will return a user's gender if they have specified it in their preferences.

So:
{{gender|Floquenbeam}} gives he
{{gender|PamD}} gives she

---Floquenbeam (talk) 22:53, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Article Jalapa Devi Primary school Batase

This message, below, was dumped onto my user page by an editor who appears not to have spotted the difference between a user page and a user talk page. Copying it here for the record, though I have replied at their user talk page. PamD.

Hello,Good evng sir

The article jalapa devi primary school is now being discussed for the proof of addressing whether it is genuine article or not.Well,it's a talk of legitimate and wanted matter as well however I wanted to let you know that I have added at least a citation and a reference to meet the requirement of Wikipedia and it gives you a trustful base to know it is a article fitted for Wikipedia to save .But I know so far that some of your groups including you are trying make deprived from being written and created article for Wikipedia, aren't you? How this article can be fake when there are already provided with citations and references? I hope and wanna say,I am a pure Nepali citizen living in Nepal and I do some helps to Wikipedia for my free time not for jokes and enjoys but just for valuable record of article. With the best regard.Mahendra Niraula (talk) 16:05, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Reply to user:PamD's message

Hello, PamD I am really sorry for my mistakes I made here in the process of improving the articleJalap devi primary school, terathumand I wanted to let you know that I am not going to be abusive to any editor Upto now and I think you may be considering such negative ideas on the the basis of my few weak grammatical elements on article writing but please I request you to not understand with any such negative mentality to these messages and no anything else indicate with the sentence"I know so far that you are trying......." that my contribution to Wikipedia is going to be only pointless and futile because my every attempts of writing article are being critisized and showed nonsensical reasons.Please sir , since it is a discussion talk page, I am trying to put my unsatisfactory matters and be understood that it is not any aggressive blows but it is just convincing ideas to the case of avoiding controversy about article and it's clear that no any such a attempt are made to attack person. I know it's a place where there are included just the article with enough sources and proofs. Happy editing, thanks.Mahendra Niraula (talk) 01:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2015

• Wikimania: Choice of small village for Wikimania 2016 ruffles feathers

• News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments evaluation sees diminishing returns and increasing cost

• In the media: Scottish MEP blocked for edit warring; ranking articles by importance

• Featured content: Another day, another dollar

• Traffic report: Bruce, Nessie, and genocide

• Recent research: Military history, cricket, and Australia targeted in Wikipedia articles' popularity vs. quality; how copyright damages economy

• Technology report: VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 11

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 11, March-April 2015
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs)

• New donations - MIT Press Journals, Sage Stats, Hein Online and more
• New TWL coordinators, conference news, and new reference projects
• Spotlight: Two metadata librarians talk about how library professionals can work with Wikipedia

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:29, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Persondata RfC

Hi, You participated in the previous Persondata RfC. I just wanted to notify you that a new RfC regarding the methodical removal of Persondata is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Thanks, —Msmarmalade (talk) 07:53, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

New question raised regarding Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request

Some opposers of this move have now contended that there is a "Critical fault in proposal evidence", which brings the opinions expressed into question. Please indicate if this assertion in any way affects your position with respect to the proposed move. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:38, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2015

• News and notes: "Inspire" grant-making campaign concludes, grantees announced

• Featured content: The amorous android and the horsebreeder; WikiCup round two concludes

• In the media: Guggenheim image donation; Wiki campaign gets advertising award

• Special report: FDC candidates respond to key issues

• Traffic report: The grim ship reality

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:42, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

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

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

• News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out

• Blog: How Wikipedia covered Caitlyn Jenner’s transition

• Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia

• Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings

• Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier

• Special report: Towards "Health Information for All": Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013

• In the media: Anonymous Australian editing targets football player, shooting victim

• Traffic report: A rather ordinary week

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Ping

Hello PamD,

I don't know how closely you've followed the research project about VisualEditor, but since they will be moving into the data analysis phase before long, I wanted to personally ask a few "regulars" at WP:VEF to let me know if they’d seen anything unusual during the last week or two. (You're in the top 10 all-time editors at WP:VEF.) Anyway, if you've seen anything or have any thoughts on it, then please let me know. There's a thread open at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Test feedback if you want, or you can always leave a note at my talk page or send me e-mail. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I'm afraid I haven't looked at VE much recently - I've been so fed up with its unusability for my own regular editing - see many threads on the feedback page - that I've rather lost interest. PamD 11:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I know that there are a few bugs with your name on them. It's been a few weeks since I reminded the PM about the categories/stub sorting problems. Maybe it's time to do that again. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library needs you!

The Wikipedia Library

Call for Volunteers

The Wikipedia Library is expanding, and we need your help! With only a couple of hours per week, you can make a big difference in helping editors get access to reliable sources and other resources. Sign up for one of the following roles:

• Account coordinators help distribute research accounts to editors.
• Partner coordinators seek donations from new partners.
• Outreach coordinators reach out to the community through blog posts, social media, and newsletters or notifications.
• Technical coordinators advise on building tools to support the library's work.

Sign up to help here :)

Delivered on behalf of The Wikipedia Library by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library needs you!

The Wikipedia Library

Call for Volunteers

Did you know that Wikipedia has its own library? The Wikipedia Library is seeking volunteers from those in galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

• Become an account coordinator to distribute research accounts to editors
• Get involved in some of our special projects:
  • Expand our Resources page with free resources for editors in all subject areas
  • Help develop a template for citing archival collections
  • Write guides to accessing and using library resources

Sign up to help here :)

Delivered on behalf of The Wikipedia Library by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:18, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 June 2015

• News and notes: Chapter financial trends analyzed, news in brief

• Traffic report: Two households, both alike in dignity

• In the media: Arbitration case attracts media coverage; Wikipedia in Israel

• Featured content: Just the bear facts, ma'am

• Technology report: Wikimedia sites are going HTTPS only

• Blog: Making Wikipedia’s medical articles accessible in Chinese

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:09, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

RE:Stubs in English Wikipedia

Hi, thanks for the notice, next time I'll follow your advices--Samuele Madini (talk) 16:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 June 2015

• In the media: Wikipedia wins Asturias Prize; printing out Wikipedia; HTTPS switch

• Arbitration report: An election has consequences

• In focus: Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe

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Disambiguation link notification for June 19

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

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For anyone reading: this was a conscious link to a dab page, with a {{dn}} template, because the cryptic abbreviation "RES" was used in the article. PamD 20:51, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

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:Realmmb

Note - reply to my comment on this edit.PamD 09:28, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you please give me example...I can't find one...(of wikipedia deletion reques)

RealmmbTalk 09:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC) RealmmbTalk 09:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@Realmmb: See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion which explains the rules for nominating an article for speedy deletion. There is then a template for each criterion, eg {{db-a1}}. If you have correctly nominated an article for Speedy Deletion, an Admin will delete it very soon. If you want to nominate something for deletion but it does not fit these criteria, and you think its deletion will be uncontroversial, you need to make a WP:Proposed Deletion; it will then be deleted after a week uness anyone has objected to this deletion. The third deletion route is WP:Articles for deletion. In each case, please read about the process before nominating an article. PamD 09:26, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@Realmmb: I have also just noticed that you nominated it for deletion 2 minutes after it was created. Please never do this, unless an article is clearly an attack page or a copyright violation. Many editors "save" the first version of their article before adding sources and more content within minutes, and very new articles should not be nominated for deletion. PamD 09:32, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

geo-stub

Thanks for that. I had looked at Sugar Creek (Driftwood River) and tried to guess at what the NC version of {{Indiana-geo-stub}} was, trying {{NC-geo-stub}}, {{North Carolina-geo-stub}} and {{North-Carolina-geo-stub}} (and eventually omitting the template when none of those worked in "preview"); it didn't occur to me to try the unspaced, unhyphenated version. Think we should make some of the other versions I tried into redirects? -sche (talk) 19:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

@-sche: It seems quite a consistent pattern that multi-word placename stubs are unspaced but with caps - {{NewZealand-geo-stub}}, {{WestYorkshire-geo-stub}} etc - so I don't think redirects would be a good idea, we could end up with so many of them. I usually try to find the right stub by going up a hierarchy of (non-stub) categories till I find one with a stub category, eg from Category:Rivers of North Carolina to "Bodies of water of ..." to "Landforms of ..." to "Geography of ..." where you find Category:North Carolina geography stubs - which I now see actually shows there are subdivisions, for those who know their geography! Alternatively, sometimes I'll add a broad stub tag like {{US-geo-stub}}, then do "Preview" to look at its category, and look to see if it has appropriate subdivisions (eg some Indian states have geo-stub tags for districts, others only for the state). Glad to be able to help out on this one, anyway! PamD 21:52, 2 July 2015 (UTC)