User talk:Alansohn/Archive 23

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DYK for Eunice Taylor

Number 455 (328 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 17, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Eunice Taylor, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Shubinator (talk) 12:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please control yourself

please refrain from letting users add unverified information to the mowbray college wiki page

-CakeMace —Preceding unsigned comment added by CakeMace (talkcontribs) 03:27, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

um, help with AFD tag removal?

Can you take a look at this? If you look at the history, it's been reverted several times. Argh. tedder (talk) 04:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Italics

hi i think you helped clean my page Mark Howard (producer). you added italics to "acadie" and "Wrecking ball". ive tried to continue in this fashion exactly with the codes you seem to use but have had no luck. do you think you could tell me how you did this??? thanks alot--Charliedylan (talk) 20:17, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Robert Pauley

Number 456 (329 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 20, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Robert Pauley, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 07:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

excuse me?

you have got to be kidding, Drake Bell Dodson? where did Dodson come from? how could you threaten to block me when someone added that nonsense to the page? i'm really confused...this site bothers me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.240.9.26 (talk) 01:32, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Sources show that as his full name. Do you have any sources to the contrary? Alansohn (talk) 01:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
Ha, there are no sources for "Dodson"...that's why it was removed from the page. Next time, get your facts right, pal. 96.240.9.26 (talk) 16:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

At least he spelled 'faggot' correctly this time. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

A vandal who spell checks his epithets is always an improvement on the usual illiterate from vandals. Alansohn (talk) 19:19, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
A slight improvement... do you think I should tell him that I'm actually a dyke, not a faggot? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

thanks

hey thanks for your help. ive worked it out now and made the changes. did you take two of my notes/sources off??? i had 16 but now only 14. could you tell me which ones and why? cheers--Charliedylan (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Gold Hill

http://digg.com/d1ri3A

My edits make perfect sense and are constructive. You have now deleted them two times. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jack.welty (talkcontribs) 00:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Gordon Chambers

Number 457 (330 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 21, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Gordon Chambers, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 17:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Your deletion

How was my adding Obama to that page vandalism? Getting to trigger happy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.135.3.91 (talk) 17:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
For your exceptional vandal-fighting efforts; it is quite an under-appreciated task. –Juliancolton | Talk 17:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Alansohn was inducted into The Hall of The Greats

On May 21, 2009, User:Alansohn was inducted into

The Hall of The Greats

This portrait of Woody Allen was dedicated in his honor.
David Shankbone.

I second Julian's emotion. -->David Shankbone 18:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Latting Observatory

Number 458 (331 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 22, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Latting Observatory, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

JamieS93 00:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Got it

thanks so much i had no idea how to find that info. thanks for all your help and being patient with my stumbling and fumbling! cheers--Charliedylan (talk) 05:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Elsie B. Washington

Number 459 (332 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 22, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Elsie B. Washington, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 06:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Rodger McFarlane

Number 460 (333 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 23, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Rodger McFarlane, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 06:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, My Bad!

I was changing the doubles one that I forgot to rename the header before I transfered it from my sandbox! I was just making it clear that it was doubles rather than singles! TennisAuthority 03:19, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank-You for your apology, and thanks for bringing it to my attention! Your Fine! Good overlook and overseeing! TennisAuthority 03:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Robert J. Sinclair

Number 461 (334 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 24, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Robert J. Sinclair, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

JamieS93 12:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Sid Laverents

Number 462 (335 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 24, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Sid Laverents, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

JamieS93 12:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for William J. Passmore

Number 463 (336 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 25, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William J. Passmore, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 08:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Elaine Benes

This guy keeps deleting the reference to keep it "consistent". As you check the history? He seems to go at no end to keep the reference out. I don't want to keep reverting so I need some help in dealing with this guy. Even when I talk to him, he seems to stand firm and thinks I own the page which is not true because I know some rules about Wikipedia but not all. I don't know what to do? Should I give in and say he wins? Let me know. Thank you. Johnnyauau2000 (talk) 02:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I have seen the back-and-forth on this and have wanted to step in on this. While I agree with you that the sourced attribution to Carol Leifer should appear in the Elaine Benes article, the question may be if it should appear in the lead or elsewhere in the article. Alansohn (talk) 02:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
I agree. Because he also added some link beside it saying "keep the reference off full stop". Now if people read it, they might think that the character Elaine Benes is made up (true) and is not based on Jerry's and Larry's ex-girlfriend. I'm open to put it in other articles like the episode "The Lip Reader" in which she first wrote for Seinfeld or whether the reference stay in Elaine's article. I'll let him revert it again and we'll think of a solution soon. Take your time and if you know a way around it, let's hope it works out. Johnnyauau2000 (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
  • One more thing, although I know little about AF or in normal terms the abuse filter, I believe he's definetely going to extremes to keep that reference out. I don't have special powers like blocking the IP but I'm just worried if he abuses his power and goes to far with his idea without even thinking about the others who is also editing the page. I mean before that, Chocolateboy took down half the page and that cost every editors work and I tried very hard to keep it. I don't want to be mean or have a dispute over something ridiculous but I just wish there's something me or you can do to resolve this standoff and I hope he doesn't take his abuse filter too far and stop people putting in there preferences. So if you have a solution, let me know. Johnnyauau2000 (talk) 04:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Newt Heisley

Number 464 (337 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 25, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Newt Heisley, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 14:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

yo i dontk now how to make new things on here but im just sayin, sry i messed aroudn just now. purely out of fun. wont happen again. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.51.59.218 (talk) 15:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!

Much appreciate the kind words on the DYK! — Hunter Kahn (contribs) 02:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

De Godoy

Your reversion constitutes vandalism. Please do not continue to reflexively replace content without explanation or checking the quality. And lay off the templates.  WP 02:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Coming here to say the same, as I'm concerned about the templates and reversions you made on Godoy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I had looked through both edits that I reverted on Manuel de Godoy made by User:Doubleyoupea and both removed very extensive portions of source material, gutting major portions of the article each time. The first edit offered no explanation whatsoever for the extensive content removal other than stating that Cluebot was being reverted. Extensive removal of sourced content combined with no explanation in an edit summary is almost always vandalism and I had no reason to believe that there was justification to remove the sourced content that had been in the article that I had read and reviewed. The second edit included an edit summary that seemed to challenge my ignorance for making the revert but offered no explanation of the changes, and I reread the article and again saw extensive content removed, including significant portions of sourced material, and saw no justification. Rather than explaining the edits, the edit summary of the second edit and the message left here were both consistent with the type of "no, you're the vandal, I dare you to revert" messages left by vandals, nor did the small handful of edits in the past made by this user give me any confidence that this would be someone who had the ability to make major changes in one fell swoop to an article of this scale and scope. I saw no discussion of the edits on the talk page for the article and the original edit seemed to be a kneejerk undoing of a Cluebot reversion of removed content. I do apologize for the terse templates, but that's what Huggle provides. I guess that it is possible that more detective work might have uncovered the fact that these edits were productive, but the combination of the pattern of evidence that I had seen -- removal of extensive portions of sourced content, edit summary offering no explanation other than a revert of Cluebot, a message left on my talk page that offered little more than a claim of vandalism on my part, no discussion on the article take page, an editor who had no more than a few dozen edits and few recent edits making a very major change to an article that seemed to be primarily removing content -- all led me to the conclusion that this was vandalism. Alansohn (talk) 15:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
User:Doubleyoupea is himself reverting to a much earlier 'better' version by user:Yomangan (give or take a few words) - see this diff. It's fairly clear there was no consensus for the earlier 'better' version (as it was immediately reverted) or for this. Occuli (talk) 17:27, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Lee Solters

Number 465 (338 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 26, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Lee Solters, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 14:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK: James J. Galdieri & James A. Galdieri

Number 466-467 (340 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On 27 May, 2009, Did you know? was updated with facts from the articles James J. Galdieri and James A. Galdieri, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--PFHLai (talk) 05:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

INFRINGEMENT

Hey Alansohn, I think there was a vandal yesterday doing the same kind of thing as 172.130.19.37, though I'd have to plow through my history--I think I rolled that kind of edit back once or twice. (I'm dropping you a line cause you just beat me to it, rolling back on Chris Fedak.) Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I think we've crossed paths on a number of other vandals. Alansohn (talk) 19:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for William Glenn

Number 468 (341 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 27, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William Glenn, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 14:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for David Friedland

Number 469 (342 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 28, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article David Friedland, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 08:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Linking poop

Just to let you know, I've linked to your "Dumping poop" section from my user page. Please feel free to change the link there if you ever move this inspired account of the Huggle experience. Also, I wanted to suggest changing "almost absolutely" to "virtually" or "next to" nothing. It's a little awkward as-is. Other than that, I thought you were spot-on. Recognizance (talk) 06:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words and the link. I've made the change you suggested along with some other tweaks. Alansohn (talk) 18:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping an eye open. I waited a while to see if they would delete that content a third time, but it really was bedtime... I will readily admit I'm no expert on these matters, but in case of doubt the benefit should go to the established text, esp. given the edit summaries. Still, I didn't use rollback and didn't leave a vandal warning; by the time you reverted, a warning was more than appropriate. So thanks again, and keep up the good work! Drmies (talk) 14:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

  • BTW, congrats on all the recent DYKs--you've been pretty busy, and those are goodlooking articles. Drmies (talk) 14:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I've been seeing that article pop up again, and I was also leery of the changes made. Thanks for the note about DYKs. I try to push myself to create about an average of an article a day, and nothing makes me happier than to be able to fill in a hole that exists in Wikipedia's collection. Alansohn (talk) 18:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism on Vinny Ball

You recently warned VinAF1 (talk · contribs) of vandalism for his edits on Vinny Ball. All I could see that he did was add a {{hangon}} tag with an explanation. Admittedly, it was a lame explanation, and would not have withstood an admin's review, but I don't know that I'd call it vandalism. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 16:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't recall what had triggered my revert, and in the absence of the original edit (as the article has been deleted) and the concerns you have raised, I have removed the warning. Alansohn (talk) 18:05, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Yehoshua Zettler

Number 470 (343 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On May 28, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Yehoshua Zettler, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 20:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Alansohn

You seem to have been doing the counter-vandalism process for a long time. As I'm trying to be useful on Wikipedia, I decided my first step will be to revert obvious vandalism. I've been at it for a little while, got a few thousand reverts under my belt, and was curious if you had any useful counter vandal information you could provide. Obviously you've seen alot more than me, and have surely have learned something I haven't. Thank you. I also found your "dumping poop" and "a matter of good and evil" sections interesting. :-)  Fyyer  00:12, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

FA Nomination; Ryan Braun

Hi. I've nominated Ryan Braun to be a Featured Article. As you were an editor, you may wish to contribute your view as to whether it should be a FA. The discussion of the FA comment process can be found at [1], and the page that you can go in through to leave comments is the article's talk page at [2]. Same hold for Kevin Youkilis, which I think is only lacking in that we need to work on the inline ciations. Many thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:08, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Message for blanking page

I am author of Mid-atlantic Pagan Alliance. The organization folded a year ago, and I am finally getting around to cleaning up some left-overs. I wanted to have speedy deletion of this article. And as I am the substantial contributor of this article I blanked the page to initiate the Speedy deletion. The following is the policy that I followed.

"Author requests deletion, if requested in good faith, and provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author. (For redirects created as a result of a pagemove, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the page prior to the move.) If the author blanks the page (outside user space), this can be taken as a deletion request. "

Please let me know the proper procedure to initiate speedy deletion otherwise.MCWicoff (talk) 03:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Toilet Paper edit

Why is it unconstrutive? The Great Cornholio has alot to do with toilet paper. If this is unconstruthive, why is the same link on the Bunghole page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hunterdude64 (talkcontribs) 03:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to add the correct name of Alexis Bledel's mother to her article. Why do you continue to undo my edits??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.135.50.207 (talk) 05:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The information appears to be false. If you have a source that shows the various names you've added (Lupe, Conchita Juanita, etc.) are correct, please prove me wrong. Alansohn (talk) 05:19, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

How do you know that "Nanette" is her mother's real name and not Lupe? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.135.50.207 (talk) 05:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I did a search after your first edit and found this source. Her mother's name is not Lupe, Conchita Juanita or Consuela; It's Nanette. Alansohn (talk) 05:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear Alansohn - why has the page on Alexis Bledel been locked? I have some interesting new information I would like to add to the article, but when I push "edit" I get a message saying that the article has been temporarily locked. I see that you have gotten into a dispute with some other user about vandalizing the page. I have actual interesting new information concerning a new movie of hers. How would I add it to the page? 71.135.63.193 (talk) 04:03, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I have nothing to do with protecting the page, but you could check with User:Toddst1. It seems that there are vandals out there with no interest in improving this or other similar articles. Semi-protection limits edits to established editors. Alansohn (talk) 04:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

For reverting the vandalism on my talk page! Matt Deres (talk) 01:50, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey Alansohn, is this blasphemy, perpetrated upon the food of the gods, not worthy of serious physical punishment? ;) Drmies (talk) 19:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for reverting the vandalism on my talk page. I saw it on huggle, but you reverted it before I did. :P Lәo(βǃʘʘɱ) 19:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Terry McAuliffe

Alansohn, my revisions simply removed unnecessary and suspiciously timed information on the Terry McAuliffe page. It's the biased "controversies" that is the vandalism. Why not discuss this on the talk page there, rather than undo edits without joining the discussion? Whatrocks11 (talk) 19:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Anti-Vandalism

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
I hereby award you the Anti-Vandalism Barnstar for your remarkable efforts in fighting vandalism. gidonb (talk) 02:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

People Born in Guam are Native-Born Citizens

The article has an error. People born in Guam are native-born citizens. I know because I used to live on Guam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.54.35.200 (talk) 03:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they are. It was the additional material removed that raised an issue, one I am still researching. Alansohn (talk) 13:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Notification

There is a request for clarification regardling your current restriction. - jc37 15:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

There is something wrong. In that article there are a lot of incorrect information. I try to fix the article and gave a reference to each sentence I wrote, someone removed my changes and explain that kind of act by simple untrue statement "the article is not neutral". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arabic muslim (talkcontribs) 19:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Please see your user talk page for my reply. Alansohn (talk) 23:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
thank you so much for reverting those offensive messages on my userpage. That user must be another IP of one of the users I reverted trying to take revenge, I don't know. But I owe you...thanks! SchnitzelMannGreek. 23:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the recognition, but it's all in a vandal-fighter's day's work. Alansohn (talk) 23:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for looking out...

Your speedy reverts [[3]] erased another (two to be exact) eye sore. Thank you Again ! Maxis ftw (talk) 23:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It's the least I can do. Alansohn (talk) 23:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

My Article

Thanks for your concern on vandalism but Matt Decker is my article so therefore I can't vandalise my own article and I would have no interest in editing my own article in a negative way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ulyanov322 (talkcontribs)

I now understand what it is that you're trying to do. There are a few problems: You don't own this or any other article and you may want to see WP:OWN for further details. The article title should not include a title, a la Commodore Matt Decker, and should probably be Matt Decker (or Matt Decker (Star Trek) if there is an issue with the unqualified title). Alansohn (talk) 23:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

West Shore, Staten Island

Hi, Thanks for sourcing this. Trilobyte fossil (talk) 21:04, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad I saw the article and was able to find sources for much of the material. It could still use some more work. Alansohn (talk) 23:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I think I've completed what you started. Maybe you'd like to throw an eye over it? Trilobyte fossil (talk) 16:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
More steps in the right direction. Thanks for the updates. Alansohn (talk) 17:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

please revert your revert

as i did explain it on the talk page. thanks. 93.86.201.173 (talk) 16:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It was a hacker falut and can't fix it up!

i so sorry and it not my falut!my name is ben z —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.15.244.71 (talk) 04:18, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, your revert to this article restored some typos. I guess this was not what you intended... --Crusio (talk) 09:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

From 71.59.225.194

Don't feel like getting all that snugly-poo with the Wiki deal Mr. Sohn so I'm just chattin toya here'n'now. Saw a page with Sohn Sohn Sohn and no intuitive way to address you so here is my evil. I observe that you simply completely reverted to your former writings on alternative housing after I took the time to alter them. I altered them in such a way as to draw attention to their having been altered. I observe you have been wronged by your standards Sir. I hope that among the slew of editorial sabatages you suffer mine were no great blows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.59.225.194 (talk) 07:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Offensive section in the article Two nation Theory

Okay, I have put those views in a seperate article

Pakistani viewpoint about creation of Bangladesh

Because I find the section

Creation of Bangladesh

In the aritcle Two-Nation Theory very offensive and against Two nation theory. It is not neutral at all. It is anti-Pakistani.

--ChJameel (talk) 22:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChJameel (talkcontribs)

"Self-censorship"

Just so that you are aware, the only reason I pulled the words was because upon reflection I realized that you'd use it as just one more of your attempts to make a CFD discussion about me instead of about the topic at hand. But I have to congratulate you for managing to make it about me anyway. Be sure to keep the link handy for next time. Otto4711 (talk) 21:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I haven't filed it away yet, but thanks for the reminder. We had made a deal earlier which you reneged upon under which you wouldn't directly comment on my posts at XfD and I wouldn't directly respond to yours. I think that our collective track record has shown that you have yet to convince me to change my mind, and that these discussions have only helped highlight the rampant inconsistencies in how CfD works, only wasting time, and filling up a lot of disk space. While many of the admins who frequent CfD seem to turn a blind eye to your personal attacks and incivility, your recent block should provide rather clear evidence that objective admins untainted with conflicts of interest brought about by personal contact with you will not tolerate actions on your part which make anything I have ever said or done pale in comparison. I'm offering this deal again to take effect upon your agreement here. I'm better off, you're better off and Wikipedia is better off if we don't waste our time responding to each other. Alansohn (talk) 22:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

...for this. You would think that someone that could come up with "Fixed ideological Bias" would be capable of more substantive contribution. See ya 'round Tiderolls 04:34, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Why did you revert my change?

If homophobia is discrimination, then so is arachnaphobia.--114.76.212.56 (talk) 06:21, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

NY Senate control

You reverted my change, and said I needed citiations... which there already were in the first section of the article.

What more do you want? Please read the pages you are reverting my changes were accurate, yours were dead wrong. You are reverting back to something that doesn't even apply anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.183.159 (talk) 22:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Obit

Hey Alansohn, I know you write a lot of articles on recently deceased people after their obituaries come out; I have one from a few days ago that I remember thinking would be article-worthy, but I haven't had time to take any action on it now, and I'm not sure if I will be able to for a little while, so if you're interested then it's an easy article you can do. (If you're not interested, of course, no big deal—I might be able to get around to it eventually, too.) Here are the sources:

  • "Dr. Richard Allsopp, creator of Caribbean dictionary, passes away". The Barbados Advocate. 5 June 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  • "Late Dr Richard Allsopp's contributions hailed". Stabroek News. 5 June 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  • Christie, Pauline (1998). "Focus on Creolists: Richard Allsopp". The Carrier Pidgin. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
    • (for this one you need to scroll down a bit to get to the actual article)

Best, rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I guess I have a reputation. I looked through and there appears to be enough to make an interseting article that i will do my best to create later today. Alansohn (talk) 05:13, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Byron M. Baer.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Byron M. Baer.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 03:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Tip

You should consider Archiving some of thouse discussions, this page is hideously long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.125.138.48 (talk) 04:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It helps ward off vandals. Autoarchiving never seems to work as well as it's advertised. Alansohn (talk) 14:13, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the missing edit summaries on the Idioglossia article. One revision was a minor linking fix that I believe is uncontroversial. The other, a "See also" link to Home sign, definitely merited some explanation. I'm going to restore the former revision and add the latter to Talk:Idioglossia; please don't see this as edit warring. -- Control.valve (talk) 04:42, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I have reviewed the edits and thank you for your additional details. Alansohn (talk) 04:46, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Tom Green (basketball coach)

Number 471 (344 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On June 10, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Tom Green (basketball coach), which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Mifter (talk) 05:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

FYI. I'm curious to see your comments. Postdlf (talk) 08:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Alansohn (talk) 15:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Alansohn Get off my back

Hey I was just trying to "disambiguate" one WikiPedia Statement. Is that too much to take?

I am really tired of you so-called "editors", by the way, and the nonsense you impose on me. So go ahead and be as immature as a typical "wikiPedia" editor can be and "ban" me or my "IP" forever, and be known as the choot you are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.158.157 (talk) 14:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Your recent edit adds the words "not the real Naples" to a fully-disambiguated Naples, Florida. That is too much to take. Alansohn (talk) 15:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

For reverting the vandalism on my talk page. --Abce2|AccessDenied 15:16, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I guess I was returning the favor. We vandal fighters have to watch each other's backs. It's amazing how brazen vandals are becoming. Alansohn (talk) 15:18, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Forget you I can put what I want

I can put what ever I want to chlorophyll it's a free editing website. If you are going to keep doing that go screw your self and get off so elementary school children can have an easier definiton for words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tylergibson3440 (talkcontribs) 20:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Listen I didn't type that I have hundreds of viruses and someone must have hacked me or something. I swear I didn't do that. Forgive who ever did that, but it wasn't me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tylergibson3440 (talkcontribs) 20:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

San Diego Thunder

Can you please clarify the justification behind this edit to San Diego Thunder? Seems to be a good-faith AfD nom to me. KuyaBriBriTalk 20:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

There were two different edits, and the AfD info appeared to have been put in the wrong article, with an error message stating that the template was misplaced, but the wrong article was reverted due to my clear confusion. I thank you for the catch on my error and for reverting what was a clear mistake. Alansohn (talk) 21:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Ham

Try finding out why an edit was made before you give out a warning Thecityone (talk) 00:03, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The material you removed came directly from a reliable source. The revert is accompanied by a warning. Alansohn (talk) 01:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Photos in bilaterals

Please see comments here Talk:Belgium–Mexico relations. LibStar (talk) 04:29, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I see that you feel that they're not necessary, but that still doesn't become a reason for removal. As I see it, the image adds context to the article and in almost any other context I would have reverted it as vandalism. It was only after further review that I see that it's merely an argument over personal preference on the issue. If you want to point me towards a talk page, I'd suggest that you point me towards a discussion at Talk:Czech Republic – Iceland relations that shows a consensus for removal; The link to Talk:Belgium–Mexico relations only seems to show that there is no consensus anywhere for their removal. Alansohn (talk) 04:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Until the recent incident in Riverdale, I had no idea how many bombings there had been in this country I just put up a page on another one. It is truly shocking.Historicist (talk) 15:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

It's happened to me dozens of times that I was stunned by the absence of a single article, whose creation led to dozens more being written. You've become a very productive editor. Alansohn (talk) 15:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Normandy Landing

Are you a person or a bot? I want an explanation as to why the Normandy Landing edits are being reverted, as they make NO sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.48.25.60 (talkcontribs)

This edit is vandalism, plain and simple. If you have content issues, discuss at the talk page without using vandalism to make a point. Alansohn (talk) 18:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

This is your last warning. You will be blocked from editing the next time you vandalize a page, as you did with this edit to Normandy Landings. Alansohn (talk) 18:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Explain how "edits" are now "vandalism".139.48.25.60 (talk) 18:50, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, you are replacing a section with "Hi. hihi." What is that other than vandalism? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:50, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
ARGH. Didn't see that. Trying to put the sectors back. Some constructive assistance would be nice, rather than threats.139.48.25.60 (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
WAIT - there is no HI HI HI on the page itself - it shows up in the "changes" which is weird, but not on the page - it is some kind of glitch. Look at the finished page.139.48.25.60 (talk) 18:56, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
the 'hihihi' is there in the version you created- they're right at the end of the introductory section. But if it was unintentional, whiel you were trying to do something more useful... that's good! We like people who aren't vandals. :) I don't know enough about the subject to have any opinion about your other edits. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I see no "hihihi" anywhere on that page. Do it. Search the entire page for "hi". IT'S NOT THERE. It appears in the list of changes though, which is strange - a glitch. For the 2nd time, I obviously didn't do that. DAMN BUT WIKIPEDIA is a bloated, miopic exercise in administrivia and bureacracy. I'm sorry I continue to bother. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.48.25.60 (talk) 19:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
It has been corrected in the current version, but if you look at the version of the page that I linked to, it's at the end of the introductory section, right before the table of contents box. I promise that it is there. I am looking right at it; if you were here in the room with me, I could point to the screen and show you. Are you really going to insult us at this point for reverting those edits? Why not say, "Thank you, I didn't mean to restore vandalism to the encyclopedia, and I appreciate your fixing my mistake," and then go back and make the useful changes you wanted to make? You don't want nonsense on that page, we don't want nonsense on that page, so we're all on the same side. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

the problem is that there is already a page on "hurricanes", but it is about tropical storms, I want to create a page on Hurricanes (wilma, andrews, etc.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by NoduloMan (talkcontribs) 21:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Census Bureau map of Washington, New Jersey.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Census Bureau map of Washington, New Jersey.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:33, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Nazi Boycott April 1, 1933 in Berlin.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Nazi Boycott April 1, 1933 in Berlin.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Census Bureau map of Ocean Township, Ocean County, New Jersey.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Census Bureau map of Ocean Township, Ocean County, New Jersey.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Census Bureau map of Stafford Township, New Jersey.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Census Bureau map of Stafford Township, New Jersey.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Census Bureau map of Mannington Township, New Jersey.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Census Bureau map of Mannington Township, New Jersey.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Census Bureau map of Lower Alloways Creek Township, New Jersey.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Census Bureau map of Lower Alloways Creek Township, New Jersey.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

La Católica

Dear Alansohn, I continued the discussion on the translation of La Católica on its discussion page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.77.255.226 (talk) 21:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

File:Morristown Map 1776.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Morristown Map 1776.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Damiens.rf 21:38, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Pete Milne

As I posted on the DYK talk page, I've added another 2K of prose to this page to bring it past the lower limit. It's basically a run-down of his professional career. Do I need to relist it, or just leave it as is? -Dewelar (talk) 03:41, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Clarification archived

Hello, {{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}. A recent request for clarification of the Footnoted quotes arbitration case has been archived at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes. You are receiving this notification because you were involved in that request. Should you still have questions or wish to modify the results of the case, please file a new request for clarification or amendment at WP:RFAR, ask a committee clerk for more information, or contact the Arbitration Committee.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Hersfold (t/a/c) 15:01, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Lawrence Sher

Number 472 (345 create/expand - 127 nominations)

Updated DYK query On June 14, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Lawrence Sher, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

05:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Apperception

My edit (a revert) was not vandalism, it was repairing vandalism perpetrated by B9_Hummingbird_Hovering. The explanation for same was in the edit summary. B9 was restoring material that was deleted as OR (As discussed on the talk page of that article). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.41.131 (talk) 08:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I see now on further review of your history you seem to have a problem (mis)identifying vandalism. Please review [[4]] before making any more such accusations. Let me call particular attention to this passage: "if an editor treats situations which are not clearly vandalism as such, then that editor may harm the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors." Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.41.131 (talk) 19:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Fine. Be that as it may, you will at least concede that my edit was not vandalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.41.131 (talk) 05:32, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I have reverted your un-blanking of this page and tagged it db-author, because Rodmunday (talk · contribs) who blanked it was the author and (apart from a trivial correction) the only author, and gave reasons on its talk page for withdrawing it, saying he had decided it was misleading and would incorporate the material elsewhere. I had myself had some doubts about the article, which was why it was on my watch-list. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 13:29, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I tried to go back as far as I could in Huggle but did not make the connection between blanker and creator. While the article does (or did) have issues, it did contain legitimate encyclopedic content that made the blanking appear as vandalism. Alansohn (talk) 13:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Understood: I agree there is useful content, and he says on the talk page "...I will incorporate it into the entry for apparent movement when I have the time" so it will not be lost. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 13:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Your welcome

Your warm words of welcome mean a lot to me. Thank you. Debresser (talk) 16:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You have been nominated for membership of the Established Editors Association

The Established editors association will be a kind of union of who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the encyclopedia for a period of time (say, two years or more). The proposed articles of association are here - suggestions welcome.

If you wish to be elected, please notify me here. If you know of someone else who may be eligible, please nominate them here

Discussion is here.Peter Damian (talk) 19:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Plenty more to come!

Hi Alan; thanks for your note on my reaching 200 "DYK"s. It was only when I started messing around with a new userpage design and creating a separate list of my hooks that I realised I had undercounted by about 6, hence the sudden leap above 200! There is indeed a never-ending list of new articles to write on churches, buildings and the like ... having exhausted Brighton and Hove's vast array of churches, I'm about to move on to my home district, where there are at least 25 which need articles. Then the corresponding village articles need expanding... The funny thing is, when I started writing WP articles 3 years ago I never thought I would specialise in this area: I knew nothing about architecture etc. Railway-related stuff was all I could offer. But this work has given me a whole new area of interest, and now I can't wait to find the time to research and write more to fill in those gaps! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 22:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I can't count the number of times that a red link or a newspaper item led me to create a "missing" article which led in turn to a second and then a third all connected to that original missing subject. I try to aim to create a new article each day, and even though I fall short many times, the act of creating a new article and getting a little pat on the back when a DYK notice is put on my talk page only adds to the reward of filling in hole that existed in Wikipedia. The next 200 are far easier (even if I haven't made it there yet). Alansohn (talk) 01:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

re: vandalism to your page

I removed some vandalism left here by an IP, and found said IP had already received the requisite warnings for a block, so I sent it to AIV. LonelyBeacon (talk) 12:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

LB, thanks for the revert and for taking this vandal to AIV. It's astounding how disruptive these vandals are and I appreciate the efforts of all those who join me in trying to deal with the problem. Alansohn (talk) 12:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Sadly, AIV refused to block this vandal. I left a query at the admin's talk page that labeled this as "not vandalism". Sometimes I just don't get it. LonelyBeacon (talk) 13:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Looks like the IP got blocked anyway. LonelyBeacon (talk) 13:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
The wheels of Wikipedia justice can turn slowly, but with vandals we eventually get our man. Thanks for all of your help. Alansohn (talk) 13:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you give me your opinion on this one? thanks.Historicist (talk) 16:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

User Page Vandalism

Thanks for reverting the recent vandalism to my user page, it's much appreciated. ERK talk 21:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It's the least I can do to watch the back of fellow Wikipedians. Alansohn (talk) 21:34, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Checkuser issues

In fact that's an awful wall of text and I unfortunately don't have much time for Wikipedia these days (and it's only getting worse). I'll leave that check to someone else. -- Luk talk 14:59, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Is the checkuser itself dependent on the amount of evidence provided? Isn't the text behavioral evidence? Alansohn (talk) 15:01, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I need to read through it before making the check :). Whether the check is made, and the certainty of the results depends on what is said by both parties (because technical evidence can be misleading). -- Luk talk 15:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This has been open for a week and I spent the time and effort to provide detailed evidence of sockpuppetry for the editors/IPs involved to make this as solid as possible. I do understand that more evidence can be more to read and that you are burdened with real-world issues, but is there anything I can do to expedite the process, especially given that the sockpuppets cited have insisted that there is no connection and the puppetmaster has deleted the notifications on his talk page as "vandalism", even after recommending that any exculpatory information be provided if there is an overlap. Alansohn (talk) 16:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

List of castlevania characters

My edits are constructive. Your reverts are unconstructive. I am trying to be constructive and also follow NPOV. Essentially either Legends needs to be categorized under legends, for people trying to look up "Legends", or it needs to be linked back to the Castlevania: Legends article (which I did in the see also section). Looking up "non-canon" is quite unclear since people looking up information on "legends" won't find it by looking up "non-canon". "Legends" is a better categorization heading. I even left an explanation in the talk page but people seemed to have ignored it. I don't appreciate your fanatic accusations.Draculvania (talk) 16:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I hope my explanation for my recent edit made more sense. I just can't see how non-canon heading can be seen as a constructive heading when people trying to look up specific information are going to have a better chance if they see the specific game they are looking for listed under the exact title. I wasn't trying to remove the information that the game is non-canon, but just trying to make it easier to search for by giving it its own heading (I made sure there was a non-canon note at the beginning of the legends section). I also apologize for calling you fanatic.Draculvania (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I can more or less understand the logic, but the main takeaway should be that the more information about your intentions the better, sort of like being careful to signal your turns when driving. Sure, others may be able to figure out why you cut across that lane of traffic, but if you signaled they would know it was coming. Alansohn (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops! I'm sorry about that edit, that was very clumsy of me, it won't happen again. I'm really sorry about it! Alma Kusska (talk) 18:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you take a look at the editing history of this, which you inadvertently got involved in recently? It appears to me that User:B9 hummingbird hovering has his own original theory about Eastern concepts that he has decided are synonymous with "apperception", and won't take "prove it" for an answer. Seems to me like a pretty blatant WP:OR violation. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:50, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Great work on starting and expanding that article. When you upload images, unless they're fair use, please upload them to Wikimedia Commons instead of en.Wikipedia. That way, they'll be available for everyone in all language Wikipedias. Also, please put the appropriate project boxes on the article discussion page. I did it for this article. Anyway, no big deal. Again, thanks for starting a quality article on this subject. Cla68 (talk) 23:49, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminders. These are two things I need to be more conscious of doing when creating articles. Alansohn (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Desist!

CVU Anti-Vandalism Award
First warning. Stop beating me. :)--Abce2|AccessDenied 01:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


You've got barnstars!
Second warning. Stop doing great things. :)--Abce2|AccessDenied 01:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I acually beat you?! I thought you were just offline! Any way, you're welcome! --Abce2|AccessDenied 01:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

Ended up only half-blanking the page instead of all of it as intended. This was per consensus on the talk page. Derrial Book is to be deleted and the information on the page is not being moved anywhere. Myself and DrFluffy are for this and 199.126.152.28 is against. 2 to 1, we win, so don't stop us from deleting the page. And if the consensus changes from delete to merge (no reason why it should) they can just take data from the page history, so don't restore the page ever. It's gone for good. This is not vandalism. 65.120.179.226 (talk) 01:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. And the talk page is pretty clear. The page is to be removed by consensus. Merging is too much work, so that's not happening. Also, this will be happening to Malcolm Reynolds as well. 65.120.179.226 (talk) 01:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for following up with the heads up. I will look out for the changes. Alansohn (talk) 02:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 36

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:20, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Appreciation

Reversing Power Moves in the Name of Progress
I am curious as to whether you just follow around John from Idegon's needless deletions and fix his problems with them. You know, doing something in the name of progress rather than just stomping things out because they don't abide by "the community's preferences" and to get quick edit stats so he gets fake awards. Isn't it also community practice to give a "needs citation" warning before deletion? WildhockeyTroJan (talk) 02:34, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
  • WildhockeyTroJan, I edit many school articles among thousands of others and if I see that a source is needed I will do my best to add it. Policy dictates that and it's basic courtesy, but it's far easier to just revert an edit than do actual work. It's always best to add the needed reference rather than risk these needless reverts and the ensuing drama. Alansohn (talk) 02:59, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I've added Wayne Valley High School to my watchlist; if the "proud coach" resumes disruption when the block expires tomorrow, I'll impose a longer block. OhNoitsJamie Talk 21:46, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

  • Ohnoitsjamie thanks for the block and thanks for taking the time to check the source and correct the date in the article. I hope that the Coach doesn't return, but thanks again for stepping in, both as an editor and in your administrative capacity. Alansohn (talk) 22:18, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

BRD

Just a gentle reminder that the WP:BRD process is optional, so you can't demand that someone follow it. According to WP:BRD, it is best suited for use "While editing a particular page that many editors are discussing with little to no progress being made, or when an editor's concerns are not addressed on the talk page after a reasonable amount of effort." That doesn't seem to be the situation here. IMO it's generally more complicated than new editors can handle anyway. There are alternatives to BRD (several of which are listed in BRD itself) that would be reasonable and policy-compliant ways to respond to your reversion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, no "demand" was made; it was offered as a model. Alansohn (talk) 04:04, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
"Per WP:BRD, any further issues with this content should be discussed..." sounds to me a lot like "Any further issues should be discussed with your mobile phone service provider" – like the person saying that believes that there is exactly one correct choice, and all other options are useless or worse.
If we tell good-faith new editors that they "should" do something, many of them will hear that they "must" do it. We even intend for people to interpret it that way sometimes. Consider WP:DRR, which says "All content and conduct issues should be discussed at either the article or user talk pages before requesting dispute resolution." That doesn't really leave me with the feeling that discussing the issue on a talk page before requesting help is an optional step. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Worthy of consideration, though the extensive array of options may only add confusion rather than provide a path towards resolution. Alansohn (talk) 13:31, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Yes. It might be easier to simplify: "I'd be happy to talk about this" (with a link, because our discussion system is surprising and strange to newbies) or "Don't edit war", depending upon how much good faith should be assumed in the situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:06, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, like many other editors, I have created canned edit summaries that I use for such situations. Your suggestion that the wording used would benefit from adjustment is well taken. Thanks again for the ideas; I will do my best to implement them. Alansohn (talk) 22:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

GOCE December 2019 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2019 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the December 2019 GOCE newsletter, an update of Guild happenings since the September edition. Our Annual Report should be ready in late January.

Election time: Nominations for the election of a new tranche of Guild coordinators to serve for the first half of 2020 will be open from 1 to 15 December. Voting will then take place and the election will close on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. Positions for Guild coordinators, who perform the important behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our project running smoothly, are open to all Wikipedians in good standing. We welcome self-nominations so please consider nominating yourself if you've ever thought about helping out; it's your Guild and it doesn't run itself!

September Drive: Of the thirty-two editors who signed up, twenty-three editors copy edited at least one article; they completed 39 requests and removed 138 articles from the backlog, bringing the backlog to a low of 519 articles.

October Blitz: This event ran from 13 to 19 October, with themes of science, technology and transport articles tagged for copy edit, and Requests. Sixteen editors helped remove 29 articles from the backlog and completed 23 requests.

November Drive: Of the twenty-eight editors who signed up for this event, twenty editors completed at least one copy edit; they completed 29 requests and removed 133 articles from the backlog.

Our December Blitz will run from 15 to 21 December. Sign up now!

Progress report: From September to November 2019, GOCE copy editors processed 154 requests. Over the same period, the backlog of articles tagged for copy editing was reduced by 41% to an all-time low of 479 articles.

Request archiving: The archiving of completed requests has now been automated. Thanks to Zhuyifei1999 and Bobbychan193, YiFeiBot is now archiving the Requests page. Archiving occurs around 24 hours after a user's signature and one of the templates {{Done}}, {{Withdrawn}} or {{Declined}} are placed below the request. The bot uses the Guild's standard "purpose codes" to determine the way it should archive each request so it's important to use the correct codes and templates.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators; Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 11

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Kearny High School (New Jersey), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page New York Cosmos (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 08:48, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

December 18, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 02:48, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Hillsborough

Hi. Thanks for this edit. Looking at it again, I see that I garbled what I was trying to do. This was a drive-by edit prompted by something I happened to see in passing and I don't really remember where I was going with it except that I see that I was looking at page 60 of this and I vaguely remember that I intended to cite it but, in my garble, it didn't get in. That may of may not be useful to you. Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:48, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Wtmitchell, no issue whatsoever. You added useful details from the township's website. The wording there made it ambiguous if Hillsborough replaced Western / Westering or was formed from a piece of it. This source is incredibly useful, but even after having used it to reference hundreds of articles I often am not sure that it says what I think it said. Thanks again. Alansohn (talk) 20:54, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Cheers

Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well A. MarnetteD|Talk 19:38, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

  • MarnetteD, thanks for the best wishes; I will have to try a Tom and Jerry some day soon. Thanks for all of your efforts and best wishes for success in the new year! Alansohn (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
You are welcome A and thanks back atcha for the return good wishes :-) MarnetteD|Talk 21:27, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

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School infoboxes

Please ensure you follow what I’ve said in the two edit summaries for North Arlington High School and apply this to any other high school articles you edit – thank you Steven (Editor) (talk) 17:25, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Alansohn, the aim is bring consistency among all school articles on Wikipedia — layout, infobox, categories etc. — all in line with the school article guidelines and the Infobox school documentation. Please ensure the following:
  • All US public and private schools must be using the respective {{NCES School ID}} and {{NCES Private School ID}} templates, which provides a link to the page and the functionality to reference other information in the article via its ref name — as this is being added on a gradual basis, some have it some don't, for the ones that do have it, it is just the simple case of updating the access date
  • There is no need to remove the spacing from the infobox, it has no affect on it and keeps it neat and tidy when it comes to editing it
  • athletics_conference is what should be used, I noticed you changed this to conference which is being removed from the template alongside the other parameter aliases — what you see in the Infobox school documentation are the parameters being kept
  • Until an FTE parameter is added to the template, we add the {{FTE}} template which allows us to see which articles have been done and will be changed to an FTE parameter when this is added
  • There should be no acronyms in the city, state or country names. This is line with the school article guidelines and for the automatic short descriptions
  • You don't need to add the "https" to the {{URL}} template but that is optional

Please follow this and any issues let me know, thank you Steven (Editor) (talk) 17:50, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Good luck

  • Miraclepine, thanks for the message and extending my best wishes for success in the new year! Alansohn (talk) 04:21, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

/* Category:Gambling regulators */

Greeting Alansohn, I haven't reached out in a while. I hope this finds you well. I would consider your input at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_December_22#Category:Gambling_regulators. I have taken time to add many New Jersey biographies to this category and I feel it is valuable. Best, Accurizer (talk) 00:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

                                                 Happy holidays

Happy New Year!
Alansohn,
Have a great 2020 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.


   – 2020 is a leap yearnews article.
   – Background color is Classic Blue (#0F4C81), Pantone's 2020 Color of the year

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2020}} to user talk pages.

North America1000 20:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

  • Northamerica1000, thanks for the message and best wishes to you for a happy and successful new year! Alansohn (talk) 21:23, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2020 WikiCup!

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders and improvers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. We are relaxing the rule that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2020 will count; now to be eligible for points in the competition, you must have completed significant work on the content at some time! Any questions on the rules or on anything else connected to the Cup should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

A year ago ...
New Jersey
counties education
... you were recipient
no. 2112 of Precious,
a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:32, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 16

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January 22, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 20:06, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Jan 25, 12:30pm: Met 'Understanding America' Edit-a-thon @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for the Met 'Understanding America' Edit-a-thon @ Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side.

Together, we'll expand Wikipedia articles on American history and art, and the understanding that all communities bring to American culture, as reflected in the Met collection up until ca. 1900.

With refreshments, and there will be a wiki-cake!

Open to everyone at all levels of experience, wiki instructional workshop and one-on-one support will be provided.

12:30pm - 4:30 pm at Uris Center for Education, Metropolitan Museum of Art (81st Street entrance) at 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
(note this is just south of the main entrance)
Galleries will be open this evening until 9 pm, and some wiki-visitors may wish to take this opportunity to see exhibits together after the formal event.

Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends, colleagues and students! --Wikimedia New York City Team 21:00, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Books & Bytes – Issue 37

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 37, November – December 2019

Read the full newsletter

On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:09, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Our 2019 Annual Report is now ready for review.

Highlights:

  • Overview of Backlog-reduction progress (a record low backlog!);
  • Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page;
  • Automated archiving of requests;
  • Membership news and results of elections;
  • Annual leaderboard;
  • Plans for 2020.
– Your Guild coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 11

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Camden City School District, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Paterson School District (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

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February 19, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Metropolitan New York Library Council in Midtown Manhattan. Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Metropolitan New York Library Council (8th floor) at 599 11th Avenue, Manhattan

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 20:59, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Nomination of Ridgefield School District (Connecticut) for deletion

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

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. ––Redditaddict69 (talk) (contribs) 21:36, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Please stop damaging articles

You introduced a non-sentence in a recent edit: "Born and raised in Saint Croix, United States." Please be more careful: the opening sentence in a section is not the section title. Tony (talk) 07:19, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Please self-revert and discuss on talk page

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Edison, New Jersey; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. [5]. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 18:13, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Hipal, again I don't think you have any understanding of what you're talking about. Before making further bullshit claims, read these polices and ask how reinserting sourced material about libraries constitutes "edit warring". Furthermore, it appears that you are the one engaging in an edit war. It astounds me that someone with more than 100,000 edits could be so utterly ignorant of polices, as evidenced by misunderstanding and / or misrepresentations of what is REFSPAM and unawareness of WP:PRESERVE. Please don't reply. Just start acting like you understand what you're doing. Alansohn (talk) 20:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
We differ on interpretation of policies. Edit-warring is not the solution, nor is your focus on me, nor your choice of words.
Is it too much to ask to work cooperatively with other editors rather than reverting? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 20:06, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Hipal, you're heading in the absolute wrong direction and further demonstrating your misunderstandings / misrepresentation of policy. In what way are details about libraries advertising? Alansohn (talk) 20:52, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Again, it would really help if you refrained from comments like the first sentence of that remark.
As for the content, it's been pointed out multiple times on the article talk page, both generally and specifically.
Let's pick up the discussion at the article talk page, where we can elaborate there. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 20:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Hipal, simply labeling something as "advertising" doesn't make it so. I understand and appreciate your thirst to find reasons to remove sourced content, but what you started with -- removing the entire section -- was butchery, plain and simple. There is clearly encyclopedic material there and you acknowledge that. You would be better served by resisting the urge to make false claims of edit warring and using patently false justifications (e.g. SOAP) to remove content. Learn the policies first; then apply them. If there are reverts to be made, start by reverting your BS edit warring claim. Alansohn (talk) 21:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Hipal, your self revert of your most recent edit is a step in the right direction. You still haven't removed the edit warring tag, but that can wait. I will step away from the article for the next 24 hours. I hope that you will do the same. I hope that we can both use that time to review relevant Wikipedia policies, review available sourcing and make a genuine effort to make the article better, not just making it smaller or keeping it the same. No reply is desired; show your good faith by stepping back and taking a deep breath, as I will be doing. Alansohn (talk) 21:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm glad you're taking a break from the article. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 22:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

  • New York (state) Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
  • England Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
  • United States Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
  • Somerset Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
  • Pirate flag CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
  • The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included United States L293D, Venezuela Kingsif, Antarctica Enwebb, England Lee Vilenski and Nepal CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; United States L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, United States Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:29, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Alan, I see that you've done some previous work on this article. I came across a fresh NYT article about the school, and given the other news coverage, I'm wondering if you think the story merits mention. I typically err on the side of WP:NOTNEWS, but this story seems to be fairly significant. Your thoughts? OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

  • Ohnoitsjamie, thanks for reaching out. I had read the article in the Times in full. It's a very lengthy article that goes beyond mere NOTNEWS that I think would merit inclusion, but I wanted to digest the story for a day or two before adding anything. Alansohn (talk) 16:54, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
Good call, I appreciate your input. I've added it to my watchlist; if someone else adds it first, we'll want to make sure it doesn't violate WP:WEIGHT. Cheers, OhNoitsJamie Talk 17:04, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I have created this page, and quickly ran out of material. It is remarkable how little they have online. Perhaps you could lend a hand. Regards, --''Paul, in Saudi'' (talk) 06:53, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

March 18, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. This month, as part of Wikimedia NYC's commitment to the well-being of members, we will hold WikiWednesday online via Zoom videoconferencing! To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 9:00 pm online via Zoom

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 04:36, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

GOCE March newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2019. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2020, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.

Election results: There was little changeover in the roster of Guild Coordinators, with Miniapolis stepping down with distinction as a coordinator emeritus while Jonesey95 returned as lead coordinator. The next election is scheduled for June 2020 and all Wikipedians in good standing may participate.

January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work, completing 215 copy edits including 56 articles from the Requests page and 116 backlog articles from the target months of June to August 2019. At the conclusion of the drive there was a record low of 323 articles in the copy editing backlog. Of the 27 editors who signed up for the drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

February Blitz: Of the 15 editors who signed up for this one-week blitz, 13 completed at least one copy edit. A total of 32 articles were copy edited, evenly split between the twin goals of requests and the oldest articles from the copy-editing backlog. Full results are here.

March Drive: Currently underway, this event is targeting requests and backlog articles from September to November 2019. As of 18 March, the backlog stands at a record low of 253 articles and is expected to drop further as the drive progresses. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Help set a new record and sign up now!

Progress report: As of 18 March, GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests in 2020 and there was a net reduction of 385 articles from the copy-editing backlog – a 60% decrease from the beginning of the year. Well done and thank you everyone!

Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Guttenberg

At Guttenberg, New Jersey, your edit added info which is in conflict with an earlier sentence in lead. 9th or 7th smallest? Would you mind having a look? Refs for first seem to be a calculation. ThanksDjflem (talk) 16:33, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Djflem, I had an article that I was using about the ten smallest municipalities in the state. For most there was no issue, but I spotted that discrepancy for Guttenberg and I tried to word it that the data was from different sources. As the NJ.com article points out, the differences between the smallest municipalities is very small. Subtle differences in measurements in different data sets -- Census Bureau vs. NJDEP -- might change rankings. The Census Bureau source wasn't based on a calculation, but on a sort by size. It is weird and I will try to address any discrepancies. I'm glad that you and other editors are paying attention to issues like this. Thangs again! Alansohn (talk) 16:38, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Howell

At Talk:Howell Township, New Jersey there is a discussion as to how to handle geo-stubs.Djflem (talk) 06:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Francis J. McManimon

Hi-a section of Interstate 195 (New Jersey) runs through Mercer County, New Jersey. That section in Mercer County was name in honor of Francis J. McManimon. It is unclear as to how to insert this in the Interstate 195 (New Jersey) article; the highway in New Jersey was name after someone else. Thank you-RFD (talk) 11:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

  • RFD, first off thanks for your updates to the article for McManimon and all of your other Wikipedia work I'd add the details on the honorary renaming to the Route description section and include the renaming in the notes column on the exit list. Does that make sense? Alansohn (talk) 12:47, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you-RFD (talk) 13:16, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Eastampton Township

Hello, I see recently you updated the Eastampton Township page. You put Anthony Zeno as the mayor of the town, and yes the mayors directory states he is the mayor. However, if you look on the township website (eastampton.com), it states Robert Apgar is the current mayor of Eastampton. As an Eastampton resident who attended a council meeting this year, I can confirm the new alignment is as followed:

Mayor: Robert Apgar (D, term ends 2020) Deputy Mayor: Dominic Santillo (D, term ends 2022) Councilmen: Anthony Zeno (D, term ends 2020), Eddie Besko (D, term ends 2022), Gerald "Jay" Springer (D, term ends 2020). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZenomanKnows (talkcontribs) 07:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

  • ZenomanKnows I've found other such errors and been going through articles systematically to correct any errors. Thanks for the update. Alansohn (talk) 12:55, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
  • ZenomanKnows, I had updated the article two weeks ago using the website, but the website does not appear to be updated to reflect the membership and roles for 2020. I was able to get the details from the minutes. The article has been updated. Alansohn (talk) 14:29, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Proof of the multiverse?

Maybe you can explain to me how a person can be "from" two places simultaneously. That would be a neat trick. Both the accomplishment and the explanation. But of your course you will never, never change your mind. Never! No one on Wikipedia EVER changes.Vmavanti (talk) 19:48, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I ask questions and I still look up words in a printed dictionary, at my age, including the word "from" just to check. I have no problem discussing, analyzing, talking, or questioning my assumptions. Any real-world editor worth his salt does the same. I hope you can, too -- really do it rather than talk about it, rather than respond impulsively or regurgitate hand-me-down notions someone gave you. You first comment asserts "moving" as an argument, as though I were an idiot and had never heard of such a thing. I'm going to ignore your examples of moving because they are insulting (a personal attack? oh, no, of course not), so I will "move on". In fact I believe the world population is more mobile than ever, hence the devastating impact of the Chinese virus. You seem to be confusing two ideas: origin and motion. The existence of motion doesn't erase origin from history any more than the existence of Wikipedia categories ipso facto means they are true or relevant or appropriate. Everyone knows there there are things on Wikipedia that are false. So what? It's a compilation of published material, and some published material is false. If the reduction of categories worries you (God knows why...) you can always come up another word besides "from" to apply to people who become residents of other states or countries, then you will have even more categories to add to articles. Oh, boy! Addition is fun! Deletion is evil!Vmavanti (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
I can take a punch. But I don't appreciate the nasty little insinuations and threats: 1) that I would be "laughed off" WP if only WP people knew how stupid I was and actually heard my nutty ideas 2) that I would be blocked for even expressing these ideas. I consider these comments impulsive, poorly considered, and exaggeration. People who traffic in words ought to be much more careful about the words they choose. Exaggeration is a literary trope best left to literature.Vmavanti (talk) 20:40, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Way back when there was a TV show called Barney Miller. One of the characters was played by an actor named Jack Soo, who was born on a ship sailing to Japan as I learned one day in a publication called TV Guide. He is included in Category:People born at sea as well as Category:Male actors from Oakland, California. Sure, he was born on a boat, but he's from Oakland, because that's where he was raised. And if he moved elsewhere he could also have been included in other categories for those other places, just like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Being "from" somewhere is in no way, shape or form limited to being "from" the place where someone was born and there is a rather clear and broad Wikipedia consensus that people can be "from" more than one place. I sincerely hope that Obama, Clinton and Soo can all serve as models and convince you.
If you don't like my snippiness, I will apologize and point out that it was you who began this thread by insisting "But of your course you will never, never change your mind." I hope that you are better able in the future to recognize your own actions here, and perhaps even able to change your mind. Alansohn (talk) 21:10, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Snippiness is one thing. That's a normal day on WP. Threats to block is another matter altogether, one far beyond the acceptable limits of exaggeration on WP. All you have done is repeat the same point as though I don't know that people move. Because it's a linguistic convention, a habit, to say "I'm from there AND there" doesn't make it acceptable prose in a formal reference work. Conversation is spontaneous. We expect it to be sloppy. Writing and editing are precise. Different. Simply repeating "It's true just because" doesn't constitute an argument. When will you be convinced that this isn't a valid point? One has to have reasons. Obama isn't from Illinois and neither is Mrs. Clinton. So it's wrong to say they are from there. You have heard that usage in conversation, but so what? I addressed that. You have choices. You could put your reason and imagination together to invent a template that describes multiple locations, as in "American expatriates in England". That means creating more work for yourself and everyone else. OR you could take a more sensible path by concluding a person can have only ONE ORIGIN and realize the word "from" applies to origin on Wikipedia, not where you were "from" last week or five seconds ago. You could then reduce the amount of excessive categories that exist in many articles. They (someone) might even you give a barnstar to add to your trophy room. More important, you will have the satisfaction of solving the problem. That's better than any trophy.
Vmavanti (talk) 23:54, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Vmavanti, I'm not sure that we're communicating here. You insist that a "person can have only ONE ORIGIN" and that "Obama isn't from Illinois and neither is Mrs. Clinton. So it's wrong to say they are from there." This is despite the fact that Barack Obama (who lived for decades in Chicago and was elected as United States Senator from Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (who was born in Chicago and raised for the first decades of her life in the Chicago suburbs) are indisputably from Illinois, as stated in their articles and in the categories used in their articles. I have no power to block anyone, nor can I threaten to do so. But I can assure you -- which was my point -- that if you were to engage in a similar edit war and removed categories from the articles for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, that you'd be skating on very thin ice. The articles for both Obama and Clinton are Featured Articles, examples of Wikipedia's finest, and there seems to be rather clear consensus in these articles (and hundreds of thousands of other biographical articles) that someone really can be from more than one place. Almost all of us manage to handle the idea of someone being from multiple places with tremendous ease. I subscribe to that consensus. I know that you feel strongly about your belief and that it was the strength of this belief of yours that led you to try to ridicule my edits as being "Proof of the multiverse". Please point me to any consensus or policy that limits people to being from one -- and only one place, which in your words means that "a person can have only ONE ORIGIN". Until then all I can ask you to do is to abide by the global consensus that disagrees with your view and leave categories alone merely because they conflict with your "ONE ORIGIN" theory. Alansohn (talk) 01:02, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
You are correct on one point. My memory slipped. Mrs. Clinton was indeed born in Illinois. That's a fact. But it's your opinion that people can have more than one origin. It's a creative misreading of the defintion. You and others have simply expanded the definition of the word. It happens all the time. But it's wrong. And a bad idea. Words have meanings. An origin is a beginning. There's no such thing as two beginnings, any more than there are married bachelors. The definition prohibits it. Perhaps it is astonishing to you that so many people can be wrong about something so simple. I suspect I'm older than you, and I can tell you it's not that unusual at all. We who grow up in democracies tend to think a Show of Hands settles everything for all time and that's that. But it doesn't. I think your expansive use of "from" comes from a combination of existing usage in Wikipedia and casual conversation. Contrary to your assertion, both of those sources are flawed and open to challenge and analysis. Although I understand WP works by consensus, not everything on Wikipedia works by consensus. As long as WP is written and edited by humans, there will be debate, wiggle room, subjectivity (we are subjects, not inanimate objects). You have used "as stated in their articles" as proof of the expanded use of "from", forgetting that Wikipedia cannot be used as a source for itself. I can show you many Wikipedia articles that have all kinds of errors. So that reason breaks down. If your reasoning is, "Those are featured articles, so they must be true", then again I refer you back to WP documentation which states that featured article can still have flaws and can continue to be edited. So that reason breaks down.
I decline your invitation to start an edit war. I have removed categories that don't make sense, and sometimes people have challenged it and we discuss it, sort of. I doubt I have engaged in "edit wars" about this subject, nor do I have any intention of doing so on the articles you mentioned. I have no Grandiose Plans if that's what worries you. You will notice there are no threats in my posts. I don't threaten people. I don't have too. I use reason to make my points. But you said "you will be blocked if..." and then played your imaginary hypothetical game. I prefer if we stick to the earth, the facts, what has been said rather than what might be said or could be said. Your willingness to engage in discussion, which I greatly appreciate and which many people lack, is a sign of hope. The title of the thread wasn't meant to be purely derogatory. It's meant to use humor to convey a simple fact: Barring proof of the multiverse, one can't exist in two places at once. One can have one start, beginning, origin, birthplace.
Vmavanti (talk) 02:21, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
April 22, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. This month, as part of Wikimedia NYC's commitment to the well-being of members, we will hold WikiWednesday online via Zoom videoconferencing! To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

This month, we've invited Esther Jackson of the New York Botanical Garden to join us for an Earth Day focused conversation.

Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Wikimedia New York City Team 23:24, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Hullo. An edit war has broken out, CLCStudent and I have been reverting an IP who is very keen on removing a referenced section of history. We're at 3RR a piece, so will back off. I've report the edit war and have asked for page protection. Since this is in your area of expertise/interest, I thought you may want to have a look and return the removed text when the page is protected. Cheers. Ifnord (talk) 02:19, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

  • Ifnord, thanks for reaching out. I will continue to keep an eye on the article. Alansohn (talk) 02:32, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Issue 38, January – April 2020

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 38, January – April 2020

  • New partnership
  • Global roundup

Read the full newsletter

On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:57, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter

The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

  • New York (state) Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
  • England Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
  • Botswana The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
  • Somerset Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
  • England Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Gondor Hog Farm with 801, Venezuela Kingsif with 719, Cascadia (independence movement) SounderBruce with 710, United States Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and Mexico MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19 (May 9)

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for a Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19, which aims to answer questions the public may have about Wikipedia's coverage of the pandemic. The event includes four speakers, all of whom are active contributors to the topic area on Wikipedia, but bring different perspectives, backgrounds, and interests. The event is free and open to the public, broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook, and questions taken from viewers on these platforms. Abstracts and speaker bios are available on the event page.

Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19

Saturday May 9, 6:00PM - 8:00PM EST (22:00 - 24:00 UTC)

online via YouTube and Facebook

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 14:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Woodlynne School District

The article for Woodlynne School District has some linkrot in it's administration section, which is awkwardly structured. Is it OK with you if I edit the article?Jacona (talk) 18:00, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Jacona, as stated on every edit screen, "Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions." However, if you're following an editor from article to article and if "the purpose is to make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine, frighten, or discourage them from editing.", then you're looking at the definition of Wikipedia:Harassment. It's hard to understand the purpose of some of your recent edits in light of this definition. I can assure you that I have not been following you around from article to article, nor will I. Alansohn (talk) 19:44, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I can assure you that I am not following you. You know what you edit, and that includes almost all school-related and locality related articles in New Jersey. If the definition of stalking is editing a New Jersey related article that you have recently edited, that would make it very difficult for anyone to edit these. Throw in bullying editors with aspersions and snarky edit captions, and that is pretty much the definition of ownership. Please stop, and allow others to improve these articles. You may disagree with me on some things; if so then discuss civilly. But don't continue to wholesale revert changes that correct errors and improve readability. That gives the appearance of defending territory rather than improving the encyclopedia, and I'm sure that's not what you really want to accomplish. Such behavior is likely to run off many potential contributors. Please remember that this is a collaborative venture. For my part, I intend to edit various NJ-related articles (especially schools, localities, and race-related articles). I suspect you will have edited many of these in the past - I don't care one way or the other. But for your part, I will not be bullied away by snarky edit captions, pejoratives, and other incivility, nor will I do any of those things. You've done a lot of great work on these articles, but they're not perfect, and other people have useful contributions as well. Thanks. Jacona (talk) 20:34, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I made the changes to Woodlynne School District, updating the info and sources. It looks like an obvious improvement to me, I was careful to use mdy dating to appease your anger. I hope that's good enough for you. I do not intend to ask your permission on future edits I make to NJ articles, unless you insist. I hope that's OK with you. Thanks. Jacona (talk) 20:49, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Jacona you have made some useful edits, as well as some rather questionable edits to achieve such grand purposes as changing a double space to a single space. Your actions belie your bluster, particularly in recent edits that have followed mine from article to article where you have never edited the article before. This is the definition of WP:HARRASSMENT and you know full well what you are doing (and pretending to do) here. Please stop and realize that what you really want to accomplish here is to pick a fight. I will assure you again that I have never monitored your edits, followed you around nor made unnecessary edits to articles for questionable justification. I hope that you understand WP:HARASSMENT and resist the urge to violate it. You may also want to read WP:DATEVAR and WP:CITEVAR to improve your understanding of policy and assuage your misplaced anger. Alansohn (talk) 21:08, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I am not following your edits. I will continue to edit NJ related articles, and I do not look to see if you have edited them first. As far as the edits, getting rid of extra spaces is by no means a critically important edit. I'm not sure why you find it offensive, I've been doing that across the encyclopedia, not just at New Jersey articles. Not all improvements are huge. If there is a valid reason for keeping these spaces,or if you have any reason to discuss a specific edit, please bring it to my talk page. You're making me curious. As far as NJ goes, are you saying it is inappropriate for me to edit NJ articles (particularly in the topics I've mentioned), if you've edited them previously? That would seem to prohibit new editors, so that can't be right. Jacona (talk) 21:31, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
May 20, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. This month, as part of Wikimedia NYC's commitment to the well-being of members, we will hold WikiWednesday online via Zoom videoconferencing! To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

This month, we'll focus on WikiProject New York City and our favorite local articles, as well as Wiki Loves Pride past and future.

Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues!

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 15:58, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

15th anniversary on Wikipedia!

Hey, Alansohn. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day!
Chris Troutman (talk) 21:42, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Fifteen Year Society

Dear Alansohn/Archive 23,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more. ​

Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 21:43, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Cozy Morley requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G4 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a deletion discussion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cozy Morley. When a page has substantially identical content to that of a page deleted after a discussion, and any changes in the content do not address the reasons for which the material was previously deleted, it may be deleted at any time.

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 deleted 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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 11:10, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

  • WilliamJE, you may want to review the criteria for CSD:G4, which states that "This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion. It excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version". In the message you created above it states that you legitimately believe that "the page appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted". As the previous version of the article was deleted in 2007 and the overwhelming majority of sources didn't exist at the time, it's hard to imagine that the article is "substantially identical". I'm not sure what your motivation is here or what it is you're trying to accomplish, but you may want to take a first step to start the much-needed process of dealing with your issues by trying to genuinely understand the policies you claim to be defending. Alansohn (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2020. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. All times and dates stated are in UTC.

Current events

Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 00:01 on 16 June. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, or you know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

June Blitz: This blitz begins at 00:01 on 14 June and ends at 23:59 on 20 June, with themes of articles tagged for copyedit in May 2020 and requests.

Drive and blitz reports

March Drive: Self-isolation from coronavirus may have played a hand in making this one of our most successful backlog elimination drives. The copy-editing backlog was reduced from 477 to a record low of 118 articles, a 75% reduction. The last four months of 2019 were cleared, reducing the backlog to three months. Fifty requests were also completed, and the total word count of copy-edited articles was 759,945. Of the 29 editors who signed up, 22 completed at least one copy edit. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

April Blitz: This blitz ran from 12 to 18 April with a theme of Indian military history. Of the 18 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed a total of 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

May Drive: This event marked the 10th anniversary of the GOCE's copy-editing drives, and set a goal of diminishing the backlog to just one month of articles, as close to zero articles as possible. We achieved the goal of eliminating all articles that had been tagged prior to the start of the drive, for the first time in our history! Of the 51 editors who signed up, 43 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Other news

Progress report: as of 2 June, GOCE participants had processed 328 requests since 1 January, which puts us on pace to exceed any previous year's number of requests. As of the end of the May drive, the backlog stood at just 156 articles, all tagged in May 2020.

Outreach: To mark the 10th anniversary of our first Backlog Elimination Drive, The Signpost contributor and GOCE participant Puddleglum2.0 interviewed project coordinators and copy-editors for the journal's April WikiProject Report. The Drive and the current Election of Coordinators have also been covered in The Signpost's May News and Notes page.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC).

Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020

  • Library Card Platform
  • New partnerships
    • ProQuest
    • Springer Nature
    • BioOne
    • CEEOL
    • IWA Publishing
    • ICE Publishing
  • Bytes in brief

Read the full newsletter

On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 15

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

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(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:16, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

June 17, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. This month, as part of Wikimedia NYC's commitment to the well-being of members, we will hold WikiWednesday online via Zoom videoconferencing! To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

This month, we'll check in on the global WikiCup race and have as featured speaker our local champion and frontrunner, who is trying to win it by writing as many new New York City articles as possible, as well as other local and global topics.

Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

We especially encourage folks to add your 3-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues!

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 01:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Closed Catholic schools of the Newark archdiocese

Hi! When I made List of schools in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark I was able to determine a list of former/closed/merged Catholic schools by comparing the list of schools from the archdiocese in 1998 (the earliest available online) and a list from 2020.

If you like you can expand on these by finding newspaper articles about any closures/mergers. This info can then be posted to New Jersey municipality articles to show the Catholic schools they used to have.

WhisperToMe (talk) 19:02, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

  • WhisperToMe, thanks for creating the article to summarize schools in the archdiocese. I will try to work in both directions, expanding /sourcing this list and adding / sourcing these details in municipal articles. Thanks again for the effort. Alansohn (talk) 19:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Category:Private schools in Hudson County, New Jersey requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

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 deleted 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. Liz Read! Talk! 15:16, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter

The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

  • New York (state) Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
  • Botswana The Rambling Man , with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
  • England Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, Denmark MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

By way of a gift ...

The Special Barnstar
Coming from an editor who years back was no fan of yours, I found your "Dumping poop" essay to be eloquent, thoughtful and very damn correct. Thank you for sharing those thoughts. Ravenswing 06:39, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

"The Patrick School" in Hillside?

In Jonathan Kuminga's article, it shows he attends The Patrick School in Hillside. But the link to the school goes to St. Patrick High School which is located in Elizabeth, an entirely different town.

I was wondering if you may be able to clear this up, and whether "The Patrick School" is just some news outlets' incorrect way of referring to St. Patrick HS? That still wouldn't explain the Hillside vs. Elizabeth confusion though.

I tried looking into this but got lost as to what might actually be correct. I have no idea if a "Patrick School" in Hillside even exists. SportsGuy789 (talk) 17:08, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

SportsGuy789, The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark closed St. Patrick High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey at the end 2011-12 school year. At the start of the next school year, The Patrick School opened on the same site as an independent school carrying on many of the traditions of the old St. Patrick's. Per this source, the school has indeed moved to Hillside, New Jersey, so the statement in the Kuminga article is correct. That same article in Slam magazine makes clear that the walls of The Patrick School "depict the rich history of its basketball program, which dates back to when it was located in Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the St. Patrick High School label." So even though its a new school in a new location, it still carries the legacy of the old school. The Wikipedia article already reflects the change in operator and transfer of control from the RCAN to private auspices, but I will update the article to reflect the move to Hillside. Thanks for the catch. Let me know if I can help further. Alansohn (talk) 21:20, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
Wow great explanation, thank you so much. I would not have pieced all of that together, but it makes sense. I'm happy to hear that The Patrick School is carrying on the legacy of St. Patrick HS because that used to be a national basketball powerhouse. Thanks for moving/updating the original St. Patrick HS article to reflect the changes! SportsGuy789 (talk) 22:56, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Dansk International Designs

Hi, I noticed that you were not notified about this recent nomination: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dansk International Designs. I believe that you created the article in 2009; I'm not sure why you didn't get the notification. So now you know. :)  — Toughpigs (talk) 23:17, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 24

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Bridgewater Township, New Jersey, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Andy Kessler.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:09, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Birthplace for Patrick X. Gallagher

Hi! This is a bit belated, but I finally found the page in the American Men and Women of Science that gave the birth date & place for Patrick X. Gallagher (you asked me about this a few months ago). I added the page and full quote of the entry to the article, confirming that he was indeed born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on January 2, 1935. — MarkH21talk 09:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  • MarkH21, thanks for researching this and adding the source. Alansohn (talk) 20:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Sun Aug 16: Great American Wiknic NYC & Beyond

August 16, 3pm: Great American Wiknic

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our annual summer Great American Wiknic, this year being held virtually.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

Featuring artist-Wikimedian Sara Clugage's "Picnics: An Outside History" for a cultural exploration of picnicking, knowledge and society during the national panel in the first part. We encourage you to call in for the second part from a local park or natural site and share it on the video stream, as well as sharing your favorite picnic grub or other special foods with us.

Is there a project you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? A Wiki* skill you'd like to learn? Let us know by adding it to the agenda. The Wiknic is taking the place of "WikiWednesday" this month, so we will also include salon and knowledge-sharing workshop aspects.

3:00 pm - 4:00 pm online via YouTube (watch our national panel's livestream, and participate by text chat)
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm online via Zoom (participate by videoconference with NYC community)

We especially encourage folks to share your parks and foods on screen, and add your 3-minute lightning talks to our roster for the Zoom portion, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues!

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 22:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 29

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Prospect High School (Illinois), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Chicago Fire.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:22, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

The reason for [sic]

You have twice removed the template that I added to show that "based off of" is an error in the source material being quoted in Wayne Valley High School. Either you do not believe that "based off of" is grammatically incorrect, or you have not properly understood when sic is used. Your last edit summary suggests the latter. If there is an error in source material that is being quoted, then adding [sic] indicates to the reader that the error is indeed in the source, and has not been introduced in the process of reproducing the quote. Sankura (talk) 18:07, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Sankura, the direct quotation is exactly as sourced and there is no textual error as specified by Template:Sic. If it occurs in article text, feel free to make a change. Alansohn (talk) 18:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
You don't understand that "based off of" is wrong, then? Sankura (talk) 18:23, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
Sankura, the direct quotation is transcribed into the reference exactly as the quotation was made in the original source. There is no error. NONE. If you believe that tagging a non-error with the sic tag solves a non-existent problem, go ahead and waste your time as you see fit. Alansohn (talk) 18:33, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
There is an error. If you think "based off of" is grammatically acceptable, you must not be a native English speaker. If that's the case, then please defer to native speakers on matters of correct grammar. Sankura (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
Sankura, you must be one of those grammar prigs looking to fix non-problems in direct quotations. As a native speaker of this language, your statement shows that you are here to waste my time and that of all Wikipedia editors. Alansohn (talk) 18:54, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
No, I'm trying to save time. Flagging errors in source material with [sic] is a standard and beneficial thing to do, hence the existence of the template. You are wasting your own time by pointlessly objecting to this. Sankura (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

  • Free Hong Kong Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
  • IndonesiaHaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
  • England Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:51, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Alansohn! I just want to say thanks for referring me to WP:CITEVAR on your most recent edit to Washington Heights, Manhattan. I will admit a lot of my edits were just changing references to my preferred style, because I was looking through stuff for typos, adding refs, rewording, etc. and I was like, why not change the references to my preferred style along the way? But I 100% understand why it's not really beneficial to allow editors to do that, so I will stop. The most recent edit I did though (after yours) was keeping one of my reference changes that was actually necessary because the old link was dead.

Anyway thanks again! I appreciate everything you do for Wikipedia. The Spirit of Oohoowahoo (talk) 21:51, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

The Spirit of Oohoowahoo, my appreciation for all of your work improving these articles! Thanks for the reply. Alansohn (talk) 22:12, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 6

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Hawthorne High School (New Jersey), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Punter.

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Patrol

Having a bad day? Not sure why you care enough about the Wolfe Kelman article to receive a ping every time someone touches it – then took the time, twice, to fuss with the style of the citations – if you do not care enough to worry about the fact that the citations themselves were dead and needed salvaging. If you're going to patrol every article you ever created, maybe take the time to review the factual content and work hard to fix that, rather than worrying about the style of your expired citations when someone else kicks in to update the dead material? None of the changes made were an attack on the work you did in 2009, they were not a comment on your citation style when you created the page, they were not attacking the terrific citations you found in 2009 supporting the article - they were all legitimate salvage efforts on material that had simply become deprecated since 2009 and needed salvaging (with a few others benefitting from wiki articles having been created, perhaps with slightly different names, that now gave bluelinks in support of the redlinks still in the citations).

No need to tell me that I have met your approval in that "every source had been reviewed"; if I wanted to damage the article, I would have simply left it with the broken sources that were already there, which you had not checked on until I fixed them. No need to thank me, just doing the work that all editors try to do to back each other up in the growth and maintenance of Wikipedia. And I wasn't being sarcastic about "Having a bad day?". You are clearly a longtime and prolific editor, and I believe that you would not normally be more worried about the nuances of trivial citation style on an article you created 11 years ago than you would be about the deprecated content itself. I hope this was not because others have changed your citations for no other reason than to change the style. (as I read that last sentence, I realize how Pollyanna it sounds. OF COURSE people do that. Oh well.) Jmg38 (talk) 01:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Jmg38, it's a wonderful story, but for the facts. This revert makes the claim "that every one of these citations were touched for substantive reasons: because they had errors (Golman), or they had redlinks that were updated to blue, or they were dead and needed salvaging". But each of the relevant edits (Forward, Jerusalem Post and The New York Times) just changed the citation and date formatting, exactly what is proscribed by WP:CITEVAR and WP:DATEVAR. The other two edits removed commented text and fixed errors you made while changing the citation format. The net result was that the fundamental reason that changes were made was because you were "changing style just for something to do", exactly what you correctly say is forbidden by these policies.
Have a great day, just like the one I'm having! Alansohn (talk) 02:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Fixed the Golman again, and salvaged another dead url. Entered it in full template (absolute reflex!), then noticed just before I hit "publish". Please check that I formatted right (as I said, reflex). Also note that the existing citation to the "Jewish Tribute" article was entered using template style rather than the "article's established citation style", in case that needs changing. Just happy to have cleaned up the three dead links, the typo and add a bluelink. Cheers. Jmg38 (talk) 02:51, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Wait! Just found that it should be The Jewish Tribune, not Jewish Tribute! That's two bluelinks. Will change that now, save you the trouble. Jmg38 (talk) 02:57, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 40

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 40, July – August 2020

  • New partnerships
    • Al Manhal
    • Ancestry
    • RILM
  • #1Lib1Ref May 2020 report
  • AfLIA hires a Wikipedian-in-Residence

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:14, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 13

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

West Freehold, New Jersey
added links pointing to John Barclay and John Reid
Elizabeth High School (New Jersey)
added a link pointing to Shawnee High School
Middlesex High School
added a link pointing to Somerville High School
Robbinsville High School (New Jersey)
added a link pointing to Ramsey High School

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:29, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2020.

                 Current and upcoming events

September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today!

Election reminder: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 December. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Drive and Blitz reports

June Blitz: An uncorrected typo (even copy editors make copy editing mistakes!) led to an eight-day "leap blitz" from 14 to 21 June, focusing on requests and articles tagged in May. 19 participating editors claimed 54 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

July Drive: Over 750,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event, keeping pace with the previous three self-isolated drives. Of the 38 people who signed up, 30 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here.

August Blitz: From 16 to 22 August, we copy edited articles tagged in June and July 2020 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 37 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Other news

June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Baffle gab1978, Tdslk, Twofingered Typist, and first-time coordinator Puddleglum2.0. Reidgreg took a break after serving for a couple years. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Progress report: As of 01:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 532 requests since 1 January and there were 38 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above).

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 20

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Hunterdon Central Regional High School, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Williamstown High School.

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September 26, 12:30pm: Met Fashion Virtual Edit Meet-up

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for our The Met x Wikipedia Virtual Edit Meet-up: Met Fashion.

This is a follow-up to last year's successful MetFashion 2019, and will follow a similar theme optimized for a remote online experience.

We will be partially coordinating with the international Wiki Loves Fashion campaign.

Watch and join the livestream! The Metropolitan Museum of Art event on Saturday Sep 26 will host a tutorial and question-and-answer session live on YouTube and other social media platforms.

  • 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm - Presentation
  • 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm - Guidance and Q&A

Chat about improving articles! Support will be provided to help guide new editors in this area at Wikimedia Fashion Chat for the duration of the campaign.

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 17:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 27

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Bloomfield High School (New Jersey), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Ewing High School.

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Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome
Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:15, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 7

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited High Point Regional High School, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Robbinsville High School.

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C'mon

Was that edit summary really necessary? OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:49, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Ohnoitsjamie, you do realize that my edit undid an edit of yours with the one-word edit summary "confusing". Not only do I question if your "edit summary [was] really necessary", I'm even less sure that the material you removed could not have been addressed to meet your confusion without having been removed in its entirety, perhaps via changing the words to make it less confusing or leaving a message on my talk page asking for a clarification. That the school had undergone a name change seems relevant and encyclopedic, and preservation of such content appears to be covered by WP:PRESERVE. If it makes you feel better, especially as it appears that I have addressed the wording and added a source, I will verbally retract my edit summary. I hope that you will verbally revert your removal of the material. Alansohn (talk) 16:58, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
October 21, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

In honor of Wikidata's 8th birthday earlier this month, we especially encourage lightning talks related to Wikidata and Wikidata adjacent projects and tools. We'll also discuss the recent proposal to change the Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws, including the Statement of Opposition from Wikimedia NYC.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 04:11, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

County in infobox school

Hello Alansohn, In the past I've been told to remove county from the infobox for U.S. schools. I was pointed to the U.S. example. I understand that you don't agree. Looking through the archives of the template talk page I don't find much support for your position although there was a claim by someone that New Jersey is a special case. Gab4gab (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Gab4gab, the examples are merely examples; nothing more, nothing less. They set no limit on the number of fields that may be used and the county field is widely used in school articles across the country. Policies set whether something must be done or cannot be done, but no policy is cited. Nor have you made a case that the address fields are intended to exactly replicate the United States Postal Service address format, especially in regard to the municipality, which may not be the "city" used by the postal service for mail purposes. If you have something to cite that mandates / prohibits how the fields in this template are used, I encourage you to point me to the policy on the matter; citing an anecdotal claim that you were "pointed to the U.S. example" in the infobox documentation doesn't set policy. Alansohn (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Of course there is no policy that supports retaining county for U.S. school either. What we do have is previous discussions at the template talk page. I've attempted to support what I see as consensus found there. Gab4gab (talk) 17:41, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Gab4gab, again, we are required to comply with policy but given broad reign to edit articles and use templates within their available parameters. The article included as an example in the template documentation includes the campus-size parameter, which does not mean that it's required in all school articles that use the template. The Absegami High School article uses the conference parameter and perhaps a few thousands of other school articles use the accreditation parameter, and the fact that they are not used in the example does not make them prohibited. I cannot force you to use the county parameter in the infobox school, and I would never impose my editing preferences on you, but I will point out that the county parameter is widely used in school articles nationwide. Alansohn (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
We don't usually include the county in the US school addresses, you need to start a discussion at the WikiProject Schools talk page. You're also removing the NCES School ID template — we use this for the us_nces_school_id parameter. Progress is not being made when you're adding county, some editors are removing county, some adding the NCES School ID template, you're removing the template. Do you see the problem here? I noticed this from your mass AWB edits. Also pinging Gab4gab Steven (Editor) (talk) 02:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Steven (Editor) We? You are one editor who stands on the critical principle that infoboxes must have the parameters that you've decided upon and must be carefully separated by a specific number of spaces. The "mass AWB edits" you refer to amount to about two dozen edits a day, which add extensive sourced material. I'm not sure what purpose your trying to serve here, but I encourage you to get consensus for the changes you're trying to impose. Alansohn (talk) 02:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
First of all, removing the spacing does absolutely nothing and it keeps the infobox neat and tidy when it comes to editing it. You're the only editor as far as I know adding the county. Why are you removing the NCES School ID template, do you have consensus for that? Steven (Editor) (talk) 02:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Steven (Editor), I modified the spaces as part of an edit that added extensive sourced content and updated sources and other material. Your edit was entirely devoted to the fundamental goal of ensuring that the number of spaces in the infobox meets your standards of being "neat and tidy". Can you please point me to the policy that specifies the requirements for a "neat and tidy" infobox? Alansohn (talk) 03:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the sourced content you added, that's great — this is about the infobox only. I can ask you the same thing, can you please point me to the policy that specifies the requirements for removing the spacing in the infobox? The spacing you seen is the default spacing from the template documentation. What are you trying to achieve by removing the spacing? Steven (Editor) (talk) 03:06, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Steven (Editor), policy dictates what must be done or what can't be done. Everything else in between is up to consensus. In the absence of policy that dictates the spacing, there's not much to discuss. Isn't there anything else that needs to be done in Wikipedia other than imposing a position on infobox spacing? Alansohn (talk) 03:13, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Go and have a look at the documentations of other infoboxes, you'll see the equal spacing, taking design into consideration it's neat. When I add an infobox to an article, I use the default spacing in the documentation, it also helps to ensure consistency between articles. Nevertheless, removing the spacing doesn't do anything to the infobox is what I'm trying to get across to you. NCES is the other issue here. Steven (Editor) (talk) 03:23, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Let's look at just me and you here: I add spacing, you're removing it. You remove spacing, I'm adding it. I remove county, you're adding it. You add county, I'm removing it. I'm adding the NCES School ID template, you're removing it. You're removing the NCES School ID template, I'm adding it. Looks like a never-ending cycle. See the issue here? Steven (Editor) (talk) 03:40, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
I agree that the policy that applies to this conflict is consensus. The place for discussion to reach a consensus regarding the school infobox is the template's talk page. As I mentioned before I believe that consensus from previous discussions there is not to include county for schools in the US. So in my view continuing to include county for US schools is contrary to consensus. If you are interested in reaching a different consensus you should begin a new discussion as Steven (Editor) suggests above. Gab4gab (talk) 15:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Gab4gab, the matter being discussed here is the repeated reverts by Steven (Editor) over the use of spaces in an infobox. If there is consensus that spaces in an infobox must be of a specified length, I'd love to see it, but none of this has been documented; all we see are claims by editors whose job seems to be enforcing imagined rules in arbitrary fashion over such foolish issues as infobox spacing. Alansohn (talk) 16:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Gab4gab is absolutely right about consensus. Alansohn, please re-read what I wrote above, it's about county and NCES. As for spacing, the message I'm trying to get across to you is that removing the infobox spacing does nothing — it has no effect on the infobox itself — it does not change how it displays or affect it in any way. The only advantage to spacing is that it keeps it clean and structured, and certainly helps new editors who visit a school article and click on edit. Steven (Editor) (talk) 17:40, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Steven (Editor), you keep on talking about a consensus that we are all obligated to follow down to the letter, but you have never pointed to the source to support your claim. Your fetish for infobox spacing has zero consensus and its only purpose is to make it "clean and structured" to meet *YOUR* personal preference for "neat and tidy", as if having a few less spaces makes it "unclean" and contaminated for "new editors who visit a school article and click on edit". I can't figure out why we would waste our time coming up with a consensus for infobox spacing or why any editor would waste their time trying to ram it through. If you want the equal sign after a parameter in a particular infobox to be precisely in column 27 that's great for you, but it certainly seems to be a trivial justification for an edit war. Alansohn (talk) 17:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
See Gab's comment above regarding county, NCES I've already answered that on the talk of North Arlington. There's no "fetish" — so the never-ending cycle above, seems it is going to be like that, not good. The main concern is your other changes, that is adding county, removing NCES template, adding a useless "Administration" section to say who the principal is when this is covered in the infobox (see also WP:WPSCH/AG). Steven (Editor) (talk) 18:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 29

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Sayreville War Memorial High School, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Williamstown High School.

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The Signpost: 1 November 2020

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter

The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is England Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by England Gog the Mild (submissions). In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. Botswana The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with New York (state) Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Gondor Hog Farm (submissions), Indonesia HaEr48 (submissions), Somerset Harrias (submissions) and Free Hong Kong Bloom6132 (submissions). The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2021 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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Freehold, New Jersey

Well spotted I will self revert. I based it on the inclusion of Rob Johnson (soccer) in Category:Sportspeople from Jackson Township, New JerseyRod talk 21:15, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

  • Rodw, thanks for the response. These municipalities with an adjoining borough / township pair sharing the same underlying name can be very challenging to correctly disambiguate. If some is listed as being from Foo, is that Foo Borough or Foo Township? I always try to dig down to the correct municipality, but it can often be challenging to find the correct one. Alansohn (talk) 21:21, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes they are difficult - I wonder who added the specific category?— Rod talk 21:22, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
It appears the cat was changed from Category:People from Ocean County, New Jersey to Category:People from Jackson Township, New Jersey with this edit 9 years ago.— Rod talk 21:25, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
Rodw, he attended high school in Jackson Township, so it's a fair guess that he lived in Jackson Township. It's Freehold Borough vs. Freehold Township that becomes tougher to distinguish. Alansohn (talk) 22:01, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Laurel Grove Memorial Park for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Laurel Grove Memorial Park is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Hog Farm Bacon 21:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Bayonne, New Jersey

/bˈn/, bay-OHN, and "bay-OWN" convey the exact same information, and are all consistent with the sources cited in Bayonne, New Jersey. However, they are not equally scientific. "bay-OWN" relies on the reader's knowledge on the pronunciation of bay and own spelled in the incredibly inconsistent English orthography (compare says and down). bay-OHN relies on the values of b, ay, oh, and n defined in Help:Pronunciation respelling key which the {{respell}} template links the notation to. /bˈn/ relies on the values of /b/, //, //, and /n/ defined in the Help:IPA/English key, based on a phonological analysis of the sound system of dialects of English, using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is widely used by linguists and dictionaries around the world. This is why Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation demands the use of the IPA first and foremost and the respelling second, and discourages the use of ad hoc respellings that rely on the pronunciation of existing words like "bay-OWN" (MOS:RESPELL). I'm having a hard time understanding why you've kept reinstating the ad hoc respelling. Nardog (talk) 17:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Nardog, thanks for reaching out. I do respect the fact that you believe that every single person reading through this encyclopedia understands IPA pronunciation rules, but they don't. At best, a tiny fraction of non-linguists know how to transform those symbols into a pronunciation. I do appreciate the fact that "OH" is used to represent a long-o sound, as in the words "oh" and "d'oh". However, once you start putting that "OH" next to consonants, you start confusing 99.9% of English speakers, as all of the naïve rules of phonology followed by non-linguist speakers of the English language would lead them to use a shorter vowel sound. The name Joan is unambiguously pronounced with a long-o sound that you would insist should be respelled under IPA rules as "JOHN", which no English-speaker would pronounce with a long-o sound.
There are three sources provided covering most of a century that indicate that the city's name should be pronounced as two syllables -- "bay" and "own", two English-language words with unambiguous pronunciation -- with the emphasis on the second syllable. As pointed out in one of the sources, the second syllable is often mispronounced to rhyme with "on". The use of "OHN" suffers from two disqualifying fatal flaws: 1) it will be pronounced by most non-linguists as in the word "on" (using "John" as a model); and 2) it's original research, as there is no source that uses that respelling as a pronunciation guide.
I empathize with your desire to impose an orthodoxy that will benefit the tiny minority of linguists, but I balance that against the fact that almost all of the people reading this encyclopedia and trying to figure out how to pronounce the city's name will be misled by your version of the respelling. In my view, the weight of the desire to have 99.9% of readers understand the pronunciation guide takes precedence and is backed up by three solid reliable and verifiable sources. Alansohn (talk) 18:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
Please do not put words into my mouth. I do not, and never said I did, believe that every single person reading through this encyclopedia understands IPA pronunciation rules. If that were the case H:RESPELL and {{respell}} wouldn't exist. If you believe the 7,953 articles currently using the template, such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Wikipedia, Ronald Reagan, Kamala Harris, Theodore Roosevelt, Amazon (company), Wiki, Dick Cheney, and English language, all contain original research, and thus MOS:PRON needs to be revised, then please bring up the issue in the appropriate forum. But you may not apply that argument in just one article without achieving consensus on a larger scale, per WP:CONLEVEL.
Your assertion about the value of orthographic oh is unfounded. I've consulted the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, and though it is rarely found before a consonant, when it is, as in Bohn, Cohn, Crohn, kohl, and ohm, it is almost always pronounced // (or varies between // and /ə/ when unstressed, as in Mendelssohn); it is /ɒ/ only when preceded by j and followed by n, indicating the pronunciation–spelling correspondence in John is a fossilized exception. H:RESPELL already warns against its use "when a respelled syllable would be the same as an existing word that is pronounced differently", so your argument about Joan doesn't apply. Otherwise you should try getting rid of the respellings in Jeff Bezos, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pneumonia, Stephen Colbert, Côte d'Ivoire, etc. (Also, how do you pronounce your username?) Nardog (talk) 19:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 41

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 41, September – October 2020

  • New partnership: Taxmann
  • WikiCite
  • 1Lib1Ref 2021

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

October 18: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC (plus weekend editathons)

October 18, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

This month we've invited the creators of instagram accounts @depthsofwikipedia and @wikipediapictures to chat with us about their Wiki* appreciation accounts. If there's a project you'd like to share or a question you'd like answered, just let us know by adding it to the agenda or responding to this message.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

Editathons this coming Saturday

You are also invited to join thse two editathon on Saturday November 21:

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--Wikimedia New York City Team 17:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

ANI waiting for you

Hello Alansohn, the ANI case you opened, WP:ANI#Edit warring by WilliamJE, is still waiting for your reply before it can be closed. ◅ Sebastian 02:12, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

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Disambiguation link notification for December 1

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Hunterdon Central Regional High School, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Howell High School.

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New Jersey dairy industry

Hello, I recently made an article for the New Jersey dairy industry. It is a work in progress. I thought you would be interested as it is an uncovered but important topic in the state's history. Every little antiques shop in the state almost always has plenty of milk bottles from New Jersey dairy farms that no longer exist. Best, Thriley (talk) 02:38, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Changes to Elizabeth, NJ

Hello. Some areas in the article are an approximate number, and therefore the number in sq km that corresponds to some numbers in sq mi in the article is inaccurate. I wrote a correct number in sq km for each approximate number, but I did understand that is better to leave the numbers from the source. My changes were just math. e.g. 13.66 sq mi = 35.379238 sq km ~ 35.38 sq km, not 35.37 sq km (source). 13.66 is an approximate number. The population density in the article is old (2010). I calculated the 2019 population density (129,216 / 12.319 sq mi), and I wrote it, with no source. Bitholov. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bitholov (talkcontribs) Bitholov, thanks for the response. Be sure to use sources for your data and be sure to sign your messages with four tildes (~~~~). Alansohn (talk) 00:43, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Help?

Hi. I see your name is first on the list of frequent contributors to DYK. I wonder if you can help? I would like to nominate a DYK (I don't care about credit for myself - whoever posts it can take it). But as an IP I do not seem to be able to. Can you perhaps do the honors? Thanks. It is as follows.

{{subst:NewDYKnomination

| article       = Mohamed Abu Arisha
|    article2   = 
| status        = new
| hook          = ... that Arab-Israeli Mohamed Abu Arisha played for the Israeli national basketball team? Source: "You are strongly encouraged to quote the source text supporting each hook" (and [link] the source, or cite it briefly without using citation templates) Mohamed ABU ARISHA ... Nationality: ISR ... 2016 FIBA U20 European Championship - Division A
| ALT1          = ... that Arab-Israeli Mohamed Abu Arisha plays in the [[Israeli Basketball Premier League]? Mohamed Abu Arisha ... Team: Hapoel Altshuler Shaham Be'er Sheva ... Nationality: ISR ... Years in Current Team: 2
| author        = 
|    author2    = 
| image         = 
|    caption    = 
| comment       = 
| reviewed      = 

}} 2604:2000:E010:1100:69CC:76F3:DC08:19BE (talk) 22:52, 7 December 2020 (UTC)