This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hello and Happy New Year!
Welcome to the 2019 WikiCup, the competition begins today. If you have already joined, your submission page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and we will set up your submissions page. One important rule to remember is that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2019, and which you have nominated this year, is eligible for points in the competition, the judges will be checking! Any questions should be directed to one of the judges, or left on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup. 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 make it 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 · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 11:14, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Rex Lassalle 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/Rex Lassalle 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. Rathfelder ( talk) 19:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, without wishing to derail that conversation any further (because this isn't really relevant to it), there are a number of globally blocked editors who have been sanctioned for opinions expressed off wiki - an example would be some who have spoken or run websites that support child pornography or paedophilia. Black Kite (talk) 12:36, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
Dear Guettarda,
since you're my favourite admin, please allow me to ask you a question about the local system of rules: How does en.WP handle paid editing in form of copmpany accounts writing articles? I'm a mentor at de.WP and have a mentee who's working for the PR department of a company and has rewritten the article about her company. She did good work, keeping the NPOV and providing good, notable sources. In es.WP she wouldn't have had a chance as commercial authors get blocked and all their edits are reverted. What's the policy in en.WP? If that topic is beyond your scope, where could I look that up?
Thanks and kind regards,
Grueslayer 21:29, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Not too late, I hope ;) -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:20, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
[Deleted, per WP:BLP - Guettarda ( talk)-- Apemonkey1 ( talk) 04:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
What lawsuit are you referring to? So what was wrong with the last item about improving the article? (I removed the part you complained about before.) Who do you say I accused of committing a crime? As I did not! (You should really read things properly before replying so you dont make such mistakes in future!) So its not wrong to accuse a person of rape without any evidence! ah ok thanks for that info! Bet if I did that to you tho, it would be wrong right?-- Apemonkey1 ( talk) 05:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Who do you say I accused of committing a crime? As I did not!You accused him of committing slander, which is a crime. Even if it wasn't, it's an accusation of wrongdoing, so without supporting sources it's a violation of the WP:BLP policy. You also repeated the allegations he made, which is also a problem because that spreads the accusation far wider than a blog post ever would (even talk pages on Wikipedia get a whole lot of traffic).
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).
Interface administrator changes
On 7 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Sabinaria, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that when taxonomist Gloria Galeano first saw pictures of the newly discovered Sabinaria magnifica she described it as "the most beautiful of all Colombian palms"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Sabinaria. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Sabinaria), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Amakuru ( talk · contribs) 00:02, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you have signed up to compete in this year's WikiCup! There are about 2 weeks left before the first round ends – if you haven't yet made your first submission, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 07:33, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Sabinaria you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 10:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The article Sabinaria you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Sabinaria for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 14:21, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The article Sabinaria you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Sabinaria for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 08:41, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.
Our top scorers in Round 1 were:
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!
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 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).
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Hello! Your submission of Main Ridge, Tobago at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Sounder Bruce 06:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
On 21 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Main Ridge, Tobago, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Tobago's Main Ridge is one of the oldest protected areas in the world set aside for conservation, having been created by the British Parliament in 1776? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Main Ridge, Tobago. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Main Ridge, Tobago), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:03, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I saw your comment at [1], and to a degree it is a moving statement. I understand that people and links opposed to your existence are worrisome. But to me, it seems like racists have been very solidly defeated, and censorship is a counterproductive practice that risks bringing them back from the dead. By contrast, some of us are more prone to notice other things that are still ongoing right now [2] [3]. Note the map in that article. There are more than a billion people who have copies of what you may or may not dare to choose to call hate propaganda that inspires things like that. The authorities of the world do not put people in jail for ten years for possessing it, or censor links to it, and with that I also agree, in the same narrow sense as you accepted my position at ANI. I think that where any wrong belief is concerned, the best progress can be made by leaving it out in the open for all to see and think about, in the hope that human beings are capable, by thought and introspection, of choosing what is right above what is wrong. If I am confident in the ability of people to overcome error by reason, then I must attribute the tenacity of wrong beliefs throughout the world to other methods which prohibit the application of reason. Wnt ( talk) 09:54, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
On 4 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Coccothrinax jimenezii, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Coccothrinax jimenezii, a palm tree native to the island of Hispaniola, was listed as a critically endangered species within two years of its formal description? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Coccothrinax jimenezii. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Coccothrinax jimenezii), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi there! Just as a heads-up, I noticed you granted +accountcreator to Jami430 the other day - I've now revoked that as Jami430 is not active at WP:ACC, but I've also granted them +eventcoordinator, which grants similar rights to +accountcreator. This does not include the ability to override AntiSpoof or the title blacklist, and also includes the ability to grant +confirmed to users. Cheers! stwalkerster ( talk) 14:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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On 9 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Coccothrinax jamaicensis, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that while the fan palm Coccothrinax jamaicensis is the only Coccothrinax species native to Jamaica, the neighbouring island of Cuba has 39 native species? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Coccothrinax jamaicensis. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Coccothrinax jamaicensis), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
On 12 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article History of Tobago, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/History of Tobago. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, History of Tobago), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Materialscientist ( talk) 00:23, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how
your edit here doesn't violate
WP:REFACTOR. Thewolfchild's comment was not "off-topic, uncivil, unclear, or otherwise distracting material"
and (to my knowledge) we don't require medical certification for talk page conversations. Maybe you overstepped and you should just revert yourself.
Chris Troutman (
talk) 13:16, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Main Ridge, Tobago you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ceranthor -- Ceranthor ( talk) 19:42, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Stella Abidh at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah ( talk) 23:31, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you are a current participant in round 2 of this year's WikiCup! There are only a few days until the second round ends – if you haven't made you first submission for this round yet, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 05:00, 25 April 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
Hi, regarding what you wrote to me about my unsourced additions to Geography of Trinidad and Tobago, I based them a lot upon this file: "File:Koppen-Geiger Map Caribbean present.svg". I figured it is from Wikimedia, and when I looked at the summary and how many authors had worked on it, and also the fact that it was broken down to a 1-km resolution, it seemed very reliable. When I looked at the part of the map that depicted Trinidad and Tobago it was essentially 50%-50% tropical rainforest and tropical monsoon climates, with isolated pockets of tropical savanna, and that's where I drew those conclusions from. How should I properly reference that? I am curious, I want to contribute to Wikipedia, but do so in a reliable way.
When it comes to my addition of the climate table in the San Fernando article, I truly did look for more reliable data, but there was very little to find about the town, which makes sense since it is not very big. I did find a few more, but none seemed more reliable than the next. One of them was Meteoblue, but in my past experience with that website they always severely understate the precipitation levels of most tropical places at least, and almost all other sources point to a much wetter climate than their website would suggest. Anyways, with Climate-data.org, I just figured the data seemed in line with other nearby towns that data existed on, and also the file I previously mentioned.
Thanks in advance for your help. Timothy2b ( talk) 17:49, 26 April 2019 (CET)
As for the Climate additions to the TT and Geography of TT, I revisited the map I looked at, and I was mistaken. I mistook the color for tropical monsoon climate for grey, so I was incorrect. I apologize. I removed everything I wrote on both those articles. Timothy2b ( talk) 22:47, 28 April 2019 (CET)
I appreciate your advice. I hope I didn't upset the student. Logophile59 ( talk) 20:48, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
On 30 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Stella Abidh, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Stella Abidh is believed to be the first Indo-Trinidadian woman to become a medical doctor? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Stella Abidh. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Stella Abidh), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:02, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
The article Main Ridge, Tobago you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Main Ridge, Tobago for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ceranthor -- Ceranthor ( talk) 13:41, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:
Other notable performances were put in by Barkeep49 with six GAs, Ceranthor, Lee Vilenski, and Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.
So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.
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) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk) MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
@ Guettarda: a very short message to say hello. Again! Great speaking to you earlier. MassiveEartha ( talk) 12:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrators
must secure their accounts
The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.
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This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
For the Arbitration Committee, - Cameron11598 21:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).
the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so
will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
Sturgeon nominated by
Atsme, reviewed by
Chiswick Chap |
Cretoxyrhina nominated by
Macrophyseter |
Tree of Life editors are making a respectable showing in this year's WikiCup, with three regular editors advancing to the third round. Overall winner from 2016, Casliber, topped the scoreboard in points for round 2, getting a nice bonus for bringing Black mamba to FA. Enwebb continues to favor things remotely related to bats, bringing Stellaluna to GA. Plants editor Guettarda also advanced to round 3 with several plant-related DYKs.
A March 2019 paper in PLOS Biology found that Wikipedia page views vary seasonally for species. With a dataset of 31,751 articles about species, the authors found that roughly a quarter of all articles had significant seasonal variations in page views on at least one language version of Wikipedia. They examined 245 language versions. Page views also peaked with cultural events, such as views of the Great white shark article during Shark Week or Turkey during Thanksgiving.
* ... that
Dippy is the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world? (1 April)
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 16:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
On 20 May 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ismith Khan, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that novelist Ismith Khan's relative obscurity may reflect the fact that he was not based in London, the "literary capital" of the English Caribbean? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ismith Khan. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Ismith Khan), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
"It is measured as the mean of all temperatures above freezing, with all temperatures below freezing and above 30 °C adjusted to 0 °C"
This assertion about biotemperature is wrong.
"Mean of all temperatures above freezing" means that temperatures below freezing aren't taken into account in the arithmetic mean whereas it is the case in the calculation of the biotemperature.
Imagine that, by simplification, the annual biotemperature is estimated as the mean of mean monthly temperatures. Let's say that 2 months have negative mean temperatures and 10 months have positive mean temperatures. The two negative temperatures will be adjusted to 0°C and the biotemperature will be equal to the sum of the 10 positive temperatures divided not by 10 as "Mean of all temperatures above freezing" suggests but by 12 with 12 being the number of all the monthly temperatures including the 2 negative monthly temperatures.
Biotemperature is the arithmetic "mean of all the temperatures (adjusted to °C or not)" and not the arithmetic "mean of all temperatures above freezing".
This is why I reverted your edit. Carlo Colussi ( talk) 19:41, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
I still think that originally the phrase "Mean of all temperatures above freezing" was wrong because it strongly suggests that the denominator enumerates only the strictly positive and under 30°C temperatures and not, as it shall, all the temperatures.
I don't think that people are stupid or ignorant but I think that Wikipedia shall make the reader understand as much as possible and that sentence was "clearly" "unclear". If someone has never heard of biotemperature it is very important to make him understand how to estimate it and the original phrase couldn't let it at all. This is why I gave you an example to make clear that the mean applied to all temperatures, even those corrected. I still think this is possibly the most important thing to say in this article : to explain the difference between temperature and biotemperature. An article in Wikipedia is supposed to bring new knowledge but it wasn't the case with this sentence which was completely misleading.-- Carlo Colussi ( talk) 11:38, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
Cretoxyrhina by
Macrophyseter |
Spinophorosaurus by
FunkMonk/
Jens Lallensack |
On 23 May, user Prometheus720 created a talk page post, "Revamp of Wikiproject Biology--Who is In?". In the days since, WP:BIOL has been bustling with activity, with over a dozen editors weighing in on this discussion, as well as several others that have subsequently spawned. An undercurrent of thought is that WP:BIOL has too many subprojects, preventing editors from easily interacting and stopping a "critical mass" of collaboration and engagement. Many mergers and consolidations of subprojects have been tentatively listed, with a consolidation of WikiProjects Genetics + Molecular and Cell Biology + Computational Biology + Biophysics currently in discussion. Other ideas being aired include updating old participants lists, redesigning project pages to make them more user-friendly, and clearly identifying long- and short-term goals.
Editors FunkMonk and Jens Lallensack had a very fruitful month, collaborating to bring two dinosaur articles to GA and then nominating them both for FA. They graciously decided to answer some questions for the first ToL Editor Spotlight, giving insight to their successful collaborations, explaining why you should collaborate with them, and also sharing some tidbits about their lives off-Wikipedia.
1) Enwebb: How long have you two been collaborating on articles?
2) Enwebb: Why dinosaurs?
3) Enwebb: Why should other editors join you in writing articles related to paleontology? Are you looking to attract new editors, or draw in experienced editors from other areas of Wikipedia?
4) Enwebb: Between the two of you, you have over 300 GA reviews. FunkMonk, you have over 250 of those. What keeps you coming back to review more articles?
5) Enwebb: What are your editing preferences? Any scripts or gadgets you find invaluable?
6) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-wiki?
Get in touch with these editors regarding collaboration at WikiProject Dinosaurs!
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Sent by DannyS712 ( talk) using MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:44, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you are a current participant in round 3 of this year's WikiCup! There are just over 2 weeks until the third round ends – if you haven't made you first submission for this round yet, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 19:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
The Brilliant Insight Barnstar | |
Thank you for this, [4], Guettarda, it's the most insightful thing I've read in recent memory, and it's also remarkably simple. starship .paint ( talk) 06:44, 30 June 2019 (UTC) |
I have just read at User talk:Katherine (WMF) the message originally written by you at Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram in this edit, but copied to Katherine's talk page by Seraphimblade. It says things which for years I have been convinced are obviously true, but which in my experience most people don't see at all. Thanks for attempting to spread an understanding of those important points. (Whether the attempt succeeds or not is another matter.) JamesBWatson ( talk) 13:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).
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The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 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, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! 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 ( talk). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Masked booby by
Casliber and
Aa77zz, reviewed by
Jens Lallensack |
Masked booby by
Casliber |
Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
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List of felids by
PresN |
Letter-winged kite by
Casliber |
The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by
Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an
extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
Treated me well -- life, that is. Thank you for the note you left on my page. I just happened to look today and was really touched by some of the messages people have left over the years, including yours. Has it really been that long? I guess it has. The reason I even bothered to check was the reporting in the last few days on 8chan and its split from 4chan. It reminded me of the circumstances that drove me from this place. No use in rehashing all that, you certainly know it well. But the parallels are stark. That aside, it was delightful to hear from you, and to see those expressions of love and kindness that I could never allow myself to see because of how painful that whole ordeal became. Take good care, you and everyone else reading this. · Ka t efan0 (scribble) 20:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article History of Tobago you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 15:21, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Seven years! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 05:31, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Dear Guettarda/Archive22,
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.
Best regards, Chris Troutman ( talk) 13:40, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Letter-winged kite by
Casliber |
Kosmoceratops by
FunkMonk |
Guest column by Thomas Shafee ( Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric ( this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 15:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.
Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.
As we start round 5, 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. 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 (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).
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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).
Greetings!
After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which have been dedicated to creating and improving content that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. Join us in this global edit-a-thon, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).-- Jamie Tubers ( talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Kosmoceratops by
FunkMonk |
Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
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This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 22:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
Too hard to edit a conversation on my iPad. I was puzzled at first but MOS:LISTGAP's examples are discussions. I admit I wasn't aware of this, and I'm guessing were typical of most editors. Doug Weller talk 20:23, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi there. You reverted a name change and wanted to discuss. Sure! I left a discussion at the talk page, but no discussion! You say "that's not how it works", wellll... I go to the page explaining how to change a name and it says if you don't expect any controversy go ahead -which I did, as I didn't expect any... besides you reverting or deleting stuff, the article has basically stayed the same since it was written back in 2008 or so. To the point, none of the sources establish that this terminology exists outside of wikipedia. The sources used are about increasing biodiversity on farms. Had that been apparent from the get-go I might have left more in the article under the new heading. The article is basically inventing jargonism based on a confused or idiosyncratic understanding of agroecology. The title doesn't even make sense: "restoration of the study of the interactions of organisms with the environment of an agricultural setting". I found another article titled " Agricultural biodiversity", very similar to my name, but that is actually about crop diversity. Better that get renamed/merged as well! Leo Breman ( talk) 21:05, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden ( submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:
All those who reached the final will win awards. 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. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.
We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. 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 2020 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 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
Meinhard Michael Moser by
J Milburn |
King brown snake by
Casliber |
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: Did You Know (DYK)What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life ( 5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Hello!
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.
Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.
The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.
Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
The file File:SanFdoTT.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
unused, low-res, no obvious use
While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}}
notice, but please explain why in your
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Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated files}}
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deletion processes exist. In particular, the
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This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot ( talk) 01:01, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your intervention. The response was not encouraging :(. I don't know your coordinates, but happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate. -- JBL ( talk) 12:41, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).
Interface administrator changes
will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.
King brown snake by
Casliber |
News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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The article History of Tobago you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:History of Tobago for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 02:02, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Have a WikiChristmas and a PediaNewYear | |
Be well. Keep well. Have a lovely Christmas. SilkTork ( talk) 17:41, 23 December 2019 (UTC) |
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)
Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
Cactus wren by
CaptainEek |
News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).
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the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpretedrather than
reasonably construed.
The article History of Tobago you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:History of Tobago for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 05:01, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).
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wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.
that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
Megarachne by
Ichthyovenator |
Wolf by
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News at a Glance |
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Vital Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list. Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
· Abiogenesis · Death · Cell · Human evolution · Organism · Zoology · Cattle · Dog · Reptile · Flower · Nut · Seed · Algae · Eukaryote · Biodiversity · Extinction · Photosynthesis
· Sexual dimorphism · Feather · Fur · Hair · Gill · Plant anatomy · Plant morphology · Berry · Leaf · Root · Stoma · Shrub · Plant stem · Bark · Trunk · Epidermis · Ground tissue · Meristem · Vascular tissue · Vascular cambium · Hypha · Mycelium |
January DYKs |
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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:
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Vanamonde ( talk) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
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)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
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must notundo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than
should not.
Segnosaurus by
FunkMonk |
Danuvius guggenmosi by
Dunkleosteus77 |
News at a Glance |
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The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January. While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day. With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed. Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines." |
February DYKs |
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
I've suggested a possible compromise between you and Jweiss11 on the talk page of the race and intelligence article, so I'd like to know whether this proposal is acceptable to both of you. 2600:1004:B14B:BF17:DD28:947E:9154:ADCF ( talk) 23:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Bactris jamaicana at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Harrias talk 17:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
On 24 March 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Bactris jamaicana, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in 1725 Hans Sloane described a plant he called Prickly-Pole as the Jamaican tree species that was "the most fit to make Rods and Scowrers for Guns"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Bactris jamaicana. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Bactris jamaicana), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
--valereee ( talk) 00:03, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
I have no reason other than previous formats on other articles. Please feel free to change them if needed. That is the only intention, so I apologize if that has been a problem. Red Director ( talk) 02:21, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
I have no reason other than previous formats on other article- What other articles do you mean? We shouldn't be referring to the country as "Trinidad" unless it's pre-1889. And it's a big NPOV failure to push a "Trinidadian" identity at the expense of a Trinidad and Tobago identity. It isn't ok to push a separatist political agenda. Guettarda ( talk) 17:07, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
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Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
Argentinosaurus by
Slate Weasel and
Jens Lallensack |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by
Britishfinance |
News at a glance |
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A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. -- Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
On 6 April 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Desmoncus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that most species in the palm genus Desmoncus climb using grappling hook–like structures called acanthopylls? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Desmoncus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Desmoncus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:19, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
On 9 April 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article National Union of Freedom Fighters, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the National Union of Freedom Fighters in Trinidad and Tobago was the only group to sustain a guerrilla insurgency in the modern English-speaking Caribbean over an extended period of time? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/National Union of Freedom Fighters. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, National Union of Freedom Fighters), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:02, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
The National Union of Freedom Fighters is a very interesting read. Thank you for this contribution to our collective knowledge about the long struggle of the Caribbean people to be independent.-- Maleschreiber ( talk) 07:44, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Guettarda. As I said in the thread I opened in Portal talk:Biology, now each article has its own Wikidata item. So I'll leave them as they are. I'll delete the whole thread as per what you said in the page: This is for discussions about the Portal (which few people care about). Thank you for your intervention, and sorry for the inconvenience. Kintaro ( talk) 18:57, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Hey, sorry about the edit in the stats section. I had already started my edit before you put the message up so I didn't see it! Rcul4u998 ( talk) 20:10, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hello and Happy New Year!
Welcome to the 2019 WikiCup, the competition begins today. If you have already joined, your submission page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and we will set up your submissions page. One important rule to remember is that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2019, and which you have nominated this year, is eligible for points in the competition, the judges will be checking! Any questions should be directed to one of the judges, or left on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup. 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 make it 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 · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 11:14, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Rex Lassalle 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/Rex Lassalle 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. Rathfelder ( talk) 19:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi, without wishing to derail that conversation any further (because this isn't really relevant to it), there are a number of globally blocked editors who have been sanctioned for opinions expressed off wiki - an example would be some who have spoken or run websites that support child pornography or paedophilia. Black Kite (talk) 12:36, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
Dear Guettarda,
since you're my favourite admin, please allow me to ask you a question about the local system of rules: How does en.WP handle paid editing in form of copmpany accounts writing articles? I'm a mentor at de.WP and have a mentee who's working for the PR department of a company and has rewritten the article about her company. She did good work, keeping the NPOV and providing good, notable sources. In es.WP she wouldn't have had a chance as commercial authors get blocked and all their edits are reverted. What's the policy in en.WP? If that topic is beyond your scope, where could I look that up?
Thanks and kind regards,
Grueslayer 21:29, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Not too late, I hope ;) -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:20, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
[Deleted, per WP:BLP - Guettarda ( talk)-- Apemonkey1 ( talk) 04:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
What lawsuit are you referring to? So what was wrong with the last item about improving the article? (I removed the part you complained about before.) Who do you say I accused of committing a crime? As I did not! (You should really read things properly before replying so you dont make such mistakes in future!) So its not wrong to accuse a person of rape without any evidence! ah ok thanks for that info! Bet if I did that to you tho, it would be wrong right?-- Apemonkey1 ( talk) 05:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Who do you say I accused of committing a crime? As I did not!You accused him of committing slander, which is a crime. Even if it wasn't, it's an accusation of wrongdoing, so without supporting sources it's a violation of the WP:BLP policy. You also repeated the allegations he made, which is also a problem because that spreads the accusation far wider than a blog post ever would (even talk pages on Wikipedia get a whole lot of traffic).
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).
Interface administrator changes
On 7 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Sabinaria, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that when taxonomist Gloria Galeano first saw pictures of the newly discovered Sabinaria magnifica she described it as "the most beautiful of all Colombian palms"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Sabinaria. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Sabinaria), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Amakuru ( talk · contribs) 00:02, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you have signed up to compete in this year's WikiCup! There are about 2 weeks left before the first round ends – if you haven't yet made your first submission, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 07:33, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Sabinaria you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 10:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The article Sabinaria you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Sabinaria for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 14:21, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The article Sabinaria you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Sabinaria for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Lee Vilenski -- Lee Vilenski ( talk) 08:41, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.
Our top scorers in Round 1 were:
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!
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 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).
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Hello! Your submission of Main Ridge, Tobago at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Sounder Bruce 06:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
On 21 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Main Ridge, Tobago, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Tobago's Main Ridge is one of the oldest protected areas in the world set aside for conservation, having been created by the British Parliament in 1776? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Main Ridge, Tobago. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Main Ridge, Tobago), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:03, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
I saw your comment at [1], and to a degree it is a moving statement. I understand that people and links opposed to your existence are worrisome. But to me, it seems like racists have been very solidly defeated, and censorship is a counterproductive practice that risks bringing them back from the dead. By contrast, some of us are more prone to notice other things that are still ongoing right now [2] [3]. Note the map in that article. There are more than a billion people who have copies of what you may or may not dare to choose to call hate propaganda that inspires things like that. The authorities of the world do not put people in jail for ten years for possessing it, or censor links to it, and with that I also agree, in the same narrow sense as you accepted my position at ANI. I think that where any wrong belief is concerned, the best progress can be made by leaving it out in the open for all to see and think about, in the hope that human beings are capable, by thought and introspection, of choosing what is right above what is wrong. If I am confident in the ability of people to overcome error by reason, then I must attribute the tenacity of wrong beliefs throughout the world to other methods which prohibit the application of reason. Wnt ( talk) 09:54, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
On 4 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Coccothrinax jimenezii, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Coccothrinax jimenezii, a palm tree native to the island of Hispaniola, was listed as a critically endangered species within two years of its formal description? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Coccothrinax jimenezii. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Coccothrinax jimenezii), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi there! Just as a heads-up, I noticed you granted +accountcreator to Jami430 the other day - I've now revoked that as Jami430 is not active at WP:ACC, but I've also granted them +eventcoordinator, which grants similar rights to +accountcreator. This does not include the ability to override AntiSpoof or the title blacklist, and also includes the ability to grant +confirmed to users. Cheers! stwalkerster ( talk) 14:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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On 9 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Coccothrinax jamaicensis, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that while the fan palm Coccothrinax jamaicensis is the only Coccothrinax species native to Jamaica, the neighbouring island of Cuba has 39 native species? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Coccothrinax jamaicensis. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Coccothrinax jamaicensis), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
On 12 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article History of Tobago, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/History of Tobago. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, History of Tobago), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Materialscientist ( talk) 00:23, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how
your edit here doesn't violate
WP:REFACTOR. Thewolfchild's comment was not "off-topic, uncivil, unclear, or otherwise distracting material"
and (to my knowledge) we don't require medical certification for talk page conversations. Maybe you overstepped and you should just revert yourself.
Chris Troutman (
talk) 13:16, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Main Ridge, Tobago you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ceranthor -- Ceranthor ( talk) 19:42, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Stella Abidh at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah ( talk) 23:31, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you are a current participant in round 2 of this year's WikiCup! There are only a few days until the second round ends – if you haven't made you first submission for this round yet, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 05:00, 25 April 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
Hi, regarding what you wrote to me about my unsourced additions to Geography of Trinidad and Tobago, I based them a lot upon this file: "File:Koppen-Geiger Map Caribbean present.svg". I figured it is from Wikimedia, and when I looked at the summary and how many authors had worked on it, and also the fact that it was broken down to a 1-km resolution, it seemed very reliable. When I looked at the part of the map that depicted Trinidad and Tobago it was essentially 50%-50% tropical rainforest and tropical monsoon climates, with isolated pockets of tropical savanna, and that's where I drew those conclusions from. How should I properly reference that? I am curious, I want to contribute to Wikipedia, but do so in a reliable way.
When it comes to my addition of the climate table in the San Fernando article, I truly did look for more reliable data, but there was very little to find about the town, which makes sense since it is not very big. I did find a few more, but none seemed more reliable than the next. One of them was Meteoblue, but in my past experience with that website they always severely understate the precipitation levels of most tropical places at least, and almost all other sources point to a much wetter climate than their website would suggest. Anyways, with Climate-data.org, I just figured the data seemed in line with other nearby towns that data existed on, and also the file I previously mentioned.
Thanks in advance for your help. Timothy2b ( talk) 17:49, 26 April 2019 (CET)
As for the Climate additions to the TT and Geography of TT, I revisited the map I looked at, and I was mistaken. I mistook the color for tropical monsoon climate for grey, so I was incorrect. I apologize. I removed everything I wrote on both those articles. Timothy2b ( talk) 22:47, 28 April 2019 (CET)
I appreciate your advice. I hope I didn't upset the student. Logophile59 ( talk) 20:48, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
On 30 April 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Stella Abidh, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Stella Abidh is believed to be the first Indo-Trinidadian woman to become a medical doctor? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Stella Abidh. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Stella Abidh), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:02, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
The article Main Ridge, Tobago you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Main Ridge, Tobago for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ceranthor -- Ceranthor ( talk) 13:41, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:
Other notable performances were put in by Barkeep49 with six GAs, Ceranthor, Lee Vilenski, and Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.
So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.
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) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk) MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
@ Guettarda: a very short message to say hello. Again! Great speaking to you earlier. MassiveEartha ( talk) 12:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Administrators
must secure their accounts
The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.
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This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
For the Arbitration Committee, - Cameron11598 21:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).
the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so
will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
Sturgeon nominated by
Atsme, reviewed by
Chiswick Chap |
Cretoxyrhina nominated by
Macrophyseter |
Tree of Life editors are making a respectable showing in this year's WikiCup, with three regular editors advancing to the third round. Overall winner from 2016, Casliber, topped the scoreboard in points for round 2, getting a nice bonus for bringing Black mamba to FA. Enwebb continues to favor things remotely related to bats, bringing Stellaluna to GA. Plants editor Guettarda also advanced to round 3 with several plant-related DYKs.
A March 2019 paper in PLOS Biology found that Wikipedia page views vary seasonally for species. With a dataset of 31,751 articles about species, the authors found that roughly a quarter of all articles had significant seasonal variations in page views on at least one language version of Wikipedia. They examined 245 language versions. Page views also peaked with cultural events, such as views of the Great white shark article during Shark Week or Turkey during Thanksgiving.
* ... that
Dippy is the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world? (1 April)
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MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 16:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
On 20 May 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ismith Khan, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that novelist Ismith Khan's relative obscurity may reflect the fact that he was not based in London, the "literary capital" of the English Caribbean? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ismith Khan. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Ismith Khan), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru ( talk) 00:01, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
"It is measured as the mean of all temperatures above freezing, with all temperatures below freezing and above 30 °C adjusted to 0 °C"
This assertion about biotemperature is wrong.
"Mean of all temperatures above freezing" means that temperatures below freezing aren't taken into account in the arithmetic mean whereas it is the case in the calculation of the biotemperature.
Imagine that, by simplification, the annual biotemperature is estimated as the mean of mean monthly temperatures. Let's say that 2 months have negative mean temperatures and 10 months have positive mean temperatures. The two negative temperatures will be adjusted to 0°C and the biotemperature will be equal to the sum of the 10 positive temperatures divided not by 10 as "Mean of all temperatures above freezing" suggests but by 12 with 12 being the number of all the monthly temperatures including the 2 negative monthly temperatures.
Biotemperature is the arithmetic "mean of all the temperatures (adjusted to °C or not)" and not the arithmetic "mean of all temperatures above freezing".
This is why I reverted your edit. Carlo Colussi ( talk) 19:41, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
I still think that originally the phrase "Mean of all temperatures above freezing" was wrong because it strongly suggests that the denominator enumerates only the strictly positive and under 30°C temperatures and not, as it shall, all the temperatures.
I don't think that people are stupid or ignorant but I think that Wikipedia shall make the reader understand as much as possible and that sentence was "clearly" "unclear". If someone has never heard of biotemperature it is very important to make him understand how to estimate it and the original phrase couldn't let it at all. This is why I gave you an example to make clear that the mean applied to all temperatures, even those corrected. I still think this is possibly the most important thing to say in this article : to explain the difference between temperature and biotemperature. An article in Wikipedia is supposed to bring new knowledge but it wasn't the case with this sentence which was completely misleading.-- Carlo Colussi ( talk) 11:38, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
Cretoxyrhina by
Macrophyseter |
Spinophorosaurus by
FunkMonk/
Jens Lallensack |
On 23 May, user Prometheus720 created a talk page post, "Revamp of Wikiproject Biology--Who is In?". In the days since, WP:BIOL has been bustling with activity, with over a dozen editors weighing in on this discussion, as well as several others that have subsequently spawned. An undercurrent of thought is that WP:BIOL has too many subprojects, preventing editors from easily interacting and stopping a "critical mass" of collaboration and engagement. Many mergers and consolidations of subprojects have been tentatively listed, with a consolidation of WikiProjects Genetics + Molecular and Cell Biology + Computational Biology + Biophysics currently in discussion. Other ideas being aired include updating old participants lists, redesigning project pages to make them more user-friendly, and clearly identifying long- and short-term goals.
Editors FunkMonk and Jens Lallensack had a very fruitful month, collaborating to bring two dinosaur articles to GA and then nominating them both for FA. They graciously decided to answer some questions for the first ToL Editor Spotlight, giving insight to their successful collaborations, explaining why you should collaborate with them, and also sharing some tidbits about their lives off-Wikipedia.
1) Enwebb: How long have you two been collaborating on articles?
2) Enwebb: Why dinosaurs?
3) Enwebb: Why should other editors join you in writing articles related to paleontology? Are you looking to attract new editors, or draw in experienced editors from other areas of Wikipedia?
4) Enwebb: Between the two of you, you have over 300 GA reviews. FunkMonk, you have over 250 of those. What keeps you coming back to review more articles?
5) Enwebb: What are your editing preferences? Any scripts or gadgets you find invaluable?
6) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-wiki?
Get in touch with these editors regarding collaboration at WikiProject Dinosaurs!
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Sent by DannyS712 ( talk) using MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:44, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).
Hi. I'm DannyS712 ( talk), and I just wanted to remind you that you are a current participant in round 3 of this year's WikiCup! There are just over 2 weeks until the third round ends – if you haven't made you first submission for this round yet, there is still time to start; if you have already started, keep up the good work. See your submissions page: here. Good luck!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 19:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
The Brilliant Insight Barnstar | |
Thank you for this, [4], Guettarda, it's the most insightful thing I've read in recent memory, and it's also remarkably simple. starship .paint ( talk) 06:44, 30 June 2019 (UTC) |
I have just read at User talk:Katherine (WMF) the message originally written by you at Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram in this edit, but copied to Katherine's talk page by Seraphimblade. It says things which for years I have been convinced are obviously true, but which in my experience most people don't see at all. Thanks for attempting to spread an understanding of those important points. (Whether the attempt succeeds or not is another matter.) JamesBWatson ( talk) 13:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).
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The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 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, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! 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 ( talk). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Masked booby by
Casliber and
Aa77zz, reviewed by
Jens Lallensack |
Masked booby by
Casliber |
Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
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sent by
ZLEA via
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk) 20:29, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
List of felids by
PresN |
Letter-winged kite by
Casliber |
The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by
Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an
extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
Treated me well -- life, that is. Thank you for the note you left on my page. I just happened to look today and was really touched by some of the messages people have left over the years, including yours. Has it really been that long? I guess it has. The reason I even bothered to check was the reporting in the last few days on 8chan and its split from 4chan. It reminded me of the circumstances that drove me from this place. No use in rehashing all that, you certainly know it well. But the parallels are stark. That aside, it was delightful to hear from you, and to see those expressions of love and kindness that I could never allow myself to see because of how painful that whole ordeal became. Take good care, you and everyone else reading this. · Ka t efan0 (scribble) 20:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article History of Tobago you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 15:21, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Seven years! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 05:31, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Dear Guettarda/Archive22,
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.
Best regards, Chris Troutman ( talk) 13:40, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Letter-winged kite by
Casliber |
Kosmoceratops by
FunkMonk |
Guest column by Thomas Shafee ( Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric ( this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 15:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.
Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.
As we start round 5, 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. 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 (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).
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. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).
Greetings!
After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which have been dedicated to creating and improving content that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. Join us in this global edit-a-thon, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).-- Jamie Tubers ( talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Kosmoceratops by
FunkMonk |
Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
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This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 22:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
Too hard to edit a conversation on my iPad. I was puzzled at first but MOS:LISTGAP's examples are discussions. I admit I wasn't aware of this, and I'm guessing were typical of most editors. Doug Weller talk 20:23, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi there. You reverted a name change and wanted to discuss. Sure! I left a discussion at the talk page, but no discussion! You say "that's not how it works", wellll... I go to the page explaining how to change a name and it says if you don't expect any controversy go ahead -which I did, as I didn't expect any... besides you reverting or deleting stuff, the article has basically stayed the same since it was written back in 2008 or so. To the point, none of the sources establish that this terminology exists outside of wikipedia. The sources used are about increasing biodiversity on farms. Had that been apparent from the get-go I might have left more in the article under the new heading. The article is basically inventing jargonism based on a confused or idiosyncratic understanding of agroecology. The title doesn't even make sense: "restoration of the study of the interactions of organisms with the environment of an agricultural setting". I found another article titled " Agricultural biodiversity", very similar to my name, but that is actually about crop diversity. Better that get renamed/merged as well! Leo Breman ( talk) 21:05, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden ( submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:
All those who reached the final will win awards. 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. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.
We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. 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 2020 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 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
Meinhard Michael Moser by
J Milburn |
King brown snake by
Casliber |
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: Did You Know (DYK)What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life ( 5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).
Interface administrator changes
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Hello!
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.
Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.
The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.
Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
The file File:SanFdoTT.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
unused, low-res, no obvious use
While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.
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notice, but please explain why in your
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This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot ( talk) 01:01, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your intervention. The response was not encouraging :(. I don't know your coordinates, but happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate. -- JBL ( talk) 12:41, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).
Interface administrator changes
will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.
King brown snake by
Casliber |
News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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The article History of Tobago you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:History of Tobago for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 02:02, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Have a WikiChristmas and a PediaNewYear | |
Be well. Keep well. Have a lovely Christmas. SilkTork ( talk) 17:41, 23 December 2019 (UTC) |
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)
Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
Cactus wren by
CaptainEek |
News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).
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the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpretedrather than
reasonably construed.
The article History of Tobago you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:History of Tobago for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kim Post -- Kim Post ( talk) 05:01, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).
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Interface administrator changes
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wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.
that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
Megarachne by
Ichthyovenator |
Wolf by
LittleJerry |
News at a Glance |
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Vital Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list. Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
· Abiogenesis · Death · Cell · Human evolution · Organism · Zoology · Cattle · Dog · Reptile · Flower · Nut · Seed · Algae · Eukaryote · Biodiversity · Extinction · Photosynthesis
· Sexual dimorphism · Feather · Fur · Hair · Gill · Plant anatomy · Plant morphology · Berry · Leaf · Root · Stoma · Shrub · Plant stem · Bark · Trunk · Epidermis · Ground tissue · Meristem · Vascular tissue · Vascular cambium · Hypha · Mycelium |
January DYKs |
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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:
These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).
Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 ( talk), Sturmvogel 66 ( talk), Vanamonde ( talk) and Cwmhiraeth ( talk). MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
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)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
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must notundo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than
should not.
Segnosaurus by
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Danuvius guggenmosi by
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News at a Glance |
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The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January. While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day. With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed. Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines." |
February DYKs |
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I've suggested a possible compromise between you and Jweiss11 on the talk page of the race and intelligence article, so I'd like to know whether this proposal is acceptable to both of you. 2600:1004:B14B:BF17:DD28:947E:9154:ADCF ( talk) 23:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of Bactris jamaicana at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Harrias talk 17:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
On 24 March 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Bactris jamaicana, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in 1725 Hans Sloane described a plant he called Prickly-Pole as the Jamaican tree species that was "the most fit to make Rods and Scowrers for Guns"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Bactris jamaicana. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Bactris jamaicana), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
--valereee ( talk) 00:03, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
I have no reason other than previous formats on other articles. Please feel free to change them if needed. That is the only intention, so I apologize if that has been a problem. Red Director ( talk) 02:21, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
I have no reason other than previous formats on other article- What other articles do you mean? We shouldn't be referring to the country as "Trinidad" unless it's pre-1889. And it's a big NPOV failure to push a "Trinidadian" identity at the expense of a Trinidad and Tobago identity. It isn't ok to push a separatist political agenda. Guettarda ( talk) 17:07, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
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Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
Argentinosaurus by
Slate Weasel and
Jens Lallensack |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by
Britishfinance |
News at a glance |
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A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. -- Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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On 6 April 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Desmoncus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that most species in the palm genus Desmoncus climb using grappling hook–like structures called acanthopylls? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Desmoncus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, Desmoncus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:19, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
On 9 April 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article National Union of Freedom Fighters, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the National Union of Freedom Fighters in Trinidad and Tobago was the only group to sustain a guerrilla insurgency in the modern English-speaking Caribbean over an extended period of time? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/National Union of Freedom Fighters. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, National Union of Freedom Fighters), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile ( talk) 00:02, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
The National Union of Freedom Fighters is a very interesting read. Thank you for this contribution to our collective knowledge about the long struggle of the Caribbean people to be independent.-- Maleschreiber ( talk) 07:44, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Guettarda. As I said in the thread I opened in Portal talk:Biology, now each article has its own Wikidata item. So I'll leave them as they are. I'll delete the whole thread as per what you said in the page: This is for discussions about the Portal (which few people care about). Thank you for your intervention, and sorry for the inconvenience. Kintaro ( talk) 18:57, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Hey, sorry about the edit in the stats section. I had already started my edit before you put the message up so I didn't see it! Rcul4u998 ( talk) 20:10, 13 April 2020 (UTC)