User talk:Yngvadottir/Archive 9

"Solomonic decision"

Is not a decision which "splits everything in half" but one which rewards actual justice. Solomon never intended for the baby to be cut in half - rather he sought to determine the actual mother of the child.

Decisions which are absolute in nature, whether they make actual sense or not, are more likely "Draconian" or even worse "Kill them all" decisions.

Icelandic Law [1] appears entirely "sui generis" with the implications that fines could solve almost anything in a small homogeneous society. Collect (talk) 12:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC) (who tends to do too much research at times)

One of the lawyers will probably correct me (especially since I should be in bed), but regarding Solomon, that was what I meant. Solomon proposed the unthinkable to force a different, just outcome. The sanction against Eric was not so wise.

The use of fines in lieu of blood revenge was I believe eventually common to the Germanic polities, although it reached its apogee in Anglo-Saxon England and may have been invented there, and the rules of frith as applied to in-group and out-group members are an interesting wrinkle. Icelanders retained the blood feud as legally preferred option until after the Commonwealth ended. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:45, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Blood feuds make better stories. --Hegvald (talk) 13:27, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

This is also true. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:32, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately not many of the old Anglo-Saxon laws survive. King Alfred, however, "gathered them together and ordered to be written many of those which our forefathers observed" bringing together laws from Ine, Offa and Aethelberht (along with biblical law).

Certainly we may take from his pre-amble c. 886 that the idea of weregeld was already ancient. And certainly the sixth century code of Aethelbert includes a comprehensive fines for bodily injury - down to the little toe.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:53, 26 October 2015 (UTC).

Thanks to Wikipedia I can now confirm that Aethelbert's Dooms include weregeld. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:13, 26 October 2015 (UTC).

A "werewolf" is a man turning into a wolf ... I really hope "weregeld" does not mean ... (not a serious comment) Collect (talk) 21:50, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The common element is wer(e), "man", and the second element means "money". :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 00:08, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

<g> I knew that - I was just making a poor joke here - there are too many folks who can be entirely too serious all the time - Collect (talk) 01:58, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Vested contributors arbitration case opened

You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Vested contributors. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Vested contributors/Evidence. Please add your evidence by November 5, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I believe I've said enough. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Vested contributors retitled Arbitration enforcement 2

The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2/Evidence. Please add your evidence by November 5, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. For this case, there will be no Workshop phase. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:05, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Kind of sort of back

Thanks to all. I believe I will accept a second nomination for adminship, but it would be rude to the arbitrators for me to run while the case request or the eventual case is open. As for running for arb, that's right out - not only would I hate the job and be incompetent at it, I would have to identify to the WMF, and I don't trust them with my info.

I seem to have been unable to quit, and I apologize for that.

My work severely limits my time now, so I won't be able to be as active. I also have an off-wiki project still incomplete that I must attend to. But I will see what I can do. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

You also have the option, as I mentioned above and as one of the arbitrators confirmed, of seeking reconsideration of the desysopping during the case. I'm neither recommending doing that nor the opposite, but the option exists.

As for your comment in your statement that you don't follow all the "moot court" procedures of the arbitration pages, you shouldn't worry about that. I don't always follow all the nuances of the rules myself—and I've been a litigation attorney since 1987, and was a member of the Committee for seven years, so I'm not sure what chance anyone else has. Just follow the basic formatting instructions and everything else should fall into place; you shoudn't let the procedures distract you from the substance of whatever, if anything, you wish to say. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:57, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Under the circumstances, I would like to see this option be the first one tried myself. The circumstances involved here are definitely unique, and that being the case at least theoretically it might be precedent setting in any number of ways, maybe even including in this regard. John Carter (talk) 01:07, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I would support that also. It is an "elegant" solution, which would be appropriate given the remarkable circumstances surrounding this unique event, and as John says, it may create invaluable precedents for the concept of WP:IAR when it comes to an admins judgement of an action which benefits the community, as opposed to slavishly following an ultimately self-defeating beaurocratic path. Also the (now apparant) ambiguous nature of Jimbo's T/P in terms of it's status as a truly "free space" needs to be clarified in terms of Arbcom's writ running there. As a wise sitting member of Arbcom noted today, that is why we have humans instead of bots, to make these deeply complex, human based decisions. NYB also offers superb advice upthread in his comments. Irondome (talk) 01:25, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I commend and thank you for your courage and determination to do what is right, instead of mindlessly following a set of rules. I have never seen a stronger example of why we need the fifth pillar. There is no need to apologize for still being here, we need admins like you. I too would support a future RFA, but the option of appeal to ArbCom may be worth your consideration. Burninthruthesky (talk) 09:23, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think that standing for RFA as close to immediately as you can manage is the kindest thing that you can do for this group of sitting arbiters. HiDrNick! 13:39, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure, but is kindness to the sitting arbitrators the ultimate goal of this project? It would certainly be WP:NICE. But what about writing an encyclopedia, as the ultimate goal? Along the same lines, is following the in-process-rules... if arbcom desysops you, you must first request resysop from arbcom, in this particular case... the best way to improve the encyclopedia? Of course, following the *letter* of the wiki-rules, Yngvadottir is literally prohibited from asking arbcom's forgiveness: 'For reversing an AE block out of process, Yngvadottir is desysoped. They may ONLY regain adminship after a successful RfA.' Emphasis and close paraphrasing added. The justification for the desysop was that rules-are-rules. The justification for performing RfA#2, exactly as ordered by arbcom in their desysop announcement, is also that rules-are-rules. I personally think that WP:IAR is a pillar at all times and in all places, to include Jimbotalk (which per WP:IAR is a forum despite WP:NOTFORUM), and even in arbcom proceedings... which just per my own knowledge, blocked User:Tryptofish something like 31 hours after the fact and desysopped User:Yngvadottir so fast nobody remembered to remove the userbox. Where was the WP:IAR when it was needed? I suspect it was swamped in geopolitical concerns about deterrence of future problems, which were used to justify a little bit of punitive rules-are-rules stuff in the short term. Utilitarian maybe, pragmatic conceivably, but paved with good intentions, and all that. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:12, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Eh. It's a level II desysop which is generally open to consideration. I'd consider it. I think the IP is actually reasonable, and has legal positivist overtones. NativeForeigner ^Talk 09:44, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

• Hello Yngvadottir, I'd like to invite you, if you wish to have ArbCom reconsider their decision to desysop, to let us know during the case, so that we can deal with the issue in the final decision. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 11:01, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• No, I won't be petitioning Arbcom to reinstate me. Thanks to those making sure I am aware of the option, including the e-mail I received through a friend, but I haven't changed my mind about that.

I have, however, been forced to change my mind about a second RfA. It's a pity, because I was rather looking forward to it and was prepared to resume helping out in my occasional and somewhat inept way, but for a number of reasons, some of them private, I shouldn't. I'll let you all know if things change. And many thanks to all of you who offered support. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I realise I'm a late pile-on, probably disrupting the flow of events (so, apologies), but I wanted to leave a note to say firstly that it's sad to see the (temporary?) loss of an admin who by all I'm aware of is very straightforward in their opinions, actions and interactions as well as a sensible voice in discussions (I seem to recall some recent insightful contribs at RfA). I consider this to be an example of the development recently discussed here. Secondly, it seems extremely unwise to me that we're not allowing each other even this much leeway in interpreting IAR, once touted as the most important policy on the English Wikipedia. Samsara 11:45, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree completely with Samsara: it's sad to see the (temporary?) loss of an admin who by all I'm aware of is very straightforward in their opinions, actions and interactions as well as a sensible voice in discussion.... too bad. Hafspajen (talk) 15:51, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• I regret that I missed seeing this before. I hope you realize that given the nature of the current arbitration, specifically the lack of workshop, there is no way for any of us to tell what the arbs might do on their own. It may well be that they opt not to reinstate your adminship, but allow you to perhaps request it at the bureaucrats' noticeboard much the way other admins returning from leave of some sort do. In any event, whatever your reasons, I hope that,you as an individual aren't in any way going to suffer from the recent situation in the long run. John Carter (talk) 22:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• While I don't think reverting Kirill was a particularly wise thing to do, I do not believe that removal of your admin privileges was necessary - we have plenty of truly rogue admins who should be desysoped. I think you should get your tools back both politically and for your own state of mind and the work you would do with them. If a new RfA remains your only alternative after other attempts have been made, you can certainly rely on my emphatic support. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Constance Leathart

Hello! Your submission of Constance Leathart at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! SusunW (talk) 03:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Allegra Versace

..is this weeks TAFI article. Take a look.--BabbaQ (talk) 23:35, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration evidence phase closing

Yngvadottir, this is just a note to alert you that Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2/Evidence phase will be closing in 2 days. If you would like to add any additional evidence or respond to statements made by others, you have until November 5th. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:28, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, the Evidence phase has been extended and now will end on November 10, 2015. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:14, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Reminder

Mark your CSD pages as patrolled! :P cute dog though. JTtheOG (talk) 04:08, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea how, sorry. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:11, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Yngvadottir. I once got taken to task for the same thing by another editor and had no idea what they were talking about either. Basically, at the bottom right-hand corner of unpatrolled new pages there appears a tiny blue link saying [Mark this page as patrolled]. Just click on it, and the page is marked as patrolled. Unpatrolled pages are marked with a red circle with a big ! inside on the New Pages Feed. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 05:53, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Aaah, thank you. I'd thought it must involve downloading some tool. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

It would be better to have your autopatrolled right restored which perhaps got lost along with admin - could some watching admin please informally do that? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:07, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

(stalking) Yngvadottir seems to be autopatrolled. Widr (talk) 09:15, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Autopatrolled has nothing to do with this. It only automatically marks as patrolled the pages the autopatroller has created him/herself. It doesn't work if they make additions to pages created by others. They need to be specifically marked as patrolled via the link I pointed out. Voceditenore (talk) 09:20, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Already restored by The Earwig; I attempted to express thanks via IRC since there doesn't seem to be a "thank" button for logged actions. However, I'm building my current article in user space because I don't feel confident writing on the topic. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:46, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah ha, so that was you! I remember your message, but I didn't notice your hostname and it was without any context so I didn't understand it. Also, let me know if you would find any of the other usual WP:PERM rights useful (rollback, reviewer, etc)—there should be no issue giving those. — Earwig ^talk 16:38, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Faroe Islands

Hi Yngvadottir. I've noticed that you've shown some interest in Faroe Islands related articles. I think you could be a great contributor in Wikipedia:WikiProject Faroe Islands. It would be a great news if you could add your name in the member's list and start contributing. Hansi667 (Neighbor Of The Beast) ^{a penny for your thoughts?} 11:10, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

drmies

"This year it matters enough that I will vote." Well that's very nice. Yes, very very nice.

  But wikipedia is a harsh mistress, and she demands tribute! Spilt in bytes!! Where is User:Yngvadottir/ACE2015 voter-guide?? There are already three candidates standing, and several sitting arbs who may seek re-election. If you are especially good at grovelling, maybe User:Hafspajen will even stoop to decorating your effort with cat pictures. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:06, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

• What is a voter guide? A list of people I will be voting for, in case anyone has never heard of em? In that case it's a bit early. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:10, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I guess you were serious about "this year I will vote".  :-)     Every year, the wikipedians who refuse to run themselves, but who want to spread wiki-love by praising the good candidates who are running, and influence other wikipedian-voters who may not have the time and gumption required to analyze the umpteen candidates standing for arbcom, write up a voter-guide. It is basically a one-person-sized-sample opinion-poll, repeated a dozen times or so in most arbcom elections. Here is the 2014 list of voterguides: WP:ACE2014#For_voters , click on the 'show' button next to the votersguide portion of the navbox at the bottom. Or just, here -- User:HJ_Mitchell/ACE_2014 User:Go_Phightins!/ACE2014 User:Gamaliel/ACE2014 User:Hawkeye7/ACE_2014 User:Tryptofish/ACE2014 User:Elonka/ACE2014 User:Worm_That_Turned/ACE2014 User:Rschen7754/ACE2014 User:Ealdgyth/2014_Arb_Election_votes User:EllenCT/ACE2014 User:Collect/ACE2014 User:Carrite/ACE2014. Two of the same people are already working on their 2015 voterguides -- User:Worm_That_Turned/ACE2015 and User:Elonka/ACE2015. You can also see the voterguides from previous elections, all the way back through 2004 probably. Candidates will self-nom between now and the 17th , and most voter-guides will be finalized before the arbcom-bangvoting begins. You can predict who will win, by averaging the voterguides, pretty much. See , Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2012 ... but beware that arbcom voterguides are a self-selected very tiny subset of all wikipedians, and even of all arbcom bangvoters, so sometimes you get outcomes more like Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election which wikipedia drily describes as "the actual results proved to be rather different from those indicated by the opinion polls" which is wiki-neutral-eze for "the pollsters really screwed up and herd-thought themselves into an imaginary universe". In other words, don't read the voterguides of other people, write your own, from scratch, using the candidate-list at WP:ACE2015/C. You can also, if you like, have a section of your voterguide urging some kinds of candidates to run, or more commonly, defining the params you like to see in arbcom candidates (Elonka says she would like to see admin + integrity + articleWriter + timeForWikipedia + disputeRezSkill + civility ... by contrast WTT says he would like to see nobody run for arbcom in 2015 whatsoever and the entire thing disbanded by December 2017 or thereabouts... which is a candidate-criteria of a sort!). In addition, sometimes the voter-guides will be a kind of arbcom-questionaire-preview, listing not just criteria, but specific issues and arbcases about which the author of the voterguide will be asking the arb-candidates, once the self-nom phase is complete and the discussion-and-vetting-and-bangvoting phases begin. User:Gerda_Arendt tends to ask some questions like this, though I'm not sure she "advertises" her questions in a voter-guide prior to the arb-election-questions-phase. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 18:00, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015: The results

WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.

This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points). All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. Cas Liber (submissions), a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.

Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to Rationalobserver (submissions). Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.

A full list of our award winners are:

• Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) wins the prize for first place and the FP prize for 330 featured pictures in the final round.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the prize for second place and the DYK prize for 160 did you knows in the final round (310 in all rounds).
• Cas Liber (submissions) wins the prize for third place and the FA prize for 26 featured articles in all rounds.
• West Virginian (submissions) wins the prize for fourth place
• Calvin999 (submissions) wins a final 8 prize.
• Rationalobserver (submissions) wins a final 8 prize.
• Harrias (submissions) wins a final 8 prize and the FL prize for 11 featured lists.
• Rodw (submissions) wins the most prizes: a final 8 prize, the GA prize for 41 good articles, and the topic prize for a 13-article good topic and an 8-article featured topic, both in round 3.
• ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the news prize for the most news articles in round 3.

We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · logs), Miyagawa (talk · contribs · logs) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · logs) 18:39, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

TAFI

If you want to, take a look at the article about Marie Serneholt which is this weeks TAFI article. Regards.--BabbaQ (talk) 19:46, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration proposed decision posted

Hi Yngvadottir, in the open Arbitration enforcement 2 arbitration case, a remedy or finding of fact has been proposed.  Please review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 15

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Why would you not be good at it?

Indeed,, allow others to make that judgement. You, too, should stand. ArbCom requires the best of us. The best can only be selected from a sufficiently wide pool of candidates. We always get the ArbCom we deserve. Do we get the one we need? Fiddle Faddle 11:52, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I was seriously considering it, although looking at the questions has reinforced my opinion that I would have been execrable. However, sadly, I can't run for admin again—at least for the forseeable future—and that rules out Arbcom too. The reasons are partly personal, which is embarrassing, and I'm sad about the adminship thing; I was perhaps perversely looking forward to RfA2 and contemplating actually taking time off work. So thanks, and I really do appreciate your high opinion of me, but it's not possible for me to run. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The questions, at least those I have received, simply need careful answering. There is no requirement to be an admin for this election, none whatsoever. There are loads of folk getting excited ("Broadly construed" [I do hate that phrase]) about the granting or not of admin or admin-like tools to those like me who are non admins, but that is Wikipedia.

One requires true common sense to to the job, no more and no less. One needs the ability to stand in a minority of one if appropriate, and to change one's mind when presented with a different way of looking at evidence.

I am not an admin, and I do not wish to be one. If elected and I have to have the toolkit I expect it to be removed at the end of my duties without notice or ceremony. Fiddle Faddle 12:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Law of One, AFD again

You may wish to add your opinion to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Law of One (The Ra Material). --Salimfadhley (talk) 16:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Our Friends archives fly arround

• Whathe ..XXX is the matter with Mandy 74-75's archive? I gifted an archive but it doesn't goes into the archive. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:75.108.94.227&diff=691337181&oldid=691317669 ... ????????????????????????????????????? Hafspajen (talk) 13:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

It started with Archive 3, and put stuff in 3, 4, and 5. Those all exist but are not shown in the box on the page. Probably the solution is to move Archive 3 to Archive 1, and like that, and then to fix the wrong instruction to the bot (it may be the "5"). But I don't dare try, I would probably send the archives into orbit around Mars. Ask someone technically competent. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:09, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't dare doing that either..... Anyone help? Hafspajen (talk) 14:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

WHAT HAVE I DONE???? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:75.108.94.227/Archive_1 Hafspajen (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I really don't know what I am doing right now. I think I put them in the right order, but only God knows. Hafspajen (talk) 14:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks good at a quick glance :-) If it's wrong I'm sure 75.108 can finish the fix.
I just got up; have you done your own voterguide yet? Yngvadottir (talk) 18:57, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Begoon/ACE2015

I shamelessly stole your table format. Sorry. You should have been a green row in it. Begoon ^talk 13:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, but I would already have had to go to the emergency room :-) No worries about the format, I ganked it in the best tradition of the internet, from Bishzilla. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Eh. Nobody better you could have stolen from. Makes me feel even better about my theft. Next time. Begoon ^talk 14:24, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 22

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Catherine H. Bailey

I got the link from Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism/Open tasks and started from scratch. I was expanding it when I edit-conflicted because you redirected it. I undid that, thinking I'd add what I had and would then merge to Catherine Hayes Bailey, but you had already started merging, so I'll leave the rest to you. Drmies (talk) 22:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@Drmies: Yes, I'm sorry :-( I have now finished adding your refs and formatting, and added another reference book. The full name version was created last year by Keilana. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@Drmies: I see the new stuff and will put that in there, but have you seen this project, particularly the linked spreadsheet? I was impressed enough by that list to do one myself. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Y. I'll have a look at the list later. Just wrote up another one I found on that Wikiproject page. Drmies (talk) 22:48, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I voted, I voted! Yeesh, Mdann. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:57, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry! There's no way to get the vote server to warn me about this :( Mdann52 (talk) 13:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

They didn't warn me, so I guess they didn't want my vote. I already went and opposed everyone. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:52, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Good thinking, young Dennis, so did I! (Not all the Mediawiki messages are out yet, so don't worry — I'm sure yours and mine are in the mail. Both Bishzilla and Bishonen have received theirs!) darwinbish ^BITE ☠ 15:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC).

I got it today, voted yesterday. Every click on the watchlist causes minutes of waiting, then close to 2000 changes in a day, - how I love it ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:43, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

The plan was to send them in batches of 1000 to avoid flooding peoples' watchlists, but then they realised that at that rate it would take three months to email everybody. My thoughts on just how bad an idea this is (and on much else) are buried in this thread. ‑ iridescent 17:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

At least on MediaWiki you can send a message just to active editors, users who have performed an action in the last 30 days on MediaWiki, which brings the total to only 1,380 editors. There should be a similar setting for En.Wikipedia. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:57, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I think they intentionally wanted to let everyone know, including the retired and those who (now) edit only a couple of times a year. Arbcom has been making decisions that affect pretty much all editors, so I can see the point of not restricting it to those who have recently had the time and inclination to edit. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:04, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Alwin Seifert

First start made. User:Polentarion/sandbox. That will take a while. Yours truly ;) Polentarion Talk 19:23, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks :-) I will eventually be able to add sources. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:29, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Was: Compulsory notification

(self-revert, original text in the page history) After much deliberation I decided to appeal your desysopping, only to learn that I am late to the party. Actually sad that the misuse of level II never really was much of an issue to ArbCom. For the record, this was my planned submission before reading Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2. Whichever way, please continue your good work for Wikipedia! Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 13:35, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I have seen many discussions following the Level II desysop of Yngvadottir (talk · contribs). Some are affirmative, some are negative. Nowhere did I see anyone actually appeal this decision in solitude, and after sleeping it over a few times, I'm coming forth with just that, invoking my right per Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Appeal of decisions. I state that I am entirely uninvolved, never having been in conflict or agreement with any of the actors. I am basing my appeal on the following:

1. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Level II procedures states as a prerequisite the "the account's behaviour is inconsistent with the level of trust required for its associated advanced permissions". From my point of view the simple reversal of an AE block, to the applause of quite a few editors, and to the criticism of many, is not on its own a proof that such trust has been breached. On the contrary, it seems that Yngvadottir has gained trust by a few members of the editing community, for exactly her action.
2. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Level II procedures further states that "if the Committee determines that a routine reinstatement of permissions is not appropriate, normal arbitration proceedings shall be opened to examine the removal of permissions and any surrounding circumstances". In this particular case, no routine reinstatement has been provided for. RfA is not a routine reinstatement, and Yngvadottir's hypothetical submission of an RfA might well be considered more pointy than her original unblock. I have not seen any 'normal arbitration procedures' for this incident, and I wish to know why ArbCom breaks its own rules.
3. This statement has been widely interpreted as 'Yngva knowingly burning her admin bit'. I have a totally different take on that: I detect an instance of Ignore all rules. Yngvadottir knew very well she could/would be desysopped for her action, and she did it anyway. I should like to submit that neither ArbCom decisions not AE blocks are exempt from IAR.

@Pgallert: I'm deeply touched. But yes, I did expect to be desysopped - in fact faster than it happened: in a previous ruling (I believe it was Arbitration Enforcement I) ArbCom made it quite explicit that administrators undoing Arbitration Enforcement blocks would be desysopped. I had originally intended to have a second RfA and in fact I found I was rather looking forward to it; for one thing, several editors offered to nominate me, for another my first was both strange and not torturous (you may not remember, but you were there in support), and thirdly I did declare that I would be open to recall, but never bothered to state my criteria—I always vaguely considered that if multiple editors in good standing, particularly fellow administrators, got together to tell me I should renounce the bit and undergo a reconfirmation RfA if I wanted it back, that would be it and I would do so, and desysopping by ArbCom qualifies under that definition. However, it then turned out that for partly private reasons (which is embarrassing) I can't be an admin again, at least for the forseeable future. That makes me sad, but it doesn't make me regret my decision.
There's been discussion to and fro about my desysopping from the start; I avoided for a while looking at the case and the proposed decisions, but when I did I saw increasing debate about it even among the Arbs. Again, I'm touched; other than that I'm trying to say as little as possible for fear of making the situation worse for others.
I considered it courteous (the minimum under WP:ADMINACCT, really) to inform the blocking admin of my intent and reasoning before unblocking, as well as to sum up my reasoning in the unblock statement. I've since said more, but I guess one could put it under WP:IAR; in my view, it falls under administrative discretion (if that is removed, we may as well have bots make the blocks) and the concomitant duty of every admin to weigh the circumstances; also, under WP:NOTPUNISHMENT. Those were the considerations I intended my unblock summary to allude to. I should probably stop there before I type in anger, but I will note that I of course realize the Arbs could not have forseen that a reputable publication would publish an inaccurate hit piece targeting any editor.
I have much less time to edit now, and I'm still upset over the things that caused me to (try to) quit in March, in addition to all this. Thanks for caring—and thanks also to anyone else reading this who's said nice things about what I have done here as an editor. Wikipedia is very important to me; I'll do what I can, but it's hard both emotionally and in terms of time, these days. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:10, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Henzel

Could you please take a look at the article about Dominik Henzel that I created a few weeks back. It is up for AfD but the main reason for deletion seems to be article quality. So if there is any improvements that you can see that could be made, please do. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 23:50, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I can't make any promises about that one; I see you've found and added some sources, but he hasn't done much yet, so it will depend how much press coverage there is of him. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:11, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Yngvadottir

I thank-you very much for pointing out my somewhat silly mistake I made whilst using the welcome templates. and thanks for blanking them out for me. thanks again --Mr.Luther34 (talk) 10:06, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Dashes

Hey, I noticed that you said you didn't know how to type them (maybe you were joking, and if so, ignore the next sentence). This should make a good holiday reading, then, ;) (Or you could just type the HTML –.)

Best wishes and happy holidays, epicgenius (talk) 16:04, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks; I've been using the HTML, as you saw. I hadn't realized the dashes had alt+ codes (which I use extensively for foreign-language characters); I've added the ndash and mdash to my cheatsheet. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:11, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

	Merry Christmas!!
	Hello, I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, Thanks for all your help on the 'pedia!    –Davey2010 Merry Xmas / Happy New Year 20:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

...and a merry Yuletide too!

Happy Yuletide!

Merry Yuletide to you! (And a happy new year!)

De728631 (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 is just around the corner...

Hello everyone, and we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season. As you will probably already know, the 2016 WikiCup begins in the new year; there is still time to sign up. There are some changes we'd like to announce before the competition begins.

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...

Merry Cristmas everybody!!!

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,

I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

Luke 2:10-11 (King James Version)

Hafspajen (talk)is wishing you a Merry Christmas.

This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove.

Spread the cheer by adding {{Subst:Xmas4}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Julbocken

@Hafspajen: Thank you :-) In case you don't look here again before Christmas, all the blessings of the season to you. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Fröhliche Weihnachten! Polentarion Talk 15:49, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Und dir auch, danke :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:33, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

(Season's Greetings)

Viggo Johansen: Happy Christmas (1891)

X

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

X

Frohe Weinachten und

alles gute zur neuen Jahr!

Wesołych Świąt i

Szczęśliwego nowego roku!

Linksmų Kalėdų ir

laimingų Naujųjų Metų!

X

Sca (talk)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PS How did you ever herd all those cats together? Sca (talk) 22:37, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, yours is the best holiday card I've seen yet on Wikipedia! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings!

Hello Yngvadottir: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:11, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Season's Greetings

	Wishing you a Charlie Brown Charlie Russell Christmas! 🎄
	Best wishes for your Christmas Is all you get from me 'Cause I ain't no Santa Claus Don't own no Christmas tree. But if wishes was health and money I'd fill your buck-skin poke Your doctor would go hungry An' you never would be broke." —C.M. Russell, Christmas greeting 1914. Montanabw(talk)

Arbitration enforcement 2 case closed

You are receiving this message because you are a party or offered a preliminary statement and/or evidence in the Arbitration enforcement 2 case. This is a one-time message.

The Arbitration enforcement 2 arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) has been closed, and the following remedies have been enacted:

1.1) The Arbitration Committee confirms the sanctions imposed on Eric Corbett as a result of the Interactions at GGTF case, but mandates that all enforcement requests relating to them be filed at arbitration enforcement and be kept open for at least 24 hours.

3) For his breaches of the standards of conduct expected of editors and administrators, Black Kite is admonished.

6) The community is reminded that discretionary sanctions have been authorised for any page relating to or any edit about: (i) the Gender Gap Task Force; (ii) the gender disparity among Wikipedians; and (iii) any process or discussion relating to these topics, all broadly construed.

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Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration enforcement 2 case closed

Happy Christmas!

		Happy Christmas!
		Have a happy holiday season. May the year ahead be productive and happy. John (talk) 09:07, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Giftmas and Happy New Year

Hope your Giftmas was pleasant. I mostly stayed home and made marmalade - cranberry orange marmalade, to be precise. The mob and the mess are pretty much the same here. Hope you and the pooch(es) are doing well. Love to you all.

RavanAsteris (talk) 04:02, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays...

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Hafspajen (talk) 09:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

A Lady Playing the Spinet...

• Some patenterad nonsens if you can read it, here. Hafspajen (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

		Season's Missingings
		Wishing you a new article, and all best articles for the New Year! Hafspajen (talk) 20:14, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Hafs, thanks, and good to see you again!!! I hope you also have a wonderful year in 2016. That is indeed some patent nonsense. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:10, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Hehe, that stuf with the potato is priceless. Hafspajen (talk) 21:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Carl Holsøe is not bad either... ahem.. Hafspajen (talk) 21:33, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I looked and I looked at the encyclopedia source :-) Don't hold your breath, but I will get to him. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:42, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Noo. Translate? https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hols%C3%B8e or Korte biografie this? I think I maneged to fix that mountain, and then we nominate it as a FP. Hafspajen (talk) 21:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I will translate. But first I have to have breakfast, walk a dog, do laundry, and I have two other articles in process ... Yngvadottir (talk) 21:52, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Buzzy busy bee! Hafspajen (talk) 22:05, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

2016

	Happy New Year 2016!
	Did you know ... that back in 1885, Wikipedia editors wrote Good Articles with axes, hammers and chisels? Thank you for your contributions to this encyclopedia using 21st century technology. I hope you don't get any unneccessary blisters.    – Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@Cullen328: Thank you! That's lovely :-) I hope you have a wonderful 2016. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

.

Small Chinese- Korean ... somethings.

Oh, great, the guy makes tvo edits per year, and this is what we get. Hafspajen (talk) 18:58, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Hafspajen: I hope what I did made it better. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:21, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. You did well! Hafspajen (talk) 20:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

For dry gardens, it's an ideal ... decoration, no? Hafspajen (talk) 20:27, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

It does lack context. I looked at the file. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• It does, but it's nice, kinda. Hafspajen (talk) 21:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• It's from here: Seonamsa. Hafspajen (talk) 21:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• Hurray! I mean, yes, of course. Do you think I made a mistake here? If yes, revert me. Hafspajen (talk) 20:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

It's a fraught issue (I think myself that 20 years was not a long enough span for the study), and there's always a balancing act between accuracy and avoidance of copyvio or simply quoting slabs of text. So I mucked about with it a bit. I hope the para is now clearer (you said you didn't understand it) and not so obviously all quotes. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Regardless of the merits of that edit, American Pit Bull Terriers are also on a list of four breeds that are banned in the UK (as currently claimed in the article) is certainly untrue; needless to say, the supposed "source" cited is fake. "Pit bull type dogs" ("type" rather than "breed" being the important word) need to be neutered, muzzled and restrained while in public, and registered with the authorities, and can't be traded without authorisation from the courts, but they've never been illegal. The legislation in question is here, while this is a very good layman's explanation of current E&W law regarding restricted breeds—TLDR version, if it's unregistered the police will seize it but unless it's dangerous you'll almost certainly be given the chance to register it. ‑ Iridescent 21:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@Iridescent and Hafspajen: Argh - I didn't even look at the rest of the article; it was bedtime and now I have to get ready for work. I'll change that using those sources after I get back, unless someone else already has. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:13, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

@Iridescent and Hafspajen: And I did some reading and ummm ... that's about as complicated as I thought it was. The intent of the law certainly seems to have been to make them illegal; it was somewhat relaxed in 1997 but there is still a massive split between the RSPCA and the police and many politicians ... I can try to summarise this, and I think it's important for the article not to be dominated by the CDC and other reports on the US ... but by heck, I'm increasingly doubtful I'm the right person. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:16, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

2016 year of the reader and peace

2016

peace bell

Thank you for having done the right thing in 2015 already, thanks with my review, and the peace bell by Yunshui! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thank you :-) I wish you a great year. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:06, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Click on bell for the soft sound of peace (and jest) ;) - I miss Yunshui, happy that you returned (and a few others)! The place is better with you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Gerda :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 13:11, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Yngvadottir!

Happy New Year!

Yngvadottir,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:49, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

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

Thank you, and to you :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

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Happy New Year, Yngvadottir!

Happy New Year!

Yngvadottir,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. –Davey2010 ^{Merry Xmas / Happy New Year} 11:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

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

Thank you, and to you :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year Yngvadottir!

File:Happy new year! --) (6605281377).jpg	Happy New Year
	Wishing you good health and happiness in 2016. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, and to you :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

??

Russian salad

Is this meant to be removed? Hafspajen (talk) 18:34, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know, to be honest; there was supposed to be a discussion but I don't know what was actually decided. Wikidata is very much open to vandalism and is hard to watch and to correct; it's another of those dubious WMF projects. However, the WMF has indeed decided that it supersedes Persondata. And since Persondata itself isn't visible except when you click "edit", it was hard to keep it correct. There were some people who got a large part of their edits from adding Persondata; now there are some who are simply removing it, like that person. I would rather it was left alone, and especially that people not systematically remove it like that, but as I say I don't know whether a decision was ever made. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:47, 1 January 2016 (UTC) Apparently the RfC did decide it should be removed. Happened while I was trying to retire. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:51, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that there were some people who got a large part of their edits from adding data, categories and such. Not really a fair play, if that's the oly thig they do, some evem make the automated. No more helpfull, then a robot. I think actually that there suld be some kind of robot for that kind of things. You would make a very good admin, don't you think=? Hafspajen (talk) 19:10, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I was a bad one, although I did my best. But in any case I can't be one again for the forseeable future. Sorry to deprive you all of my second RfA; the first was quite entertaining and I'm sure the retry would have been too.

I didn't see the point of Persondata when it was introduced, but it was a useful place to put things like birth and death place and alternate names, that can be hard to fit neatly into an article (I have never understood why, but the English Wikipedia Manual of Style disagrees with the other Wikipedias and with every biographical reference work I've ever read and deprecates having birth and death places with the dates in the parentheses after the first mention of the person's name.) Adding and improving categories and so on can be very useful, and sometimes I've created a category and then added it to a whole bunch of articles in a series of edits. There's nothing really wrong with that kind of work. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• HM, well, not if somebody is doing it as Amantino. But it can be a simple tactic play to, like a user wants to create fast a background and wants to show up a huge amount of edits. Welcome templates, moving categories around, adding tremplates, and stuff like that gives the impresion that the editor has huge amounts of edits and it's experienced. But it is just tactics. Hafspajen (talk) 19:32, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• That guy's a "swordslinger". Nonchalantly he regards the onlooker, with his hands in his pockets. His rapier is not in a scabbard; he is daring the viewer to move closer… Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 19:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

That was why his stance looked familiar. I've had fights with guys like that, usually with knives. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:20, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The Beethovens

The Beethovens - well, no, the van Bochoven. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andries_van_Bochoven. Drmies should write this article for us. Hafspajen (talk) 20:25, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Sadly, he's described as "obscure" in the one book where I found anything about him; that painting and an attributed still life seem to be it. See here. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Der Bücherwurm

Gender: male Born: Utrecht between 1609-03-01 and 1609-03-31 Died: Utrecht 1634-12-02 Father: unknown Mother: unknown? Hafspajen (talk) 20:46, 1 January 2016 (UTC) Here is more: click on the DetailsHafspajen (talk) 20:47, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I see - he memorialized them all on the painting. Poor lad. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2016: Game On!

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!

Here, sign it pease yourself, or Arbrust will kick us in the but. Hafspajen (talk) 16:05, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Yngv, sign it so it's done. YOU must sing it, FP is not like DYK: You must sign the nom yourself so there is evidence that you did it. Hafspajen (talk) 17:08, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I just got up, Hafs, sign where? support it? Yngvadottir (talk) 18:34, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

This image is waiting for support. De728631 (talk) 19:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I signed but now I think I messed up, cos someone put me as co-nominator? Yngvadottir (talk) 19:14, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, I guess you'd just have had to confirm the co-nominator bit by signing that line. De728631 (talk) 19:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

This is why I'm so confused ... I didn't want to be a co-nom, but perfectly willing to support; as I said, if they think the scan merits it (I don't have the eyes to evaluate image quality), the painting certainly deserves to be featured. Plus I really don't like to get involved with good/featured stuff. I guess I'll leave it and they can sort it out over there if it sits ill with them. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

furet, værbitt over vannet, med de tusen hjem. ;) Polentarion Talk 00:07, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Reform of Wikipedia

You might be interested in my page User:Biscuittin/Reform of Wikipedia. I shall probably be accused of WP:Canvassing for leaving this message but I can't imagine why because the first line reads: "In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it is done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus". Biscuittin (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Differences between different WPs

Bionadefriendly deWP exists ;)

Revenge of the Gnoms

Hallo Yngva, haven't talked for a while. HOw are you? I was involved in some hotspots, deWP Taharrush gamea got a review in the FAZ but was reduced to a stub, the biggest part is now de:Sexuelle Gewalt in Ägypten, the enWP goes for a fortress Europe narrative and i dislike that and deleted it on my list. I saw as well the lengthy discussion at Genesis creation narrative, something completely impossible in the deWP. Sometimes you have to be able to leave the kids alone. Less controversial is the de:Sparverein, a recent article about a proverbial German topic, which has not been written (even redirect had been deleted) for years and various reasons. Do you think it could be of interest here? Polentarion Talk 14:47, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi again! Frequently depressed by this place and tend to have very little time, I'm afraid is the answer :-( You mean "Wo Belästigung und Neckerei ein Wort sind" in FAZ? I can't see it because I don't have an account, I'm afraid, but well done :-) ... And that would be the problem with translating Sparverein; the major article in Die Zeit predates the online archive and it looks as if I wouldn't have access to many of the sources. If I could see at least 2 lengthy discussions of the topic, I might be able to make a brief article, especially since there are images on Commons, but otherwise it would be too easy for it to be challenged here; and I'm not sure I could find anything through my library. You would have the same problem if you just translated it, unless you could link to a large number of online references the en.wp people can check. It does appear to be a very valid topic; I'm puzzled by the history of deletion, including the clean-up when you had given credit quite clearly to the other article ... sigh. And it's wound up looking good to my eyes, although of course I fiddled with a repeated reference :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:04, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

thing is, if you go to serious (or as said the FAZ commenting on your work), you get more flame. I faced some hatespeech on the deTaharush gamea disk page, you mentioned the depressing aspect already. The URV agent seems to be an old foe. Things happen like that. Sparverein is a blatant example of the role of the Vereinswesen in Germany, an alleged petty bourgeois leisure game and as well a powerful instrument of microfinance, community and institution building. I take your advice. I fear you have a featured article in mind and, as you said, it won't work based on the sources at hand. Most of these articles, including de:Kegelclub have been written deep back in the old age of deWP. I think an article, that explains Sparschränke and Sparverein combined, you find them in a lot of traditional German pubs, would not be object of an AfD. Neither seems Oil constant, a nice stub and a university joke I loved to hear. Polentarion Talk 20:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Nooooo, I don't do featured articles. I just try to avoid them being AfD'd or slapped all over with templates (like the ones in the self-portrait on my user page). As you know, there's a lot of resistance on en.wp to foreign topics, not just German ones, so they require clear referencing or they are likely to be challenged - also I like to be able to consult key references myself so that I can explain things. Thanks for the FAZ link BTW - I sympathize with you, though I know you love these political topics, but I have to wonder why the newspaper wouldn't just show me that page. I mucked about with the Oil constant article a little bit, but it could use an English source explaining how it's a pun :-) Please excuse any incoherence - back to bed now. I was bad and stayed up late trying to finish my expansion of the saga article - one where de. is better than is. but still pretty poor. And people say we are "nearly finished". They live in another world. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:08, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

The empire strikes back on Bionade-Biedermeier....Polentarion Talk 08:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the pic, that's a de.wp admin and medieval studies professor on the left and a GLAM/campus ambassador on the right :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

You have met Marcus? Hope to see him thursday, will ask him. Good guy. Polentarion Talk 06:37, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

No, I haven't met anybody :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 06:40, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

not meeting RL works in the enWP better than overthere. But the two of us have met at Hafspajens! Bionade AfD, ist not easy for en WP sysop, since the soapopera overspills. Löschantrag ist die beste QS however. Definitions had been lacking, Duden was a good point. Point is, it started and developed as an extremly catchy title and catchphrase, and further use in titles in abundance, but not much explanation, since its quite self evident. Polentarion Talk 13:41, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

The way I see it, the sources demonstrate that there is or was a real (or commonly perceived) social phenomenon for which this is or was the common label. It doesn't much matter if it's run its course - notability doesn't expire. And it doesn't much matter if the articles about it are about the phenomenon itself and thus don't repeat its name several times. Consensus could wind up disagreeing with me, of course. And the nominator appears to have nominated it twice simultaneously, but I imagine whoever closes it will be able to deal with that.

The WMF invited me to express my opinion and I am writing truly splenetic responses on Meta. My job is also being almost unbearable. So I am probably extra-nasty to be around right now and folks should be very glad I don't do conventions, meet-ups, or other gatherings. Although I suspect I ran into a pair of Wikimedians of some sort in a supermarket in Silicon Valley a few years ago; they understood my joke about the WMF. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:57, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

I am in Berlin now, worth while to have a look on the headquarters. I am singing in a choir and do some english Toastmastering but whle I am quite active online, I just was once at a WMD stammtisch, never got warm with those gatherings. BBwise, you know, there was my blood on the wall, a statement like matters if the articles about it are about the phenomenon itself is true, but.... Point is, a trendy neologism needs some base and endurance, instead you just put it with Bioheme as a see also at LOHA. But thats OK now. Nominator did it wrong the first time, no true second nom imho. He translated meatatlas, received kudos from Haf for the pics and I got some idea about the deWP background. Polentarion Talk 15:44, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

@Polentarion: You're in Berlin?? You are lucky I just got up, I'm sure there is a list of places I should be asking you to photograph for Commons :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Impressive row of keeps, as well at the end. ;) Polentarion Talk 12:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh good :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 13:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

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Ynglingatal

In response to a request for a copy-edit at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests#Ynglingatal, I have begun a copy-edit of Ynglingatal. In the request, the editor made clear that it was translated from Norwegian language sources. I have found the copy-editing slow going, however. There are many places where I had to make an "educated guess"; I also added quite a few "clarification needed" tags with hidden questions for the editor. I've completed roughly a third to a half of the article. I'm wondering whether it might make more sense for someone with a knowledge of Norwegian to attempt to put the sentences into English before I copy-edit. (I'm kind of used to doing what I've been doing, but at a certain point it kind of seems like we're going about this wrong.) Do you know any Norwegian? Can you help here? Or do you know an editor who knows Norwegian who can help? Corinne (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Like many of our articles on ancient Scandinavian topics, this was created and has been heavily edited by experts whose first language was not English. I do see your problem, though the English was not as bad as many I've seen, and some of the problems appear to have come from updates in the past few years. There is an additional problem in this case, that the article deals with material that has been heavily debated in recent Scandinavian scholarship, with at least one scholar casting into question almost everything that one would say at the outset to orient the reader.

Yes, I can read Norwegian, and am familiar enough with the issues to attempt to clarify the article. But it is contentious; see Fairhair dynasty for an article where I have previously tried to make an article clearer but the scholarly debate has led to conflicts about what we should say. Also, there is an on-going conflict among Wikipedia editors about the use of Old Norse, which some feel presents a barrier to non-expert readers, but for early Scandinavian material is the lingua franca for citations and names among scholars in most of the world, but continental Scandinavian scholars usually use their native-language forms instead, with little if any gain in clarity for the English-speaking reader. (For example, note "Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (Thjodolf)" at the start of the Ynglingatal article and at the start of his own very short article. That's more the modern Norwegian and Danish than it is a common anglicisation.) Also I'm frustratingly busy these days, and this is the kind of article I can only work on at home. Most of the people I would have pinged on this have already worked on the article, but I'll ping Bloodofox in case he wants to add his expertise or his knowledge of who's currently active on Old Norse material. And I'll add it to my list of things to work on. If I were you, I would be inclined to set aside the copyedit except for obvious English improvements, but your method of noting things that need clarifying works too. I can't promise to get to it soon and am not the ideal person to do so, in view of that scholarly controversy. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:45, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your informative reply. That's very interesting. Corinne (talk) 04:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on this. The article is important and might just need to be rewritten from scratch, failing all else. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

New editor needing help.

Building I armtwisted an editor into photographing with his iPhone, for Architecture of the night

Hi Yngvy, this editor needs some help. Her first article (which came from her own blog) is getting tagbombed and AfDed (and there's not even an AfD notice on her talk page). She's seeking help adding new refs to the article. I think Wikipedia should endeavor to retain this obviously intelligent and good-faith contributor. Since you were so helpful with another new editor recently, I was wondering if you could help this one? Thanks, Softlavender (talk) 03:13, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

That was an astonishing oversight not even to let her know it was at AfD. I hope I've helped a bit; I'm glad to see a number of people have been working to help save and improve the article. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Hallo Yngva, I had a look, but you made a good save. One question - where does one get all the newspaper clippings from? I would need some hints for my meeting at the RL WP tonite, since I meet with a guy from one of my portals, where those would easily safe lotta articles under AfD. I would have tried to check wether Carneri has a Stolperstein, that is a must keep then in the deWP. One of the German DYK collegues is quite active in the field. Polentarion Talk 15:00, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting the new editor! I think she has a family scrapbook with the clippings in it, and since Carneri was born in Austro-Hungary and was in Vienna for much of her career, that might well complicate both getting access to printed newspaper archives from Germany and the Stolperstein idea. Also, I understand many German-speakers nowadays can't read Fraktur - can you? But I see the nomination has now been withdrawn, hooray :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Yngvy. In terms of the clippings, if push comes to shove she could scan and upload anything that was disputed or questioned, or provide typed quotations in footnotes. (To my mind Fraktur isn't or wouldn't be that much of a barrier if the copy/reproduction is clean; my German sucks but I can read and understand it -- it's like any calligraphy from the 18th century and, to me at least, is not that puzzling.) Softlavender (talk) 21:29, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Good meeting in Berlin. They had no Bionade however. Pics for Commons - my camera is just an I-phone now. But they have a project making photos. Wikipedia:Bilderwünsche and Portal:Berlin. Fraktur is no prob, but my Sütterlin, the handwriting went awry. It was not easy deciphering a digitalized handwritten Sparverein Rules of Order. I did my first newspaper articles as an Abiturient based on archive studies with handwritten files. @Nancypolk1:, I gave @Meister und Margarita: on deWP an hint about a Stolperstein / deWP translation SG? nomination for Carneri. He is in Austria, I believe, likes the idea and and should be able to go further on that. Polentarion Talk 00:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

@Polentarion and Softlavender: Maybe that's a myth about Fraktur then; I hope so. My ability to read Sütterlin is purely theoretical; I have trouble deciphering even what I myself have written in it. (I've used it in the past for financial records, like the medical student I heard of once who took her lecture notes in Tolkienian Elvish to discourage classmates from stealing them.) But Fraktur still largely defeats OCR, which makes search hit or miss, and some of those old newspapers are terribly blurry. I've thanked Meister und Margarita for one of his edits to the article - he has really helped already. As to photos, Sharktopus photographed a building in New York for me using his iPhone a few years ago, and I think he did a fantastic job - see above right. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Lets do it like that. I won't go for lists, since I am more into writing than pics, but if you need a specific Berlin picture, lets say around Prenzlauerberg oder Charlottenburg, I am in. Polentarion Talk 22:38, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Bot articles and machine translations

DeWP recently mocked about a cebuano WP, that overtook us article number wise. Sorry, same as for Sweden beetle article stubs, that's hilarious. If you deem each biography as being automatically relevant, you end in bot generated stubs of questionable worth. I would prefer to have some overviews, essay writing by human authors is being needed, less machinery. Software can do lists, networks, elaborate common issues. Software won't write articles like the one about Carneri with a narrative and content. Point is, the bot problem applies as well to Stolperstein articles. Meister und Margarita will disagree. I opt for solid infobox content first and a more solid choice of where an real article is being needed. Except if I write an essay about a topic that is anatema for the Bionade-Biedermeier of deWP ;) In so far I agree with Yngvas points against machinery translation. I would prefer to have solid infobox databases available for all WPs however. Polentarion Talk 17:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

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Impact

Impact

Thank you for your impact
in being a cultural bridge between German and English, taking care of new editors and doing the right thing even "out of process"!

On the fourth anniversary of Precious no. 10, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Gerda, you're very sweet. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:19, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Not so sure - just look at the description of my flash mob actions, - I should have asked you how to word that I think making the information visible that was so far on persondata is no vandalism that needs to be reverted, but could be discussed. Background: Pierre Boulez was important in my life, I saw part of Jahrhundertring, staged by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Boulez. How will our readers understand that the Boulez article looks so different, only because he was - among many other things - a classical composer? - Even if you aren't an admin at the moment, you can perhaps tell me: The title of my thread was changed, - is that correct? Commenters don't read the proposal, they react to the title.

ps: love the puppy! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:35, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

For the puppy, thank Hafspajen, who gives great gifts :-)

Gerda, as you may recall, we are almost entirely on opposite sides on infoboxes (I cling to an intermediate position that I like to think of as reasoned, but in my view the default should be no infobox). I'm also a fervent Wagnerite and loathed the Centennial Ring. (There are a lot of articles I don't edit because I cannot be dispassionate. According to our article, many people have changed their opinions since the initial shock; I haven't.)

I would be surprised if there are many other Wikipedias that forbid giving the locations of birth and death in the parentheses along with the dates of birth and death. It's silly; they belong together, and that's how reference works have traditionally always presented them. I have no idea why the MOS for English Wikipedia includes this nonsensical rule, and I note that it's one of the most widely broken MOS rules in the encyclopedia. I think it should be changed. I also regret the loss of the Persondata, which doesn't affect the reader and served as a good place to collect information that is hard to fit into prose - like the death place! and the many permutations of an author's names on their publications - and now has been replaced with something on another project that is very open to vandalism. And also to plain old error - once in a while I find sources disagreeing about someone's birth or death date, or the spelling of one of their names, and the different-language Wikipedias often decide for different versions of the truth - Wikidata will now forcibly harmonize the data. Both of these are serious issues that I would like to see fixed. I don't see an infobox as anywhere near as good as fixing the two problems.

I keep meaning to write an essay about my position on infoboxes, so that when the issue comes up, I can point to it. But I haven't yet. After all, it's just my position. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:21, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not about infoboxes ;) - I know your stance on infoboxes and dared to ask you, because if I had asked a supporter, "canvass" would have been the next entry. Thank you for a long response to a question I didn't ask. I only asked you if it's ok to change the header of a thread to almost the opposite (making it provoking where I hoped to compromise). - But if we talk about the way to display the names and data of birth and death: there's the example from the Italian Wikipedia where they use the templated information to construct the lead sentence (which Nikkimaria discussed favourably). We might also - if redundancy is such a problem, which I don't understand, because nobody complains that the lead is redundant to the article - have them in a box, as the Britannica has it, and free the lead sentence from the data, free to write about a person's impact. Just an idea. - I wrote my essay in 2013 as you probably know. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

(I have an even stranger schedule these days - back online but only for a short while. I'm sure my clarity of thought and coherence of expression suffer as a result, and my promptness in responding certainly does, so I'd better put that context in writing.) I looked, and I assume you are talking about this change. Frankly, although it's pushy to change someone's topic header, no, I didn't find it misleading or necessarily more provocative. As an outsider and someone with a low tolerance for jargon, "PDBox" would be completely unclear to me; what you are proposing is in fact a minimal infobox. The implication of "provocation" that you tried to avoid comes from the rancorous history of infoboxes in areas of Wikipedia such as biographies; it's not about you, it's about the fact that consistent use of infoboxes is a locus of disagreement. (I think I now see why you mentioned up above a concern that readers would be puzzled at finding Boulez's bio is formatted differently; the thing is, that's precisely where the disagreement arises between the two camps: those who disagree with you on infoboxes see no merit to consistency in this matter.) I appreciate your effort to suggest a compromise and to propose it using a less loaded term, but the less loaded term can also be seen as unclear. I was prepared to revert the change of heading, but no, it doesn't look like a change that should be seen as warping your meaning. To me, at least. I did not read through the discussion itself, so I don't know whether the change in heading and resultant emphasis on PD boxes' being a subset of infoboxes has prejudiced the discussion, but since it is such a fraught area - particularly in this wikiproject (I looked back in the history to find your original title and where the change was made, so I saw some of the earlier discussions) - there are always going to be strong feelings, including your own strong feeling that consistency is desirable. For what my opinion is worth, that's what I saw. (Personally, I find ArbCom's instructions:

(a) Infoboxes are neither mandatory nor deprecated (with which I vehemently agree, as you know)

(b) Discuss them only in relation to individual articles

to be impractical in the extreme. Since for the pro-infobox faction and a large portion of the anti-infobox faction, the essence of the disagreement is consistency, discussion is hamstrung from the start, and in fact wikiproject discussions such as that one are ruled out by implication!) But you may want to ask someone else with a less cynical view. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:36, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for many thoughts, excuse me for replying only partially, for lack of time. Consistency is not my goal, compromise is. As outlined in the proposal, we have good examples for working minimal infoboxes (your term), especially Beethoven. Why is Beethoven ok (an arbitrator who wrote the infoboxes case installing the community consensus), but when I try to use it as a model for Boulez, revert, when someone adds to Bizet, revert, when another adds to Monteverdi, revert. I rarely revert, only vandalism, and hate to see good faith edits of other users (who possibly have not the slightest idea that classical composers are soooo special) being treated that way. These edits are not "bold", - roll over Beethoven ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:12, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Yngvydottir and Gerda, at least for me, the "series on" boxes in e.g. articles on political ideologies, biblical and religious topices oder military campaigns have been a sort of major advantage of the enWP compared with the German WP. Seems that artist's biographies were excluded due to the infights you mentioned. Its a pity in my eyes. at least Boulez got some Navigation boxes at the end. The lede would be better off with the Navbox at the start. Polentarion Talk 20:14, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I believe here you are talking about navigation boxes, "navboxes". I agree that those are useful for grouped information, such as Biblical. There's some debate about whether they are better on the right - under the infobox if there is one - or as a footer, one advantage of the footer being that it's less overwhelming, especially if collapsed, and therefore avoids the problem of the box stuff overwhelming the article; that also makes it easier to accommodate multiple such boxes. But they aren't infoboxes; they're really category trees or mini-site plans. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:58, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I like navboxes at the bottom, - my life on Wikipedia would have been different without the challenge of {{Bach cantatas}} with 50% red links when I started. Thanks to Dr. Blofeld who one day added stubs for all those still missing. I created {{Benjamin Britten}} (usually collapsed) and many others, most recently started {{Ferruccio Busoni}}. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:27, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I am back at the WMF in Berlin on thursday. As said, they have an diploma thesis in work on the infoboxes. I will see what they say about navboxing as well. The variant category systems are a separate mess in all the sisterwikis. If the WMF wants to get rid of that, it has to provide a systemic approach based on wikidata. Then navigation, infobox and categories would converge. Polentarion Talk 02:32, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

For some reason I didn't see this, but you know my opinion of Wikidata imposing its system on the various wikipedias. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:46, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Start over and simple: before getting to global converging, can you tell me, Yngvadottir, what you think about the infobox of Gabriela Eibenová? - It's a random article which I just met on my watchlist, but not so random as I took the picture which appeared on the Main page on DYK, - I am all for Women in Music ;) - I think we first need to get specific before globalization, - it's also something the arbitrators asked from all participants in infobox discussions. (Most would be short if the (all too well-known) general pros and cons would be simply ignored.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:34, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

As I say, I am not the person to ask. That infobox would be longer if we knew her birthdate, and if it explained what genre(s) she sings in, especially if she worked outside classical music (there are bitter fights over genre with many popular music artists and groups, simply because that field is there; on the other hand, "classical or what?" was one of the questions I had for which I looked to the lede paragraph. It would also be longer if her nationality presented any complexity - for example, if she had immigrated to another country as a child and was no longer a Czech citizen, or held dual citizenship. She might also work with more than one group, as many artists in all genres do. Basically it's short because she is not a complex case and because two important pieces of data are missing. My most frequent objection, that the infobox oversimplifies, does not arise (except for omitting genre). My second most frequent objection, that there are no chunks of statistical or otherwise indigestible information to justify having an infobox rather than simply writing a good lede that sets out the information clearly in prose, does arise: I can't see what it adds other than clutter. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:46, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Can we please focus on what's there, not "would be"? I would be happy to supply her birthdate, but many female singers don't provide one, I have not added nationality, ever, following the missed friend who quoted "The only real nation is humanity" in his edit notice. Same for genre. - I always try to be short, so for Pierre Boulez just linked CBE instead of all awards. But if you look at the discussion, even that seemed "too much". The singer works with many groups, - I picked the most important one (for her), and you see at a glance that opera is not her main focus. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:23, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

"Middle name"

Yngvadottir, as you seem like the kind of person who would have an interest in onomastics, would you mind taking a look at the Middle name article? And I noticed Gerda above! As the name of a certain 18th-century German composer has been invoked as an example both on that page and the Given name page, I'll take the chance to ping her as well (@Gerda Arendt:). The article seems like it would be in need of a complete rewrite, but I wouldn't quite know where to begin. (Oh, what a nice-looking dog. Sorry to hear it is no longer around.) --Hegvald (talk) 16:08, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I looked and looked away. I have a load of more important things, sorry (one FAC open, one on my mind, cleanup of the giant works lists of Ferruccio Busoni ...). Catholic among the regions is nonsense. "Modern German" after a passage that reads like today but isn't, not much better. Who would link to this article and why? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:25, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Hegvald: I looked through it and I'm afraid it's beyond my competence. I have not looked at the history, but it looks like one of those articles that have had many contributors on different aspects but not much overall vision. It needs to be rewritten based on references, and yes, the section on Catholic countries needs to outline how extensive the confirmation/saint's name practice is and how it relates to the Spanish and Portuguese naming custom, since those are traditionally Catholic communities too. Clarity regarding compounded family names and where they are treated as middle names is also needed; I suspect some of the German material really belongs under family name. I also notice the treatment of English-speaking countries is lop-sided; this may be the source of the "not global" tag. For example, the tradition in the US (I believe originally in the South) of perpetuating the mother's maiden name as a given name should at least be alluded to in this article, as it has led to a whole lot of names being used as given names in US families that are only last names elsewhere; and my understanding is that they were originally given as middle names. However, I wouldn't know where to find the needed sources giving an overview, and since naming customs do indeed vary considerably in different cultures, I'd be personally leery of wading in, since I know I don't know enough. The best article on this topic is probably inevitably going to be long and baggy. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Hegvald: From my perspective, the German sections just have to be deleted. Nonstarters, both of them. It tries to procastinate the middlename concept on German customs and fails. Germany has no deed poll, changing names and even using weird ones for your kids is much more difficult as in the UK. Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach needed and received an allowance by the Kaiser to keep the name Krupp. And Germany is neither Austria nor Switzerland, naming rules wise.

Germans have fornames and a surname, since the 19th century. Before it was much easier to change names - Melanchthon was called Schwarzerd - black earth but took a greek version. The classical Jewish names like Rosenthal or Greenspan show the amount of money they were able to invest to bribe the authorities when they had to take a family name.

Normally one of the fornames ist used as "Rufname" the one you get called by. The German Doctorate is being used as Namenszusatz, an add on to the Name as an whole. (A Weimar joke called the doctorate a Jewish forname, due to the high percentage of German Jewish academics then, mazeltow to Yngva). The nazi Sarah or Abraham additions were forced first names, not middlenames.

Some fornames are combinations - like Hans-Jürgen (which was shortcut HJ and chique in the Nazi era) or Peter-Maria (Maria is the only female forname allowed for men, as long as it is used on the second position) In the case of the Bach family - and often as well royality or catholic families, you give the kid a Rufname and provide it with the fornames of godfathers and important relatives. Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg has a lot of them. Gutti is the nickname (Spitzname), and in Austria, he would not be able to carry the Freiherr. Jan Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma received a sort of call to action with the forname "Fürchtegott" - fear god, that is normally being used after the Rufname, but part of the fornames as well.

In case of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger né Leutheusser, she took a so called double (family) name after being married, allowed in Germany, but slightly different -without the hyphen and not a true double name - in AU and CH and not to be inherited. As said - thats all not about a middle name in the US sense. Polentarion Talk 02:02, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. Most things discussed in most parts of the article are given names, additional family names, patronymics or something else that may in some cases end up inbetween one part and another in the full name. Calling them middle names is neither correct nor helpful for understanding what they are. --Hegvald (talk) 03:03, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Akerman LLP

Sorry about the edit conflict.--ukexpat (talk) 02:46, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

No problem at all. Several of us are looking at that article and fixing one thing at a time :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 02:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Lady Agnew

It's not just an IP, as you know. I haven't looked at their website in a while; a little birdie tells me it's now Mandarax they're slandering more than me and some others, but I don't know if that is good news. Drmies (talk) 16:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

On this stuff, they know their shit. But I wish it had been the other IP. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Worms 2

I do appreciate that there are times when LTA accounts make reasonable contributions, and are not always wrong. And I really do appreciate the fact that you are here, and the contributions you make. I'm not certain that restoring the IP's edit is in keeping with policy, and would like to hear your thoughts. I have no intention of reverting you over it, I just want to better understand. I had reverted per WP:DENY and WP:RBI as an editor evading a block for long term abuse. Thanks in advance! Scr★pIron^IV 20:58, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I won't bother you with my deeper thoughts on whether this editor should have been classified as a long-term abuse case, or banned; that ship has sailed and one would have to catch it on its return to the port of WP:AN. But I believe policy still states that an editor in good standing may take responsibility for and restore a particular edit of a banned user based on the merits of the edit. And it would be hard to legislate that away since it's a clear case of WP:IAR. In any case I rarely fail to see something else that needs work - in this case most of the references also cried out for gnome work, although I wasn't certain of the intention of the dates so I am still seeing screaming from the citation templates. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:05, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I now understand, and appreciate your willingness to explain. Perhaps I have been fighting vandals too long, and need to consider the merits of some of these less problematic edits. I tend to be a rules-based editor, and never considered taking responsibility for someone else's good work. Thank you again! Scr★pIron^IV 21:13, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Bah. You're just jealous.

JEALOUS, I SAY! HalfShadow 18:12, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Molly Sandén

If you find time for it, and want to, please help me improve the article about Molly Sandén. As she is the most likely winner of Melodifestivalen an expansion of the article might be needed. I have improved the articles references today.--BabbaQ (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2015 March newsletter

One of Adam Cuerden’s several quality restorations during round 1

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. Forty-seven competitors move into this round (a bit shy of the expected 64), and we are roughly broken into eight groups of six. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups.

Twenty-two Good Articles were submitted, including three by Cyclonebiskit (submissions), and two each by MPJ-DK (submissions), Hurricanehink (submissions), 12george1 (submissions), and Cas Liber (submissions). Twenty-one Featured Pictures were claimed, including 17 by Adam Cuerden (submissions) (the Round 1 high scorer). Thirty-one contestants saw their DYKs appear on the main page, with a commanding lead (28) by Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Twenty-nine participants conducted GA reviews with J Milburn (submissions) completing nine.

If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck to those moving into round 2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 March newsletter (update)

Along with getting the year wrong in the newsletter that went out earlier this week, we did not mention (as the bot did not report) that Cas Liber (submissions) claimed the first Featured Article Persoonia terminalis of the 2016 Wikicup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email).--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:06, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

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Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

I don't have the time to re-write the Wiki article here, but maybe you can or know someone that can.

The information on how the restaurant chain Bubba Gump Shrimp Company started is not correct.

This is the correct information and a much more interesting history about who's idea it was to create Bubba Gump and who was really behind it:

http://anthonyzolezzi.com/portfolio_page/bubba-gump-seafood-company/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:1314:802A:C47F:9E4A:AA9F:821B (talk) 07:40, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

That is indeed interesting, but it's a primary source. It would need checking out, to find uninvolved sources; there are probably some in newspaper business pages. If I still have any talk-page stalkers who might find the challenge exciting, have at - I have a few projects on my plate already right now. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:44, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

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School

I don't know what win-win you're looking for. Nothing is lost. The article was a few sentences with an address and a link to a website that supposedly claimed temporary accreditation. You can simply write it up with the new sources, and if I'll gladly restore the deleted content to your user space. Hell, I'll write it up myself.

Participants in AfDs who say "per x", whatever X is, are lazy, yes, because typically that doesn't add an argument for the closer to put on the balance--and you may think that my close was bad, though you're not saying it explicitly, but I think it was pretty good and based a. on the discussion and b. in policy. If you wanted me to say "Speedy keep per SCHOOLOUTCOMES" (which is, at heart, what all the overturners want) the response is simple: not policy or guideline, plenty of naysayers, admins need to stick to the rules sometimes. This was not an IAR case. All that energy spent on deletion review, when one paragraph proposed in an RfC on a guideline's talk page could have settled that for a long time to come. Drmies (talk) 23:48, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

@Drmies: Deletionists exist. We no longer have the ARC, after all. Yes, it was a savvy and creative close, and yes, it was a good test case because the article author did a terrible job, including basically copying from the school's website, and because the press coverage is not prepossessing. I linked to what I found; if I'd come along during the AfD, I'd have rewritten it as well as adding the sources, and some folks are heavily influenced by the appearance of an article - organization and English. I think it squeaks by, with that added coverage. But I can't slang the participants at that AfD for not knowing what I know about the wikiproject having cooked up a special Google search widget (which is off Sitush's user page!), and even if someone had known that and done the rewrite and referencing up in time, it could have gone either way - the school is relatively new and is covered in the press largely for trivialities, and people are indeed influenced by whether it seems to be a good school, although that's way outside any reasonable notability criteria ... (There's a US high school I researched, intending to whip up an article for it, but the press coverage from the last year or so is startlingly negative and that drowns out any earlier coverage, except of course for its having sports teams. I decided not to bother.) Maybe my view of deletion review is overly cynical; I'm increasingly sad about the project as a whole. But it does seem like an unwinnable situation, where I have to argue that the closer messed up, or that the AfD was fundamentally screwed up (and the closer failed to notice). The merits of the subject of the article are kind of irrelevant - yet this will be used to delete lots of articles on schools that people don't like, with it being a lot harder for those who want to save them to get them over the bar. Particularly schools in countries where the bureaucratic documentation isn't on-line, or looks iffy to a foreigner, and the extra-curriculars likewise. After all, most of what a school does is in a classroom, not in the newspapers. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:18, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

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Thanks

Thanks for creating Raymond Vernon. And for the tip of the hat in the edit summary to the mention I made over there about this article being missing. I failed to notice it had been deleted back in 2007. It was tagged by Iridescent and deleted back then by Anthony Bradbury, both of whom are still around. I am pinging them to find out whether you creating the article showed up in their notifications. And also to see their reactions to something like this popping up 9 years later... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

In a more serious vein, I see the article was requested at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics in 2011 by User:DaDexter. Lots of red-links there. No surprise that economics coverage is poor on Wikipedia. The contribution history and talk page at User talk:Nomysz~enwiki (the user who created the one-line stub) is a bit sad really. Oh well, better late than never I suppose! Carcharoth (talk) 23:51, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, both the article and talkpage have popped up (and I hope you appreciate that I've gone to the effort of logging into my main account on a phone to check). I do prune my watchlist down every so often, on an "if I can't remember why I watchlisted this I'm removing it" basis, so am surprised this one slipped through; I imagine being so far down the alphabet I'm getting sloppy by the time I reach 'R'. FWIW, the deleted version of the article read—in full—Raymond Vernon the author of the Product Life Cycle theory used to explain International Trade and Foreign Direct Investement. (sic throughout), so I'm not going to feel remotely guilty about having tagged it.

Account creation rate, 2006-07

Regarding the minimal history of the author, Wikipedia back then was full of one-shot single purpose accounts which would make one or two edits and then vanish. 2006-07 was the height of the WMF's War On IPs in the wake of Siegenthaler, when more and more restrictions were thrown up as to what logged-off editors could do, so the account creation rate suddenly rocketed as people created a new account every time they wanted to create a page, move a page or any of the other things IPs could no longer do, but couldn't remember the name or password of the account they created last time they wanted to create a page. The surge in registrations from 1500 per day to 10,000 per day shows up very clearly in the account-creation chart (right). ‑ Iridescent 02:47, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, both. @Carcharoth: Pas de quoi, I needed something to do to keep awake while waiting to co-walk a dog, and since the French and German editors had found two excellent sources ... but frankly I rather expected someone else to jump in. I would have thought en.wikipedia was replete with US editors who took a class in this stuff in college. I just hope I did an ok job (I don't have that background at all and don't understand our article on the product life-cycle theory, although I do understand the French Wikipedia summary and sort of understand the journal obituary (providing I have correctly parsed the word obsolescing) - and I regret that they started recriminating against you over there. I don't mind being called a "little stalker" for using that place to, ahem, improve Wikipedia, but that made me feel bad. @Iridescent: The sad thing is that in hindsight, that one sentence made an appropriate claim of notability. If only Nomysz~enwiki (of course I can no longer see what if anything else they tried to do) had linked to that article on the theory - which was created on 19 March 2007, almost 3 months beforehand. Or included a source. (The escalation of the requirement for sources to demonstrate notability was also happening in 2007, I believe? But I hadn't known, or it had slipped my mind, that that was the period when registration started being required for page creation/moves, and why.) It likely wouldn't have helped the Vernon article then, but might well have led to its being created in the interim, if he'd been red-linked at the article on the theory - no one ever seems to have thought to do that, though it was created with links to Charles Hill and McGraw-Hill, and he wasn't linked at the article on the professional organization that has an award named in his honour ... maybe this is one of the subject areas where a lot of editors dislike red links? Anyway, both, there's a lesson to be learnt here about our coverage, and I'd hate to think it was just that (English-speaking) Wikipedians dislike economics. He turns out to hit several of our notability criteria: important career, influential research down to a very frequently cited theory, named chair at Harvard ... and created peanut M&Ms '-) Similarly when I approached Henry Adams Bellows (businessman) I found he was notable on multiple grounds (he switched careers every decade or so) and that we were erroneously linking to his namesake the state Supreme Court judge alllll over the encyclopaedia. Well anyway, I think that's my first article relating to economics, just as a week or so ago I did what I believe is my first television programme (Continental Classroom, which was Hard-Core with capitals and bolding). But I still hope I can get help with it. Did I summarise the theory acceptably? And which City College did he get his undergraduate degree from? I imagine it was the one in the Bronx that Isaac Asimov and everybody else attended, but the bot will be by any moment now to point out I've linked to a DAB page. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

No worries about the 'recriminations', that is water off a duck's back (and you have to understand a bit about how things work over there, the culture is a bit different). There are loads of notable people who lack articles. Some are borderline, but this one surprised me more as (like you) I see that he was clearly notable and the sources would have been around back then for a similar article. What I find interesting is how other language Wikipedias get there first sometimes even for Anglophile topics. The other reason some notable people get missed out is because they have a common name and articles appear to exist, but are about other people (such as sportspeople). Examples I give (where I created articles) are Frank C. Newman, and Frank Newman (educator) (see this page move). Similarly, Jack James (rocket engineer) and this page move. Also Robert J. Parks and the sportspeople at Robert Parks. If you frequent disambiguation pages, you will find them replete with certain topic areas that have either set notability criteria rather low, or have more people active in them (YMMV). About the deleted contribs of Nomysz~enwiki, there were none, just a drive-by account as Iridescent said. Carcharoth (talk) 11:08, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

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For your assistance in Operation Stuttgart

	Calatrava Medal of Merit
	For your participation in Operation Stuttgart on Castle Rosenstein. Vami IV (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Ooh, thank you :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:23, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Gamaliel and others arbitration case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others. The scope of this case is Gamaliel's recent actions (both administrative and otherwise), especially related to the Signpost April Fools Joke. The case will also examine the conduct of other editors who are directly involved in disputes with Gamaliel. The case is strictly intended to examine user conduct and alleged policy violations and will not examine broader topic areas. The clerks have been instructed to remove evidence which does not meet these requirements. The drafters will add additional parties as required during the case. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Evidence.

Please add your evidence by May 2, 2016, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. This notification is being sent to those listed on the case notification list. If you do not wish to recieve further notifications, you are welcome to opt-out on that page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

In the evidence you presented for this case, you posted a link that appears to have been truncated in error:

cast aspersions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=7141164 I think you may have meant:

cast aspersions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=714116491 — wbm1058 (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I believe you're right and will change it! Yngvadottir (talk) 04:12, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome, looks good. wbm1058 (talk) 00:06, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Re your e-mail

This link looks useful. I like your encouraging ersatz cat! Bishonen | talk 13:41, 25 April 2016 (UTC).

@Bishonen: Thanks. (I miss him a lot.) Home now, but I think I'll continue to wimp out. It's only the one source, and technically a personal blog, although I trust File 770 or I wouldn't have pursued the matter. The news was linked to by someone I read else-net who's in the Eastern US, but it was very early for those of us further west, including I think Orangemike, and in any case I saw that he hadn't edited for a day or so. (Though maths is not my strong suit.) But I can no longer do the stuff that would need doing anyway, so I should probably get my nose out of others' business. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:50, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Aimy in a Cage

A tag has been placed on Aimy in a Cage requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect from the article namespace to a different namespace except the Category, Template, Wikipedia, Help, or Portal namespaces.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Stefan2 (talk) 19:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 May newsletter

FP of Christ Church Cathedral, Falkland Islands by Godot13

Round 2 is over and 35 competitors have moved on to Round 3.

Round 2 saw three FAs (two by Cas Liber (submissions) and one by Montanabw (submissions)), four Featured Lists (with three by Calvin999 (submissions)), and 53 Good Articles (six by Worm That Turned (submissions) and five each by Hurricanehink (submissions), Cwmhiraeth (submissions), and MPJ-DK (submissions)). Eleven Featured Pictures were promoted (six by Adam Cuerden (submissions) and five by Godot13 (submissions)). One Featured Portal, Featured Topic and Good Topic were also promoted. The DYK base point total was 1,135. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) scored 265 base points, while The C of E (submissions) and MPJ-DK (submissions) each scored 150 base points. Eleven ITN were promoted and 131 Good Article Reviews were conducted with MPJ-DK (submissions) completing a staggering 61 reviews. Two contestants, Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and Cas Liber (submissions), broke the 700 point mark for Round 2.

If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck to those moving into round 2. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) -- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:00, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

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A kitten for you!

Hi Yngvadottir, thanks for reviewing Cuthbert's Babies

Coolabahapple (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks!

-For filling in my refs. I had clocked your original request in the edit-summary, but I'm currently having on / off problems getting ReFill to work- particularly with "my" own articles; It doesn't do anything, just a blank page. Gutting. I left a message on the FAQ page, but no joy yet. Nice pussy by the way. _Fortuna ^{Imperatrix Mundi} 18:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

pas de quoi, I need practice with the citation templates. :-) (Yes, I miss His Furriness very much) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:30, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Any run for RfA?

In the future, or have you left that behind Y? I would support without hesitation, and I am sure many more with more "clout" would in addition. You were a damn fine admin, and would be again. Regards, Simon Irondome (talk) 20:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment! (I don't think I deserve it, but still, thank you very much.) It's rather sad, actually. I have had other offers to nominate me, both here and privately, and I was rather looking forward to my second RfA; the first was very eccentric and I think fun for most participants, and this time I would have known ahead of time and been able to take time off work. And I would have tried hard to be a better admin than I was. However, I then discovered that for mostly personal reasons, I can't. So I'm still trying to get used to not being able to see deleted articles. I'm afraid I doubt it will change; if it does I'll let you all know in a heartbeat. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I fully understand Y. Just whistle if there comes a time ;).. Simon Irondome (talk) 21:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

An arbitration case regarding Gamaliel and others has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Gamaliel is admonished for multiple breaches of Wikipedia policies and guidelines including for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, removing a speedy deletion notice from a page he created, casting aspersions, and perpetuating what other editors believed to be a BLP violation.
2. DHeyward and Gamaliel are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
3. DHeyward (talk · contribs) is admonished for engaging in incivility and personal attacks on other editors. He is reminded that all editors are expected to engage respectfully and civilly with each other and to avoid making personal attacks.
4. For conduct which was below the standard expected of an administrator — namely making an incivil and inflammatory close summary on ANI, in which he perpetuated the perceived BLP violation and failed to adequately summarise the discussion — JzG is admonished.
5. Arkon is reminded that edit warring, even if exempt, is rarely an alternative to discussing the dispute with involved editors, as suggested at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
6. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to supplement the existing WP:BLPTALK policy by developing further guidance on managing disputes about material involving living persons when that material appears outside of article space and is not directly related to article-content decisions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

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Notice of Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion

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Jesse Waugh AfD Debate

Hi Yngvadottir - I'm just posting to ask if you might be willing to take a look at the AfD debate for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jesse_Waugh It's basically the same debate that took place at the establishment of the article. Thank you either way. 83.55.234.68 (talk) 07:29, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your input! 83.55.234.68 (talk) 18:31, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

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Over there

I hope you weren't upset by anything I said. I've long admired your contributions, and I hope I've said that before.

If not, I damn well shoulda. Begoon ^talk 15:49, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

No, although your first response about focus was closer to my view '-) And thanks, it means a lot that some people notice. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:52, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

People notice people who talk sense. I guess that means you will get noticed a lot. You're going to have to live with that. Begoon ^talk 16:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Mondongo (collective) has been nominated for Did You Know

Hello, Yngvadottir. Mondongo (collective), an article you either created or to which you significantly contributed,has been nominated to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page as part of Did you know. You can see the hook and the discussion here. You are welcome to participate! Thank you. APersonBot (talk!) 12:01, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

?

So true. Long not been here, but still happy to see you. Polentarion Talk 13:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Polentarion! I was wondering where you were. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Elvis left the house or so.... I had been completely annoyed, to say the least, by the German WP. I still have things to do / that interest me here, but I have ceased activitities completely for a while. Polentarion Talk 19:22, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I can understand ... I'm pretty unhappy with the state of the project myself, and I hadn't had the troubles you had over there. I've mainly been fixing stuff and writing little articles on Finnish architecture and so forth. There are some large tasks I should do but I find myself reluctant. That plus I still have a massive off-wiki task kicking my butt. Good to see you again. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:49, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I feel similar. I closed my account on deWP and suddenly an IP and a newby tried an attack on Bionade Biedermeier. I have some other articles where I hit the gang, but it seems they still feel bad about this one. Reverted the stuff but I won't do much, my Reifensteiner Verband needs an English version. I am happy about Iceland and Portugal now ;) Polentarion Talk 21:40, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I was happy to be able to think about the footie rather than the Brexit, but I wish the semi-finals had turned out differently. I took Drmies' good advice and closed the tab on my watchlist; I try not to think about what may be happening to the articles I used to watch. I do know that nice people have watched over my user page, for example, just as a lot of you left very kind messages when I tried to retire; a lot of Wikipedians are really wonderful, which makes me feel all the worse about letting everybody down, and all the sadder about what's happening to the community with the WMF's encouragement, and all the more disappointed about some of the things I've seen individuals do and say. I warned in my leaving statement that if I stayed I would have to be more political, and although I've managed to stop myself from writing up my opinion on infoboxes, which would further hurt Gerda and others, I've committed a couple of other essays, including the one you probably just saw. This is sad in itself—now that I'm not an admin I should be spending what time I have on articles (less time than I had; my job and another commitment leave me with far less free time than before my retirement attempt). On the other hand I have just been too angry to participate at two RfC's where I have a strong opinion. Drmies also advised me to stop looking at Wikipediocracy, and he is wise in that, too; it's frightening how negative many of the people there are about Wikipedia. But they also constantly mention articles that need fixing, and other things I would otherwise not know about, since I can't bear to read the Signpost regularly. Unfortunately that means I'm distracted even more from the articles I know I should be fixing, but where I dread the amount of work and the possible response that the topic is too boring or expert or something, and that I wind up instead spending hours fixing weird bad articles on topics that kind of bore me; at least that helps me maintain my reputation for breadth :-) Some of that repeats at greater length what I said above ... and of course I need to add that we keep losing people who made this place interesting and friendly. At least some of them come back, like Black Kite; but now Dennis Brown seems to have got depressed, and he was a real admin (I think his was the first normal RfA after my weird one, and he helped out tons more than I did, and was far better at it). And I miss Hafspajen and 74/75/whatever he or she is now, probably some humongous unrememberable string of letters and numbers. Phooey. I'm so sad I'm probably discouraging others. I looked at de:Reifensteiner Schulen and I should probably have started translating it, but ... maybe if work is slow I'll start it in my user space. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Sadly, without Haffy around anymore, I have nobody to help add to my collection of pugs...--kelapstick^(bainuu) 04:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Poor little doggies! Yngvadottir (talk) 04:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit Dispute

Hi,

I've been trying to fix the grammar of some articles. However I've encountered a rather a strong and firm resistance in the form of User:4TheWynne. I looked at the guidelines and it says the revert tool is for vandalism not for good faith edits or edits someone simply dislikes. Please understand that I mean to make good edits on this wiki and not to be a troll or bully. If I make a mistake, I would appreciate it would be fixed and told why it is a mistake instead of simply reverting.

Anyway, what I'm asking is the articles to be reviewed, a consensus to be held instead of simply reverting edits, and the user above to be told of what revert tool is not to be used for.

Please and Thank you Darksheets52 (talk) 09:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC).

Hey there – allow me to try and explain my actions. I first warned the user and explained my reasons for reverting in the warnings that I gave. I deemed these grammar changes (in the context of the articles that they were being placed in, namely Characters of Warcraft and Arthas Menethil) to be unnecessary, and I tried to explain this. When the user reverted back, asking me to discuss on the article's talk page rather than give a reason for their edits in his/her edit summaries or the user's own talk page where I had tried to reason with the user, I did so (after perhaps one revert too many, and for that, I apologise). However, it has now been two hours since I opened up a discussion on Talk:Arthas Menethil and the user didn't respond until after he/she had reported me to other editors. Again, I apologise if my actions were too harsh – I was only trying to protect the pages that were being affected by these changes, particularly as the user wasn't listening to me initially and was instead removing my warnings from his/her talk page without explaining their edits. Again, sorry about all of this. Thanks – regards, 4TheWynne^{(talk)(contribs)} 10:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

• Hi both, @4TheWynne and Darksheets52: I'm not an admin any more, just an experienced editor, and so far I've only looked specifically at one article, Arthas Menethil, but here's what I see so far. Darksheets52, you have a rather wide interpretation of "fixing grammar": since Frostmourne is the name of a sword, "the Frostmourne" is not better, it's actually less good. But you also had a valid insight, that the reader might not know what it was, so putting "the sword" in for context before the name was a good idea. The trouble was, you hadn't realized you were changing a direct quotation, and that's a no-no. So that made your revert correct, 4TheWynne. However, neither of you said in an edit summary what you were doing and why. That's what edit summaries are for - to head off misunderstandings by saying what your reasoning is. If the change had been labeled providing context for reader or even it needs "the" and the revert had been labeled reverting - direct quote, you'd have reached understanding much faster. It's not so much that reverting is only for vandalism, as that you should not leave the default revert statement in place unless quickly reverting a vandalism edit, because that's what that default statement generated by the software implies. And this is also an illustration of why you should make an edit summary even when making what seems to you like a small and obvious change; so that other editors can see why you made it; they probably didn't see what you saw that needed fixing, or they would have fixed it themselves.

As to discussion: I'm glad to see you started talking on Talk:Arthas Menethil. That's where changes and disagreements regarding that particular article should be discussed. For one reason, it's neutral ground. For another, it leaves a record where future editors of the article can find it, so that they know what issues have come up in the past with the article, what the reasoning was on both sides, and what decision was reached. Also, at some points in its history an article may have been protected so that some or all editors couldn't edit it directly; that's the place where edits will have been discussed during those periods, so there may be important info there about suggested edits and reasoning for them. And occasionally someone may have a conflict of interest or just be shy, and have suggested edits or raised questions on the talk page instead of editing the article. So you should check the talk page anyway. Instead, to some extent, at least one of you seems to have started templating the other on their talk page. I am not one of those editors who deplore our templates. They were carefully developed to be clear, to explain things to newbies, and to discourage people who were making unsatisfactory edits from continuing in the same way. But they can be intimidating, and they aren't a substitute for explaining what the specific problem is. And both of you appear to have been here for a couple of years, so WP:Don't template the regulars may apply. Unless the other editor is doing serious damage or appears to you to be vandalizing—which means deliberately damaging the encyclopedia out of malice or for lulz, remember—an explanatory edit summary should always come first; then if it's one article, go to the article talk page and start a section explaining your point of view and refer to it in one of your edit summaries; or if it's several articles, consider starting a non-template section on the other editor's talk page instead of using a template. In this instance, at least as regards that one article, you both had valid points. That happens more often than you might think.

Sorry about the long screed. I'm now going to look at the other article mentioned above and see whether there are any other places where you misunderstood each other, or where something different happened. Again, please bear with my slowness (and you may in the meantime have asked someone wiser, I dunno). Yngvadottir (talk) 15:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

DYK for Mondongo (collective)

They took the cowardly option ‑ Iridescent 15:22, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your edits on the page Sörby (Öland) » Shadowowl | talk 19:03, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:22, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

		The Rosetta Barnstar
		For supportive behaviour and general excellence in relation to WP:CXT.—S Marshall T/C 15:19, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Aww, thanks :-) <blushes horribly> Yngvadottir (talk) 15:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

GoogleTrans gadget can do machine translation on Content Translation system

Hi there,

I noticed you are a wiki translator and that you have very good knowledge of several languages.

Just thought I'd mention that the GoogleTrans gadget integrates with the Content Translation system now, and can do Machine Translation for all the language pairs that Google translate supports (10000) instead of the 100 that Apertium supports.

Help for the gadget is at User:Endo999/GoogleTrans#Integration_With_Wikipedia_Beta_Translation_System:_Now_In_Production_Version_Of_Gadget

With your language proficiency you could well get a better translation than Google supports, but since around half the words just carry over, it's easier to type the new article out with MT happening.

Endo999 (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm afraid I strongly disagree with the assumptions and regard them as an insult to those of us working to provide accurate translations and effective English articles. The WMF e-mailed me an invitation a year ago (while I was trying to stay retired, hence I didn't discuss it on-wiki) to use the content translation tool to produce content on French Wikipedia, and it destroyed the last shred of respect I had for the WMF. The thing is seductive, so I am now working my tail off fixing a tiny fraction of the resulting flawed translations, instead of working on what I should be working on. I feel rather grim about it all. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

(Driveby TPW comment) Endo999, if you're not already aware (I don't see you commenting there so I assume not) I strongly suggest you familiarise yourself with this discussion. The Content Translation Tool, and the large amount of work it generates for other editors, is deeply unpopular, to the point where the discussion is no longer "should pages created using this tool be summarily deleted?", but "what should we call the new deletion criterion?". ‑ Iridescent 12:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

@Iridescent: A note before I collapse into bed, and I hope it won't become too much of a rant. I gather from that discussion that on the other hand, a lot of editors have been seduced by this tool, or can't see the problems with the resulting translations, and that the requirement to use it has therefore been scaled back from 5,000 edits to the "extended confirmed" level. While there are over 3,000 articles on that list, and they range from almost complete incomprehensibility (one editor has also used it to store in user space the Romanian version of his unreferenced account of his Minecraft crew, deleted A7 on both ro. and en.) through sad stubs (Wildlife of Levant is just the lede of what looks like a pretty good article on ar., with numerous references) and things with outcroppings of untranslated and overtranslated bad output (see the BLP I just worked over) to superficially ok articles with hidden inaccuracies, which are probably worst of all. Unfortunately I can't possibly check and fix all 3,000; I can't even begin to do several languages, and I'm white-knuckled when I try, for example, an architect's article translated from Polish, because I'm using the German or whatever other article there is as an aid, and that's blatantly relying on Wikipedia as a reference - where they differ, I have no way of knowing which is more reliable. And unfortunately it's becoming clear that there aren't many of us with the necessary proofreader's eye. That BLP was by a fine editor. Of the two articles checked and passed by another editor at the list page, the two I rechecked he'd bobbled. Very respectable people have spoken in the discussion about how they find machine translation a useful first step. And Endo999's script reenables unchanged machine translation. It seems impossible for me to convey why I approve of our policy against machine translation, because this has made starkly evident that most people can't see (a significant number of) the problems with the result. There are so many good intentions involved, and I would hate for us to become like German Wikipedia, where a new article is regarded as an imposition because people have to check it (and hence their wiki-wide pending changes policy). Heck, it makes me sad that unregistered editors can no longer start new articles here. But this is damaging the encyclopedia (quite apart from the message it sends: All we want is quantity! Forget what we said about quality!) and it's wearing me out and bringing me close to tears. I approve of translation to broaden our coverage, and I've said over and over that the number of articles that exist in other-language Wikipedias and not on en. is a good indication of how very far the encyclopedia is from being complete. But not translation for the sake of translation (or full employment for WMF staff). I've never been a fan of fetishizing article improvement either, or a snob about newbies' efforts—at least I hope not. I hope this isn't turning me into a hypocrite. It has me so upset I despair of explaining why, since so very few seem to be able to see the problems with the translations! Yngvadottir (talk) 20:53, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

And fundamentally, you need not just a mere word-for-word translation, but rather an intelligent interpretation. An interpreter understands the language, the nuances, the idioms and the context. Interpretation is more than being (or using) a dictionary. This is especially difficult and critical in technical and specialized areas. IMO. Sorry for interrupting. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 21:29, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

And also, the cultural differences, which are a genuine issue despite the number of people who try to claim they aren't. No machine translation will ever be able to understand that "basic background knowledge" isn't a universal constant, and thus things which require detailed explanation to make sense to readers in one culture will appear patronising if explained in detail in another, and that basic cultural concepts themselves vary between cultures. (Any German asked where they would place Merkel on the political spectrum would reply that she's well to the right, but to Brits and Aussies she's an earnest centrist and to North Americans her policies are so far to the left as to be almost communist.) As you may have guessed, I do not approve of machine translation except as a tool to be used by very experienced translators as a cross-checking mechanism, and I personally would go even further than the hardline opposers at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT and make the use of machine translation a blockable offence, as we already do with unauthorised bots. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Spanish too?

Wow. Is there no end to your linguistic talents?  :) All the best—S Marshall T/C 15:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Easy topic, and there's a reason I list my reading rather than my writing/speaking knowledge :-) For more fun, look at the sources I used to write Mondongo (collective) :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 21:24, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Good Lord: A creative commons picture of someone performing a sex act, made of biscuits. My day just became a trifle odder. ... But I do see you can manage Spanish! :) And the Elder Futhark, of all things. Can I interest you in taking a glance at Seax of Beagnoth?—S Marshall T/C 04:24, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Ah, the Thames Scramasax! That article appears to deserve its GA designation; I can't see a single gnome edit to make :-) Unfortunately the Elder Futhark Babel userbox series is limited to one level, for some unknown reason, or at least that was the situation when I last looked; but Level 2 is probably not far off. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:46, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Leukophobia

Per That Place I looked at cleaning it up, but really, it seemed (and seems) hopeless. I found myself wanting to reduce it to "Leukophobia is fear of white, that is, of anyone is actually afraid of it." I'm wondering how many other trash phobia articles we have. Mangoe (talk) 17:21, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm really hoping WikiProject medicine takes out of my hands the responsibility of deciding whether to !vote TNT at AfD. I simply don't have the qualifications to look for acceptable refs. Sigh. Unfortunately there are limits to my education. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:30, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

That exists and Bionadebiedermeier gets the hack. I am rather annoyed of this project. Polentarion Talk 17:56, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm annoyed and sad for different reasons, but not unrelated ... glad you came back. Unfortunately I don't have the background to refute the points being made about Bionade Biedermeier, although many of them make me scratch my head, such as the doctorate being unfinished. I do wish they would leave it alone, and am very sorry you got blocked over there. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:04, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I had an e-mail exchange with the guy that started the project and as well the faculty. He sent me the complete paper published with the Deutsche gesellschaft für Soziologie conference, he hasn't finished the doctorate yet. With regard to the Dudenwiki: Its OK to say that the szenewiki is offline now - but I based the quote in the article on a reader about sociology of nowadays Berlin published by Campus Verlag. That said, mobbing in the De WP is something I prefer to avoid here. Polentarion Talk 18:24, 10 August 2016 (UTC) PS.: I actually did some changes based on the discussion ;)

Reifenstein schools

Chemistry education, Maidhof 1926

I have done a first translation of my much more detailed German entry. Point is, the community talks about the gender gap - they aint not doing notting 'bout it ;) Its been my swan song overthere, as I am not willing to contribute to that community anymore. Sad ending for a top 1000 author, but its like that and I am not the only one. User:Weißbier, a sort of Urgestein overthere, which defended as well against the BionadeAfD got some months detention for lack of political correctness. Sigh Polentarion Talk 23:06, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the Reifensteiner :-) I have had it open in a tab since your last mention of it, but despaired of being able to check sources. Also recently I've been working my tail off trying to check and fix translations, in what limited time I have for WP these days. To be fair, there are a number of initiatives over here on en. like WikiProject:Women in Red; people have been trying to narrow the gender gap in our coverage by writing biographies of women. Politics, ugh. WMF, ugh. Must now get ready for work; there went my weekend. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:14, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Michael Hardy arbitration case opened

You were added to a mass-message list because of your displayed interest in this case. The Arbitration Committee will periodically inform you of the status of this case so long as your username remains on this list.

You were recently listed as a party to and/or commented on a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 25, 2016, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Kharkiv07 (T) 17:23, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	thanks for your work editing the Françoise Laborde (journalist) article‎ Endo999 (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks :-) That one was not so bad. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:23, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Death of Richard Nieuwenhuizen

Dear Yngvadottir, I have made some updates and changes to this article, which you have done some great work on about three years ago. I've added a few notes to the changes I've made on the talk page. It would be great if you could review it! Additionally, I have started a discussion at nl:Overleg:SC Buitenboys on whether it should be about time to get a similar entry on the Dutch Wikipedia, rather than one measly paragraph on the incident. What would your thoughts be on that? P.S.: What a beautiful dog you had! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 10:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

@Eddyspeeder: Thanks for the compliment and yes, I miss my ersatz cat very much :-( At this point I don't recall how I came to write that article; I may have seen a news article, or someone may have mentioned it to me ... as such I really don't have much of an opinion on whether Dutch Wikipedia should have a whole article on it, although I do think that since they have articles on both clubs, those should cover incidents such as those you mention (club-house burnt down?!), especially since both clubs seem to have had incidents. But if you do decide to create such an article, it might be better to write it from scratch using just the Dutch sources rather than translating the English article, which has to explain about the clubs and the pre-existing worry about violence in youth football—Dutch-speaking readers can be assumed to need much less explanation—and was originally based heavily on English-language sources. As I noted at Talk:Death of Richard Nieuwenhuizen, you've made a change that suggests the sources in English got a point wrong; Dutch sources are more likely to be accurate. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:53, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Yngvadottir, thanks for the quick reply! I found the origin of why you wrote the page here. This is also the reason I referred to the Dutch sources; you asked whether people could verify the reliability of the Dutch sources ;-) In the updates to the article I did tend towards English-language news articles from less prominent websites (e.g., "Dutch News") as they covered what the prominent media also wrote, but provided this information in English. The incidents at SC Buitenboys are completely unrelated though; their club house burnt down due to an electrical failure and the player who died was a girl that drowned. Still, they are tragic incidents in the club's history, but I do agree that those should be added to the article about the football club as well. Thanks for giving your two cents on the matter, I will take them into account! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 22:43, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts please?

Runic Swedish. All the best—S Marshall T/C 16:51, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

[2] :-( Yngvadottir (talk) 17:00, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Splendid, thanks very much.—S Marshall T/C 17:05, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

After rummaging around on sv. I've followed up with a note to the editor who created the article and pinged an expert who unfortunately doesn't often edit here. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:39, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 25

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

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:36, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Done. Was removed by students as a prank in 1929 link. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 11:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! (Couldn't go online from work.) And ROFL. She's all over the Google News archive, but that one of course didn't come up. This lady is one of the few examples I've run across that really look as though she was overlooked because of unconscious bias: female, right-wing ... and a sculptor. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:14, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Suzanne Silvercruys is been none of the Biohemiennes, I presume. I did some interlinking from Boheme to Bionade-B and vice versa, Grisette (person) had not been mentioned yet in the Boheme article but has to. The enemy is not logged in currently. With regard to your brain, I refer to Matthew 5, which says it all: While blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works. Ye are the light of the world. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Ye are the salt of the earth. ;) Polentarion Talk 19:36, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't think I would have liked her if I ever met her. For Bohemians of the Anarchist type, see Indecline. I've been naughty and escaped from the dreadful task of vetting WMF-instigated machine-aided translations into article creation recently, but put the yoke back on my shoulders today. Thanks for the compliment, Biblical though it is '-) Here's a different view:

Meðalsnotr skyli manna hverr, æva til snotr sé; því at snotrs manns hjarta verðr sjaldan glatt, ef sá er alsnotr, er á.

Medium wise should every person be, never too wise; because a wise man's heart rarely becomes glad, if he who owns it is wise in all.

I am probably not even medium wise these days :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

For a long time, my personal POV has been that anything being claimed as Germanic of origin, is most probably elder christian (respectively one of its confessions) recoined in the 19th century. I never was a big fan of James Frazer's Golden Bough. Take Halloween, quote de:Halloween#Kontroversen_um_die_Kontinuit.C3.A4tshypothese: Die österreichische Ethnologin Editha Hörandner sieht die häufig behaupteten keltischen oder heidnischen Ursprünge als historische Projektion, die geradezu den Charakter eines Gütesiegels habe. Von Interesse für die Forschung sei weniger die längst widerlegte These einer ungebrochenen Kontinuität bis ins Altertum, als vielmehr, wie die moderne Sehnsucht nach fiktiven keltischen Traditionen entstehe und was davon verbreitet werde. Die aktuelle Praxis des Festes Halloween habe mit diesen Vorstellungen wenig oder gar nichts zu tun und sei keineswegs heidnisch oder keltisch geprägt. Interessanter sei die aktuelle Entwicklung von Halloween als Reimport aus den Vereinigten Staaten. Point is, I may have been become wiser with the days. One of my last contributions in the de WP was an enlargement of the Eid article. de:Eid#Rolle_unterschiedlicher_Rechtskulturen. It seems to be the case that really old things still exist and go on to develop. Continuity is no taboo anymore, including pagan background. A synthesis might be based on Bruno Latour - we never have been modern. Including you and me. Polentarion Talk 20:08, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Order of the silver fairy

	Courage, perseverance, idealism and humility
	I hope its working in heathenly lands! Polentarion Talk 10:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks :-) (blushing) Yngvadottir (talk) 15:40, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Nothing new on the honeypot front

I found it quite satisfying, that my recent edits on a battle ground like creationism have been accepted and nicely corrected and enhanced. Point is, I might have grown wiser, behaved myself, went along stepwise and explained what I had done with editing comments and details on the sources in use. As well I introduced myself and prepared for it at a related article. But sometimes its just matching the Zeitgeist. Polentarion Talk 11:40, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Good for you. And rather you than me :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 16:52, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Sigh. .... Polentarion Talk 17:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I took a look at that talk page and I'm afraid it made my head spin; categories often do. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:42, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

That was not intended. Point is, with disputed articles like that, you often get in ownership disputes, content is far from being interesting nowadays. And I registrate that even friendly authors believe more in established WP consensus instead of discussing recent research. I love the point about Darwin, actually a theologian himself, not being treated (as the popular myth goes) like Galileo by church authorities. Actually the liberal Anglican church establishment had accepted evolution long before the science community but refrained later from social darwinism ;) 23:13, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Q

Wild hunt as by Franz von Stuck

Do you know if there is an English phrase the equivalent of "de heerscharen van Odin"? Thx, Drmies (talk) 02:08, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker) This man knew. Otherwise, I can't think of a phrase that (I presume) has the same connotations as "Soldiers of Odin" (who appear to have re-incarnated as a gaggle of Finnish boneheads)- "the thin red line" has a different connotation. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 03:52, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• Hmm yes, that's not unrelated to what I'm writing about. Drmies (talk) 04:19, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Wild hunt or Wuodan's army / in Wuotis Heer in Swabia. Horrido Polentarion Talk 06:45, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• Hunter's stew, to use up all those rabbits and chickens the Wild Hunt came home with. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 08:01, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Szegediner Gulasch in German! I still have to translate de:Volksjagd, an article about the Eastern German obsession with hunting. Polentarion Talk 09:08, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@Drmies: As Polentarion suggests, one possible translation is the Wild Hunt. If you don't mean that, then maybe "the horde of Odin"? But neither is exactly an everyday expression in English these days. The third possibility is you mean the Einherjar, though I doubt it. No English term for those guys. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

No, not Einherjar, though that's exciting. And it's much less formal than what "Wild Hunt" suggests--we're talking about a bunch of drunk heathens who destroy the Good Work done by Christians. "Horde" is a good term to use. Thanks to all! Drmies (talk) 16:19, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. @Drmies:, what about Apollonian and Dionysian, Nietzsche old school or Camille Paglia postfeminist? Polentarion Talk 17:16, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Drmies: Idiomatic english describing those drunk heathens who destroy the Good Work done by Christians would be Vandal, viz. the Sack of Rome; bt colloquially used to decribe general cretinous barbarism... _Muffled ^Pocketed 13:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

"Vandal" probably isn't appropriate in this context, since "early Germanic Europe" is probably the one context in which the term genuinely would be unclear. The usual English idiom would be "orgy of pillage", now that "rape" has lost its original meaning. ‑ Iridescent 20:35, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Pillage- pertaining to pills (medicine). "I haven't got the correct pillage." not signed what do you mean- I done signed it 21:12, 13. Sep. 2016‎ Xanthomelanoussprog

Just pretend to be German, leave your towel on the beach and build a sandburg. The context gets quite modern then ;) A Bavarian version is the bar:Haberfeldtreiben, less cangaroo but Vehmic_court by a large crowd. Polentarion Talk 21:36, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

• Somehow the Austro-Bavarian Wikipedia looks like a really fun place! Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 08:44, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Dialect versions are the laid back part of WP. In the case of Muggeseggele, the Englisher came with an afd. Polentarion Talk 08:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

• 
• 
• 
• 

Death of Richard Nieuwenhuizen

Dear Yngvadottir, this is just to let you know that following our recent discussion, I have now created a Dutch translation. I have followed your advice to assume the Dutch sources, which resulted in the emphases to vary (e.g., more details on the silent march and changes in Dutch soccer) and a different approach to writing (especially in the opening paragraph). I did keep the structure largely similar to the English article. All in all, I just wanted to thank you for your support, encouragement and advice. Cheers! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 19:05, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Well done! Good job! Yngvadottir (talk) 19:30, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic)

Hi, can I interest you in contributing to this as you've long worked on Nordic articles anyway? The idea is to motivate more editors to contribute to articles on the countries involved and bring about more quality improvements than if the target wasn't there. At some stage it would be good to have some national contests, one for Norway or Sweden would be good based on WP:Awaken the Dragon or something, but we need some inaugural support on this first!.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:00, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm, thanks for asking, and I note it allows article creations, not just GA/FA. But I'm torn. I really don't have much time these days, and here I am sitting here reading around on Wikipedia and fixing stuff when there is a huge task I should be doing elsewhere. I wasn't successful in retiring partly because I'm addicted. But also partly because I really believe in this project, and I care about the community, and I know I have particular things to offer. So as Floquenbeam said, I really had to stay back after I came back. (All the expressions of support here weighed with me, too; more people had appreciated my efforts than I thought.) But I'm still short on time, and if anything even sadder about what's happening here. We seem to lose valuable editors every week; we just lost what, 5 in one go? The WMF is flat out evil, so I don't have many hopes that they won't continue to make things worse. Most recently (unless you count their latest efforts to revive Aunty Flo, their horrible translation tool has led to at least one newbie getting indeffed for believing the WMF's bullshit, and landed us with more than 3,500 articles that need checking, most of which should either be deleted or need time-consuming fixing—and I do mean time-consuming. For a while I was doing nothing else, and admins keep refusing to delete the ones that really need deleting, and it's all too easy not to even see the inaccuracies and ... it's taken me close to despair. (And you know I'm an inclusionist.) I feel guilty doing anything else. And either way, that lack of time kicks in. Recently, for something like the third time, I found I had not got around to improving a particular article—one you started way back when, actually, Thingspiele; I was going to drop a note on your talk page when I was finished—and the books were due back at the library after running out of permissible renewals. So I dropped some other stuff and used those books, and only got back to the translated article list last night at work. But on both tasks I ran out of time, so both are waiting for me, and meanwhile I keep noticing other stuff I should do. There are other things I shelved when I became an admin, although some I'm less inclined to do now because my confidence in the collaborative environment has been shaken. And there's the political stuff that I didn't use to do—that was one of the ways I made time for article writing, and similarly when I became an admin I cut back trying to rescue articles at AfD, because I've never had as much time as it probably looks as if I have—but as I said in my retirement statement, I now feel compelled to do some politics. I've even written a couple of user-space essays. But now I think you can see why I don't think I can or should participate in any drive. I think I have too many unfulfilled responsibilities as is. Consider asking Bloodofox, although his interests are more pan-Nordic than country-based. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Understand. I had a massive stress headache yesterday to the point I had to cancel something and go to bed early. My eyelids felt like billiard balls. Mostly wiki caused. I very rarely get stressed like that, the last time was with RO and Sinatra, almost a year ago! Some of the biting comments on here at times are more unnerving than a lot of people think, particularly in showing bad faith towards editors and their contributions. People always have to make collaboration more difficult than it really needs to be.♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:34, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Bernadotte

I have created a short article about Gunnila Bernadotte. It was redirected without much discussion I have contested that. It was redirected on the basis that "why was this created after her death". That is to me irrelevant. If you can take a look at the article and make any improvements. Please do. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 17:57, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@BabbaQ: It's always hard with aristocratic women, but I agree with you that she's independently notable; I've added further sources and a few details in hopes of clearly demonstrating it. Take a look at the section started by Dr. Blofeld above—did he invite you to that drive yet? I think this article definitely qualifies. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:30, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

No, But I have added myself to the list. I agree with you that the article qualifies. Is there any way to get it on the "to do list"?--BabbaQ (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Good, and I note you've added some others that you've done, great. No idea otherwise! Yngvadottir (talk) 20:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I guess that is the only thing I can do for now. I have added a few articles from my "library". I appreciate that you notified me of that project. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 20:34, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I guess that the move discussion could/should be closed soon as a Keep. It is pretty obvious that it will not be redirected.BabbaQ (talk) 20:52, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

I hope so, but people do sometimes come along later; let's hope we did a good enough job sourcing it to demonstrate her notability. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:15, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Harbor City International School

Thanks for your additions. Did your research turn any mention of the chartering agency? That's a useful piece of info for charter schools and the school's website showed nothing on that. I have no clue where to look. In many states, the state normal college is the usual suspect. Never worked on a Minnesota charter school though and don't even have a clue as to what state university is the normal school. John from Idegon (talk) 06:32, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Most likely the University of Minnesota, Duluth, then, although there's also a private Catholic college in Duluth that trains teachers, but no, it didn't. Unfortunately the News Tribune's archives are pretty much unsearchable, and I didn't turn up any of the articles from when the school was first proposed and opened. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

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Trees and Groves in Germanic Paganism

Hey! I've started the article you requested over in my sandbox ([3]). You're welcome to contribute. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:48, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse ... what's the difference?

I did have to laugh at your post - just a tiny bit of difference between the names! Ealdgyth - Talk 18:06, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Apologies here all, including @Ealdgyth: The reason for the mistake was that I couldn't remember the ping template - then I copied one I'd remembered using in the Talk:Eleven-plus page but forgot to put the right name in! These things happen, particularly win iPads! The Parson's Cat (talk) 18:40, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy closed

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

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Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy closed

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Michael Hardy closed

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Michael Hardy is reminded that:
   1. Administrators are expected to set an example with their behavior, including refraining from incivility and responding patiently to good-faith concerns about their conduct, even when those concerns are expressed suboptimally.
   2. All administrators are expected to keep their knowledge of core policies reasonably up to date.
   3. Further misconduct using the administrative tools will result in sanctions.
2. MjolnirPants is reminded to use tactics that are consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and the 4th Pillar when dealing with other users they are in dispute with.
3. The Arbitration Committee is reminded to carefully consider the appropriate scope of future case requests. The committee should limit "scope creep" and focus on specific items that are within the scope of the duties and responsibilities outlined in Arbitration Policy.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

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WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup Greetings, all! We would like to announce the start of the 4th GA Cup, a competition that seeks to encourage the reviewing of Good article nominations! Thus far, there have been three GA Cups, which were successful in reaching our goals of significantly reducing the traditionally long queue at GAN, so we're doing it again. Currently, there are over 400 nominations listed. We hope that we can again make an impact this time. The 4th GA Cup will begin on November 1, 2016. Four rounds are currently scheduled (which will bring the competition to a close on February 28, 2017), but this may change based on participant numbers. We may take a break in December for the holidays, depending on the results of a poll of our participants taken shortly after the competition begins. The sign-up and submissions process will remain the same, as will the scoring. Sign-ups for the upcoming competition are currently open and will close on November 14, 2016. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors, so sign-up now! If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the judges. Cheers from 3family6, Figureskatingfan, Jaguar, MrWooHoo, and Zwerg Nase. We apologize for the delay in sending out this message until after the competition has started. Thank you to Krishna Chaitanya Velaga for aiding in getting this message out. To subscribe or unsubscribe to future GA Cup newsletters, please add or remove your name to our mailing list. If you are a participant, you will be on the mailing list no matter what as this is the easiest way to communicate between all participants.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 November newsletter: Final results

The final round of the 2016 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2016 WikiCup top three finalists:

• First Place - Cas Liber (submissions)
• Second Place - MPJ-DK (submissions)
• Third Place - Adam Cuerden (submissions)

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

• Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
• Good Article – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
• Featured List – Calvin999 (submissions) produced 2 FLs in R2
• Featured Pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
• Featured Portal – SSTflyer (submissions) produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
• Featured Topic – Cyclonebiskit (submissions) and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
• Good Topic – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
• Did You Know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
• In The News – Dharmadhyaksha (submissions) and Muboshgu (submissions), each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
• Good Article Review – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2017 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thank you for cleaning up Alexandria's Genesis, I probably would have just looked at the article dead-faced trying to figure out how to clean it up. JudeccaXIII (talk) 06:12, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

You're very welcome. I just had time before getting ready for work. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:14, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Things happen

Trump gets oval, the Bionade-Biedermeier article got devastated by the obvious suspect and Slavoj Žižek opts for centrist liberals. I am not sure which is worse. The best is to be here and say hello to an old friend. Polentarion Talk 18:08, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi: I'm sorry, the third I am unaware of, the first two I feel entirely powerless. The WMF duped hordes of editors, many new to en.wiki, into creating terrible translations; at least one got indefinitely blocked here for trusting them, and there is an unbelievable mountain of translated articles to be checked. I've been trying to work on it, but not only is it soul-destroying, I keep being side-tracked into improving the article or even related articles. Most recently I've been hacking my way through the swamp of health-related Danish ministries (it's the tradition there that a new government shuffles, combines, uncombines, and renames most of the ministries, which has left us with strata of out-of-date articles ...) then I got sidetracked from that to a now defunct historically black high school in Illinois, and that reminded me of an article I read a long time ago, and my jaw hit the floor when I realized that we weren't even citing it and I've been editing away on the school district(s) it covered and related issues of American football at the high-school level in Texas. I am obviously certifiably insane. Wait for my next big edit, which I must finish up before the weekly grocery shopping trip. I did do a recent changes stint on election night, while keeping the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the incoming results open in a tab; I reckoned a lot of people would be too busy to watch the 'pedia, so I have some edits of a political nature that night. And I suppose school desegregation and blacks in high-school football are political topics too; I'm more concerned by yet another facet of our bias in what we haven't yet got round to covering.

I hope you can understand my prose. Thanks for regarding me as a friend :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 18:55, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

• Hmmm, first with regard to my prose: Slavoj Žižek endorsed Trump - calling him a centrist liberal ;) [4]. I finally agree once with the Guardian. But I got the impression that in our postfactual age it is not important what you say, it is important who says it.
• There are various soul destroying aspects within WP - just how I was made to leave the deWP was unhealthy for anyone. I had contributed to de:Benutzer:Gamma/Die_Psychopathologie_des_Skeptikers and was doomed afterwards.
• Don't get into ADHS syndrom wise. Been there, left it. Some topics made me register that I better should do something about things I wrote about in real academia. I left even the enWP nearly - I just go back now and then to restore Bionade on enWP level and to check wether friends and friendly ones (yes you are one) like you are still active. Instead I wrote some article for the real world and two drafts for peer review and one got greenlighted this month. That said, I would care less about the state of Danemark - its been wrotten for so long, even you won't change it ;) Polentarion Talk 20:00, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Group 3 of TELL

• Thanks for the ping. Based on the user name, I suspect that this user was part of an editing session and will likely not return. I'll check with the Wikimedia Indonesia group. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Yngvadottir. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Wanna help a newbie?

There's an understandably upset brand-newbie who may get himself into hot water if he doesn't receive the help of more allies who are inclined to help rather than criticize. The editor is DanHamilton1998, the article is Bill Hillmann. I've seen you graciously and kindly help other newbies, so I thought of you in this case. Softlavender (talk) 11:34, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, I tried, but his fur's been pretty much rubbed the wrong way. I started by giving the article a good edit, which they sometimes also interpret as hostility. Hopefully he'll take my comment on his talk page the way it was intended. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Your efforts are extremely helpful. Thanks very much! Softlavender (talk) 01:58, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

King of New York, Knallkopf of Kallstadt

Hi there. How about a suitable translation for pfl Brulljesmacher ? I currently try braggart and bigmouth, it is, you will wonder why, the city nickname for Kallstadt ;) of current German-American fame. Polentarion Talk 20:06, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Heh :-) I suspect "loudmouth" rather than "bigmouth", because isn't that brüllen? But I truly don't know :-) I'll make a few tweaks to the prose in the article before bed. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:37, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Oh yes ;) I had a similar idea, compare Brüllaffe = Howler monkey with Brulljesmacher. There are some palatinate German web entries, which suggest a French influence: Brouille is dispute, yes, while brouillard fog and brouiller wiping. Hmmm. I would say it is a combination, like in Gore effect - first about Al Gore and similar prophets in cold weather, but alluding to gory effects as well. Polentarion Talk 23:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

upset

bachmann is NOT the same as bachmann industries. plaese do not change it again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by L.S. inc. (talk • contribs) 18:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

@L.S. inc.: OK I won't, but it appears from our Bachmann Industries article that it's now a subsidiary of the Chinese corporation; is there some other U.S. model railroad manufacturer called Bachmann? And isn't that what you meant by making Bachmann Industries a footnote? Yngvadottir (talk) 19:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

okay.i will update it. L.S. inc. (talk) 19:10, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Your question

I've responded with a possible solution - to save you the bother of looking at my questions page, I discovered that the voice software they use does the facility to stream to text. They weren't aware of this but at my request have agreed to test it. Doug Weller talk 08:03, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: That's great! You never know when that accommodation will be needed, just as I bet the WMF never foresaw our having a blind admin. Thanks for chasing that down. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup December newsletter: WikiCup 2017

On 1 January 2017, WikiCup 2017 (the 10th Annual WikiCup) will begin. This year we are trying something a little different – monetary prizes.

For the WC2017 the prizes will be as follows (amounts are based in US$ and will be awarded in the form of an online Amazon gift certificate):

• First place – $200
• Second & Third place – $50 each
• Category prizes – $25 per category (which will be limited to FA, FL, FP, GA, and DYK for 2017). Winning a category prize does not require making it to the final round.

Note: Monetary prizes are a one-year experiment for 2017 and may or may not be continued in the future. In order to be eligible to receive any of the prizes above, the competing Wikipedia account must have a valid/active email address.

After two years as a WikiCup judge, Figureskatingfan is stepping down. We thank her for her contributions as a WikiCup judge. We are pleased to announce that our newest judge is two-time WikiCup champion Cwmhiraeth.

The judges for the 2017 WikiCup are Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email).

Signups are open now and will remain open until 5 February 2017. You can sign up here.

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:03, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Happy Saturnalia!

		Happy Saturnalia
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:43, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

	Merry Christmas Yngvadottir!!
	Hi Yngvadottir, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, Thanks for all your help on the 'pedia!    –Davey2010 Merry Xmas / Happy New Year 01:51, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting times

The deWP got an interesting xmas: The had an member of right wing AfD on their arbitration comittee, since several years. And they never got aware of it. Very serious neutral work here, yes yes. Now some months ago AfD had a large win in a state election, and the arbiter outed himself during an internal conference. Three arbiters stepped back the day after, but didn't tell anything. Now one of the arbiters leaked the issue to a notorious WP leftist with excellent connections. The scandal is already in the press. And it signifies two things: The community is not able to tell the difference between an serious historian and an rightwing fonctionary. If they have the candidates for arbitration to be scanned by the WMDE or the Verfassungsschutz, forget anything about Schwarmintelligenz or freedom of expression. If they do nothing about it, you have the project in a mess. Polentarion Talk 19:49, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting indeed. Responding before I go look to see whether my guess as to the identity of the well-connected left-winger is correct :-) Germans have good reason to avoid having real right-wingers in positions of power; it looks very very bad. Although of course some de.wp editors are Austrians, a different kettle of fish; then again some are Swiss, where right-wing positions are even more anathematized. That said, we differ from Britannica or Citizendium precisely because we are allowed anonymity (officially; WMF keeps trying to get us all to out ourselves), and hence we are all ultimately judged on our contributions rather than our credentials. After all, any one of us could be lying; I could be lying about my PhD for example. And I support that policy quite vehemently, not least because even academics can have blind spots, or be unreasonably committed to a point of view (you know I've worked on biographies here of excellent scholars who were also committed Nazis), or go senile (one of those professors was thought by his Doktorvater to have gone nuts in his 30s). The wider we cast our net, the more likely Wikipedia can correct for biases (in theory; there's a house POV on a whole range of topics, as you well know, and despite the good intentions, that makes me sad; it also drives off some useful editors), as well as covering more topics; there is a wisdom to crowds in a meritocracy. The truism is that a stopped clock is right twice a day: Jimbo at one point came down hard on userboxen, decreeing that they needed to take the form "is an X or interested in Xness" if they had to exist at all, and that they should be strongly deprecated. I'm still looking for the second time I can agree with him, but that's one. A lot of tension on en., at least, could be avoided if folks didn't have user pages plastered with religious and political points of view. So ... if the arb in question hadn't outed himself, no one would be the wiser, and providing his edits and his judgements as an arb were reasonably unbiased (no one can be 100%), I wish that had been the case (he may even have been a good arb; many people's politics doesn't actually colour everything they do, just as many people appear to the religious to be merely ceremonial members of their religion). There are likely some other shocking secrets among the arbcoms of en. and de. Law of averages, plus the ambition generally required to reach such a position. (Never mind that it must be pretty soul-destroying dealing with some of the stuff they deal with. Adminship done right is bad enough. So is being clergy, done right.) However, his having outed himself is a very bad sign. And that it should be that party is embarrassing and worrying. And now you see why I could never be on Arbcom: I am far too woolly a thinker. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:31, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I made my first note to Jimbo now ;) Point is, it is a classical scandal, will say you have no outcome without damage or major changes. If you try to keep up with WP:ANON and freedom of speech, the German arbcom is not able to work anymore. And if you start to screen each future member for his party allegiance, sorry thats beyound any thing WP stood for or should be work along ion countries like China. Polentarion Talk 23:04, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

We clearly agree with the second half, but I don't see why the first half. If I were a contributor to German Wikipedia, I'd suggest an emergency Arbcom election and start afresh with the committee that results. But I am not. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Curiosity. Do you know if the members of the German ArbCom are required to divulge their names to the WMF, like the English candidates have to? If they do, maybe someone at the Foundation could run some sort of internet search to see if the candidates are problematic in any way. John Carter (talk) 21:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

As I understand it—someone like Newyorkbrad would of course know it inside out and sideways—the WMF used to want functionaries to send a photocopy of an ID, but would then shred it, and the current requirement no longer includes that. In any event, I would be appalled if the WMF were to research any editors' identities, let alone vet them. That isn't the kind of outfit I have been volunteering for at all. (That would be so even if the WMF stuck to its theoretical function as a secretariat and therefore merited my trust.) Less angrily ... we're all untrustworthy in some way, between youthful indiscretions and the biases of those doing the examining. No. Just no. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking, if anything, maybe just a quick check to see if, for instance, they're one of Donald Trump's or Hillary Clinton's press advisers, along with, maybe, depending on how easy that might or might not be, a brief criminal check. There had been at least one long-established editor whose name I've forgotten who had a history of child sexual abuse, and whose conduct here raised questions about his motivations in at least some few instances. I would oppose myself anything more than a quick look-see of background for really egregious problems, and I suppose it might be possible that in some extreme cases the WMF might just send an e-mail to the effect of "we might ask you to reconsider" or something like that. John Carter (talk) 21:36, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thnx for the feedback.

• Something like sending an ID card to WMDE never would work so far. I got some flak after suggesting that the WMDE (the German Chapter of WMF) should better announce and pay external arbiters. I would prefer that in comparision to WP authors being screened or cross examined on real life issues and beliefs. The community is quite aware that it is unable to regulate itself. But it won't accept the reign of the WMDE. ON the other hand, a WMDE official accused me of being in break of basic rules, because any such proposal has to be OKed by Chairperson Mao first. There is no real Chairperson Mao currently since the green party Geschäftsführer of WMDE Deutschland now quits to work with the Senator of economy of the City of Berlin. Sigh.
• deWP community wants to have the cake and eat it. They ask for a background screeen of candidates for WP offices and want keep up the Web-3.0-netizen-pirate-party fairy tale. They have no idea how to formalize that.
• deWP Schiedsgericht (SG) is much weaker than the enWP ArbCom. Arbcom is a sort of authoritarian government, Schiedsgericht a sort of lazy and amateurish Supreme court. SG did one case per month in 2016 and is not not allowed to to anything about content.
• Most arbiters are connected with or within the WMDE (German WMF chapter). But never tell the community about that.
• SG regulations are ridiculously simple but incomplete - they neither have or abide rules about stepping back or unworthy arbiters. They have no formal standards regarding process and seem never to have heard about Robert's Rules of Order and they don't like to be told about arbitration in trade. Bionade Biedermeier at full speed.
• You won't be able to do "emergency elections' now. a) No one of wants to be elected as long User:MAGISTER won't step back. b) And there is no regulation for that. The arbiters are being elected for a fixed period, one year. By law, there has to be a SG, so stepping back for anyone should not be an option. But they did.
• The only two fixed rules (Wikipedia:Schiedsgericht/Regeln#Pflichten) are a) all arbiters must work together on any case accepted by the court and b) strict confidentiality about internal info, even after leaving the court. Both were neglected during the scandal.
• I assume its a sort of millenial generation problem as well. The political mindset is now much more restricted as e.g. during the 1969ies, imagine Wehner, an ex-Stalinist, Brandt, an ex Partisan and Heinemann, an bourgeois Christian pacifist cooperating with Bavarian Dr. Strangelove FJ Strauß under Ex Nazi Kiesinger in the grand coalition then. That said, AFD is a rather disgusting political platform. But the most telling issue is the community not being able able to tell the difference till an external outing.
• That said, it was rather erratic to step back instead staying inside and putting pressure on the AFD guy. And it was rather erratic to stay inside and leak info to a even more disgusting figure outside the SG. By stepping back they increased the power of the arbiters that staid in position. But stepping back was a matter of conscience and crying out loud instead of staying cool and formal. Polentarion Talk 23:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• • I meant an emergency election de novo: void the tenure of those still on the SG, including MAGISTER. They themselves presumably have the authority to pass an emergency motion doing just that, and any case that comes up during the interregnum would just have to wait. But that's just what I think, as a clueless outsider. And that does sound like a peculiar set-up. They all have to participate in all cases? That means they can't recuse, which seems wrong to me. However, one case a month sounds about right given the disparity in size between en. and de.
  • Some at the Unnameable External Wikipedia Criticism Site have long suggested the WMF should spend some of its loot to pay professional arbitrators. I wonder what the arbs themselves think about that, since it is by all accounts a massive job. But my own inclination is that that would be a slippery slope to making Wikipedia beholden to outside law (and which?) and it would mean revealing private information about editors to non-members of the community, so the more I think about it, the less I like it. Since the reality of the world is that we all come from different places and have different secrets—that's true even of German speakers, although the cosy set-up with WMDE that you describe suggests there are few Austrian or Swiss insiders, I suppose it's possible that there are, but they use jets or trains to get to Berlin frequently :-) —I remain adamantly opposed to the background checks John Carter is musing about, and I am not sure I would have consented to fax a copy of my identification to the WMF even if that organization weren't rotten to the core.
  • I hadn't fully realized how grand that coalition was, but working together with people who think very differently and whom you may privately know to have affiliations that disgust you—such as an ex-Stalinist with an ex-Nazi, or a Green with a Trumpie—presumably can be done on a person-to-person basis, common humanity and all that, as well as on the diplomacy model of formal politeness, so I don't personally think imposing rules of engagement such as Robert's is either necessary or necessarily helpful. What is required is rather (a) acceptance of the electorate's decision and (b) putting the good of the Project first. However, there are presumably kinds of people that even Brandt would not have worked with; people are human and have limits.
  • Those are my thoughts for tonight; I have a task I must now turn to, and while looking for a Yule card picture I discovered yet another article I must write. I'm sure they're very vague and unpolitical thoughts as usual, but I really hope de.wp can find a way out of this without WMF intervention. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Kiesinger/Grand coalition: Brandt delivered the most precious resource in post war Germany: Clean conscience. Brandt as foreign minister enhanced Germany's negotiation position. His cooperation with former NS staff allowed those guys to embrace democracy. That said, I think that his generation had learned it the hard way how to cooperate with different people: Trenches, prisons, shelters and bombing raids. In a way, anonymity.

Brandt alienated the refugee sector within SPD (e.g. guys like Herbert Hupka), similar as the civil rights movement lost southern Democrats to Nixons GOP. For Brandt's landslide win 1972 see as well Mierscheid_law ;)

I think WP allows one (including me) to cooperate with a wider range of people. In so far anonymity is and was helpful. Look SG cooperated 3 and a half years with Magister - due to anonymity, lost person-to-person.

Hmm. The thing is, MAGISTER won't step back as far as for now. He has been elected and fulfills his tenure. Sit and wait could have been a sort of choice as well for the rest. De novo was no option so far.

SG may recuse to deal with a case at all, but if they accept it, they all have to deal with it. Professional arbitration often uses a flock of arbiters the parties may choose from.

Thank you for having a looking on my recent Stasi psychic ;) Polentarion Talk 18:49, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

A stupid question: When was the election, when does the current 1-year term end? Since it looks as though de.wp may be stuck without an SG until the end of the term, unless anyone can prevail on MAGISTER to do the right thing; it was his fault for revealing his identity. And a not-so-stupid suggestion that the rules be rewritten as soon as possible to allow individual arbitrators to recuse, in fact it would be highly advisable to require them to do so in all cases of conflict of interest. The committee consists of multiple people, rather than one God-King, to correct for individual foibles, but requiring people to join in the deliberations on cases on which they cannot be neutral is asinine and will inevitably look bad even if others outvote them. And what happens if an arb has a nervous breakdown, gets a job requiring them to seclude themselves from the internet, or even dies during their term? The committee would be unable to all participate in a given case in such instances, also. It's really none of my business, though. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:08, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Half of the arbiters each six months. MAGISTER's tenure started June 1st 2016. He internally revealed his identity and party allegiance in October, three arbiters stepped back one day later. The leak took place in December. There are now 3 other arbiters left, their tenure started December 1st 2016.

The SG needs five arbiters to work and a request is being accepted if at least five arbiters are willing to work on it (I could have stated that more clearly). If you forward a request, you may declare an arbiter as biased, if the arbiter agrees (or the peers), he/she won't participate. There are two main tasks: To work (together) on cases and to keep internal discussions secret. You may die or step back, yes. If the case takes longer than your tenure, you may prolong the tenure. Polentarion Talk 20:46, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

(Your use of "you" is scary in this context :-)) This was a predictable mess, then. Staggered terms, a rigid quorum, no provision for individual recusal. The rules need to be changed for the new year, even if it requires getting enough of those who have resigned to participate in hammering out the proposal to put before the voters. An alternative proposal for them to consider putting to the voters is to force him out for conduct unbecoming, but it sounds like he did nothing actually wrong; he was just a boastful fool in revealing his other identity. And I am still adamant about unanimity/equal access. However, if bias has been found in his on-wiki actions, a de.wp admin could and should block him, which ought to render him unfit to continue on the committee. I doubt that's the case, though, and as I say, no one is entirely free of bias; if they've found only the usual small dubious things, then it's the rules that are at fault. Sigh. I would have expected Germans (and Austrians and Swiss) to construct a model of efficient rule-making for their arbitration committee. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I am rather biased ;) Magister seems to be a historian and he wrote featured articles, e.g. Teutonic Order. Got all regalia of a hall of fame Wikifant. One could say however that it went along the black swan model - nobody saw anything coming, but now everything has always been clear. He edited tanks and had PimboliDD as a mentee, the latter getting banned after writing dozens of "WWII aces" entries. But anyone who would block him now would have to eat crow for the praise he received before. So far as I can see, the guys that suggested to change formal rules, all got flak - since any suggestion means you have to admit that commmunity /crowd control is bogus. All and everything is about moral panicking, requesting Magister to step back etc and showing that one belongs to the righteous. Efficient rule-making see General Robert and his rules, which apply as well for the Bundestag. 1950ies. It is is as well an issue, that effective private arbitration is part of the TTIP contract, which is anathema for Bionade-Biedermeier. Polentarion Talk 06:12, 21 December 2016 (UTC) (three again, P)

One option, maybe. I proposed here a few months ago a way of maybe reforming ArbCom. Yeah, that is pretty much tilting at windmills here too, but something along the lines I suggested at User talk:John Carter#ArbCom reform proposal might be one way to deal with the German ArbCom situation. One of the implicit options there is that not every member has to sit on every case, and, in fact, I suppose, many could even take protracted breaks without any loss to the committee. Not sure if it would be likely to be considered, though. John Carter (talk) 15:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

John, your idea seems to be about a separate commmunity of arbiters. I like it. I had been part of efforts involving moderation / facilitating in deWP. Main point of community representatives against it (which tried an AfD) was "we are all equal and no further sysop class". Your idea is as well according real life arbiting e.g. in trade, where parties choose arbiters from a larger group. I did start to develope templates for arbiting. Loook on Talk:Al-Maghtas#Lede for a successful example. Polentarion Talk 06:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

There is now an article in the Signpost and Salvidrim! has started a thread on the Unnameable Site—I won't link. I suggest you both contribute in both places. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:01, 22 December 2016 (UTC)