User talk:O/Archive 40

Archive 35

←

Archive 38

Archive 39

Archive 40

Archive 41

Archive 42

→

Archive 45

The Signpost: 20 February 2018

• News and notes: The future is Swedish with a lack of administrators

• Recent research: Politically diverse editors write better articles; Reddit and Stack Overflow benefit from Wikipedia but don't give back

• Arbitration report: Arbitration committee prepares to examine two new cases

• Traffic report: Addicted to sports and pain

• Featured content: Entertainment, sports and history

• Technology report: Paragraph-based edit conflict screen; broken thanks

• Humour: Impossible and unexplained traffic report

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Magioladitis 2 happened, leading to further restrictions on Magioladitis (decision, summary).
• Betacommand 3 was proposed to be amended to lift the indefinite ban on Δ, but was unsuccessful (decision).
• A motion concerning Crosswiki issues (mostly concerning Wikidata) was passed (see discussion).

BAG

• Hersfold was removed from the BAG due to long term inactivity.

BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things

• WP:BOTDICT, a dictionary of common bot-related terms (see discussion).
• 6 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey happened. Two bot-related proposal passed, #6 deploy Article Alerts to other languages and #10 Commons deletion notification bot, although other entries may affect bots as well.
• Category:Wikipedia bots and its subcategories has had some cleanup. Bot-related pages that were historically important but are no longer of interests can be found in Category:Wikipedia bots (historical)
• The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
• You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.

Upcoming

• HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ).

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

---

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018

• Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost?

• News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.

• Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.

• In the media: The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good

• Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers

• Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs

• Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.

• Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.

• Humour: WikiWorld Reruns

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:49, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Roads for deletion

A proposal has been made to delete Portal:Roads, which you have made significant contributions to, as well as all other portals on English Wikipedia. You are welcome to contribute to the discussion if you'd like, which is located at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Ending the system of portals. Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:19, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2018

• From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again

• Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost

• News and notes: Photo of Kim Jong-un. Stephen Hawking death tops hits on many Wikipedias.

• In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop

• In focus: Admin reports board under criticism

• Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide

• Opinion: Guideline for Organization Notability revised

• Op-ed: World War II Myth-making and Wikipedia

• Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias

• Discussion report: The future of portals

• Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History

• Blog: Why the world reads Wikipedia

• Humour: Our Favorite Places to Whine About Stuff

• Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March

• Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation

• Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

• Gallery: A look at some famous and not as well-known border tripoints

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:49, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 May 2018

• From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline

• Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?

• Opinion: Integrating my many lives on Wikipedia

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals

• Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals

• Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

• Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics

• News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia

• In the media: Wikipedia in Turkish politics; COI politics in Wikipedia; most cited work

• Traffic report: We love our superheroes

• Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies

• Blog: Why I write about women on Wikipedia

• Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues

• Humour: Play with your food

• Gallery: Wine not?

• From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 June 2018

• From the editor: The Admin Ship is still barely afloat, while a Foundation project risks sinking

• Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?

• Op-ed: What do admins do?

• Opinion: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes

• News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania

• In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress

• Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page

• Featured content: New promotions

• Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed

• Traffic report: Endgame

• Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements

• Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa

• Blog: Wikipedia should be open for editors in Turkey

• Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry

• Humour: Television plot lines

• Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors

• From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:29, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2018

• From the editor: If only if

• Op-ed: The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

• Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality

• News and notes: Another newspaper for Wikipedia; Wikimania 2018 ends; changes at NPR

• In the media: Blackouts in Europe; Wikipedia and capitalists; WMF Jet Set

• Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals

• Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose

• Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes

• Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else

• Technology report: New bots, new prefs

• Gallery: Independence days, national holidays, and football – all in July

• Blog: Motivation of two editors

• Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons

• Humour: It's all the same

• Essay: Wikipedia does not need you

• From the archives: The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.

BAG

• There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
• In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

• 24 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
• 5 open BRFAs and 3 BRFAs in need of BAG attention (see live status).
• 54 approved bot tasks since the start of 2018. Of note, Community Tech bot 5 (the #10 Wish on the 2017 Community Survey) was approved to notify users concerning problematic images and files from Wikimedia Commons.

Also

• If you're a bot operator that can help with Tidy/Linter error cleanup (see discussion, discussion), please file a BRFA!
• 8 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion, discussion, discussion).

Discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

• Use of tags by bots – Exploring the use of a new 'bot' tag.
• Mass page moves – Bot policy question/clarification about mass moves.
• Creation of redirects – Bot policy question/clarification about the creation of redirects.
• Guidance on disruptive use of semi–automated tools? – Related to meatbots (see also MOS discussion, which resulted in small addition to MOS:VAR).
• Discussion concerning WP:BOTFLAG/WP:RC – A reminder that bots should use the bot flag when it makes sense to use it (see also VPT discussion and CREATEBOT update).
• Out of curiosity... (to all bot operators) – BotPasswords vs OAuth usage amongst bot operators.
• Introducing Toolhub – Toolhub is looking for feedback.

New things

• {{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
• AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
• BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
• Massive updates and improvements have been made to Citation bot in the past few months (see discussions, discussions, discussions). You can activate the bot here, amongst other methods.
• HTML Tidy has been phased out (see Tech News #28).
• {{Newbot}} has been reorganized a bit (diff). In particular, it links to previously approved BRFAs (see discussion).
• Wikipedia:Bots#See also has been reorganized a bit (diff).
• The bot dictionary has two new entries, context bot and context-sensitive edit.
• The bot request header has been updated to include better guidance (see discussion).
• The subcategories of Category:Wikipedia bot requests for approval have been sorted in a consistent manner to make past BRFAs easier to find.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

---

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 30 August 2018

• From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia

• Interview: 2018 Wikimedian of the Year, Farkhad Fatkullin

• News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend

• In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles

• Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy

• Featured content: Featured content selected by the community

• Special report: Wikimania 2018

• Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits

• Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work

• Gallery: Leapfrog, historic Thai cave, and a rhythmic beat

• Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies

• Humour: Signpost editor censors herself

• Essay: Principle of Some Astonishment

• From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:03, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 October 2018

• From the editor: Is this the new normal?

• News and notes: European copyright law moves forward

• In the media: Knowledge under fire

• Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2

• Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom

• Traffic report: John McCain's death generates over 7 million hits, followed by historical low

• Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile

• Gallery: A pat on the back

• Blog: After a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil, a drive to preserve what knowledge remains

• Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?

• Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle

• Essay: Expressing thanks

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:45, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 October 2018

• From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely

• Op-ed: Wikipedia's Strickland affair

• News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks

• In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias

• Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform

• Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring

• Technology report: Bots galore!

• Special report: NPP needs you

• Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six

• In focus: Alexa

• Gallery: Out of this world!

• Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion

• Humour: Talk page humour

• Opinion: Strickland incident

• From the archives: The Gardner Interview

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, O. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

North Dakota Highway 23A

Hi i saw that you can makes shields, i was wondering if you could make one for North Dakota Highway 23A? Thank You Bacardi379 (talk) 17:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 December 2018

• From the editor: Time for a truce

• Op-ed: Looking back, looking forward: A beginner's experience on Wikipedia

• Special report: The Christmas wishlist

• Opinion: The blogosphere migrates to Galaxy WMF

• News and notes: Reviewer of the year, WikiCup winner, and the 2019 Wikimedia Summit

• Reflections: Wikipedia, history, and the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day

• In the media: Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars

• Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee

• Arbitration report: A long break ends

• Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight

• Gallery: Intersections

• Recent research: Why do the most active Wikipedians burn out?; only 4% of students vandalize

• Essay: No one cares about your garage band

• Humour: The dark side of our favorite root vegetable

• From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2018

• From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?

• Op-ed: Wikipedia not trumped by Trump appointee

• Special report: The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right?

• News and notes: Some wishes do come true

• In the media: Political hijinks

• Discussion report: A new record low for RfA

• WikiProject report: Articlegenesis

• Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case

• Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents

• Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone

• Blog: News from the WMF

• Humour: I believe in Bigfoot

• Essay: Requests for medication

• From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

• Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected

• In focus: The Collective Consciousness of Admin Userpages

• News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives

• In the media: The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized

• Discussion report: The future of the reference desk

• Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity

• Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope

• Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther

• Technology report: When broken is easily fixed

• Gallery: Let us build a memorial fit for such pain and suffering

• News from the WMF: News from WMF

• Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?

• Essay: How

• Humour: Village pump

• From the archives: An editorial board that includes you

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)