User talk:Yngvadottir/Archive 11

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)

Disambiguation link notification for February 2

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Tina Hassel, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Tweet (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 10:20, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Sandwich Toll Bridge

Firstly, thanks for cleaning up and sprucing up many articles I've been working on recently. Secondly, do you think you could find a source that says the side of the Sandwich Toll Bridge sports the town's coat of arms? It sounds like a nice DYK hook; it's not exactly controversial since you can simply look at the bridge and confirm it, but no obvious source seems to mention it. Or I'm searching for the wrong terms. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:57, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I can look, but don't get your hopes up; local British news sources get sniffy at IPs like mine, and that's where I'll be looking first (after I fix a horrible article on a Bengali film). Yngvadottir (talk) 22:12, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Don't worry if you can't, the "bling" from DYK is not as important as making we've got this fairly well-known landmark covered in the encyclopedia. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:56, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Yes, no luck I'm afraid. The strongest contender was Edwyn Jervoise, The Ancient Bridges of the South of England, Architectural Press, 1930, only visible in snippet view but mentions the stone arch that remains, so might be worth looking at. Pevsner's books now appear to be only visible to me in snippet view, but from the total lack of results, I don't think Kent: North East and East has an entry for the bridge. I found an alternate online mirror of the 1976 listing description, and wonder whether there is a fuller description from when it was submitted for consideration; pdfs of those forms are a major source for descriptions of old buildings in the US, and there must surely be a paper trail somewhere. As I feared, all the newspapers will let me see is stuff about disruption when the bridge is closed, although unlike with private schools it's possible that that's all they have. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:03, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 15:17, 12 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:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
• 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 L293D, Kingsif, Enwebb, Lee Vilenski and 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) 16:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, 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) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you...

...for your actions and words here. I hate it when i see a presumably new user being treated badly; as far as i'm concerned all users are innocent until proven guilty and making a mistake is not proof of guilt. Your second welcome and calming words reflect as well on you as some others'...don't. Happy days, Lindsay^Hello 15:14, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! I figured I'd give it a try. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:44, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi retired

Hi. You pinged me recently. Please note that I am semi-retired and no longer an admin, which means that I won't be back for anything other than correcting typos and other junk on the fly while I am reading articles for my own purposes, and perhaps commenting on other deliberate, vindictive comments made about users around the site, especially at Arbcom cases. If you missed the ping I made for you on my talk page, the message was: I lost my tools based on prima facie evidence and an Arbcom who were exited at the thought of desysoping yet another dedicated, long-term hard worker who has done more than most to get new policies and systems rolled out. At over 70 it's not losing the tools that matters - that doesn't bother me in the slightest, but it's the vile emphasis they made, and allowed to be made, on the deliberate character assasination, and pretending it needed two long drawn out months to reach a decision. My email is still open. Take care Yng, and stay at home. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:00, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, I hope you're staying well. I've lost my job so if it weren't for the WMF, I would be doing a huge amount of work here. I apologise for the ping, it was a courtesy I hoped wouldn't bother you too much; someone else had recommended the editor for autopatrolled and you just happened to be the one who gave it to them. Yngvadottir (talk) 05:58, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry about your job. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:44, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Desktop improvements prototype

Hello, Yngvadottir!

Thanks for taking the time to participate in the user feedback round for our desktop improvements prototype. This feedback is super valuable to us and is currently being used to determine our next steps. We have published a report gathering the main takeaways from the feedback and highlighting the changes we’ll make based on this feedback. Please take a look and give us your thoughts on the talk page of the report. To learn more about the project overall and the other features we’re planning on building in the future, check out the main project page.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 15 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:

• Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
• 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
• The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
• 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
• Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Hog Farm with 801, Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and 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) 17:45, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Please stop including pseudo-political commentary, not relevant to specific edits, in your edit sumamries. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:38, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

No, I will not, because it is relevant. See longer response here. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:12, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Although FWIW, the 100+ edits metric has been quietly dropped, and the WMF's "active editor" definition is now "The count of editors with one or more edits, including on redirect pages". ‑ Iridescent 18:35, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

No, it is not relevant to the edits in question. Your pollution of watchlists and page histories in this manner is disruptive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I concur with Pigsonthewing. 331dot (talk) 20:34, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't care. If I am to continue helping out here, I cannot allow it to be seen as done for the glory of an organization that has demonstrated contempt for us and constantly complicates and even undercuts our mission. My edits are far fewer in number because of the WMF, but except that I can no longer justify creating new articles in mainspace, I believe they are still as useful as they were formerly. I am not posting any more to noticeboards and other discussion venues deploring the WMF than I was—I remain reactive and focused on helping find workarounds to the problems the WMF causes—and as such, I judge the disruption caused by my addition of a tag to my edit summaries to be minimal and the alternatives, including my leaving, to be more disruptive. I politely suggest that those who find approximately 95 edits a month tagged with a brief and polite disclaimer (I occasionally forget, and new page creations for redirects and user talk pages don't offer me the opportunity to add it) a serious burden on their watchlist and recent changes use consider picking up more of the tasks I perform here, such as copyediting and referencing awful articles mentioned at AN/I and welcoming newbies with templates that provide them places they can actually look up our rules and conventions as we used to do before we instead just had a bot throw them a link to the Teahouse and/or the Wikipedia Adventure. Make me unnecessary and you won't have to see so many of my edit summaries. Even better would be to induce the WMF to apologize to the editing community, but I believe we're still lacking an apology for superprotect, so I'm just throwing that out there ... Yngvadottir (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Infobox-pushing back at Thor

Looks like the topic has arisen again: see here. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Rikkeisoft

Thank you for the other day, Yngvadottir.

I looked at your advice and tried to town down the language, as well as add more detailed citations.

I then submit the article for review.

I wanted to ask if you could look over it and tell me other ways I could improve it.

I also want to ask if my neighbor being a part of the company represented a conflict of interest. For your reference, I am not getting paid and was suggested the idea as a way to keep me busy, during the lockdown caused by COVID-19.

Any other suggestions or comments would be helpful. Thank you. -KyleVietnam

@KyleVietnam: You're very welcome. I thought the changes you made were good: as I have said, I can't read the languages involved, but it seems to me you have referenced it well using a range of news sites, and as I suspected, the dates are from varying years. The main change I would suggest is removing the unreferenced paragraph on volunteering in villages that I think someone else added. I think some other editors would suggest removing that section entirely, since almost all companies do charitable things, but personally I would leave the first part of it.

However, when I found your message and looked at the draft, I saw someone had already rejected it. Frankly, I was surprised they considered it entirely promotional and therefore unsuitable for the encyclopedia. But reviewers do vary. I wonder whether they assumed the news coverage was all based on press releases. Two messages have now been left on your talk page: an automated message about the rejection, and a bot invitation to the Teahouse. Both messages recommend that if you have questions about the rejection, you post at the Articles for Creation help desk. I suggest that would be a good next step. (There is also an IRC chat channel, linked in the first template, if you prefer live chat.) If you ask at either place, you might want to mention that there is conversation about the draft on User talk:Oshwah, as well as your own talk page. Main thing: I think you should rework it again and re-submit it.

Since you ask, I believe you that you don't have a conflict of interest. Did you find the references yourself? Yngvadottir (talk) 05:39, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, Thank you for your input.

I also found myself surprised at the very quick rejection, especially since other pages on this website seem to be far more promotional than I had ever intended to be. Honestly, I feel it's just fine as it is (with the exception of that inserted paragraph, which I can't find a source for), so I'm more wont to simply leave it as it is and submit it again. I also wonder if ignorance is just a factor; again, I've tried to be as varied and detailed with my citations as possible.

I also did find the references myself. It take me many hours and searching in multiple languages to get where I am. I'll be sure to reference User talk:Oshwah, but do you mind if I reference this page too? I really just want to get this up because I've spent a long time on it. It would be a shame to have it just be a lot of wasted effort. Heck, I even made sure to make minor edits to other pages in an effort to beautify and make them more detailed. It seems to me like the standards on this site are can be a massive headache.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibers

Let's use this article as an example. It's very short, uncited, and about a company most people haven't heard of (I lived in Russia for a bit and still speak the language). If my article is promotional or not notable enough, then I'm not even sure what those words mean. Is it a race thing? Is it a language thing? Is it an arbitrary standards and opinions thing?

It's very confusing.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by KyleVietnam

(talk • contribs) 06:04, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

@KyleVietnam: Sure, by all means mention that we've also talked here, especially since you just confirmed here to me that you did all the work. I agree, don't give up. Try the noticeboard. I'm glad I checked back here before bed. (By the way, to make a dated signature, do this: ~~~~ - or there is probably a button with a squiggle on it that you can click.) I'll check the noticeboard tomorrow in case I can help.

As to other articles such as that one—I'm afraid there are some very dusty corners of the wiki, and also different reviewers can disagree in surprising ways. It's messy because it's a big volunteer project. Courage, let's see if we can get some light cast on the matter. Yngvadottir (talk) 07:07, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thanks for making an infobox for me. Keith chau yet (talk) 00:45, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

VP comment

Hi, I am using mobile WP at the moment, have been doing for a while & probably will be stuck with it for some weeks, even months, yet. It is a complete pain, especially for high-traffic pages.

Please could you spare the time to dump a diff on my talk page of your recent Village Pump comment about code of conduct proposals, timestamped "Yngvadottir (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)" ? I am in agreement with you but could do with an aide memoire. Thanks, and hoping you are staying safe & well. Sitush (talk) 11:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Vigilant's "Straight Shooter" Award

		The Original Barnstar
		Vigilant thought you already won his 2020 Straight Shooter Award for your comment in the "anti-harrassment RFC" as follows: "I support Only in death on this with the exception of the research into T & S [Trust and Safety] staff, which I am unprepared to check for its validity and therefore do not use as part of my argument. The WMF are not our bosses, but paid editors of a particularly inept kind with a declared policy of forcing bias into the encyclopedia (the rationale behind their new global behavioral guidelines). T & S have mismanaged the one task for which their existence is justifiable, dealing with report-mandated illegalities such as pedophilia, and in the Fram case showed contempt for the community and perpetrated a serious injustice. The WMF deserves nothing but our scorn and any collaboration with them, especially with T & S, is reprehensible." Sincerely, as liaison for the unpeople, —tim /// Carrite (talk) 16:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you :-) And for your own comment in support. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Bringeus's book

Here is the book: [1]--Ymblanter (talk) 20:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: Thank you! I also have an article by Alan Dundes that I can use to flesh out his methodological innovations. (I know him from specific articles.) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

FYI, JSTOR is allowing 100 free articles per month to anyone during the crisis. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

SGA

Hi there - I will absolutely help get some information on the numbers, etc. for you if you can give me a few days. I will be out of town for a few and when I can get back I can pull the info for you. I appreciate your help and understand the copyright issue. Your dogs are absolutely precious! Thank you! Kelhaddock (talk) 19:07, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy...

Hey, Yngvadottir. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Why thank you! I'd forgotten it was today :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 07:30, 2 July 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:

• Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
• 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
• 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, 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) 12:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Thanks :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:THQ#I want to delete my account

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:THQ#I want to delete my account. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:05, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Yngvadottir. Since you've already been trying to help this editor out with their draft, I thought perhaps you might be a good person to offer them some encouragement at this particular time. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:07, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Inspired by some of your recent comments...

Just a thought. I've sent this to a couple other editors for their opinions, as well: {{User:Chowbok/Userboxes/Fork}} —Chowbok ☠ 04:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this edit

Thank you for this edit [2]. The newspaper article used as a source for your edit is a gem. I was one of three major contributors to the Wikipedia article on the train wreck. I feel embarrassed that I only now noticed that addition to the article. I'm not as active on Wikipedia as I used to be. While doing my research, I found a source that mentioned the train wreck in Arizona happened shortly after an article about the train wreck in Nevada had been published in a magazine, and that the FBI thought their might be a connection. I wanted to add that to the article; I thought it would make a good addition. But I lost track of where I read that and couldn't find it again, so I didn't add it. Great to find out I'm not crazy and a reliable source for it was sitting under my nose all that time. I now have a source for that and will add it in shortly. Thanks for the find. Dave (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome! One of several things I've been able to add since reviving my news addiction; I'd actually forgotten about that article, what a bizarre business. I'm glad you tracked down that theory. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you

For edits to Boro Boro and related articles. The IP has loaded unrelated links under 'See Also' to multiple articles. Since it's not vandalism and more of a competence issue, it's difficult to gain traction on these. Much appreciated, 2601:188:180:B8E0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 01:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

(pets the friendly-looking cat-dog)

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For your save at AfD, well done! Ravenswing 13:18, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Edit summaries

We've all got our own opinions about the WMF, but whatever yours are, please leave your lack of endorsement of them out of your edit summaries. It just adds clutter to page histories and watchlists, no one pays attention to it, and it's just not the place to air your grievances. From just another standpoint, no one is even remotely going to think that anyone making an edit to Wikipedia is endorsing the WMF. I've certainly never that about a single edit I've seen, from anyone.

You don't really know me, and I realize this is probably coming off as kind of crabby, but that's really not my intent. Just please realize that this is coming from someone who has no love of the WMF. And if even I find it incredibly tacky, pointless, and distracting, then a lot of other people probably do too, but just haven't said anything. Thanks for your time. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:06, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing it, anyway :-) It tends to be crammed in at the end of a long summary. I'm afraid you aren't the first, and you won't change my mind, because the WMF does claim our participation as endorsement of its "leadership", and it's only by severely limiting my activity here so as to contribute as little as possible to the statistics they parade, and explicitly noting my repudiation of their claims, that I can square it with my conscience to consider helping out at all. I can no longer even stomach creating new articles in mainspace. It's not the first time I've been accused of being tacky or even crass, and I would love the community to receive a comprehensive apology from the WMF so that I could discontinue the additions to my edit summaries, but I'm afraid that my concern for the small amount of added distraction on people's watchlists and even for the possible discomfiture of those who choose to ally themselves with the WMF is considerably outweighed by my desire to continue contributing in a small way to the project I love. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Let me be a bit blunter this time. It's disruptive and it's just plain annoying. Even though (I think) I mostly agree with you, I still don't want to read about your views of the WMF every time I see an edit summary of yours cross my watchlist. If you can't swallow the minimal amount of pride it takes to stop doing so, then you shouldn't be editing here at all. But saying "and I would love the community to receive a comprehensive apology from the WMF so that I could discontinue the additions to my edit summaries" is being completely dishonest. No one is twisting your arm to do this, and no one is preventing you from stopping except yourself. If you really do have a "desire to continue contributing in a small way to the project I love", then pardon my French, but knock it the fuck off. Enough is enough.

Since apparently I'm not the first editor who has complained about this, it's getting to the point where someone needs to escalate the issue. And if that happens, it's going to suck – for you, for me, and for Wikipedia. Please don't make this the hill you die on, because in the end, doing so won't help. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:27, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Do what you prefer. I do not consider the disruption large enough to be the hill you choose to fight on, but I'm not you. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:23, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

If you insist: There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

• Well that escalated quickly. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 20:48, 14 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

• Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
• HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
• 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) 19:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

not an endorsement of the WMF.

Tat's an unusual edit summary. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

It's come up here a few times since I began using it in the wake of FRAM (at first I tried keeping my edits to under 5 a month, but under 100 is all I can manage balancing my guilt over what I can't help with any more against my guilt over continuing to edit here). I was taken to AN/I over it last month. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:06, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

I went through the same crisis of conscience and reassessment, without adding the signature. I focus on the joy I feel in helping curate the largest online free-content encyclopedia in the world. I try not to think of what the WMF seems to have become. I also believe those who remember history are still doomed to repeat it --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we all have to make our own decisions; my disclaimer obviously applies to me alone, I am not seeking to dissuade anyone else from contributing, and except for the new articles I can only now create in userspace without violating my own conscience, I use the least inflammatory statement I could think of. But I volunteer here for the sake of the project, not for the WMF to take the credit, which they do, even to the extent of now planning to rename their parasitic organization to represent that claim. Almost everything they do hurts the project, including the guidance they give new editors. I feel dirty continuing to contribute without their even apologizing for what they did to Fram and how they treated the community of volunteers in that instance ... there is so much else of which they should be deeply ashamed, and I would be mortified to take money from such an organization that not only disserves a body of worldwide volunteers almost entirely selflessly working on something of huge benefit to mankind, but actively impedes their work while taking money from the public as a charity, but that was totally beyond the pale, and we did not get one word of admission that it was wrong. So, anywhere, that is where I stand, with one foot outside the door. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:24, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

I now silently cheer whenever I see an edit summary "This edit to improve the encyclopedia is not an endorsement of the WMF" as it means an article has been improved or a salient point has been made. Although Fram was the biggest casualty, he was by no means the only one. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:30, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced details to Raleigh, Memphis

Hi Yngvadottir i removed the unsourced details you recently added to the Raleigh, Memphis article. In the future, all details must be sourced on a wikipedia article, Even though the detail is false or real it still have to be sourced before publishing. In addition, if you think i made a mistake please re-add the details and make sure you sourced them next time. Cheers! Richard Raleigh 02:31, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi, you have the wrong end of the stick somehow. You removed updated information together with the reference I'd given for it, and reinstated the bit about the recording company that someone else had removed pointing out that Everybodywiki is an open wiki. I've started a section on the talk page rather than continue to explain in edit summaries. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:32, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Also i looked up Coleman and you right it is apart of Achievement Schools. Craigmont and Raleigh egypt middle are located in the area raleigh as well. Richard Raleigh (talk) 14:19, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For getting DAVA Foods into an acceptable state when nobody else wanted to (or could), have a barnstar. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:42, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Adrian Griffin

Your analysis of the situation over this article is very good. I was on the borderline about dePRODing it and decided to leave it to the proposer to decide. Thank you, in any case, for your work at REFUND. Wikipedia needs more people like you. Enjoy.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 21:22, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Why thank you! That's very kind of you. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:08, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

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October harvest

treats --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 01:29, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

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 Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by 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. The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Hog Farm (submissions), HaEr48 (submissions), Harrias (submissions) and 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.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
• Rhododendrites (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

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) 11:39, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Because you thanked me

Yngvadottir, you thanked me for one of my recent edits, so here is a heart-felt...  YOU'RE WELCOME! It's a pleasure, and I hope you have a lot of fun while you edit this inspiring encyclopedia phenomenon! I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me after replying off my talk page. Thank you.

21:29, 4 November 2020 (UTC)I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me after replying off my talk page. Thank you. 05:47, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

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Walter Baetke, Kleine Schriften

I've got a PDF with the title pages and table of contents for you. Please send me a mail so I can reply with an attachment or tell me which filehoster (e. g. file2send.eu) you prefer. --HHill (talk) 13:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

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Greetings!

It has been a long time Yngvadottir, but I thought I would bring greetings! Simon Adler (talk) 05:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Hey! Long time indeed :-) Greetings back atcha, hope you and yours are all doing ok in this trying year. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:41, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Lillian Feder

A student of mine cited (OK, "cited") a paper on Oedipus by some dude, published 1967, who cited Feder's work with some approbation, because she was the only one who looked into this or that psychoanalytical aspect--but he referred to her as "Miss Feder", not Dr. Feder or whatever. I couldn't let that stand. Thanks for your help. Drmies (talk) 00:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome; it's a pity academics are often hard to find biographical information about. Hopefully there is an old faculty page somewhere, or a biographical sketch in print. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:28, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Maria Britneva

Hello, Yngvadottir, I thought I should alert you that I have been working on this page and have recast it into new headers. Most of the text is still yours. See what you think. Regards, Moonraker (talk) 06:27, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

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Nomination of Nathan Larson (politician) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Nathan Larson (politician) 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/Nathan Larson (politician) 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.

Herostratus (talk) 09:17, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Natalis soli invicto!

		Natalis soli invicto!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 15:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers 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. Any questions on the rules or on anything else 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. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

User:Celco85

Thank You for posting a second welcome to him. An earlier one at [3] was a much smaller one, and like most things on his talk page, was deleted by the editor concerned. His reply to you includes one of the Locco photos which we have deleted from the Brighton article earlier but does not work in this edit. Also he still does not sign his edits on the talk page as mentioned in your welcome, which seems to indicate to me that he has not taken in much of the advice that has been given to him. I am not really looking forward to tomorrow when his blocking ceases. Fleet Lists (talk) 06:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I see now. Well, one can but hope they follow some of the links. I was right, then; all they got was the invitation to the Teahouse. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:38, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up the Birthday cake interview earlier today. Since then Celco85 has done a number of edits on this article. Of the early ones I reverted one which had a number of typos and which I considered an unnecessary change. Then he started to expand the article again with information on Fightbank which has a separate article and I considered out of place in the cake article. Hence I reverted it but he has reverted it back. I would like your opinion on this as I dont want to get into an edit war. And besides this he has made a number of small errors in other articles today which needed cleaning up, so I am getting somewhat fed up with all this.Fleet Lists (talk) 07:35, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

And just as I hit the enter key he has also duplicated it in Fightback! (policy) Fleet Lists (talk) 07:44, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi!

Dear Yngvadottir, I don't know if you remember me, but I have just woken up from a long hibernation :-). I am dismayed to see so many good editors having moved on to less frustrating things in life, but you are still here! I am really glad to see that.--Berig (talk) 13:22, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Berig! Great to see you back! Of course I remember you. Yes, still here, but rather battered and sad. I limit my edits to 99 a month now and create articles only in user space, because I still love the project and want to help new editors and to protect what we've built, so I find myself unable to stay away, but the WMF, with all they have done to insult and hurt us and continue to do to obstruct and undermine our work, take credit for all activity. I also ought to be working on offline writing, but, well, I love Wikipedia, and I keep seeing things I think I can help with ... Anyway, I hope you had a satisfying and rewarding hibernation, and welcome back :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:58, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks :-). 99 edits a month sounds like a great limitation. It is easy to get dragged down into something here. I see that you are doing some vandal fighting. Just ask me if you want the rollback function.--Berig (talk) 21:57, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, but I don't really do enough of that and besides, I'm too much of a fumble-fingers to be safe with it '-) Yngvadottir (talk) 02:18, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

They are notoriously easy to use by accident :-). I hibernated for much longer than I expected, only sticking my nose out once, twice or a few times a year, and I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle seeing all the small changes that have happened in the meantime, so I am careful and read up before I use the tools myself. I may be here for quite some time before I take another nap, so in the meantime, just give me a message if you need my help in anything :-).--Berig (talk) 06:34, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

The Liberals episode 5 1995 Politics will get you

Hello to clarify "Politics will get you". The Liberals. Episode 5. 1995 this is what I was using as a source for the policy on the run remark Peter Hendy the Liberal Mp made. That source has been used on John Hewson and on 1993 Liberal Party of Australia leadership spill by someone else. I only use the youtube version of the source so someone could watch it and see my other source for Hendy that other use could be placed on the cake interview page. --Celco85Celco85 (talk) 09:30, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

AfD of Jennifer Hansen

Thank you for contacting Celco85 about the AfD after I had failed to do so. I wanted to reassure you that I didn't leave them out of the notification because I intended to sneak the article through the discussion with without a main contributor knowing. I'd seen that they had objected to deletion on the talk page and I just (wrongly) assumed that they were the creator or had the page on their watchlist. Best, Modussiccandi (talk) 23:01, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of LattePanda

Hello! Your submission of LattePanda at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 17:15, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Æsir

I have worked a little on the etymology section which is quite OK.--Berig (talk) 22:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I still wonder about genitive āsir, which leapt off the page when I was mucking about with the mentions of Jordanes (including removing the assertion that what he is saying is unclear; de Vries offers various explanations, of which the "euhemerism, name of the gods presented as meaning demigods" is pretty safe in this context and one need go no further unless exploring the possible claims for sacral kingship with reference to the Gothic ruling house and descent from Odin in general). That there are three places in the article going over Jordanes' statement suggested to me that a tightening rewrite would be good, and I'm happy to see you added åska; it was Ása-Þórr, the uses of áss alone, and tracking down how the Jordanes passage was being translated that brought me to the page. (Declan Taggart's 2018 How Thor Lost His Thunder, p. 38, is a recent reference in English for the etymology of åska, citing Hellquist.) I will not bloat the article with all the stuff about Thor as áss (yes, I just checked List of names of Thor). :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 22:42, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

"Asa-Tor" is a common name for Thor in Sweden, and a name I personally associate with Swedish folklore rather than Norse mythology. There is still a lot of room for improvement, and I will have a go at it.--Berig (talk) 15:37, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

When I said it was "OK" I meant the information. The structure was really messy. I have cleaned up the etymology section now. It appears that people have just added things without trying to create working paragraphs.--Berig (talk) 17:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you again for giving it a good brushing-up! It needed it. And I now see the scolarly theories section is really all about the Æsir-Vanir war rather than the Æsir themselves or the etymology, plus a lot of unsourced stuff higher up about the sons of Bórr. We even seem to manage to misrepresent Dumézil while hand-waving to Gimbutas. But I think I'd better stay away from that one, or it's likely to get the Balkentheorie added (homonymous ON áss, Gothic Bible ans, "beam", propounded by Grimm, DM ch. 1, p. 25 in Stallybrass's translation, de Vries Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte Vol. 2, p. 9, note 1; I have just searched in vain for the image of a kind of half seesaw that I could have sworn was in de Vries), plus the uses of Ása-Þórr and the issue of their relationship to human names and to the question of hinn almátki áss, plus Lotte Motz's paper on the dísir arguing that ásynjur displaced that as the term for the goddesses. Bloodofox, are you around; you're likely to be more balanced than me? Incidentally, Berig, have you noticed that Sons of Jonakr gives only one name in ON and mentions "Hamðismál" only in passing? The different versions of the legend and particularly the very allusive take in the poem are of some interest (it's in Ursula Dronke's Volume 1), and the poem article could also do with explicitly linking to the article on the sons ... I may do a rough job on the sons article, if I have enough edits left over after trying to save BLPs and update things where I'm less likely to nerd out and frighten people. So. Once more, thanks. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Jonakr's sons only giving the ON form for Erpr is my fault, when I first wrote the article :-). It was my way of showing that Erp has a nominative case marker in ON. The other names don't have a different case marker (AFAIK).--Berig (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

The article could certainly do with a lot of improvements. I'll give it a look over again here soon. And hello, Berig! Long time no "see" here. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:00, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it's been a while :-). Yesterday, the article had 1359 views, and it is logged as being watched by 267 editors. It is definitely more frequented than most articles I edit. I would love to see it reach a similar level as Titans.--Berig (talk) 17:26, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank You

Thank You for the further changes made to various articles edited by Celco85. I thought I may have getting a phobia about that editor. Your reaction makes me think I should continue to keep looking at his/her edits.I had not previously looked very closely at Jennifer Keyte but I have now also linked the unlinked reference about Good Medicine, to its mention in the article. In the case of Herald Sun articles, I am subscribed so I can look at them. But in the case of the Sydney Morning Herald and some others I can open any articles by opening them in a new private window in Firefox. But it does not work for the Financial Review. Cheers - Fleet Lists (talk) 03:44, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I limit my edits so cannot babysit anyone too much; in any case I'm concerned about biting them. My usual trick, hitting the thing that looks like a sheet of printed paper on the right in the Firefox address bar (I know all these techies but nobody has been able to tell me what that's called), and my follow-up trick, looking for Wayback saves when the article was first published, are neither of them working with the Herald Sun. Thanks to COVID-19, I now have a San Francisco Chronicle subscription, so I can plug in refs from the archives of both their websites, and until they apparently changed strategy, that gave me access to a lot of recent Washington Post and New York Times articles too, but I obviously can't subscribe to every newspaper on the internet. So, thank you again, we're doing a very poor job by that lady, if only Celco85 would help ref things like that. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:44, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

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Celco85

I notice that the last conversation about this editor has been archived, just as he is stating up again on John Hewson, whom he does not seem to been able to leave alone. He claims there is a reference which I have not been able to find but I dont think users should have to read through every reference to find it. Cheers Fleet Lists (talk) 05:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Arbitration Case Opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RexxS. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RexxS/Evidence. Please add your evidence by March 13, 2021, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RexxS/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, SQL^{Query me!} 04:53, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
• Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
• Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
• Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
• The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
• Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
• Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
• Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
• Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. 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 a good article candidate, a featured process, or something 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. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Shieldmaiden Award

		The Shieldmaiden Award
		For being one of very few editors I would call a Shieldmaiden of Wikipedia, I give you the unique shieldmaiden award.--Berig (talk) 12:56, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm so glad you and Chiswick Chap like the rewrite. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:22, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Well-deserved. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:48, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Goths

Hi. I've found some time this morning to do what you requested on Goths, and reviewed the new texts changes. There are three new sections giving detailed comments about three issues. (To be clear: I have stopped at that point for practical reasons, and I am not saying I agree with everything else.) Normally these wouldn't be difficult to move forward, but I think on this article it would be good to get input from others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:54, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC

Dear Yngvadottir, I have started an RfC on the article Goths that may be of interest to you, see Talk:Goths#RfC.--Berig (talk) 17:38, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

ITN recognition for April (giraffe)

On 6 April 2021, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article April (giraffe), which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Spencer^T•C 15:33, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

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

Our top scorers in Round 2 were:

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

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

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

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There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:28, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The "in a pinch" Barnstar
	Ow, shucks! Thanks ever so much  :) ——Serial 14:15, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you :-) A nice thing to see as I stumble to my comp while waiting for coffee to brew, and I hope you and yours are well :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

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Arturo Campos

The article that I deleted in 2012 was not about a NASA scientist — it was about a Peruvian YouTuber who was "sourced" only to his own YouTube channel, and would be of no value to you whatsoever in trying to start an article about the scientist. Wikipediocracy needs to think harder sometimes about the fact that people's names aren't unique, so just because an article was previously deleted at the name of a notable scientist doesn't automatically mean the scientist was actually the subject of that article: sometimes it can be, and in this case it was, about a completely different person who merely happened to have the same name. Bearcat (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Embleton

Well done here, thank you! Do you know the place? I was slightly mocking the news headline calling it a "castle" (yeah right) but I thought it was actually a great story, and I had not heard it before – I wonder what happened next? I might ask around. The last time I looked over from the church side there was rather a nice (though maybe a bit under-polished) Rover P4 parked there ... it should probably be listed too! :) Cheers DBaK (talk) 08:06, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Pas de quoi; I sniffed around to see whether I could find out anything about the architect, but was unsuccessful except that presumably he wasn't the first private owner. I am not in the UK, and could never get the British Newspapers Archive to show me anything useful, so if you think you might be able to ferret out any earlier news stories, have at it; I wouldn't be surprised if it's been in Country Life. (It would of course be beyond wonderful to live in that place with a tower room to fill with books. Assuming it has broadband.) Yngvadottir (talk) 08:19, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Yes, it is gorgeous. I have never been properly inside it, though I was at a village fête there some years ago and there was music, a Northumbrian piper I think, in the conservatory, and visitors could wander round the garden. We won a cake in the raffle. I will have a look around and see if anything else comes up. I was interested to see that it is on the market at £1.4M and sounding like it needs some restoration ... I hope someone nice gets it! My piggy bank is not looking that full right now so, ner, not this week ... cheers DBaK (talk) 08:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

PS Probably yes on the broadband, going on our (less grand) Embleton experience ... DBaK (talk) 08:27, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were:

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In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; 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 (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

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Happy First Edit Day!

Happy First Edit Day, Yngvadottir, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 22:00, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Germanic

Hi. I promised not to overload the article talk page, so in case you are interested, I'll respond to your recent post here. Of course if you are not interested no worries. Feel free to delete or whatever. Also feel free to move this to my talk page if you'd prefer that. I can't predict whether we will come to new conclusions that will be relevant to the current re-structuring discussions, but I feel like getting our ideas clear is always a healthy thing to do and it can be positive in unexpected ways.

• Andrew Lancaster was saying (my paraphrase) that Germanic peoples should only be regarded as real if they had been described by Roman authors, or as Germanic if classical authors had used that term for them. Not quite. I do not define the language, and the "linguistic" definition is used. I also sometimes use it, depending on the audience. But it can cause confusion. So when writing carefully I would define my terms for my audience or readers, and I would tend to use terminology like "Germanic-speaking" because it hurts no-one to add words for clarity. This is not a question about reality. Just words?
• For me this is a key point of difference. I was thinking the key point was that you believe that the linguistic definition should be considered dominant still, and therefore by implication the one we can assume all scholars mean, and which all readers will understand without problems? To be clear, I think there is no simple consensus on this among scholars.
• an unwarranted extension of Wikipedia's reliable sources policy back to the time of the Roman Empire. I think that's a misunderstanding. My point about the qualitative difference between the historical and linguistic definitions (which can cause confusion) is that one openly claims to be based on the other. (Linguists took the term from History, not the other way around.) I have no problem with linguists claiming to know things about history, but this is not just a proposal, but a whole new definition of words, which has created confusion. We can not fix this confusion. But this is relevant to the question of how to explain things, because it makes it difficult to be "mathematical" and just say we have two independent words that happen to look the same.
• It amounts to rolling back everything scholars have learned since, and from my point of view it denies the existence of any group that (preserved) classical writings did not happen to mention. I don't see how you can draw that conclusion. Probably you don't really mean what I think these words would normally mean. (Of course I admit there were people who existed who were not mentioned by classical writers.) But maybe it is an example of how this terminology confuses us. See below.
• There were many things beyond the ken of Roman and even Greek historians/ethnographers/generals. In particular, it obviously excludes the Scandinavians. Yes, but I need to consider what you mean by this. If I say that I would prefer to use careful terminology such as "Germanic-speaking" instead of "Germanic" when we write about Goths or Vikings (on the basis that these words can be confusing) what am I denying according to you? Is it a denial about something real, or just about which words to use? For example, are you claiming that linguists have discovered that the Scandinavians called themselves Germani? (That would surprise me.) If not, then what is your disagreement with me?
• A further point related to this is the contrast he draws between language and ethnicity. Ethnicity is a whole scholarly kettle of fish, and rightly so. So we agree on these things being different? By the way, do you think all people were in an ethnic group? And were they in only one? Some scholars actually criticize the idea that we have to have one simple model of shared identity, because in reality there were (and are) a lot of different ways these things can work. Put simply, some argue that people are part of whatever groupings, often many different and changing ones, that they and their associates think they are in, and academics can't really correct them, by definition. What do you think of such ideas?
• (This is perhaps relevant to the question above of linguists saying they have discovered that Scandinavians were in an ethnic group that they probably did not know existed. Is that really possible? I am personally happier to use more vague terminology and just list the facts we can really say something about: Scandinavians were Germanic-speaking, at least once evidence starts to become available, and Tacitus saw them as culturally close to the Suebians. All those facts line up and just by stating them a normal person will get the picture without any added words about "ethnicity". The one thing we do NOT know is whether they saw themselves as sharing a specific shared identity with far away peoples on the mainland. Probably they did in earlier protolanguage times and soon after, but how long did this remain the case? We can only speculate about those details?)
• Of course we should not equate speaking a Germanic language with being of "pure Germanic blood", at any period. The amalgamation of tribes, including in at least one case including a Celtic group, has been established as something that happened. So you agree that tribes in the Roman era were not perfectly "biologically" isolated, but do I read between the lines that you are saying they were normally still relatively isolated (so to speak)? Are you saying that impurity was exceptional? I am confused if this is what you think, about why you would think it. What evidence would that be based on, and why is it relevant in this discussion?
• (and this is why I personally prefer to continue to use "tribes" for such political/military/cooperative groupings, to distinguish from the primarily ethnic meaning of "peoples", since "nations" has anachronistic implications, not the least of them being size). Yes nation is a modern concept, quite different for example from Roman nationes. I don't have a strong position on "tribes" versus "peoples". To me it seems important to remember that both words have "common sense" meaning, so they are both unsuitable as "technical terminology" if our aim is to be as clear as possible. If our aim is to have a broad and flexible word though, I think "peoples" is the most neutral. Tribes is a word which English speakers naturally connect to specific preconceptions (primitive peoples). I know other editors feel more strongly about this. Anyway, I doubt I am getting all the points you are making here.
• But while Andrew Lancaster has averred that he is not seeking to deny the reality of peoples/tribes, by representing as problematic identification of groups as Germanic peoples on the basis of information other than statements by Classical writers, and equating such identification with a statement of ethnicity, he is in fact denying their generally accepted Germanic identity, as well as displacing the locus of disagreement among scholars (and is of course excuding the entire realm of medieval and later Germanic culture). That's a bit difficult to parse, but perhaps it still means that we are not necessarily disagreeing on facts (including facts proposed by linguists), but rather on terminology.
• I honestly feel that my difficulty with this sentence is a sort of proof that the terminology issues can be very confusing. For example: when I see the apparent insistence upon the words "Germanic identity", and your implied strong rejection of words like "Germanic speaking", then to me it looks like you are making a claim about facts that go beyond languages. But "identity" is something subjective, as discussed above, and so this would mean you are claiming that for example medieval people who spoke a Germanic language identified themselves as ethnically "Germanic". But taking this literally, can you really believe that? I think most medieval people had never heard the word Germanic and while they'd be used to understanding bits and pieces of other languages and noticing similarities, they would not have had a linguistic model in their minds about family trees of languages, and they most certainly would not have had ideas about being in the same group (let alone "ethnic group) as far away peoples. (FYI this was one of Goffart's arguments which has slowly been absorbed into mainstream thinking about Germanic peoples (such as the Vienna school).)
• BTW, talk of how people "identify" has become an everyday terminology now, influenced by a type of academic usage that you probably don't like. For example everyone now talks about "identifying as Asian", "identifying as gay", or similar. This wording is associated with people making a choice about who they are for themselves, which is of course totally opposed to the 19th century linguistic idea where academics believed they could literally know better what an ancient person "really" was, based on studying etymologies, and skull shapes, and the like. Most scholars don't accept that methodology anymore, and "normal people", influenced by newer ideas, are likely to be confused by this type of wording, and assume it refers to an "identification" people made for themselves (or were at least aware of). As writers trying to avoid confusion we have to keep the wide range of possible preconceptions connected to specific words in mind.

My apologies that this got so long! Your posts have been interesting and constructive so it seemed a good opportunity to test our ideas and whether we can explain them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:49, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm flattered of course, but I limit my editing these days; I was disturbed to see you at Bloodofox's talk drawing several psychological conclusions about that editor and referring to an edit by Berig as trollish, neither of which impresses me as adhering to the standards of basic collegial civility required by a project like this, and was particularly alarmed since both editors have more obviously relevant credentials and expositional abilities than I do; and looking back at the talk page, I think I've explained my position quite clearly. But you do raise some new points/issues. So here's a rather scattershot response to what you wrote here.

• You make some comments about common usage and reader assumptions/understanding. In my view, it's always the case that an encyclopedic entry, perhaps particularly in Wikipedia, is going to sometimes be the first time some readers learn something that to many people may seem to be common knowledge. It's part of the mission to explain things. So for English-speakers, Germanic peoples or Germanic languages may be the first time they are made aware that "Germanic" is not the same thing as "German". Similarly (and IMO less likely) they may have prejudices about tribes. I've encountered college/university students unaware that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa; correcting ignorance and misunderstandings is embarrassing in the classroom, but here it's part of the basic encyclopedic mission. Not entirely unrelated, your background is no business of mine, but possibly your education separated Germanistik from Nordistik; some scholars in these fields are used to seeing them as part of a whole, some as distinct disciplines. I've also found that in the English-speaking world, I'm increasingly unusual in being able to manage Latin as well as Old Norse; in many if not most continental European countries, a high level of Latin is a pre-requisite for studying in any medieval field. We cannot assume English-speaking readers are even familiar with Tacitus as an author, while scholars of many backgrounds automatically place a high value on Classical writings.
• Of course I'm familiar with the concept of self-identification, and I think considerably more aware of intersectionality than the WMF :-) If you look again, I think you'll see that I am explicitly recognizing not only the possibility of combined tribes, but that we know of at least one. I am aware that problematizing the concept of "Germanic" is the basis of the scholarly approach you are expounding. I can't resist a cheap shot: the term "Vienna school" invites problematizing, Otto Höfler only died in 1987. The best answer is probably Bloodofox's: the field of Germanic studies exists, studying the complex of cultures that can be related through their having used Germanic languages or being relatable to peoples speaking Germanic languages (this is the challenge of using archaeological evidence in many places), and up through the folklore collecting of the 19th and early 20th centuries, "Germanic" is the WP:COMMONNAME. That the term "Germanic" derives from a term used by Roman writers is worth mentioning, but the peoples who happened to be around at that time and whether or not a writer mentioned them in a still surviving text is a small part of the story—origins, in and of themselves, are a small part of the story for me, I am not an Indo-European philologist :-) What I have said about the bias toward outsider reports in some of your arguments was, I think, quite clear and makes this a somewhat ironic point.
• "Medieval" covers a very long stretch of time, especially since in this context it must include what used to be called the Dark Ages, and in addition to changes, there was considerable variation between places. I would also argue that there were quite different ways of life even within societies; that's the problem IMO with the use of Viking to signify "any speaker of Old Norse until a bit after 1066". Berig, who I believe disagrees with me on "Viking", and I think I'm on the losing side on that matter, has also pointed on the talk page to the debates over cultural diffusion vs. migration/conquest. It is a complex picture even before accounting for the scholars who problematize it, but "Germanic peoples" is the overarching term we happen to use in English, and I'm personally quite interested in the threads of commonalty.

That's probably too much, hopefully at least semi-clear, and I must now go write off-wiki :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 09:13, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

• (talk page watcher) Note for any other talk page watchers: this relates to a discussion at Talk:Germanic peoples. (Just to save you looking for it at Germanic as I did out of curiosity.) PamD 22:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I already wrote too much I suppose but looking over your comments and my explanation I suppose the one directions of continuing disagreement that remains possible or likely is concerning the area of proposals by linguists (I use the word roughly), about non-linguistic "facts" (and also for this word, I am using terms in a simple way). There have been accusations made on the article talk page that I must hate linguistics, but this is a parody. I think for example that Dennis Howard Green's distillation of some of the stronger attempts by language scholars to add to non-linguistic knowledge is extremely impressive and relevant to the article. It is written in a careful and critical way. However, we would be kidding ourselves if we would ignore the fact that the field he was distilling and filtering for English readers is a continuation of a very special sub-field that obsessed about everything Germanic, and which proposed all kinds of amazing conclusions about non-language facts (including of course racial facts), without scientific methodology, and that is heavily criticized now. There is a parallel and related debate in the archaeology of Germanic things. These debates did not end with WW2 of course, because it is not only about the racial conclusions, but also about other results of the non-sceptical methodology. This direction of controversy, which involves lots of specific debates about specific proposals, is less easy to resolve just by using careful language. I don't know if you are interested in methodological debates, but I am. To me this is an interesting area where a methodology has continued which is literally pre-modern. Proposals have been made, and if people liked the story, they went into the Reallexikon. This has slowed down, but only recently. Even in Germanic studies, for example in Germany, scholars are getting more conscious of the need for more methodological rigour in this area. In practice, this type of issue will relate to specific academic debates about specific "facts", and as WP editors we'll need to see what has been published in each case. But in short, yes, I tend to be more on the sceptical side. That should not be a big problem, although we have sometimes had people parodying each other, and the sources, too much. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:13, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: thanks for taking the time. I think possibly you overestimate how well I can understand what your argumentation would be in cases where it is not spelled out. What do you mean by "outsider reports"? I don't really get the joke you make about the Vienna school. Are you saying I overestimate how much they have moved on since Höfler? But they (e.g. Pohl) at least claim they have changed their position. Wouldn't they know? Anyway, we have to look at what they publish, right? Do you think we should not report what they say?

Maybe I can just comment on one thing: "That the term "Germanic" derives from a term used by Roman writers is worth mentioning, but the peoples who happened to be around at that time and whether or not a writer mentioned them in a still surviving text is a small part of the story—origins"... I think that's missing a rather big part of the story. The disputed types of conclusions of the old school of thought you are defending are completely dependant upon information from those Roman writers such as Caesar, Tacitus and Jordanes. And yet they also "correct" them. They claimed to know who the Germani really were, and they were certainly talking about the exact some people who occur in those old books, and not e.g. the Jastorf culture, or proto-germanic speakers.

Language and archaeology could never have led Germanicists to those exact types of conclusions which are now seen as controversial (also within mainstream Germanic studies), let alone the name "Germanic". The controversial aspects of this school of thought are related to exactly this way in which it makes claims about Roman era peoples and events which go way beyond the linguistic evidence, and both relies upon, and disagrees with, the classical writers. And those old claims about Roman era people with known names are still a common source of disagreement on WP.

The mainstream scholarly criticisms of recent decades are largely methodological, the way I read it. Or to put it another way, there was no methodology, the way that term is often used, in the sense that there has traditionally been no attempt to consider how many alternative explanations exist for any given piece of evidence. The conclusion was always treated as proven correct as long as someone found a way to claim that X, for example a tribal name or personal name, was Germanic. When I look at old and new publications about the Germanic concept I feel that even within Germanic studies there is an acceptance that this has been a problem. Do you see no such trend in publications specifically about the Germanic concept?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry you find me unclear. I know how frustrating that can be. I'll pass over your having apparently come to the conclusion that I write in defence of the bad old days, however those may be defined, and say again that a lot comes down to different assumptions and focusses. I am not very interested in methodological debates, both because they often hinge on differences in use of terminology and because they become rabbit holes and I'd rather spend my energies elsewhere. That may seem dismissive, but historical linguistics and some aspects of archaeology are the only parts of the field that I can think of right now where the scientific method is applicable; in most of the field, testing hypotheses in a scientific manner, let alone claiming proof, is impossible; furthermore, the assumption that the latest published treatment of a topic, or even the latest edition of a text, must be better is contrary to science as I understand it; and still furthermore, one of the things we learned from Nazi-era scholarship was the danger of undue reverence for a particular school of thought as against competing "schools", which can be reminiscent of the medieval citation of "authorities". Particularly in the modern climate of "publish or perish", competition between journals, and adopting a novel position being the key to jump-starting a career and to success in that career, academics in fields like Germanic studies have espoused all kinds of radical views, and all (or maybe almost all, I live in hope) have made at least one silly statement in print. We all have a duty to read critically, and of course the word "sceptical" can be applied to a whole range of things, from scepticism about a particular claim (such as the language family to which a name on a Rhineland votive tablet is assigned) to scepticism about a theory or application of such a theory (such as Dumézil's tripartite theory, the sequence of development proposed for bracteates or Scandinavian interlace ornament, or the relative dating of Norwegian place names) to scepticism about the existence of a Germanic cultural group.

We differ on our weighting of the importance of Roman reports, and one of the reasons is that I don't give them automatic primacy because Roman culture was a culture of writing; another is that no Roman writer was an ethnographer in the modern sense, so their reports must be interrogated, to use a modern term; and a third is that since you raised the issues of self-description and self-identification, and since I had already pointed to the indefensibility of the equation of culture with ethnicity, it's a bit rich to insist that the descriptions that have survived from conquerors should be the final word. Yes, we do know more than the Romans did; and no, using that knowledge is not the same thing as accepting any pretty story.

In any case, the field still has startling geographic splits, caused as much by ignorance and the impossibility of keeping up with all the publications as by adherence to different schools. Even in this internet age, anglophone scholars are often unaware of what's being published in Scandinavia, and I'm grateful to those countries and institutions that are making things available online so that those of us who do want to be aware can at least read publications no library can afford. (I am going to have to spend good money ordering one Scandinavian dissertation that I regard as wrongheaded, because even excerpts are no longer available online. I would much rather have given that money to a used book dealer for an out of print work of excellent older scholarship.) And that's if the anglophones can read the scholarship in question; I've noticed more scholars in the field able to read German, but facility in the modern Scandinavian languages is asking a lot except of modernists. So your mention of the Reallexikon in itself presupposes that that work plays a bigger role in reflecting scholarship than it actually does in many places. It's not only scepticism, it's differing backgrounds and priorities; I'll say again, the origins and very early periods of Germanic culture are not at the top of my personal interests, and I don't think that's the area most Germanicists are into; but I'd be hard put to determine whether I'm right, frankly. There's no central body or single conference structure where one could poll people.

(No, of course those currently calling themselves the Vienna School and being referred to as such do not espouse the views of Otto Höfler. But I'm sure the change at that institution did not happen overnight, and that there was a certain amount of restatement of the same things in new jargon at first. And who knows what era's or in fact what subject's "Vienna School" a reader, or even a fellow editor, may have in mind? "Problematizing" things is a relatively modern buzzword; I took a cheap shot by applying just that disruptive technique to your terminology associating particular scholars, since I happen to know a bit about the history of the field. I'm all too aware that it's vital for scholars in many countries to vocally repudiate Nazism, while I have the privilege of having lived and worked in places where it suffices to not think like a Nazi, so I'll go a step further and add that that was why it was a cheap shot, precisely because I am fully aware that Goffart et al. are not Nazi thinkers, in addition to their scepticism about the term "Germanic" being opposed to the vast majority of what Höfler wrote.)

And of course little of this has much of a bearing on Wikipedia, where our task is to write a resource for who knows who to look up who knows what, and click through to further information as they see fit :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 03:48, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Yngvadottir thanks. Very thoughtful, and it helps me as someone from outside these fields to continue to understand how they are working. Maybe these points are of interest:

• To be clear: of course I agree that following the old-style claims and methodology in Germanic studies does not make someone a Nazi. That was also true before WW2 of course. I don't think scholars criticize the old methodology just because of its association with Nazis. One of the debating strategies which I keep seeing on the internet including WP is that modern mainstream scholars are just being "politically correct" and over-compensating by proposing opposite things to whatever the Nazi era scholars believed. That is a misunderstanding, or perhaps sometimes a deliberate distortion, of what scholars write, and also a debating strategy that is borrowed from right-wing populism. (The Germanic peoples article has however constantly had a flow of editors who are clearly influenced by extremism in more ways than just borrowing some of the debating tactics.[4])
• Concerning methodology, I think the most important understanding of what a good modern methodology needs to be is systematically sceptical. A good example is any kind of blind-fold test. Despite how dogmatically that undergrad textbooks recite things about Popper and falsifiability and the like, real researchers and indeed philosophers, clearly can't agree on any single specific method. It is the need for being methodically sceptical of human judgement that they really agree on. Going back to Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the reason for following a method is that we should not trust human common sense, but rather assume that humans naturally get drawn towards certain kinds of explanations.
• I might not be a trained linguist but it is clear that many proposed "proofs" that single-syllable words or names are Germanic have been based purely on the possibility of finding similar-sounding syllables in a version of reconstructed Germanic. (And if the similarity is not a very good one, for example in the case of the Cimbri and Teutones, and their associated personal names, or the Germanic word involved seems to make no sense as an ethnic or personal name, for example in the case of Goths, all kinds of complex solutions are developed with the specific aim of achieving the pre-determined conclusion. In most fields today, scholars are trained to spot this kind of reasoning and weed it out. So as an outsider this approach is strikingly "pre-modern" to me. An obvious safety check such scholars need to perform, for example, is consideration of whether the proposed etymology can not be explained any other way. When this has happened, as happened in the case of say the Scirii, the traditional response has not been very objective IMHO.) It is also clear that whole sandcastles end up being built with such assumptions, and that these are still important. So the critics of this methodology do seem to have a point sometimes? And we can't really say these types of cases are not common? Anyway, this is just background thinking and not necessarily relevant to any specific Wikipedia edit. If no scholar publishes a criticism, as in the case of the Goths etymology, then we can't say anything. If scholars do criticize something and that criticism is well-known, as with the Scirii, then my position is that we should be careful not to selectively censor such information. I'd prefer to have too much on WP, rather than too little. (You seem to agree with me on that.)
• Concerning the Vienna school, my reason for mentioning them so often is much more to do with the practicalities of WP policy, and not my personal reading of the facts. The point is that this is a case where since about the 1980s numerous "big names" in the field of Germanic ethnicity debates, many of whom completely disagree with the Vienna school, ALL refer to exactly which positions they believe are the current frame of reference. There is a really strong consensus, for better or worse. By this I mean they name not only the Vienna school, but specific authors, and specific positions. The current leader of the Vienna pack is Walter Pohl, and the specific model they are talking about is the model of Ethnogenesis from Traditionskern-carrying mobile elites, which goes back to Wenskus and Wolfram. That this is at least one possible way that language and culture and the name of a people could "move" without massive migration is now very widely accepted. (There is much more that could be said about this.) So I agree with Ermenrich on this being reasonably clear and important in terms of how we can structure Germanic peoples in the long term. Older versions of both Germanic peoples, and Goths, have never contained proper discussions of this topic at all. OTOH, I do not mind if such discussions are moved to a spin-off article to some extent as long as this does not create a POVfork.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

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For the record

I will never forgive you for luring me into that den of vipers. EEng 17:18, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I see you fled to Gamergate. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:36, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

And I swear to God I don't do it on purpose. It's like some unseen hand guides me from flashpoint to flashpoint. EEng 23:59, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

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Björn at Haugi

The article Björn at Haugi has been split and new one called Björn (Swedish king 829) has been created with POV statements that are not supported even by the not very WP:RS online sources that are used as references. The reason appears to be to disconnect legendary Icelandic sources from Swedish history. Maybe you would be interested. I think the new article should be made into a redirect back to Björn at Haugi.--Berig (talk) 21:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Probably, if the sources are bad. I'll take a look, but someone else may get there first. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Berig: I've had a quick look, and am inclined to redirect the split-off article, possibly to the section on Ansgar, and to rework the Björn at Haugi article starting from this immediately pre-split version to separate the theorising from the accounts of what the sources say. But the article also needs a good copy-edit, including wikilinks, the identifications in the citations, and replacement of the Northvegr citation. The infobox should go, since there is disagreement as to almost everything. But it comes down so far as I can see to a disagreement between Finnur Jónsson and preceding scholars (Arkiv 1890, pp. 144–45) and Jón Jóhannesson (Saga-Book 1966–69, pp. 293–301), who furthermore has suggested one Bjǫrn actually ruled in Norway. Those are both good sources. I may not be well qualified to pull this off; can you find a more recent scholarly article we can cite to demonstrate that identification of the Bjǫrns (Bjarnar) is still mainstream? If not, I can look, but I procrastinated really badly on my off-wiki work last night and today already, and as I say, may not be well qualified in this area. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is still mainstream. I think the best source I have is this one: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?dswid=8564&faces-redirect=true&language=en&searchType=SIMPLE&query=&af=%5B%5D&aq=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aqe=%5B%5D&pid=diva2%3A1221652&noOfRows=50&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&sf=all from 2018.--Berig (talk) 05:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Got it, thanks; thank goodness Swedish universities (as well as the Viking Society) are so generous with online links. This may be doable, and the article can certainly be improved by adding that source as well as brushing up the use of the other two and the treatment of the Latin and Norse texts. But I see him saying on p. 192, n. 2 that there may indeed be 3 different people? I think the way forward is still a single article, but with the scholarly debate separated from the presentation of what the texts say, but it's starting to look as if the scholarly debate section will be lengthy. Do you agree? Yngvadottir (talk) 07:17, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Great. I much prefer single articles to splitting up what may be the same personage into several articles. I am still busy with the lists and I try to get them finished before my vacation ends. If you want to improve the article(s), I will go through it later and see if I can improve it in any way.--Berig (talk) 07:26, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

not an endorsement

Great dogs. No need to keep repeating that in your edit summary, we know, and indeed everyone else's edits aren't an endorsement either. Just chill. Please. It would help my watchlist.... The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 00:09, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I am sorry, and on some edits it does seem silly; but the WMF aren't reasonable, and do think our participation is in service to them, and it's the only way I can accommodate my conscience and continue making a few contributions here. I am not implying anyone else should feel the same, so I make the extra bit as short and inoffensive as I can, but I personally feel like a traitor in that I carry on at the project. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok, that's fine. But whether you say it or not, your contributions are an endorsement of the project. Your relentless edit summary makes no difference. Anyway, cheers. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 01:13, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, Lee Vilenski, BennyOnTheLoose, Amakuru and Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, 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 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, 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). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help 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 your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The "ghetto"

Please be mindful of WP:civility and WP:Prejudice. Referring to Little Portugal, San Jose as "the ghetto" as you did here is absolutely not ok. You are entitled to your own PoV, but it is not appropriate to pejoratively label any community as a "ghetto" in civil discussion. Cristiano Tomás (talk) 21:06, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Precisely, it isn't. Your emphasis in the article introduction on the restaurant being in Little Portugal has the unfortunate effect of implying that San Jose limits its Portuguese heritage to that neighborhood. I'm absolutely sure that isn't what you meant to imply, but it has the effect of denigrating both the restaurant and the neighborhood. Hence, since you would not accept placing that information solely in the first section of the body, where the history and cultural continuity is presented, I softened the wording so it did not have that implication. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:21, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Marie Wilcox

On 13 October 2021, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Marie Wilcox, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Stephen 01:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 23

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dartmouth.

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Speedy deletion nomination of Nauru national soccer team

Hello, Yngvadottir,

Welcome to Wikipedia! I edit here too, under the username Lithopsian and I thank you for your contributions.

I wanted to let you know, however, that I have tagged an article that you started, Nauru national soccer team, for deletion, because a consensus decision previously decided that it wasn't suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. If you wish to restore a page deleted via a deletion discussion, please use the deletion review process instead, rather than reposting the content of the page.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top. If the page is already deleted by the time you come across this message and you wish to retrieve the deleted material, please contact the deleting administrator.

For any further query, please leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Lithopsian}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ . Thanks!

Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Lithopsian (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Block evasion

Re Special:Diff/1052954560, I called the edit block evasion since I interpreted the blocking admin's comment at User_talk:919499sp#Final warning (I want you to treat this as a de facto block from all similar lists) to constitute a separate block on editing the entire Lists of rail accidents series. I have no objection to you reinstating and cleaning up the edits in question, but I figured I should explain what I meant. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:40, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I understand, and Mjroots said at AN/I that that was the intention. Nonetheless, it was not truly block evasion. And unfortunately it's become crystal clear that the user doesn't understand that level of English; de facto is undoubtedly beyond them. It's rather sad; see their latest edit, responding to me trying to explain what is wrong with their edits and to give them advice, and this after two attempts to edit the blocking template in order to request unblock, because they don't understand the instructions for requesting unblock. I would suggest Mjroots or another admin convert the p-block into a complete article-space p-block, and explain in simple English is that the reason is that their edits are not good enough for them to continue editing article space. But they have no edits to an article talk page, and they don't use edit summaries. I'm afraid this is very much a case of WP:CIR, but I would hope we would try our best to be kind. I wish they would tell us if they are more comfortable in a different language, so we could try one of the standardised templates explaining that the problem is with their level of English and that there is a Wikipedia in X language. (Their global contributions page shows only en.wikipedia.) Anyway, thanks for coming here, and don't worry, I understand, and it turned out they were also misrepresenting what a source said as well as mucking up the template syntax, so it would have been bad to just AGF on their 2 edits. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is The Rambling Man (submissions), who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were:

1. The Rambling Man (submissions) with 5072 points
2. Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 3276 points
3. Amakuru (submissions) with 3197 points
4. Epicgenius (submissions) with 1611 points
5. Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1571 points
6. BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 1420 points
7. Hog Farm (submissions) with 1043 points
8. Bloom6132 (submissions) with 528 points

All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.

• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5.
• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. 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 2022 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. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Curley Culp

I think you might have a serious misunderstanding of what my issue with KMBC source was. You added the author of the article to the citation template without using the "last1=" and "first1=" parameters of the citation template and without putting the authors last name first, you added the access date without using the "access-date=" parameter of the citation template, you added the article title without using the "title=" parameter. Long story short, you removed my version of the citation that actually uses the correct parameters on the citation template and added a citation without the proper parameters. That is what I am saying is in inappropriate formatting and reverting inappropriate formatting in any template doesn't violate any policies, especially MOS:CITEVAR.--Rockchalk717 05:21, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you were looking only at the section you added. Your added reference was the only one in the article using citation templates. That's the CITEVAR violation. So when I added the new reference, I fixed yours by adding the missing information and also by changing it to match the other refs in the article. Yes, I saw your edit summary about using the parameters. But the citation template was inappropriate in the first place. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:55, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

No it wasn't. There is no requirement for which parameters you must use, yes using as many parameters as possible is preferred but it's not required. You are totally misunderstanding that policy. I'm not going to argue about this though.--Rockchalk717 15:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Akane Yamaguchi

Hello. Help expand the article. Thanks you. Gokjdnf (talk) 07:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks pretty expanded already to me! And I'm afraid I can't read Chinese, so I would be of limited use anyway. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Sockpuppet message. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Fdery. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Io, Saturnalia!

		Io, Saturnalia!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 15:10, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2022!

Hello Yngvadottir, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2022. Happy editing, Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. 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. Any questions on the rules or on anything else 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. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. 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. Any questions on the rules or on anything else 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. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		You have been awarded this mopping-up barnstar for your appropriately ruthless cleanup of Vũ Hà Anh. Bishonen | tålk 09:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! But someone else has gone in after me and cut it down with a Bat'leth. I think it's them you should thank, really! Yngvadottir (talk) 09:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I did! It was cool to find a Vietnamese editor. But your original great Gordian slash was just inspirational. Bishonen | tålk 09:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC).

accidental edit conflict

I was working to improve articles that I created today, added an infobox to one, then later I saw that you had removed an earlier one. That earlier one was probably done by me and was probably interior to the one I did today, nonetheless... Opps. Sorry. Wasn't trying to edit war. I'll delete it if you think it's superfluous. What do you think? Here's the link: Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu CT55555 (talk) 21:57, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your note! I went ahead and reverted both changes with a thorough rationale. That infobox was indeed more detailed than your earlier one, and infoboxes are a point of disagreement between Wikipedians, but for pep[le, particularly living people not involved in professions where a lot of statistics or other lists can usefully be marshalled in a box (such as athletes, and politicians who've held ministerial positions), I believe it oversimplifies, giving the impression that the things the boxes have lines for are the only important thing. They then attract editors who want to put in the person's marital/dating history and pad out "known for". Better for someone who uses Google, which reproduces Wikipedia's infoboxes if present, or who is on a cellphone and thus only sees the top section of the article, to get a lead paragraph that explains in words who the person is. (Articles on, for example, ships, schools and universities, buildings, films, and of course species, which they were developed for, are on the other hand well suited to infoboxes: on those topics there's a whole raft of specifications, lists, and statistics that is clearer in a box than in prose form, and where the reader may quite likely be looking for one or two of those specifics, but we can't predict wich one(s).) Yngvadottir (talk) 22:29, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

OK, no problem. I'm somewhat new to wikipedia, I don't have a strong opinion, defer to your judgement. I had been operating under the impression that adding infoboxes was always a good thing, part of a process to make articles better, I wasn't aware of the downsides until now. Today is a learning day. All the best. CT55555 (talk) 23:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Important Notice

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

––FormalDude talk 13:18, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

AfD

Hi. Following your work on the article for Jānis Andriksons, you may be interested in this AfD. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:18, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your note, Lugnuts. It took a bit of work, but after what I found I hope I've been able to save it. I see you were/are on the opposite "side"; I'll see if there is also enough coverage to save Gösta Grandin, because all things being equal, I'd rather save articles, and I can usually persuade Google to show me foreign-language sources. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for taking time and effort to look at these. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The AfD was closed as keep - once again, many thanks for your help! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 19:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Draft:Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir

Hi Yngvadottir, I have seen you around for some time and think you might be able to be of assistance with this draft about an Icelandic actress. I am an AfC reviewer and declined it due to poor sources. Afterward the IP who created it contacted me and I advised them the sources they used were largely not reliable. However after giving it another look, I think the subject may be notable but the IP has yet make any improvements so I doubt the draft will ever be resubmitted. I do not have the knowledge/skills to make the necessary improvements myself and unfortunately I have found most WikiProjects are largely inactive (such as WikiProject Iceland) .Could you take a look? No rush; I did add the "promising draft" template so it should be a year-ish before its deleted. If you believe the subject is notable and can add sources, there is no need to send it back through AfC but if you choose to, just ping me. No worries if you do not have time/inclination. S0091 (talk) 01:28, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Always precious

Precious

ten years

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Wow, thanks Gerda :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 08:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I love your greeting puppy, and your edits when they appear on my watchlist! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
• AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
• Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
• GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
• Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
• SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
• Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. 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 Needed.

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. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
• AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
• Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
• GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
• Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
• SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
• Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. 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 Needed.

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. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Ya never know

Now that Neutralhomer's been blocked from his talkpage. Perhaps, putting forward his request for reinstatement into the community, will have better success. His not being able to respond at AN or his own talkpage, may well be a good thing for him. GoodDay (talk) 03:01, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I have restored Neutralhomer's talk page access, for the sole purpose of commenting on the appeal. Cullen328 (talk) 18:54, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:53, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you ...

For the thought here but I'm not bothered. My oppose was solid, but I tried to make it clear that I didn't think Tamzin was a horrid/awful/meanie-head person, but that I did not feel the judgement was what I look for in an admin. And it's definitely based on my historical knowledge and was partly yet-another-tilt-at-the-windmill-that-is-WP:NONAZIS. I'm not out to get Tamzin, I won't be following them looking for the first mistake so I can drag them off to Arbcom. Once I made my second comment, I resolved not to engage further .. partly not to make things worse for Tamzin. But thank you for thinking of me and worrying that I was upset by the folks spring-boarding off my comments...it's appreciated. Ealdgyth (talk) 22:13, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Ah, good. I hadn't even looked at the talk page conversations till it closed. So much hurt to so many people. I suspect Tamzin, TNT, you, and I would have a blast at a hen party meetup, probably solve several of the 'pedia's problems, too. Not gonna happen tho, if only because the WMF always makes sure there's a photographer around, and I don't want it documented on Commons that my body is half dead and rotting. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:00, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 May newsletter

The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

1. Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
2. AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
3. Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
4. Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
5. Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
6. Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
7. Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.

The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded 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. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

CERL

Hi! I think you originally created https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Consortium_of_European_Research_Libraries. Although it has been updated to indicate who the current Chairman is (for which many thanks!), there are some other things in the article that are out of date (for example, the CERL Portal was discontinued). Would you be willing to update the article based on information you find on www.cerl.org and cerlblog.wordpress.com. As I am a involved in CERL I do not think I am allowed to do this myself. Many thank for all your work on this article on wikipedia. MRLeffertsCERL (talk) 13:12, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi MRLeffertsCERL, thanks for asking. Yes, I did create the CERL article, based on the German Wikipedia article (linked in the sidebar). I see it hasn't changed much since, except for others updating the chairman. I'll have a look for 3rd-party sources, which we prefer, but either way I'll change those two things. Please do stick around and improve other articles! I'm going to put a welcome template on your talkpage with informational links. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:42, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

"This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF."

Why do all of your recent edit summaries have this? Am I missing something here?--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:48, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I've been doing it since Framgate. Since the WMF boasts our edits as if we do it all for them, while actually the best that can be said for them is that their ineptitude sometimes limits how much they get in our way, I had had enough when they demonstrated their contempt for the community by not even apologizing for what T & S did. I tried to limit my edits to 4 a month, since I understand 5 is their threshold for an active editor. But I couldn't keep it up. So I limit myself to 99 a month; 100 edits a month is their next major threshold, although they no longer apparently publish that number. And when I remember, I add the disclaimer. This is all entirely me and my moral code; I love the project too much to stay away, but I can't square my continuing participation with my conscience without making a disclaimer. It's as simple and non-polemical as I was able to come up with; I do not intend any implication about what other editors should do. I think you're the 4th person to ask me about it here, and I have been taken to AN/I over it. Yngvadottir (talk) 07:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Would you consider becoming a New Page Reviewer?

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. () Hi Yngvadottir, I've recently been looking for editors to invite to join the new page reviewing team, and after reviewing your editing history, I think you would be a good candidate. Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; the new page reviewing team needs help from experienced users like yourself. Would you please consider becoming a New Page Reviewer? Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision (if it looks daunting, don't worry, most pages are easy to review, and habits are quick to develop). If this looks like something that you can do, please consider joining us. If you choose to apply, you can drop an application over at WP:PERM/NPR. If you have questions, please feel free to drop a message on my talk page or at the reviewer's discussion board. Cheers, and hope to see you around, (t · c) buidhe 22:18, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite; I'm honoured. However, even if I were still editing at a reasonable rate (I limit it in an attempt to minimise the WMF's use of my work for boasting), the review tool would be a big hurdle for me, and I am in any case unwilling to go through the required training process. I don't think there's a solution, but "professionalising" NPP did have the effect of excluding users like me who in the past used to review a few pages here and there. The change was for good reasons and is largely invisible to admins, because they retain the right; it may even have been you who told me here back when I was still an admin that I needed to mark pages reviewed when I tagged them for speedy deletion, only for me to respond that I had no idea how; someone else then helpfully pointed to the tiny checkbox or whatever it is that generates the logged action :-) So I'm afraid I'm no longer able to offer any help at all at NPP. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:59, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of New R. S. J. Public School for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article New R. S. J. Public School, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New R. S. J. Public School until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Heh - thanks :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 20:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

About Pizzataxi

Hello Yngvadottir,

Your comment about the deletion discussion of Pizzataxi accidentally got archived during a routine procedure on my talk page. I have now moved it back to my active talk page.

Anyway, it does not seem that the story you linked to has anything to do with the company Pizzataxi. See the discussion on my talk page for full details. JIP | Talk 22:24, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 July newsletter

The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
• Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
• Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.

Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. 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 a good article nomination, 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. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Prod

I understand that the Hoax template in this article was disputed, Italian names by IP also BUT please explain why did you remove Prod template from the article [5]?

• the article does not have a single source, totally break Wikipedia:Verifiability
• 100% of article is Wikipedia:original research + even name of article is clear OR.
• there is more corrected article of List of localities in Malta about this topic.

Your edit protects an article that breaks 2 of the three main Wikipedia rules (see: Wikipedia:Core content policies) and is a duplicate. Such an article should be removed from Wikipedia as soon as possible because it brings shame to the entire project. Unless you have serious reasons for keep the article, please restore the Prod template. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 08:31, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

@Subtropical-man: This is a complex situation involving 4 articles and their histories. I'm typing up my talk page statement; it will take me a little while. Please be patient. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:39, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

I have a question, you often write this in the description of changes, which means "This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF" [6][7][8]. What is WMF? Wikimedia Foundation? why do you write about it in so many destription of changes? What this is about? Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 22:22, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation. Several people have asked me about the disclaimer in my edit summaries (I try to remember to include it every time, but semi-automatic functions like starting a new talkpage section using the tab at the top of the page don't allow for a personal edit summary.) As I've said in my previous responses, it's an entirely personal thing, worded as unpolemically as possible and with no implication that other editors should do or not do anything. But for me, what happened to Fram was a tipping point. I love this project, but since the WMF claim all our contributions as a source of pride, I am only able to square with my conscience that I continue to contribute by making a disclaimer disassociating myself from that claim. I've also throttled back my activity. But as I say, that's just me and my personal ethics. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:43, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

World Bodypainting Festival

Thank you for your work on the article World Bodypainting Festival. Some parts of the article were a bit promotional, this is because years ago, the article was edited by User:Alexwbf and User:Karala barendregt, who (from what I understand from their usernames) are Alex Barendregt - the main organiser of the festival - and his wife Karala themselves. I guess no one got around to reviewing and editing the content they added before you. JIP | Talk 11:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome :-) I thought of checking the history, should probably have done so. Heh, I would likely have completely missed those two names. Yngvadottir (talk) 11:55, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

RFC for political userboxes

In light of the Bedford ANI, I'd like to workshop with you the idea of running an RfC to delete all userboxes that are political, religious, or other categories likely to divide or produce significant argumentation (apologies for the lawyerly wording, wasn't sure how else to phrase it). I'm not great at coming up with neutral RfC prompts, but I have no problem getting the actual guts of the RfC started if you feel this is something important worth pursuing. I certainly think it is; the ANI to me has proven that Wikipedians are unable to be dispassionate politically when it comes to blocking someone they deem to be disgusting, which makes our current userbox environment incompatible with both policy and practice. It's a bad look for Wikipedia to favor some userboxes over another, even as there does seem to be a broad consensus in excluding the most extreme or unpleasant of opinions. It should be either all or nothing.

Interested to know your thoughts one way or another. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 12:44, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

You'd probably be better working on it alone; my history with RfCs is 100% failure :-) I think the guidelines established after the userbox wars, and still present on many userbox pages but widely disregarded, are the best starting point for wording a proposal. So I did a bit of rummaging before responding to you.

The relevant section of the Wikipedia:Userboxes page, reached by WP:UBCR, reads:

• All userboxes are governed by the civility policy.
  • Userboxes must not include incivility or personal attacks.
  • Userboxes must not be inflammatory or substantially divisive.
• Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for:
  • Propaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind (commercial, political, religious, or otherwise)
  • Opinion pieces, particularly on current affairs or politics
  • Self-promotion or advertising

Simply: If content is not appropriate on other parts of a user page, it is not appropriate within userboxes.

I think that last sentence undermines the foregoing; the standard for WP:POLEMIC is higher than "substantially divisive" (Polemical statements unrelated to Wikipedia, or statements attacking or vilifying groups of editors, persons, or other entities&nbsp... Material that can be viewed as attacking other editors ... negative information related to others). But note the list of divisive words to avoid that appears further down the page. This is substantially unchanged since it was merged in from a transcluded template in 2013, and we are not enforcing this best practice.

There is a WikiProject:Userboxes. At the top of Wikipedia:Userboxes/Politics/Ideology (which is grouped in the project template under "interests"), this advice appears:

Before placing any of these userboxes on your userpage, please consider that many Wikipedians believe that the use of such userboxes runs contrary to the spirit of the guidance given at WP:USERPAGE, because they can be seen as being polemical. Please remember that the purpose of userboxes is to tell people about yourself as a Wikipedian (an editor of an encyclopedia), not as a human being in general.

There is no requirement that you follow this recommendation, which has no official status. By deciding not to post such content on your userpage, some of your fellow editors feel you could contribute to building a better editorial environment, while in no way renouncing your opinions as an individual.

Please feel free to contribute and add userboxes to this page; however, please remember that as this is effectively a very controversial page, please respect everyone's (not just your own) views. This makes Wikipedia what it is, a place for communication and information.

(That's a template, I've transcluded it here, which is why the non-highlighted paragraph isn't indented.) I applaud the WikiProject for including that, but I indeed feel it does not go far enough.

WP:Userbox wars redirects to Wikipedia:T1 and T2 debates, which has links to and summaries of a lot of stuff, including "broad" and "narrow" interpretations of "substantially divisive". But it gives the impression that the conflict began with the wheelwar over a pedophile userbox that went to Arbcom in early February 2006. An earlier precipitating event was that on January 1, 2006, Kelly Martin began working alphabetically through userboxes, deleting three categories, those that:

1. contained a non-free or unsourced image (thereby violating the fair use policy);

2. expressed a political, ideological, or religious opinion (thereby tending to categorize Wikipedians by affiliations not related to Wikipedia, which Jimbo himself has expressed disapproval recently on wikien-l); or

3. in [Kelly Martin's] opinion, expressed incivil or offensive content. (from an ensuing RfC, mid-January).

You mention WP:NONAZIS. There have been a raft of AN/I sections over the years about editors with Nazi userboxes, (including one who coded his own all-text box and who appears to have misunderstood "National Socialist"), and Nazi userboxes and others expressing sympathy with murderous dictators have been deleted. Although one can still find things like User:Vert et Noir/Template:User EZLN (has an equivalent in a different editor's userspace) and User:Queerly Bohemian/Userboxes/FreedomFighters. There have also been some kerfuffles over militant atheist userboxes, although I still find User:Kevin Murray/Userboxes/Atheist-Zeus, User:Jeff dean/Userboxes/Atheist, and Template:User reality. There are some confrontational religion userboxes, such as User:Template555/UserBibleStudy, User:UBX/One God, Template:User Creationist, and User:UBX/Support Hindutva. (I note that two of the religion/anti-religion ones are in the template namespace; wasn't that also supposed to have been forbidden?) There has also been a push (I don't know how far back it goes; for all I know, it's continuous since the crackdown on pedophilia) against anti-LGBTQA userfoboxes; I see no impolite ones at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Politics/Issues/02. Effectively, what the community is doing is proceeding on an ad hoc basis, in response to complaints. This fosters a culture of denunciation and reinforces biases toward frames of reference and political and social positions that are familiar to many of our editors, but unfamiliar or exclusionary to others. We're not being either fair or truly inclusive, and while the narrative appears to be that we crack down only on things that attack and frighten off whole classes of editors, we're letting some things stand that are divisive and hurtful to other whole classes of editors, partly out of ignorance that I presume is shared by many of the people creating and transcluding the userboxes.

I've raised this issue a couple of times before, notably at Iridescent's user talk. But I'm sorry, even after a couple of hours trawling through records, I think my helping draft an RfC would guarantee its failure. I am just no good at that aspect of Wikipedia. Thanks for being willing to look into it, maybe someone else will see this and assist. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:37, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

What you wrote out has been surprisingly helpful and informative considering that you feel your participation would be detrimental to an RfC. Thank you so much! It's a great starting point. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 18:25, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Google Books

I saw this edit. I, for one, am happy with links to Google Books, but the reason why I don't usually provide them is that when I have in the past someone has usually flagged such references as dead links because they cannot personally see them, as if the reference was to the link rather than to a book. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:28, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Hadn't even thought of that, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. Betacommandbot used to strip them to the point where only the link to the Google Books page for the book remained; I'm not sure how far the current bot's work also stops them from coming up with the page, but Google's ongoing changes have broken a lot of the ones I put in years ago (offset by vast improvements in the OCR). With the comment, I was recalling something on Iridescent's talk page (I think) about not dumping a reader on Google without warning, but especially if an article is at AfD, I'm inclined to provide all the information I can to demonstrate that the references are real. I should have done the ISBN / OCLC work when I first added the refs, but was running out of time. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:29, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 September newsletter

The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, 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 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, 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). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help 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. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:45, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	for you incredible work on the school. you somehow expanded a stub in six days to a fully-fledged article. (probably rushed by my afd, heh.) lettherebedarklight, 晚安, おやすみ, ping me when replying 07:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! It helps to be able to read Norwegian :-) I'm very glad I came upon the AfD and was able to save the article; it's surprising how often I've found that a miserable article taken to AfD actually just needed rewriting and updating to demonstrate notability (and as in this case, I get to research and write about something I had been completely unaware of), but sometimes it's a fight to get to see the sources. Luckily I got around enough of the paywalls to write the story. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:28, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Appeal by SecretName101 at AN

I hope you are well.

Not sure if you recall, but you participated in appeal to my topic ban. To my disappointment, you did not support my appeal. I currently am appealing again. I hope that the concerns you expressed may be lessened or completely alleviated this time around. If not, I would appreciate you share what concerns you have with me so I can address them to you before you reach a verdict if you chose to. I look forward to conducting a dialogue with any inquiries you may have.

I believe you also partook in my first appeal and the discussion that had following the imposing of the sanction. I apologize if I offended you in any of my comments around that time. I was at a point of emotional turmoil in my life at the time, I recognize I was rather reactive in my responses here.

SecretName101 (talk) 18:47, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

My new appeal is at the administrators noticeboard SecretName101 (talk) 18:50, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi SecretName101, thanks for letting me know. It will take me a while to look at your edits and post there. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:58, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

👍 SecretName101 (talk) 00:36, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Not rude

In the translation discussion, I was not being rude. I know that some people get irritated by getting their format modified in a talk page (even WP:TALKO states this). But it can be irritating also getting reverted, getting ones' edits changed, finding oneself in the minority opinion in a discussion... so many things. Context depends as to whether it is rude or not.

In the edit at hand, I modified the format following the exceptions to WP:TALKO, namely, "Fixing format errors that render material difficult to read." I have done quite a bit of research on copyediting paragraphs. And sometimes I try to facilitate the reading of someone's post by splitting paragraphs.

Many times editors only post their thoughts in talk pages, but forgetting about making paragraphs to help in the reading of what they write. I simply try to help by creating paragraphs. And usually editors don't revert said changes. I didn't mean to be irritating, just helpful. Thinker78 (talk) 22:33, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

You were being meddlesome, not helpful. The general rule on Wikipedia talk pages is: do not modify others' posts. The fact you prefer short paragraphs does not mean that a paragraph with long paragraphs is hard to read. You also used HTML to make the paragraph breaks (and you use them again here), which I believe is an impediment to users of screen readers, but I'll defer to the experts on that. Stop modifying others' posts unless the indentation is wrong or a line starts with a space causing typewriter text, or something like that that makes a post genuinely hard to read. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:04, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Summary:

Guidelines are handled with common sense, empathy and a desire to improve Wikipedia, and are not absolute rules, which can even be ignored per WP:NOTBURO. Assume good faith, don't assume someone was rude only for trying to be helpful to others.

Extended rationale:

1.Guideline, not absolute rule: "a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."

As I stated previously, "I modified the format following the exceptions to WP:TALKO, namely, "Fixing format errors that render material difficult to read." The long text you posted made material difficult for me to read and probably for other editors as well. I simply added paragraphs to be helpful to others. It looks like you didn't even read my previous post.

Why wouldn't someone care about making it more difficult to others to read? Is it more a priority to you that someone else dared to add paragraphs in the text you wrote than understanding they were trying to make it easier to read by simply splitting paragraphs? Some people might have different capacities and it's easier for them to read text split in paragraphs. Why was it so irritating to you that you even indicated that I was rude?

It is not even that I prefer short paragraphs. It is recommended generally by expert writers.

Shorter sentences and paragraphs make your content easier to skim and less intimidating. Paragraphs should top out around 3 to 8 sentences. Ideal sentence length is around 15 to 20 words.

— Harvard Library, "Writing Guide", [9]

Although I have to say that I have read elsewhere that paragraphs can be as long as the author wants. According to Masterclass, "In traditional academic writing, paragraphs range from six to eight sentences".

But is there a specific recommendation for them to be long and not short as you seemingly imply? Can you provide a reference that advocates for long texts without paragraphs as the one you wrote? Maybe you are correct too. But meanwhile, as you can see, it is recommended that paragraphs be short to help the reader.

2.Regarding <p> to make paragraph breaks, you have an idea about screen readers, but not completely accurate. Per Template:Paragraph break, "using <p> tags can cause problems for navigation with screen readers, which expect these tags to delimit paragraphs of prose". I added said tags in paragraphs of prose, not in a list or references (per the context of said quote).

Also, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Indentation, "Blank lines must not be placed between colon-indented lines of text [...] If space is needed, there are two approaches [...] The second approach, for when the material is meant to be a single comment (or other list item, e.g. in article text) is to use new-paragraph markup". Which is what I did with the p tag.

3.Regarding fixing formatting of others' posts, refer back to exceptions in WP:TALKO and the description of a guideline. Also, per WP:NOTBURO,

Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policies without consideration for their principles. If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them. Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures.

Thinker78 (talk) 23:19, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

References

Happy to see you not using HTML here. At the very least, it's unnecessary. Wiki-syntax provides other ways to make paragraphs.

The operative phrase is format errors that render material difficult to read. Paragraphs longer than your personal stylistic preference—or even recommendations rooted in journalism and in getting maximum engagement with blog posts—are neither a formatting error nor an impediment to understanding. Nor is NOTBURO or its parent, IAR, applicable to changing the formatting of others' posts in talk spaces. Both apply to improving the encyclopedia, and Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policies is more applicable to your wikilawyering; you are in breach of the basic guideline at WP:TPOC, The basic rule, with exceptions outlined below, is to not edit or delete others' posts without their permission. Please re-read the list of examples there, and note that I did not tinker with the strangely large number of colons you used in your paragraph breaks.

I am sorry that your reading comprehension is so easily challenged, as evidenced by your jumping to the conclusion that when I wrote in my edit summary that your meddling broke up the flow of my argument, I was implying that there was a specific recommendation for [paragraphs] to be long and not short, rather than referring to how I had explained points by following them with specifics. As you would know if you even read the entirety of one of the two links you placed here ("paragraph style and length vary greatly in different writing types"), and more so if you read more widely in actual published writing, writers vary in the length of paragraphs they use, including within the same work depending on the points they wish to make or the style they choose to employ. Which in any case (to vary in a different way from style guides for students) is only tangentially related to talk-page posts, at least in a forum for educated readers with no inherent screen-size limit, such as behind-the-scenes Wikipedia discussion spaces. I am afraid I must reiterate that your stylistic preferences, or even needs, do not constitute an emergency exception to the talk page guidelines: Respect others' comments and don't meddle with them unless they are broken. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:18, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

"I am sorry that your reading comprehension is so easily challenged". Don't apologize if you don't mean it, although your wanton making fun of people with different capacities is noted. It's funny that you accused me of being rude for simply splitting paragraphs while you are ridiculing my reading comprehension. Try reading the civility policy.

I already explained to you about the exceptions mentioned in WP:TALKO. If you insist in only highlighting a portion of it to your personal preference, ignoring the rest, what can I say. We can agree that we disagree. Thanks for using paragraphs this time. Have fun editing. Cheers! Thinker78 (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Re-read what I wrote. Re-read the guideline. Your preferences do not fall under the exceptions. I am not making fun of you; I am informing you that you are violating the guideline you are citing. Yes, I am sorry to have to point out a problem you are making evident. For all I know, your contributions in article space are excellent, and I have not looked at your other talk-space edits to see whether you make a habit of this disrespect for other editors or whether I happened to trigger it by posting on a complex issue, but you seem to be under a misapprehension that talk space posts must conform to your narrow preferences. They don't have to; meddling with them is rude; don't do it again. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:34, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Thinker78:

• The Harvard Library guide you linked was written by bureaucrats, for bureaucrats writing bureaucratic stuff. Try instead looking at Harvard's guides for academic writing linked at https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/pages/gen-ed-writing-guides, wherein you'll find no mindless numeric formulas, because good writing doesn't come from formulas.
• And if you somehow think that paragraph breaks are something you can insert into others' writing without affecting its import, you really have no idea how to write at all, no matter how much research on copyediting paragraphs you feel you've done. The only way to learn to write is to write; you can't "research" it, and you certainly won't learn it from the kinds of places you've been looking at, such as https://www.masterclass.com ("GAIN NEW SKILLS IN 10 MINUTES").
• Anyway, it doesn't matter, because other people's stylistic choices are none of your fucking business. A few years ago, you changed the advice at TPG [10] from there is no need to correct others' spelling errors, grammar, etc., and doing so can be quite irritating --> ... doing so can be irritating, but I'm here to tell you that even with quite in there it was an understatement. (I've added quite back.) If I see you tampering with others' posts again I'll have you at ANI so fast it'll make your head spin. You have been warned.

EEng 18:24, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 November newsletter

The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is

• Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
• Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
• BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
• Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
• Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
• Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
• PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
• Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.

During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. 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 the overall leader in this field.

• Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
• Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
• Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
• Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
• Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
• SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
• Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
• Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
• Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
• Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, 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. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:29, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Why, thank you! Om nom nom! Yngvadottir (talk) 21:32, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

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Happy holidays

Hello Yngvadottir: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, —¿philoserf? (talk) 05:57, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

—¿philoserf? (talk) 05:57, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Philoserf, and Good Yule to you! Yngvadottir (talk) 09:20, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!
Have a great Christmas, and may 2023 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls, vandals or visits from Krampus! Cheers SchroCat (talk) 11:13, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, SchroCat, and good Yule to you! Yngvadottir (talk) 22:14, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

What is WMF!

I noticed you end your edits with This edit intended to improve the encyclopedia is not an endorsement of the WMF. What is WMF? Pauseypaul (talk) 15:14, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation. They claim our edits are made on their behalf. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:33, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Freudenberg Group

Dear Yngvadottir,

I am writing to you on behalf of Freudenberg Group as you are still one of the main contributors to the article. Please note that I have a financial conflict of interest as I am being paid by the company. They have asked me to support here after they updated the German history section of the article – mainly adding missing sources, correcting some false information and adding missing company milestones in close cooperation with the WPDE community.

So, we were wondering if any of the following two suggestions would make sense for the English language article from your point of view:

• As the German history section is now fully backed by sources and as it is much more thorough now as it is currently here in WPEN, we were wondering if it would make sense that we translate the section and update the article here accordingly.
• Also, we would like to suggest adding the current table of business areas of the Group (Geschäftsfelder) and possibly the KPI section to WPEN. The description of the company structure is somewhat different in WPDE (more focused on legal structure) and WPEN (more focused on the family) but both approaches make sense. So, we don’t suggest any change there.

Maybe with these changes it would also be possible to lift the article again into sections did you know or featured articles on the main page.

As I stated at the beginning I have a conflict of interest and will therefore not make any changes myself directly to the article. If you deem our suggestions to make sense, would you be willing to support by making the edits? We would, of course, prepare everything so that you would not have too much work with it.

What do you think?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best, Conandcon (talk) 14:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me, Conandcon. I see from the talk page that you have previously requested and received a smaller update based on the company annual report. And I also see that someone added an uncollapsed infobox to the article; I disagree with that decision, see my post on the talk page, but I think I must admit defeat on business articles, not least because I haven't edited that article in several years; I hadn't even realised it had been nominated for speedy deletion at one point.

I think this discussion should be on the article talk page, not here. I haven't worked on the page in a long time. In addition, I limit my edits each month and we are very near the end of the month, so I wouldn't be able to do anything until January anyway.

However, I would strongly advocate not translating sections from German. As you say, I took a different approach in constructing the English article. In part this is because English Wikipedia prefers to use third-party sources, such as independent newspaper and magazine coverage, to shape the article, with minimal use of primary sources such as company reports and press releases. (There are two reasons for this: one is that English Wikipedia uses the extent of independent coverage to establish both notability and what is worth mentioning about the topic, and the other is that there's a strong desire to avoid promotion, especially for businesses.) I haven't looked at the current German article, but if the new material is cited to reports from the company and to news articles based on press releases, and it's impossible to find any independent newspaper or magazine articles covering changes in the business or what it does now, it is safer not to add the information. If independent coverage only mentions some of it, English Wikipedia's coverage should be limited to what those sources reference. The link to the company website provides the means for readers who are passionate about business to find, for example, an exhaustive list of products and manufacturing facilities, and the annual reports. If the German version includes one or more extended newspaper or magazine articles that English Wikipedia doesn't yet have—whatever language they are in—then great, the article can and should be expanded using that. But if it gets expanded using company materials, especially with the addition of tables, it may well get nominated for deletion as promotion. It's quite difficult to demonstrate the notability of a company on English Wikipedia without getting accused of advertising it. (Note that I originally worked on the article because it had been nominated for deletion. The creator had done a bad job of creating the article, partly because their English wasn't very good, but that illustrates the risk.) In any subject-matter field, there is tension between, on the one hand, editors who like to work on articles in that field, who find it interesting and consider it useful to readers, and who want to make articles long and detailed, and, on the other hand, editors who want to maintain broad principles of Wikipedia such as not advertising, not being a directory (this is my objection to the value indicator that the infobox produces), and not being a repository of minutiae interesting only to fans ("cruft"). English Wikipedia has lower barriers to the addition of new articles than German Wikipedia, but is much more prone to deleting the articles after they are created, rather than editors feeling compelled to fix them, which I understand is still the ethos on German Wikipedia.

If the article does get substantially updated, it would have to become a good article for it to appear in "Did You Know" a second time. If someone wants to rewrite it to meet those standards, wonderful! I myself don't participate in the process to obtain that certification for articles, but you can see at the linked page what it would involve. Featured article requirements are much more exacting, and also much more standardised, because a whole group of experienced editors work on checking and reviewing Featured Article candidates, while for a Good Article, there is a single reviewer.

I'll stop there. I've written rather a lot, sorry. If you wish, I can copy most of your post to the article talk page and add a shorter version of this response, but I would very much prefer to do so on or after January 1. On or after January 1, I would also be willing to look at the German article and make a first attempt at updating the English based on the sources cited there. You might prefer to post on the talk page yourself, perhaps linking to this section on my talk page; the editors who have worked on the article in the many years since I did, most of whom are probably more business focused than I am, might well do a better job of updating it from your point of view. In addition to limiting my edits in recent years, I am very much a generalist. But please weigh the risk of triggering a new nomination for deletion by adding material based on company sources, and don't expect it to include information just because the German Wikipedia article does, or just because the company wants it. The nature of the sources is very important on English Wikipedia. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:29, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your fast and detailed response, Yngvadottir. This is greatly appreciated. I will post my suggestion above to the talk page in January - fully respecting your rule of not editing too much. As for the sources: For the German language article in recent months we just looked at the existing history section as it lacked sources. Let me emphasize that the history section had been contributed by independent editors - and not the company. The primary goal was to add independent sources where they were missing. The ones the company added now are published books from real publishing houses (so no self-publishing) for the earlier years and newspaper articles for the rather younger history of the company. In only two cases - and after discussion with the community - the company pointed to its company archives as they were not able to verify the information, which was in the article before, based on secondary sources like newspaper articles. Maybe those existed at some point but today they were not able to retrieve these sources. I understand also your concerns when it comes to the tables. So, how about we focus on the history section for now. The facts in the German article are correct and backed by independent sources. We could also leave out these few sentences, where this is not the case (as just described). I would love if you would get involved. Let me emphasize though that I can contribute all the input and sources needed. If you would be willing to check my wordings and the sources - to make sure that they are reliable also from your point of view - that would be fantastic. But let's continue this in January. I will post a summary of our discussion on the talk page and we can continue there. I wish you a great start into the year! Kind regards, Conandcon (talk) 11:17, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy Kalends of January

		Happy New Year!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free and may Janus light your way. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:11, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Ealdgyth, and all the best in 2023 to you, too! Yngvadottir (talk) 23:31, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. 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 ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else 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. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

EW.com

The Entertainemy Weekly agazines in my review editing r all out-of-date. They're all old & hard 2 find now, even online, so citing the physical magazine is unnecessary 47.17.47.199 (talk) 14:58, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Entertainment Weekly update

What if I just add the current publisher of the Entertainment Weekly website? No mention of the print article whatsoever 47.17.47.199 (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Request regarding MDWiki funding info

Hey, Yngvadottir, could I trouble you to direct me towards any locations on Meta, or any other wiki discussing the affiliate, where I can follow-up on the discussion of the funding for MDWiki that you referenced here? I did some very cursory searching the other day when the issue was raised at ANI, but didn't turn up much of substance, so any additional details you can direct me towards would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, Snow Rise, I didn't even go to whatever link(s) on Meta or wherever were provided in the AN/I discussion, so I can't help there. (I did go to MDWiki and as I read more at AN/I about the mirror issue, I checked my own user page over there and wound up putting a disclaimer at the top of it over here, then checking back the next day to make sure the mirror had picked it up.) My attention was drawn to the later development of the thread (the section that was not about the now deleted article) by a section at WO (its title contains Doc James' real name, but I won't go so far as to link), but I didn't and don't see any mention of funding there since the thread on that forum was revived. (And I am not a member of the forum, so can only see public threads. I understand that most of their threads about individual editors are members-only.) Thanks for asking. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Kellie Chauvin

Hello, Yngvadottir,

This is typically not what we would consider an attack page. It's a redirect to an article section where she is mentioned. How do you see this violating BLP? Would you consider taking this to WP:RFD where editors can consider the situation? I don't see an admin acting on this CSD tagging very quickly but that's just a guess from being around CSD categories for a few years. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:56, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Liz, and GeneralNotability, too. It's one of those edge cases where encyclopedic completeness and privacy of non-notable individuals collide; since it had been previously deleted g10 (I presume that was also a redirect), I thought it was worth making my case in the edit summary and seeing whether an admin would agree with me. After seeing this post at the unnameable site, I edited the article on the person's ex-husband to remove occurrences of her former name as much as possible and in so doing removed one piece of supposition on the part of news sites. (I also removed where the person grew up, and of course the gratuitous mention as a notable person at the article on that place.) I didn't examine the history to see whether there was a prior version that avoided her first name, too, or who had inserted what (I found the forum post to be inaccurate regarding who'd created the redirect). If that information was recently added, and not discussed and agreed to on the article talk page and/or the BLP noticeboard, then I think it might merit reconsideration. Knowing the first name makes it trivial to find the former last name in online news coverage; I couldn't entirely avoid its being present in sources the article cites. CNN appears to be unusual in having gone back and edited it out. But the first name is extremely widespread online and there's a much stronger argument for its encyclopedicity, not just on the basis of coverage in sources; I am generally in favor of us naming spouses both as a natural part of a biography and because not doing so unpersons them. But in this case I apparently come down more on the side of minimizing harm and less on the side of complete information than experienced admins; absent other considerations in the edit/discussions history, so be it. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Trivia

Do you realize that you are the only editor ever to receive a formal "thanks" from Jimbo Wales? The more you know.... Randy Kryn (talk) 07:30, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

No, I had no idea :-) Can't figure out how to find out what for. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Some things remain mysterious. A sole "thanks" by the founder, fun Wikipedia trivia. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Feb 15: WikiWednesday Salon in Brooklyn

Feb 15: WikiWednesday @ BPL + on Zoom

WikiWednesday is back in-person, pizza included! You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our WikiWednesday Salon, with in-person at Brooklyn Public Library by Grand Army Plaza, in the Central Library's Info Commons Lab, as well as an online-based participation option. No experience of anything at all is required. All are welcome! We are proud to announce that monthly PIZZA has returned! All attendees are subject to Wikimedia NYC's Code of Conduct. In addition, to participate in person you should be vaccinated and also be sure to respect others' personal space, and we may limit overall attendance size if appropriate. Brooklyn Public Library encourages the wearing of masks when indoors, and especially be mindful of those in your proximity. Wednesday February 15 WikiWednesday @ BPL (RSVP on-wiki). 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm (Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn) Also online via Zoom

(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 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:49, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Civility in enwiki-WMF relations, and binding the WMF

I thought it was better to reply here than try to have a discussion in the case request. While I agree that frustration with the WMF is understandable, and that editors have a right to take issue with the work the WMF does, I also believe that this doesn't justify incivility; we can do this without personally attacking WMF employees as happens far too often. In addition, the WMF has a legal responsibility to protect their employees from a hostile work environment, and that means so long as we allow their employees to be attacked they have a fair justification for not expanding communication with us.

I also think it is possible for us to bind the WMF; we control their largest revenue stream and I believe we should take advantage of that to shift the balance of power back towards the center. We have used the threat of doing so successfully in the past, and the 2022 fundraising banner RfC, and I believe it can be an effective tool in the future.

I don't know exactly how we would do this yet, but my initial thoughts are that the WMF would be limited to a certain number of days each calendar year that they are permitted to run banners within, including test banners. When an issue exists that the community does not have the ability to resolve, such as WP:TCHY, and when efforts to convince the WMF to resolve it have failed, an RfC could be opened proposing that the WMF is issued with an ultimatum - that they must rectify the issue by a given date, or have the number of days that they are permitted to run ads within a given calendar year reduced by a specified amount.

I would also propose including that the normal rules of WP:CONSENSUS do not apply; only a clear consensus, not a rough consensus, would result in the ultimatum being issued.

Pinging Levivich, as I previously mentioned to them the possibility of compelling the WMF to fix TCHY if we cannot convince them to do so; this is how I believe we could do so. BilledMammal (talk) 11:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for considering my points. I see I'm not blocked, and got in shortly before the case request was archived/removed.

I'm a good person to have such a contentious topic raised on their talk page in that I don't have much to lose by being associated with it; but (thanks to the WMF) I limit my edits each month, and I don't have much standing in the community and have no legal, political, or even strategic skills to inform my arguments, all of which make me / this page a bad choice.

That said, here are some thoughts.

1. Incivility / personal attacks don't have fixed definitions or even generally agreed upon boundaries. What's rude and what's an attack are the single thorniest issue in relations between editors, IMO. We come to this project from different generations, different social classes, different educational and work backgrounds, and of course different places in a very big world. Even larger since English is the lingua franca of the internet and many contributors here don't have it as their first language and may be familiar with it only in a limited range of registers (whether government or business, or popular culture). We have editors who are outraged when someone uses the mildest of four-letter words (WMF folks on Meta among them, but they can also often be found at AN/I by searching for the unintentionally ironic use of the term "immature"), editors who fly into a wounded rage when they are referred to as "they" rather than "he", editors who regard txtspk like "u" as prima facie evidence of either NOTHERE or dismissability on grounds of youth ... My personal pet peeve is those who consider only open insults uncivil, and wield snideness instead. The only fair basis for a civility rule in such a disparate working community is respect.
2. The core of the issue is lack of respect for the communities on the part of the WMF. Setting aside for the moment the whole issue of whether the organization thinks of itself as above us—it very much does, we are by no means treated as equal partners, while in most respects we should be above the WMF, the exceptions being the anti-government overreach / social justice pressure and litigation roles it's decided to take on—the WMF as a whole and its employees individually tend to be snooty about being professionals. With respect to the software, this is completely inappropriate. The software—and their jobs—exists to facilitate what we do. If it isn't working for editors and readers, it's inadequate, and for the WMF to override what readers and editors say because they are paid is the wrong way round. If they can't grasp that, the complaints need to be escalated until we are at least talking to someone with expertise in public relations. It's unfortunate that programmers whose work has been demonstrated to be poor wind up reading what users think of their work. Especially since, as I previously stated, they probably did exactly what their managers wanted. But they need to realize that their work is being evaluated not only by schoolkids but by PhDs, programmers in better run organizations, government functionaries and business people from around the world, and who knows what-all intimidating characters. If they can't handle that aspect of what we do here and our (entirely justified!) maintenance of the option of anonymity, then they shouldn't be participating here. I recognize that the fault lies with their bosses for disrespecting us; every decision to fix something other than what's badly broken, every huffy statement to the effect that they know best, and yes, every reference to the WMF owning the servers demonstrates their contempt for us and what we do. But we have to stop this; it's corrosive to the project, and I care far, far more about a reader not being able to use the site, or an editor giving up because they can't figure out how to log in (or because they get blocked and have no idea why because they're using a mobile app that exemplifies the term of art in user interface design, "shite"). After all, the WMF's employees are getting paid; and with their mad skillz they can presumably find a job elsewhere where the users have to shut up and take what they're given. The WMF has become a colossal impediment to a unique public good. The rubber meets the road with the software.
3. The fundraising banners are a separate issue. I am opposed to the WMF's fundraising on a much more basic level. The aftermath of the RfC on their last set of banners (the primary focus of which was misleading claims in the ad text, with the size of the things as a secondary focus) was that they made some promises regarding wording and size, and then the fundraising team ran ads that took up 2 screens on mobile, with no option to close except below the ad. But I don't think we should try to use the fundraising banners as a point of pressure to get them to listen to us about software. These are different teams within the WMF, and the content and format of the ads is an unrelated affront. Moreover, we shouldn't be bargaining with the WMF (or holding their moneymaking hostage; money is possibly the most important thing to the WMF) over what we have the right to expect: that they view their software development as a service to the projects and follow community priorities on it. Yoking the two together would be wrong, in my view.

... But as I said, strategy is among the areas where I don't have skills. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:06, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree with your first two points; civility is a difficult problem, and we do a bad job of it, while the WMF does not treat us as the equals they should treat us as.

For your third point, I understand what you are saying - we should be able to work with the WMF without having to compel them to do so - but I don't see a solution to make that happen. As far as I can see the only effective point of pressure we have is fundraising, and while they are different teams fundraising is sufficiently important to the entire organization that it can result in the technology team being compelled to comply.

I am also disappointed to hear that they didn't comply with the spirit of the banner RfC; I went inactive after that RfC and was hopeful that they would comply properly.

Thank you for you extended response; I will think on it further as I continue to consider options for this. I suspect the WMF might reject community consensus on Vector2022, which may bring things to a head. BilledMammal (talk) 02:54, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for reading all that! You may well be right about Realpolitik as well as about the potential for shitfannery. But before your response, I'd thought again and realized I just can't personally endorse tying the fundraising banners to the WMF following our guidance on the software. In my view, we shouldn't be acquiescing to either their running ads that mislead the readership into thinking the sites lack money, or their placing their own notions of software "improvement" above what the users (not just contributors, but readers) say is needed. I believe that using one to bargain about the other constitutes such implicit acquiescence. It feels wrong to me, sorry. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:13, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I understand, although I don't believe we need to acquiesce to either; we can say "you can only run ethical ads" and "you can only run ads if you are actually using the money you raise to provide us with the support we need". BilledMammal (talk) 18:26, 26 February 2023 (UTC)