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September 2011

Invitation to New Orleans developers' meeting

Resolved

 – Just a notice.

Extended content

New Orleans Wikimedia Hackathon MediaWiki and Wikimedia developers' meetup Hi, SMcCandlish. I'd like to invite you to come to the New Orleans Hackathon 2011. It's an opportunity for MediaWiki developers and Wikimedia operations engineers to come together to work on advancing Wikimedia's tools and infrastructure, focusing on Wikimedia Labs (starting with the dev-ops virtualization cluster), and to train and to squash bugs. The theme of this event: "the infrastructure of innovation". We're going to improve and discuss the Wikimedia Labs projects infrastructure and other stuff that makes it easier for anyone to supercharge Wikimedia with awesomeness. We're going to work on our gadgets/extensions/tools support, authorization/authentication strategy, dev-ops virtualization, and general training and hacking. It's mostly going to be dev sprints and bugsmashing, with some discussion and workshops. The event is open to anyone who wants to come and contribute, and is an opportunity to spend time with senior MediaWiki developers & ops engineers, write beautiful code, and learn about the latest developments. If you can make it to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 14-16 October 2011, we'd love to have you. Please add your name to the attendees list. Thanks! Sumanah (talk) 20:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC) (Volunteer Development Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation) Sumanah (talk) 21:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

September 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

Resolved

 – Just a project notice.

The September 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 01:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Biological taxonomy

Resolved

 – No contest.

It's great to try to make articles easier to understand and work, but can you be a little careful, to avoid getting them wrong or confusing? When citing names in zoological nomenclature, parentheses have a specific use, to state that a name was originally given in a different genus: changing parentheses could make zoological articles decidedly confusing, so I've reverted all such changes you made to Synonym (taxonomy). At nomen nudum, taxonomy and nomenclature are not the same thing (though the previous text wasn't good either), and there's cultivated plant nomenclature as well. —innotata 23:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 22:10, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Research into the user pages of Wikipedians: Invitation to participate

Resolved

 – Done.

Greetings,

My name is John-Paul and I am a student with the University of Alberta specializing in Communications and Technology.

I would like to include your Wikipedia user page in a study I am doing about how people present themselves online. I am interested in whether people see themselves in different ways, online and offline. One of the things I am looking at is how contributors to Wikipedia present themselves to each other through their user pages. Would you consider letting me include your user page in my study?

With your consent, I will read and analyze your user page, and ask you five short questions about it that will take about ten to fifteen minutes to answer. I am looking at about twenty user pages belonging to twenty different people. I will be looking at all user pages together, looking for common threads in the way people introduce themselves to other Wikipedians.

I hope that my research will help answer questions about how people collaborate, work together, and share knowledge. If you are open to participating in this study, please reply to this message, on your User Talk page or on mine. I will provide you with a complete description of my research, which you can use to decide if you want to participate.

Thank-you,

John-Paul Mcvea
University of Alberta
jmcvea@ualberta.ca

Johnpaulmcvea (talk) 21:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Keep in mind that "my user page" is actually a bunch of pages, some transcluded inline like templates, and some, like User:SMcCandlish/Personal just linked. And, yes, people do present themselves differently online and offline. They can even see the world differently and behave differently. For example, when I take the MBTI personality sorter (Meyers-Briggs) I show up as INTJ when I answer the questions with reference to my offline life, but ENFP (different on three of four axes!) when I provide answers based on my online life. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest and also for your comments -- it sounds like you and I could talk about this at length. Let me finish the data-gathering phase of this project, though, first : ) I am going to post my short questionnaire to your user page. Please know, too, that I will not limit myself to your one user page in wikipedia -- I will look at linked components as well. Thanks again for your interest and your help -- my questions are to follow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpaulmcvea (talk • contribs) 20:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Okey-dokey. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:09, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you for agreeing to participate in my study

Hello again,

Here is the questionnaire I alluded to yesterday when we were talking about my study, entitled “Online Self-presentation among Wikipedians.” I meant to send these to you yesterday, but I must have become distracted and I did not post them to your user page. Sorry about that. These five questions will help me to understand your motivations for creating a user page such as yours. In responding, please be as brief or as thorough as you like.

5 QUESTIONS

1. Are you a member of social networks such Facebook or MySpace?
2. In addition to maintaining a user page in Wikipedia, have you also written or edited articles? If so, about how many times?
3. What are the key messages about yourself that you hope to convey with your user page?
4. Have your Wikipedia contributions ever received feedback, such as being edited by others or commented on? Have you received a message from another Wikipedia user? If so, do you think your user page positively or negatively affected what other people said and how they said it?
5. Do you see your “online self” as being different from your “offline self?” Can you elaborate?

Please indicate your answers to these questions on your talk page, or on mine. Please respond by October 1st so that I have time to properly read your responses. If you like, you can email your answers to me instead (jmcvea@ualberta.ca).

Additional Information

ADDITONAL INFORMATION Background • I am asking you to participate in a research project that is part of my MA degree. • I am asking you because you have created a user page in Wikipedia that other people can use to learn about you. Purpose • My research is about how people present themselves online. • I will look at how people present themselves when presenting themselves to the Wikipedia community. Study Procedures • With your consent, I will analyze the language of your user page and gather basic statistics such as the count of words, the frequency of words, the number of sections, and so on. • I will also read the text of your user page, looking for elements in common with ads posted by other people. I will note whether you include a picture, or links to other content on the internet. • I ask you to answer my five questions, above. This will take about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. I will ask you to answer the questions within a week, and send your answers to me. • Throughout my research, I will adhere to the University of Alberta Standards for the Protection of Human Research Participants, which you can view at http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/policymanualsection66.cfm Benefits • There is no direct benefit to you for participating in this research. You may, however, find it interesting to read my perspective on how you present yourself online. • I hope that the information I get from doing this study will help understand how technology affects the way people come together into a society. • There is no reward or compensation for participating in this research. Risk • There is no direct risk for participating in this research. Voluntary Participation • You are under no obligation to participate in this study. Participation is completely voluntary. • You can opt out of this study at any time before October 10, 2011, with no penalty. You can ask to have me withdraw any data that I have collected about you. Even if you agree to be in the study, you can change your mind and withdraw. • If you decline to continue or you wish to withdraw from the study, your information will be removed from the study at your request. Confidentiality • This research will be used to support a project that is part of my MA degree. • A summary of my research will be available on the University of Alberta website. • Your personally identifiable information will be deleted and digitally shredded as soon as I have finished gathering data about you. • Data will be kept confidential. Only I will have access to the computer file containing the data. It will be password protected. It will not be sent by email or stored online. • I will always handle my data in compliance with University of Alberta standards. • If you would like to receive a copy of my final report, please ask. Further Information • If you have any further questions regarding this study, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Stanley Varnhagen, my research advisor for this project. If you have concerns about this study, you may contact the University of Alberta Research Ethics Committee at 780-492-2615. This office has no affiliation with the study investigators. Indicating Consent By answering these questions, you indicate your agreement with the following statements: • That you understand that you have been asked to be in a research study. • That you have read and received a copy of the Information Sheet, attached below (“Additional Information”). • That you understand the benefits and risks involved in taking part in this research study. • That you have had an opportunity to ask questions and discuss this study. • That you understand that you are free to refuse to participate, or to withdraw from the study at any time, without consequence, and that your information will be withdrawn at your request. • That the issue of confidentiality been explained to you and that you understand who will have access to your information (see “Additional Information”). • That you agree to participate.

Thank you again : )

Johnpaulmcvea (talk) 19:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Here we go:

1. "Are you a member of social networks such Facebook or MySpace?" Yes, virtually all of them (other than specialized topic-specific things). I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, Tribe.net, Friendster, Orkut, LiveJournal, you name it. I was a very early adopter, going back to the original social networking site, SixDegrees (long defunct, in the late 1990s - to far ahead of its time, and too limited as well).
2. "In addition to maintaining a user page in Wikipedia, have you also written or edited articles? If so, about how many times?" Yes. Too many to count. As a wild guesstimate, I'd say over 100 counting stubs, and over 30 counting articles at least "Start" class with multiple sources. Fully-developed B-class or better articles like William A. Spinks, maybe 10.
3. "What are the key messages about yourself that you hope to convey with your user page?" What my roles are (rollbacker, autoconfirmed, etc.), how I edit (various userboxen about grammar, "wikipolitics" and so on), what my most important (to me, anyway) contributions are, what my interests and areas of expertise are so people know what I'm likely to be a good collaborator on, what my current projects and editing tasks are, how to contact me (cf. User talk:SMcCandlish/Editnotice, and lastly personal stuff. I don't want to be totally faceless, and I don't make an effort to hide who I am, but it's not that important for why I'm here. About the only reason it is important is if someone questions my background in a relevant topic like anthropology (I have a degree), pool (I'm a VNEA certified instructor), web development (my profession) or online activism and advocacy (my former profession).
4. "Have your Wikipedia contributions ever received feedback, such as being edited by others or commented on? Have you received a message from another Wikipedia user? If so, do you think your user page positively or negatively affected what other people said and how they said it?" All of the above and more, many, many times; I have over 60,000 edits, so it would be impossible for me to not have received pretty much every kind of feedback (other than no one's ever tried to block me; I don't do destructive things). I've refined a few features of my user page to forestall misunderstandings and arguments (e.g. User talk:SMcCandlish/IP, which is transcluded on my talk page), but mostly my user page has barely changed in years, just a new userbox here, an updated stat there.
5. "Do you see your “online self” as being different from your “offline self?” Can you elaborate?" Yes. As noted earlier, on the Meyers-Briggs (MBTI) personality sorter, I show up typically as INTJ offline and ENFP online. Translated, that means I'm more extroverted than introverted online - I'm more gregarious, open and participatory on the 'Net and especially on socially engaging sites like Wikipedia and Facebook (and UseNet, back in the day - I've been at this since around 1990); in meatspace, I tend to be quieter and more private, though not isolated, as I'm out playing pool several nights a week. It also means I'm more empathic and less cold in my approach to issues and people (though the medium itself often robs online communication of emotive implication, and lends people to assume negative implications over positive ones, even more so than other forms of prose, because people tend to "fire and forget" without thinking hard about how particular wording may be misinterpreted as hostile; self-included). My reaction time from input to conclusion about something is delayed by this medium; while the Internet can be a very reactionary medium (cf. Twitter, MySpace, etc.), in a collegial environment it actually tends to short-circuit kneejerk reactions. And the MBTI bifurcation also means that I'm more apt to consider other viewpoints and wonder about whether I'm the one at fault or in error in any given dispute, something I generally don't do offline at all (a character flaw, but one that I'm pretty well stuck with). People who find me too argumentative on Wikipedia would really hate me offline. Heh.

I hope this helps. I'd be interested in the results of the research. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:02, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Template documentation

Resolved

 – Declined – I'm not in a position to fix this.

It would be helpful if you would create a basic documentation page for the templates you have been placing requests on, instead of asking someone else to do the work for you :) I've created the pages for the first three; perhaps you could write the documentation for those? Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Not sure I follow you. I think I only flagged two of the templates in that series as being unfixable by someone w/o admin authority. I don't know enough about those templates to document them; I just noted that they have no /doc page and are protected, so I can't transclude one in the template page itself in either case. I'm not trying to get someone else to do my work for me, I'm trying to get someone to fix template coding errors (failure to transclude a /doc page) where they have the authority do so and I don't since I'm not an admin. All I'm doing is cleanup work making the template documentation and categorization consistent. Those who use these templates regularly should document them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:20, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that if you are requesting that a /doc page be transcluded it would be helpful if you could create the /doc page beforehand, otherwise we are transcluding a blank page. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:23, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

But that's okay, on the same principle that redlinks encourage the creation of articles. :-) A number of the templates in that series already /doc pages but had essentially no actual documentation, and between you and me we've {{NODOC}}'d all of those, which is prominent ambox, and someone will fix them eventually. I fixed two of them myself. I do get your point now, but for most of these I'm not qualified to write the documentation. While I can envision some uses for some of these, many of them were created for specific uses on various noticeboards and other processes that I am not a regular at. Misdocumentation is usually worse than none. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 04:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Re: Remove full protection on trivial template, please

Resolved

 – Done.

Re your message:  Done I also unset the protection on Template:Not sure. I don't recall the exact circumstances that lead to that protection. I vaguely remember that the kiddies were attacking all of the templates listed in the Template:done article and I think I just swept through all of the unprotected templates. Not sure about that though. Anyways, the protection is unset. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Keen-o. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:37, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Template:Letter-NumberCombination

FYI

 – Noted.

Hi -- discussion of removing the template from dab pages has been taking place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Removing Template:Letter-NumberCombination from disambiguation pages. The bot request wasn't answered, so we're working on removing it manually; you're more than welcome to join the effort. Theoldsparkle (talk) 18:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks. I just deleted an entire "What links here" pageful of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 03:27, 29 September 2011 (UTC)