User talk:The wub/archive39

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Sgt. Pepper straw poll[edit]

There is currently a straw poll taking place here. Your input would be appreciated. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:59, 7 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it any help to have a "Noob's progress" to look at?[edit]

Thanks for your Wikipedia Help Survey message on my talk-page. It was a pleasure to contribute.

I've been leaving a kind of vapor-trail on my user-page - in case it's useful as an example of how the learning-your-way-in process looks / has been looking (in one random case). It might be useful as an example of the kind of context where the various Help facilities may get used - and of course as a note of reactions. (I've also left a mention of it on the Help Project talk-page.)

SquisherDa (talk) 04:54, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's great, thanks very much! I actually saw it already in your answers to the survey. It's really helpful to see how you learned things, and in what order. the wub "?!" 09:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Editor Retention[edit]

In case you missed my comment on the Help page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention was just started, evidently not realizing all the good work you are doing here in case you want to go over and see how these can work together. I've also told them to come here, but I'm not sure if they got the full import. CarolMooreDC 18:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Carol, I had missed that actually. Been quite distracted by RL issues the past few days, so not been on-wiki that much. It looks exciting though, and seems to have sparked a lot of discussion already which is great. I'll follow up more when I get a chance.
Are you going to be at Wikimania? If so it would be great to chat at some point. And I'll just plug the panel I'm involved in too :) Submissions/Wikimedia Community Fellows: what we're researching on Friday afternoon. the wub "?!" 01:08, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be floating around Wikimania. Will look for workshop on schedule and possibly peak in, but won't be there much after 3 pm. Forcing self to finish an off wiki writing project have been procrastinating on for several years - mostly cause doing wikistuff - so have been watching Help pages but not really paying much attention. If I didn't have to sleep I could do both!! :-( CarolMooreDC 15:38, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Article Feedback newsletter[edit]

Hey all!

So, big news this week - on Tuesday, we ramped up to 5 percent of articles :). There's been a lot more feedback (pardon the pun) as I'm sure you've noticed, and to try and help we've scheduled a large number of office hours sessions, including one this evening at 22:00 UTC in the #wikimedia-office connect channel, and another at 01:00 UTC for the aussies amongst us :). I hope to see some of you there - if any of you can't make it but have any questions, I'm always happy to help.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Hey Wubby I didn't vandalise the page. It was my brother. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.86.191 (talk) 15:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FYI[edit]

Decided to pick you for some reason: [1] [2]. I showed them what a real block looks like. =) -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 00:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks for that :) the wub "?!" 00:31, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AFT5 newsletter[edit]

Hey again all :). So, some big news, some small news, some good news, some bad news!

On the "big news" front; we've now deployed AFT5 on to 10 percent of articles, This is pretty awesome :). On the "bad news", however, it looks like we're having to stop at 10 percent until around September - there are scaling issues that make it dangerous to deploy wider. Happily, our awesome features engineering team is looking into them as we speak, and I'm optimistic that the issues will be resolved.

For both "small" and "good" news; we've got another office hours session. This one is tomorrow, at 22:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office connect - I appreciate it's a bit late for Europeans, but I wanted to juggle it so US east coasters could attend if they wanted :). Hope to see you all there!

Help Project newsletter : Issue 3[edit]

The Help Project Newsletter
Issue III - August 2012
Project news summary
  • Final results and conclusions from the help pages survey were released.
  • The wub gave a presentation at Wikimania 2012 about help pages, and the slides are now on Commons.
  • A discussion is taking place about the purpose and future of the venerable Community portal.
  • New designs for tutorial pages have been proposed, comment from project members is welcome.
From the editor

Welcome to the (slightly delayed) third issue of the Help Project newsletter.

The past month has once again been a busy one for my fellowship. The full results and conclusions from the extensive user survey on help pages are now available, and make interesting reading. These do confirm a number of our suspicions about Wikipedia help, and suggest that the current plan for the remainder of the fellowship is a sound approach.

Also last month I was fortunate enough to attend Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC, where I gave a presentation about help pages and the aforementioned survey results. You can find the slides from this on Commons. Wikimania was also a great opportunity for many discussions with staff and community members, and these brought up some interesting ideas which I hope to follow up on.

One of the things much discussed was the planned tutorial pages. I've been working on a new design for them which can be seen at User:The wub/sandbox/1, please let me know what you think (especially if you spot any bugs!).

Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name.

the wub "?!" 13:26, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Help page project[edit]

Hi. I'm not sure if the caption at File:Policies and guidelines indicator.png is entirely accurate; many essays that are not official policies or guidelines are in Wikipedia space, becuse they have been moved there from user sub pages, or created there without objection from the community, and to permit further editing by others. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:34, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I wondered about that myself. The content is just copied from the existing tutorial, but I think you're right that it's a somewhat misleading image and have removed it from both the old and the new. The text is more accurate. the wub "?!" 14:04, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I enjoyed your presentation. With over 700 contributed replies to WP:EAR, and dozens of requests for help on my user page, user help is something I feel strongly about, and we have far too many help pages and noticeboards that just serve to confuse. I am hoping that development will soon resume on the Article Creation Work Flow, a long promised WMF project for a decent landing page for new users. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:17, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Tea Leaf - Issue Five[edit]

Stop by for a tasty glass of wiki-iced tea at the Teahouse, today!

Hi! Welcome to the fifth edition of The Tea Leaf, the official newsletter of the Teahouse!

  • Guest activity increased in July. Questions are up from an average of 36 per week in June to 43 per week in July, and guest profile creation has also increased. This is likely a result of the automatic invite experiments we started near the end of month, which seeks to lessen the burden on hosts and other volunteers who manually invite editors. During the last week of July, questions doubled in the Teahouse! (But don't let that deter you from inviting editors to the Teahouse, please, there are still lots of new editors who haven't found Teahouse yet.)
  • More Teahouse hosts than ever. We had 12 new hosts sign up to participate at the Teahouse! We now have 35 hosts volunteering at the Teahouse. Feel free to stop by and see them all here.
  • Phase two update: Host sprint. In August, the Teahouse team plans to improve the host experience by developing a simpler new-host creation process, a better way of surfacing active hosts, and a host lounge renovation. Take a look at the plan and weigh in here.
  • New Teahouse guest barnstar is awarded to first recipient: Charlie Inks. Using the Teahouse barnstar designed by Heatherawalls, hosts hajatvrc and Ryan Vesey created the new Teahouse Guest Barnstar. The first recipient is Charlie Inks, for her boldness in asking questions at the Teahouse. Check out the award in action here.
  • Teahouse was a hot topic at Wikimania! The Teahouse was a hot topic at Wikimania this past month, where editor retention and interface design was heavily discussed. Sarah and Jonathan presented the Teahouse during the Wikimedia Fellowships panel. Slides can be viewed here. A lunch was also held at Wikimania for Teahouse hosts.

As always, thanks for supporting the Teahouse project! Stop by and visit us today!

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here. Sarah (talk) 08:38, 4 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nice words[edit]

Well , I think Wikipedia is a great site . esp to school students because it really helps them a lot to finish their projects and assignment and for quizzes. People understand many concepts by it . People try to find out many things from it . It contains the rarest pictures . I don't think people will ever live without Wikipedia. The best part is the editing because we can edit ourselves if we find a mistake and we can talk about the page . We can contribute. We can make our own user .We can be part of any group. Well , That's it .

Love You Wikipedia --Indu27 (talk) 04:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)Indu[reply]

Glad you're enjoying it so much Indu! Let me know if you need any assistance. the wub "?!" 09:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An opportunity to promote some good help pages..[edit]

Hi Pete, I just spiffed up the task list that's transcluded onto the Community portal. You'll note that I added some "learn how" links next to each of the tasks – I did my best to find the least-terrible, most newbie friendly help pages out there, but it's possible I may have missed some good ones. Feel free to tweak the links, and definitely feel free to plug in any newly redesigned help pages/tutorials where applicable :) Once the new list has been up for a few days, I can let you know which of those links, if any, people are actually visiting, too. Yay data! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Maryana, the portal definitely seems much better! I added my just finished referencing tutorial. Do keep me updated on the results of your experiments.
How tricky is it to set up click tracking for a page? Is there documentation somewhere? There are definitely some help pages it would be nice to try it on (even if it doesn't get done until after my fellowship ends). the wub "?!" 20:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's not tricky to set up now that we've done it on one page – but it is somewhat tricky to store, access, and analyze the data.
Is there any particular page you're dying to have clicks on? I can talk to my team and see how much bandwidth we've got for adding another clicktracking request. In the meantime, do some thinking about what kinds of questions you want answered by click data on help pages. The hardest part, really, is figuring out what to do with the numbers once you have them. I've been meaning to document this in a pretty high level way... I'm going to start something on Meta now :) Will drop you a link. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looks great, the wub :)
@anyone, do you know of other graphical-illustrations/maps for our navigation? There's:
But I'm not sure if there are any more, or anyone skilled and interested in making more...? I have a weakspot for infographics, but I'm sure that more of these could help us prune/merge/cleanup our Help and Nav systems, if used well... —Quiddity (talk) 03:33, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Those are the only two that I'm aware of. I agree that a new one would be helpful, although might want to wait until after I do my planned re-arrangement of pages in the next month or it will soon be outdated! the wub "?!" 09:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cambridge fresher's fair[edit]

Hello Peter,

I've bid a stall on behalf of the Cambridge University Wikipedia Society at the Cambridge University fresher's fair, 2-3 October. If you are around, it would be great if you can come and help by staffing the stall for a few hours!

The fair will run, roughly, from 9am to 7pm on the 2nd, and 9am to 4pm on the 3rd; details are yet to be confirmed.[3] You certainly won't be expected to stay the whole day unless you really want to! It'll be a sign-up stall for the campus Wikipedia Society, and we'll give out Wikimedia freebies at the event to promote awareness for Wikipedia-editing and Wikimedia UK.

Please contact me if you're interested in helping, even if it's just a few hours. Thanks! (Apologies for double-posting if you've seen this message on wikimediauk-l already!) Deryck C. 22:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It'll be awesome to have you around at the fair. To begin with, I'll try to integrate the campus society into the Cambridge meetups, doing edit workshops for newcomers there. Also in the pipeline are speaker events: we've got our very own Magnus and Charles, both of whom are "big names" that will hopefully attract much attention. But unless we have an audience - lots of signups for the society - we can't kick anything off! Deryck C. 21:39, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, The wub. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Deryck C. 09:19, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Tea Leaf - Issue Six[edit]

Hi! Welcome to the sixth edition of The Tea Leaf, the official newsletter of the Teahouse!

  • Teahouse serves over 700 new editors in six months on Wikipedia! Since February 27, 741 new editors have participated at the Teahouse. The Q&A board and the guest intro pages are more active than ever.
A lovely little teahouse nestled in Germany from Wiki Loves Monuments
  • Automatic invites are doing the trick: 50% more new editors visiting each week. Ever since HostBot's automated invite trial phase began we've seen a boost in new editor participation. Automating a baseline set of invitations also allows Teahouse hosts to focus on serving hot cups of help to guests, instead of spending countless hours inviting.
  • Guests to the Teahouse continue to edit more & interact more with other community members than non-Teahouse guests according to six month metrics. Teahouse guests make more than twice the article edits and edit more talk pages than other new editors.
  • New host process implemented which encourages anyone to get started as a Teahouse host in a few easy steps. Stop by the hosts page and become a Teahouse host today!
  • Host lounge renovations nearing completion. Working closely with Teahouse hosts, we've made some major renovations to the Teahouse Host Lounge - the main hangout and resource space for hosts. Learn more about the improvements here.

As always, thanks for supporting the Teahouse project! Stop by and visit us today!

You are receiving The Tea Leaf after expressing interest or participating in the Teahouse! To remove yourself from receiving future newsletters, please remove your username here. EdwardsBot (talk) 00:11, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fellowship News of August 2012[edit]

Fellowship News
VOLUME 1 August 2012 ISSUE 3

As you can see from this month's issue, Wikimedia Fellowship projects continued this month with lots of experimentation. Do you have ideas for a great new fellowship project? Submit a project idea, or tell us what you think about existing project ideas today! Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

Help Project newsletter : Issue 4[edit]

The Help Project Newsletter
Issue IV - September 2012
Project news summary
From the editor

Hi, and welcome to the fourth issue of the Help Project newsletter.

It's been another busy month in the world of Wikipedia help. The results from the in-person usability tests conducted as part of the help pages fellowship have been released. There are no great surprises here, the tests confirmed that people have trouble with the existing help system, and people looking for help on the same topic often end up at wildly different pages. Editors who experienced a tutorial and/or edited a sandbox as part of their learning were noticeably more confident when editing a real article.

Drawing on that, three new "Introduction to" tutorials for new users have been created: referencing, uploading images and navigating Wikipedia. These join the popular existing introductions to policies and guidelines and talk pages. Feel free to edit them, but please do remember that the idea is to keep them simple and as free from extraneous details as possible. All three have been added to Help:Getting started, which is intended to be the new focal point for new editors, and will also be seeing a redesign soon.

In other news, the Article Feedback Tool (AFT) can now be used to collect feedback on help pages. By default it has been deployed to all pages in the Help: namespace. It can be disabled on any page by adding Category:Article Feedback Blacklist, or enabled for pages in other namespaces by adding Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. Once a page has AFT applied, you can add feedback using the form which appears at the bottom of it. Feedback can be reviewed by clicking "View feedback" in the sidebar, or the "Feedback from my watched pages" link at the top of your watchlist.

I'm now entering the final month of my fellowship, and will be focusing my efforts on making much needed improvements to Help:Contents, the main entrance point to our help system. It's been a pleasure working as a fellow, and I just want to thank all the people who have helped me or offered advice over the past months. That definitely won't be the end of my involvement in the Help Project though, I'll be sticking around as a volunteer and continuing to write this newsletter.

Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name.

-- the wub "?!" 20:00, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Help pages[edit]

Those introduction tutorials look really good. I will definitely add them to WP:PANDS and WP:PSCOI. Nice work! Ocaasi t | c 21:30, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Moving cats outside noinclude[edit]

Hi, with this edit, you moved all the categories and interlanguage links outside the <noinclude>...</noinclude>, which I don't think is a good idea on a page which is transcluded to Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles and User:Ernstblumberg. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:35, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, didn't mean to do that sorry and have just fixed it. I was under the impression that AWB didn't move things outside of noinclude tags, but was apparently mistaken. the wub "?!" 18:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fellowship News of September 2012[edit]

Fellowship News
VOLUME 1 September 2012 ISSUE 4

The Fellowships Program believes that supporting editors to lead on community improvements is one way WMF can help boost editor engagement. This month, Wikimedia Fellows worked on 5 projects that aim to do just that. Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

The /B draft looks fantastic. Can't wait to support ;) —Quiddity (talk) 01:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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