User talk:Sdkb/Archive 3

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Submission error

Thanks for ur response i am trying to create this article its getting rejected. once it had got approved again it got nominated to speedy delectation person is notable has many individual sources but i am getting error as person is not notable now its showing Require extended confirmed access kindly look into the article & help me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Anusharai_(actress) this user had accepted the article Nomadic_chiru after that its getting nominated to speedy delectation AjKa180

Hi AjKa180—you've properly submitted the draft to our articles for creation process. There is unfortunately a long backlog, so it may take some time for the page to be reviewed. Please be patient and don't try to jump the queue, and it will be reviewed in due time. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Please check this below link its showing 20:36, 15 November 2020 Woody talk contribs protected Draft:Anusha Rai [Create=Require extended confirmed access] (expires 20:36, 15 May 2021) (Repeatedly recreated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Anusha_Rai will it get affected to this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AjKa180 (talk • contribs)

@AjKa180: Ohh, I see; the proper title of the page is Draft:Anusha Rai, but you can't create it there because it's been create-protected, which happened because the article was deleted and repeatedly recreated by socks (possibly including yourself; sorry I don't have enough info to know). I'll leave a comment for the AfC reviewer, but beyond that I can't really help you further. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:31, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for ur support No no i got to know many soks has worked on page. She has gud source but not able to create the page. kindly help me in this — Preceding unsigned comment added by AjKa180 (talk • contribs)

@AjKa180: I've done what I can for you, providing information for the draft reviewer. It'd be unfair to all the other drafts in waiting for me to review the page myself, so you'll have to be patient; it could unfortunately take up to several months, but it'll get done eventually. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Done thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by AjKa180 (talk • contribs)

Template merge

Hello, I just have attempted to do a merge between {{Top25}} and {{Top 25 report}} which you closed recently. I have set Top25 to a redirect, nothing seems to have broken & I updated the doc for Top 25 report. Just wondering if there is anything else I should have done, thanks. Terasail^[✉] 22:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Terasail, I haven't been too involved with performing the actual merges, so I'd put a note at the holding cell, where the templates are listed, and see if others can weigh in. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:35, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah, ok thanks Terasail^[✉] 22:36, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

HI Sdkb/Archive 3,
I'm writing to let you know we have simplified the RfC on trust levels for the tool WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Please join and share your thoughts about this feature! We made this change after hearing users' comments on the first RfC being too complicated. I hope that you can participate this time around, giving your feedback on this new feature for WikiLoop DoubleCheck users.
Thanks and see you around online,
María Cruz
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to update your settings to change the wiki where you receive these messages, please do so here.

A barnstar fo you!

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		Thank you for starting the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Expired nominations. You were encouraged to take a passing comment on Wikipedia Discord and start a full discussion on Wikipedia. I'm impressed! Keep up the good work. :) MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 05:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: Thanks! I just wanted to give space to the thought in a forum where there's some chance it could lead to action if there's enough consensus. We'll see what happens! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:35, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Sample pages

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Random numbered subpages of Draft:Sample page. Thank you.--Shirt58 (talk) 10:33, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Just came here to post this; looking for your input is all. If you had checked before now you wouldn't have found your name mentioned there, but you have been now. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:54, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Biblical criticism

Hi! You were kind enough to come do a review of Biblical criticism, and I am guessing you are done with it as you haven't returned. If I'm wrong then please ignore this, but if I am correct and you are done, then I'd like to ask you to close it, and if possible, post your conclusions concerning what you did. If the comments are not struck, and it's left open as it is now, and there is no conclusion posted, then other reviewers think all those issues are unresolved - that I didn't fix them or cooperate with you. Since that is not the case, this creates a false impression about me and this review. I'm sorry to be a nag. This review is important to me. Thank you again for participating. Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Jenhawk777, no worries at all; I collapsed the majority of my comments, which have been resolved. There are a few small lingering things which we need input on from others, which I've moved to their own section, which should hopefully be more digestible. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:12, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

You're wonderful. Thank you so much. I will address those lingering issues immediately. Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of RTGame for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article RTGame 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/RTGame 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. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:35, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:30, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Editing Introduction Discussion

The editing introduction discussion is at User talk:Robert McClenon/Edit Intro. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:56, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Champ and Major

On 28 November 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Champ and Major, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Major will be the first rescue dog to live in the White House? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Champ and Major. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Champ and Major), 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:03, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

New Admissions Template for Colleges and Universities

Hi. Your new template shows "ACT" as a parameter. Could you relabel it "ACT Composite" for clarity to distinguish it from ACT Math and ACT English? Thanks. Contributor321 (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Contributor321, since it displays as "ACT Composite" and there are no parameters for ACT Math or ACT English, hopefully the usage will be clear. I did just modify the documentation to make it clearer, though, and added the composite label as an alias. The thing I'm a little more concerned about people messing up is using the scores of the admitted class rather than the enrolled class (colleges love to publish the former because it's normally higher). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:04, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for making those changes. I realize I should have been more specific in my request: the admissions infobox just shows "ACT" (under SAT Math change) when editing, whereas "ACT Composite" would, I believe, minimize potential confusion.

I agree with your point regarding admitted vs. enrolled, and am concerned that when editors go to add data in the infobox there is nothing there to indicate enrolled data should be used. It's specified in the documentation subpage, but I'd guess 99 out of 100 editors wouldn't look for, much less find, that documentation. Can an instruction to specifically use enrolled data be added to the infobox that an editor would see when adding or updating data? Thanks. Contributor321 (talk) 03:31, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Contributor321, by "infobox" do you mean the basic usage example code? I just changed that so it now uses the more descriptive alias. Beyond that, I think it's somewhat of a fool's errand to try to put complete instructions in the code itself, since by the time you've put in enough instructions to cover the big points, the code is so long that no one actually reads it. To phrase it another way, even though documentation is often ignored, ultimately there's no place to put the documentation other than the documentation. Regarding this template specifically, I am hoping to ultimately have it become automated, which would help reduce the potential for human errors like using admitted data by mistake. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:09, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I meant the basic usage example code. Thanks for updating it. Contributor321 (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Linking a page in the toolbar

Hi Sdkb, I figured if anyone knew, it would be you. As of now, do you know if there is a way to add a custom link to the top toolbar alongside the "Talk - Sandbox - Preferences etc." ? I have a to do list I've been using for some time now, and figured if it's available I may as well talk advantage of it. Aza24 (talk) 02:55, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Aza24! You can do that through a script, I believe. User:Lourdes/PageCuration adds a link for the new page feed, so you could probably copy and paste the code from that and just change it to the link you want. Hope that helps! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Wow yes, I was able to adjust that script easily. Thank you! Aza24 (talk) 03:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You can look in User:Jonesey95/vector.js file for "Add link at top for Tools page". Copy the section from "Wait for the DOM/page to finish loading" through } ); and put it at the bottom of your own vector.js file (it looks like you have something similar at User:Aza24/vector.js). I can't promise that it is up-to-date code, but it works for me. Replace the page name with your own page name, obviously. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:13, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes that seems to work well too – thanks. I may as well ping SandyGeorgia and Gog the Mild (whose to do lists that I stumbled across convinced me to make my own), they may also find this useful... Aza24 (talk) 03:45, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, I am having difficulty following just what the issue was that was resolved. Any chance of a diff and/or a link to the article altered? Re my To Do List, linking it via Kiss Boxes on appropriate pages seems to work for me; does this do something similar, or am I missing the point? Gog the Mild (talk) 17:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Gog the Mild sorry, I suppose the conversation above was rather fragmentary. If you copy this (I would copy it from the source editor, not the talk page it self):

$( function() { // Add link at top for Tools page mw.loader.using( ['mediawiki.util'] ).done( function() { mw.util.addPortletLink('p-personal', mw.util.getUrl('User:Gog the Mild/Tasks'), 'To do', 'pt-todo', 'Go to User:User:Gog the Mild/Tasks', null, '#pt-preferences'); });

/* Override annoying purge dialog */ if ( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'purge' ) { $('form.mw-htmlform').submit(); } } );
and paste it to your js page it will put "to do" in between your "sandbox" and "preferences" at the top toolbar. Maybe that will be useful? Aza24 (talk) 21:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, ah, that would be handy. Except that I have "To Do" permanently saved on a browser tool bar immediately above this - along with other useful links such as Wikt, Watch, FAC, Transl, Google Maps, etc - so this serves a similar purpose, except that I never need to scroll up to access it. Many thanks for explaining it. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:QuestBridge partner colleges has been nominated for deletion

Category:QuestBridge partner colleges has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Le Deluge (talk) 11:05, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced information

Why are you adding unsourced information to the encyclopedia? Have you read WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:AFD? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:19, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Please see WP:BLP (emphasis in original): "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source." Please also see Wikipedia:Core content policies. Let me know if there are more rules here that you aren't familiar with that may aid you in editing. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

For anyone curious what he's referring to, I reverted his unilateral attempt to turn List of awards and nominations received by Elliot Page into a redirect because it was unsourced; more is at his talk page. I won't respond further here to avoid creating a talk fork. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:01, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

(As an update, Koavf was subsequently indefinitely blocked over this.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Regarding SuperMarioLogan

Good morning. It's been over a week since I left this message. (the one at the bottom of the page at the link) I know I should've wrote this message earlier, but I wanted to give some time to see if IVORK responded. I wanted to know, did you write a message to IVORK regarding the creation of this article? It's okay if you did not, but I'd like to bring this back up, because if it's suitable enough for Wikipedia, it shouldn't have been declined in the first place. I also thought this was important because maybe you have more authority over me that would prompt this person to send a response back? Please let me know when you can, and thanks for reading this message. Have a nice day. TrevortniDesserpedx (talk) 16:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for following up, Trevortnidesserped. Although I am an AfC reviewer, I do not have the permissions to create SuperMarioLogan because it has been create-protected, so I am going to place a tag on this thread that will attract an administrator.

Context for the admin: Trevortnidesserped made a draft for SuperMarioLogan, which was declined by IVORK. They subsequently sought assistance at the Teahouse in this thread, where I encountered them and where the sentiment was generally that this draft was better sourced than previous attempts and perhaps ought to be let into mainspace (where it can be AfDed if anyone so chooses). I'd appreciate a second opinion from you on the notability, and if you do choose to accept it, please note that there are other redirects (Logan Thirtyacre) that will also need to be unsalted, and that the page will likely need some monitoring and/or protection due to the controversy of its subject. It could also certainly use some general cleanup. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@Trevortnidesserped: I accepted Sdkb's explanation around the notability to the article and had said he is fine to approve/accept as he wishes, but I think by that point you had already edited your sandbox into another article. Obviously be aware that for incidences like that, you can use any namespace under your username User:Trevortnidesserped/sandbox1 User:Trevortnidesserped/NewDankAssArticle etc. but mainly only in events where the draftspace titles are salted. There is no need to overwrite one in place of another. — IVORK _Talk 21:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The Teahouse message didn't influence this decision, but Special:Diff/990135378 did. As the unprotection request to the protecting administrator has remained unanswered until today, I'm downgrading the protection to semi-protection. Future similar requests can be made at WP:RFPP. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Only opposing view in COVID-19 Pandemic Article

Hey Sdkb,

I hope you are well.

I see you just reverted an edit on the COVID-19 pandemic article. You seem to be the only dissenting voice in discussions regarding that topic.

Please participate in the discussions and explain your views more clearly so that we may find a compromise. Those discussions have been lasting months with no resolution in sight manly due to your dissenting opinion.

Let's fix this!

Thanks,

-- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:18, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I replied to you at the talk page. I will note for the record that I was not the only dissenting opinion, and that your edit went against the page's current consensus item 9. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:38, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of GeoWizard

Hello Sdkb,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged GeoWizard for deletion, because the article doesn't clearly indicate why the subject is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions. Thanks!

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

Alexandermcnabb (talk) 08:54, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #16

Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Growth features show impact

Newcomer task experiments results

The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.

In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.

This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:

• the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
• the probability that they are retained as editors
• the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)

We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.

• 
  The number of suggested edits completed by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020, with a line for the total.
• 
  The number of distinct users completing suggested edits by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020.

Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.

You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page

General metrics

As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:

• more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
• more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
• more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.

Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.

Variants C and D

Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.

News for mentors

A separate list for workshops hosts

During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.

Claiming multiple mentees at once

Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.

Community news

The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

RfC draft feedback

Pinging participants of the prior discussions on infobox plurality: @GhostInTheMachine, Funandtrvl, AlanM1, BilCat, Jonesey95, RexxS, and Nikkimaria: I have drafted an RfC follow-up which could hopefully make it clearer how to proceed. It's currently at User:Sdkb/sandbox/early drafts, and would probably be hosted at VPT. I'd be interested in your feedback—is this the right way to proceed, and if so are there any tweaks I should make to it before launching it? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

(Update: Discussion happening at User talk:Sdkb/sandbox/early drafts, so let's centralize there.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

ANI Notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Sdkb deliberately introducing HTML errors. Thank you. Guy Macon (talk) 06:33, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello Sdkb,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 13

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited The Washington Post, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Eugene Meyer.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:12, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Resolved. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:15, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for the barnstar and the support. There won't be a next time for me. But I appreciate the good thoughts. Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:30, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

DYK for David S. Breslow

On 14 December 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article David S. Breslow, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that plastics researcher David S. Breslow's interest in chemistry began as a child when he used a chemistry set to make stink bombs? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/David S. Breslow. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, David S. Breslow), and it may be added to the statistics page if it received over 400 views per hour. 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) 12:01, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Short description goes first

I've noticed you're updating various articles via AWB. It auto-sorts templates alphabetically, however per MOS:ORDER, the {{short description}} template is to remain first. Please undo your changes that put 'short description' at other than the top of the article. Thanks —ADavidB 23:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Adavidb, thanks for the heads up. I was just using the default AWB settings and I hadn't seen it do that before, so I assumed there was just some change in consensus about where the short description should go. That's rather concerning that the default settings are causing changes that go against MOS:ORDER, since changes added to WP:GENFIX are not supposed to break anything. It sounds like something that should be fixed with AWB; should we post to WT:AutoWikiBrowser or is this a known issue? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:25, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This is a known issue with a previous version of AWB. See WT:AutoWikiBrowser (search for "short description") to see a note about this problem being fixed in the latest version, and previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 32. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:50, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey95, thanks for the links. I'm using 6.1.0.1, which based on the header at WP:AWB is the latest stable version, so it seems the developers haven't yet released a non-beta version that fixes the issue. (Clicking Help > Check for updates within AWB leads to "Retrieving current version...FAILED", so there's something else going on there...) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:59, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Glad it's known/addressed. I've also encountered the update issue with 6.1.0.1. —ADavidB 06:07, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Good evening

Two things, I know I should've wrote this message before this damage was done, and I know you are probably sick of hearing of this, but is there anything we could do to fix the issue of the SML page being re-salted? The main reason I'm asking is because I don't understand why they would delete the article if, as you stated, it passes WP:GNG and WP:ENT, so I just wanted to ask if there was anything else we could do to re-vamp this, this time justifying an irrefutable reason against its deletion. It just honesty boils my mind at this point that so many people feel that the creation of an article revolving a relatively notable subject is going against their existence, and that this one person can make the final decision as to whether the page gets deleted again. I feel bad asking about this again, but I wouldn't feel right not doing so, in the sense of "getting [this] off my chest." Trevortnidesserpedx (talk) 1:42 December 15, 2020 (UTC)

Trevortnidesserped, it's no trouble to reach out, and I'm sorry that you're having such a frustrating experience. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything that can be done to get the page revived currently. The participants at the deletion discussion hopefully looked at the question of notability more thoroughly than I did as an AfC reviewer and had more relevant subject expertise, and they came to a fairly clear consensus that the topic was not notable. So it seems the available sourcing just isn't persuasive enough to demonstrate notability, and in that situation, there is nothing else that can be done. However, this doesn't mean SML will never be notable. If there is additional media coverage in the future, you can ask for the page to be restored as a draft and then try publishing again. For now, though, I'd suggest finding other topics that interest you to write about. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:07, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020: Yahya M. Madra

I just had a look at Yahya M. Madra, and I notice that you have rated it as a stub. I cannot tell whether the article was formally accepted into Wikipedia or simply added by its creator.

My question is: how did a short article which fails to demonstrate notability get into Wikipedia in 2020? I thought we were better than that. If you were the reviewer who let the article go live, I would like to ask whether you took a look at the interviews, papers and other connected sources supporting the article. It's a classic case of non-notabililty; the sort of thing which gets declined every day.

If I am mistaken as to how the article was accepted, please let me know who reviewed it and how a person can look at an article and find that out, as I have yet to discover where this information is found.

I'm sure Madra is a nice guy, and Marxists are always facinating, but that article isn't ready to go live yet, as nobody writes about him.--Quisqualis (talk) 06:05, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) See WP:NACADEMIC, #8. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:43, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Quisqualis, I encountered the author seeking help at the Teahouse in this thread. They argued that Madra meets WP:ACADEMIC criterion 8 (The person has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area) as the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rethinking Marxism, an argument I don't see fault with based on a plain reading of the guideline. Regarding "nobody writes about him", [1] and [2] seem to make at least a plausible case for GNG. Regarding the short length, we don't impose a length requirement for accepting drafts, and to the extent we de facto impose a style bar, this one was well above average in terms of MOS compliance. Based mainly on the NACADEMIC claim, I accepted the draft, although I didn't tick off the NPP so as to get a second pair of eyes on it. I hope that helps clarify. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

That article in Turkish is an interview. Also, "head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area" does not mean just any academic journal. Rethinking Marxism may be a major Marxist journal, but, going by the scope implied by its title, I would judge it to be pretty minor within the realm of political science journals, despite being over 30 years old. Looks like I am going to have to learn about AFD, finally.--Quisqualis (talk) 08:10, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_186#For_loops_for_a_category

I don't really know what you wanted to do here, but AutoWikiBrowser might help you if you're looking to generate lists of pages in a category and wrap each title in some wiki code. —swpb^{T • go beyond • bad idea} 15:46, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. As I mentioned at the discussion, I'm looking to see if it'd be possible to convert a list page to something that just updates based off the category members, which would reduce the redundancy between categories and lists. AWB can't help with that, unfortunately, and it seems it's impossible until some back-end improvements are made. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:27, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

	Merry Christmas Sdkb!!
	Hi Sdkb, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, Thanks for all you do--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:28, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Ozzie10aaaa, and I wish you a happy holiday season as well! Could you point me to the template for this box? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:43, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

TBH actually I copied/pasted it from one I got last year(I myself tried to find the Holiday page for these but I couldnt)...Merry XMAS--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:11, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy holidays

This year, many people had COVID to fear,
The holidays are getting near,
One thing that will be clear,
We will still have holiday cheer,
Happy holidays and happy new year!!
From Interstellarity (talk) 14:14, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks so much; best wishes to you, too, and please stay in touch! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:50, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks for all the work you do on Wikipedia especially in the vital articles. Interstellarity (talk) 19:37, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

So lost :(

Apologies for not understanding this. I appreciate your advise but honestly I don't even know how to respond to your comment? I would be happy to move the subject to its own page but I'm not entirely sure how to do that. Can you assist in that, please?

-NW NinjaWarrior99 (talk) 20:24, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

(For reference, this is a follow-up to Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive_1087#Help. NinjaWarrior99, I've moved your draft to Draft:James H. Dargie and added a submission banner, which you can use once you think the article is ready to publish. It would be declined if submitted in its current state, so I recommend you read Help:Your first article and Help:Introduction to learn what it needs. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello Sdkb, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021. Happy editing, Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:34, 25 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Merry Christmas

File:Christmas tree in field.jpg	Merry Christmas Sdkb
	Hi Sdkb, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and prosperous New Year, Thanks for all your contributions to Wikipedia this past year, like this tree, you are a light shining in the darkness. Onel5969 TT me 08:44, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Re your edit on my sandbox

Thanks for fixing whatever was in error but maybe a note about why you edited my sandbox would have been nice... Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 00:57, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@Shearonink: There were a bunch of incorrectly categorized pages in Category:Happy holidays and seasonal greetings WikiLove templates, and I just went through and cleared them out to make the category more navigable. Enclosing categories of templates in {{Sandbox other}} is standard practice, but I probably should've used a better edit description than just decategorizing sandbox. I hope it wasn't any disturbance, and happy holidays! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:03, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

TikTok RfC follow-up

Thanks for helping out with the closure of the RfC! I see that ProcrastinatingReader has closed it with the consensus that the first sentence should read: "TikTok ... is a video-sharing social networking service owned by [the] Chinese company ByteDance." Although the consensus has been established, I'm concerned it still may not be appropriate for me to implement it myself. Can you go ahead and make the change instead? (Happy to do it myself if given the green light.) Bkenny44 (talk) 14:58, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Bkenny44:  Done here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Gay Republicans

The article Gay Republicans has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

As per WP:BLPSOURCES ....contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion. This applies whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable and whether it is in a biography or in some other article.

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}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Moxy 🍁 15:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, although it should be redirected, not deleted. I'm not really the editor you need to notify, as my only interaction with the page was to !vote to get rid of it (by merging). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

re email

I'm not too worried about those situations - just making sure this wasn't being build purposelessly for article displays. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:51, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:54, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

What is high alumina bricks made of?

Refractory materials are generally divided into two types, namely unshaped refractories and shaped refractories. Unshaped refractories are also called castables. They are mixed powder particles composed of a variety of aggregates or aggregates and one or more binders. They must be mixed with one or more liquids and mixed evenly during use. Strong liquidity. Shaped refractory materials generally refer to refractory bricks, the shape of which has standard rules, and it can also be temporarily processed during construction and cutting as required. Referred to as firebrick. A refractory material with a certain shape and size. Refractory brick According to the preparation process, it can be divided into fired bricks, non-fired bricks, fused bricks (fused cast bricks), refractory and heat insulating bricks; according to the shape and size, it can be divided into standard bricks, ordinary bricks, and special-shaped bricks. It can be used as high-temperature building materials and structural materials for building kilns and various thermal equipment, and can withstand various physical and chemical changes and mechanical effects at high temperatures. For example, refractory clay bricks, high alumina bricks, silica bricks, magnesia bricks, etc. We have been producing refractory materials for more than ten years, welcome everyone to discuss — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amy123lee (talk • contribs) 08:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for remedying the lack of brick-related advertisements on my talk page. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:17, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

"Draft:Sample page/(eight digit number)" again

Hi Sdkb,
I thought this got sorted out some months ago? This obviously isn't any big deal at all, but I guess it would be annoying to the anon users who find that their first attempt at editing get WP:G2-d . WP:AN thread here.
Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:19, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Emoji in political identity

Hello, Sdkb,

I just deleted this draft after it hadn't been edited for six months but I found it an interesting list. When I looked at the contributors to the draft, you were the only editor who wasn't an IP and who is still active so I wondered if you wanted to do any additional work on it and submit it. I can restore it if you wish. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:22, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Liz. Yeah, I remember that one. If I recall, it definitely had some issues, but I forget whether or not they were of the fatal keep-this-out-of-mainspace variety. I don't think I'll be putting more work into it myself, but if you're feeling inclusiony, maybe just add the necessary tags, launch it on the grounds that it's a net positive for readers, and see how it fares? If someone decides to AfD it, maybe that'll attract WP:ARS to swoop in. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, it was cute and informative which I don't think meets most editors criteria for keeping an article. Most of the associations between emoji & political positions were unknown to me but maybe they are common knowledge on social media. I'll look at it and again and see whether it was ever submitted. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Request for help

Hello Sdkb! Season's Greetings,

I strive to be a contributor on Wikipedia, so I would like to improve the quality of my User Talk page by adding an Infobox on it, with the following labels: 'This user was last active on (date and time)', 'This user has last seen the Talk page on (date and time)', and 'This user is expected to be inactive until (date and time)', which I can update everytime I visit my Talk page. But the problem is that I am unaware of how to add such an Infobox as there are no pre-existing templates for this. I hope you can help me out.

Also it would be extremely helpful of you if you can guide me on how to send the Barnstars to other users.

Thank you.

CX Zoom (talk) 11:13, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: Hmm, that's an interesting request! I doubt there's any way to automatically detect when you were last active, but you could put together an infobox that you could manually update with your last date of activity; it'd just be a little annoying to have to constantly update it. For when you do plan to be away, {{Wikibreak}} is what people generally use. For an automatic date of last edit to your talk page (not quite last activity, but close), you could use {{REVISIONUSER}}. For Barnstars, see WP:Barnstar; one way to do it is (on desktop) go to their user talk page, click on the red heart in upper right near the search box, and then follow the instructions. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 11:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thanks a lot. I would also like to invite you to my User Page to give your feedback as I am setting up my User page and the allied Talk Page for the first time and would require some guidance to do it. Thank you again. Cheers. CX Zoom (talk) 15:24, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It looks good to me! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb:Thanks a lot. CX Zoom (talk) 16:56, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Gay Republicans

Hi, Sdkb, I'm back.

I saw you commented on a move discussion on Talk:Gay Republicans, advocating that this article be merged with another. Subsequently, this article was PROD'd and is due to be deleted over the next 24 hours. If you have some interest in this merger, you might want to take action sooner rather than later or remove the PROD unless you agree that it should be deleted. If you have no opinion, sorry for bothering you! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:03, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Liz: Thanks again for the heads up! Thinking about it, since Republican is a disambiguation page, there's no way to be sure that someone searching for "Gay Republicans" is interested in U.S. politicians, so perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to leave behind a redirect. I'm not comfortable merging when there are such severe unsourced BLP issues, so I'll just let the PROD expire instead. It's much less of a loss to Wikipedia than the emoji page haha. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:29, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

True! Plus much of the content is reproduced on the LGBT Politicians list. The only element that the Gay Republicans article had only was state legislators, not just politicians at a federal level. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:34, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks

I am--Hacker-index (talk) 17:57, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Please review my draft

Hi. My request on the article Draft:Asif Tariq was declined because of lack of sources. Unfortunately this is very difficult to find many sources as i am from very small town. The said subject is a renowned Kashmiri poet i worked hard on this article. Please help me by approving this article. I did my best. Hope in your help. Majid Saleem78 (talk) 21:33, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

@Majid Saleem78: There is an extensive backlog of new drafts waiting for review. Please be patient and do not attempt to jump the queue. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:54, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Saint infoboxes

Sdkb, hi again, I hope you don't mind me coming back here for some insight – you seem to always to be very sensible. I was recently look at Hildegard of Bingen and noticed the (rather ridiculous) double infobox for her being a saint and philosopher/scientist/composer. I suppose I must have glanced over this before, as I've been to her page multiple times; I looked around a little and found a similar situation of two infoboxes on Ambrose and (this one is painful to see as there are three additional sidebars) Augustine of Hippo (I'm sure there are other pages like this). After discussing this with a user who works on Christian-topic articles, she concluded that there is no obvious reason for the infoboxes to be in such a manner. I'm assuming (?) the appropriate solution would to make one able to be imbedded in the other, presumably the saint one, any ideas? Also, where would you think be the best place to hold a discussion on finding consensus for this? Best - Aza24 (talk) 01:07, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Aza24! Totally agreed that the double infobox looks fairly silly and that embedding would be the preferable solution. I'm not entirely sure about a good venue for discussing; you could hold it at Template talk:Infobox saint and just put a {{Please see}} at the religion or even biography wikiprojects. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:29, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb, coming back to this to think about how I could draft an RFC, I'm not sure how exactly templates work with embedding. Would I proposing that the infobox saint be available as a module? If so, this forgotten RFC is perhaps the same proposal? Aza24 (talk) 22:46, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Aza24, my understanding is that embedding as a module would be the way to combine the infoboxes, so yeah, it might be worth reviving that discussion. For an example of this happening elsewhere, I was just looking at Infobox officeholder earlier, which seems to have some decent documentation related to embedding. {{Infobox NRHP}} is another example that comes to mind of an embeddable infobox. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:40, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Article for review & improvement

Hello, I would like to request you to review the article Governor (United States) which seems to be outdated, especially the Race and ethnicity and Gender sections and its corresponding map. It clearly says 'as of October 2020', much of which might have been changed by now, after the 2020 election. My concerns arise from the fact that Puerto Rico now has a male governor (Pedro Pierluisi) but the map shows it to be a female and 'race and ethnicity section' mentions the then-governor Wanda Vázquez Garced. But I don't have much knowledge about the other state's & territory's governors, so I'm reluctant to edit this article.

I'm not sure if I should've requested you here but I did so because your user page says that you're a member of "WikiProject Articles for Improvement" and "WikiProject District of Columbia". If I should've requested somewhere else, please let me know. I'll take care of it from the next time. Thank You. CX Zoom (talk) 12:45, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi CX Zoom! I don't have the capacity to dive into that personally, but thanks for sharing, and here are a few thoughts.

It looks like the article has already been tagged since May with {{Update}}. You can tag specific pieces of information with {{Update inline}}, but beyond that I can't think of any great places to go to get attention on it. The page doesn't look like it's in bad enough shape to be a good Articles for improvement candidate, and the issue isn't urgent enough to be likely to draw editors if you shared it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics/American politics (although you could try; it certainly won't hurt and I might be wrong).

When data on high-level pages becomes outdated, it's often a sign that the data was too detailed. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but it's worth asking if it'd be possible to write the content from a broader angle that wouldn't require so much updating.

And it's no problem for you to come here. For future reference when sharing potential tasks with other editors, some can be touchy about WP:Volunteer, so I find it generally works best to frame the invitation as "here's a task that you might be interested in if you're inclined" rather than "here's a task I'd like you to do". Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Hello, extremely sorry for the very late reply. Thanks a lot for letting me know the etiquette of which I was unaware of, I would take care of this in my future talks with anyone. And thanks again for telling me how to get other editor's attention to the aforementioned article. Have a nice day ahead. CX Zoom (talk) 12:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Information Ecology

Hello:

The copy edit you requested from the Guild of Copy Editors of the article Information ecology has been completed.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Regards,

Twofingered Typist (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Twofingered Typist; it's definitely an improvement! The article still has a long ways to go with regard to overly technical language; would it be okay to apply {{Technical}}? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why not. Twofingered Typist (talk) 15:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Osman Kibar

Just wanted to say a quick thanks for creating this article. I had read about him a while back and noticed there was no Wikipedia page. Bogazicili (talk) 22:23, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Bogazicili, thanks! I met him a few years ago and had no clue at the time who he was; hopefully the next person in that situation will have an easier time Googling him haha. Also a bit bummed I blanked on making a DYK nom, but oh well. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:30, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I was actually thinking about creating an article too, but I was busy with other stuff and the process looks a bit cumbersome. So I'm glad you beat me to it lol. Bogazicili (talk) 22:33, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

@Bogazicili: If you're looking for a related page to create, his grandfather (of the same name) has a page in Turkish but not English, so that could probably use translation. He was a mayor who became known as "Asphalt Osman" because of his work building roads. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:41, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Maybe in the future :) Bogazicili (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

WP:STUBSPACING

Hello Sdkb, I've noticed that you have been active in creating RfCs on points of formatting/accessibility, so I though you may be interested in taking one up.

The guidance in WP:STUBSPACING (Leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it.) has been a mild point of contention on the talk page for several years now, but as far as I can tell there's never been a formal RfC (there's been low interest, and the discussions never quite closed one way or the other). There's been a couple of workable ideas thrown around, like (1) using just one blank line, and (2) using some kind of CSS solution, like the "clear" template. This suggests to me that it would be an issue that would ripe for a simple RfC. — Goszei (talk) 04:30, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Goszei! That does sound like something ripe for an RfC, moreso just so folks can stop using energy to argue about it than for any major consistency benefits (I doubt it's something readers notice). I'm a bit tied up at the moment (I just woke up to find that a page I quickly threw together last night has been linked from the Main page without making it work on mobile... 😬), so I won't be able to help with this specifically, but I hope you find someone and are able to bring the issue to a resolution. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 12:15, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Short desc.

Hi, I just completed the whole level 5 vital article categories for Video games (215 articles), Gambling (14 articles), Other games and plays (44 articles), Sports Basics (14 articles), Sports equipment (27 articles), and International competitions (top 12 articles). Plus, I did an odd one here and there. It takes a lot longer than expected because I have to patrol each article one by one to check the short desc. since the pet scan link takes too long to load and yields no results. I plan to do many more categories, as this kind of tedious work interests me. So, do I get a barnstar? Huggums537 (talk) 10:56, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the delayed reply! The rewards board ask was technically to complete all the level 5 categories, but yeah, that's probably a bigger lift than any one editor could take on. Your work looks like it's taken care of a good chunk of the pages, so I'd say you've earned the star; here you go! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:39, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

No problem about the delay, and yeah it is a lot of work for one editor, but I think over time I'll be able to knock out a large swathe of it just by myself, so thank you for the barnstar! Huggums537 (talk) 19:14, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Interview request

Hello, Sdkb!

My name is Daniel, and I’m a senior at Harvard University currently writing an undergraduate thesis about Wikipedia. I’m particularly interested in how the Wikipedia community decides what facts are relevant and/or notable enough to warrant inclusion on a particular article — especially in regards to articles on contentious topics.

I noticed that you’ve been quite active editing the “COVID-19 pandemic” article over the past few months. So, would you mind if I send you a few questions (via email or right here) about your work editing that article, and the approach that you take? I’d really love to hear from you.

Thanks so much! --Dalorleon (talk) 16:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Dalorleon! Yes, I'm happy to share my thoughts; feel free to ask what you'd like to know! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:25, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Sdkb!

Thanks so much for agreeing to speak with me. My questions are below; let me know if you need me to clarify any of them.

1) How long have you been editing Wikipedia? And how long have you been an active editor of the “COVID-19 pandemic” Wikipedia article?

2) When adding content to the “COVID-19 pandemic” Wikipedia article, how do you decide what facts are relevant / notable enough to warrant inclusion?

3) When removing content from the “COVID-19 pandemic” Wikipedia article, how do you decide what facts are irrelevant / non-notable enough to warrant deletion?

4) Are there any particular Wikipedia policy / guidelines pages that you rely on to guide your editing? (Like “Wikipedia:Editing policy,” “Wikipedia:Writing better articles,” etc.)

5) Do you feel that Wikipedia’s “official” editing guidelines are helpful, or do you generally ignore them? If you prefer forging your own path, do you feel that Wikipedia offers you that flexibility?

6) Has adding or deleting content from the “COVID-19 pandemic” Wikipedia article ever brought you into conflict with another Wikipedian? If so, how were those disputes resolved?

7) Do you identify more as an inclusionist, a deletionist, or neither / something else?

Thanks again for agreeing to help my research! Feel free to weigh in on anything I didn’t specifically ask in regards to your editing practices. I’m primarily curious to learn about what factors you consider when deciding what content ought to be added / removed from Wikipedia articles.

Finally, if I do include your responses in my thesis, would you prefer to remain completely anonymous, or can I include your username? I really appreciate it! --Dalorleon (talk) 22:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

1. @Dalorleon: I made my first edit way back in 2012, but I became active and started to think of myself as a Wikipedian around summer 2018. You can see my (or anyone else's) editing history here. I started editing COVID-19 pandemic regularly in March around the time the U.S. went into lockdown. My editing history of that page is here (much of it is reverting unconstructive edits and other maintenance-type work) and my editing history of the article's talk page is here. I backed off I think around July, since I got burnt out trying to prevent the page from deteriorating. I've also edited a few other COVID-19-related pages and the associated WikiProject, but I focused mainly on the main pandemic page, since it's one of the highest-viewed pages and has less medical content than COVID-19 (I generally focus more on the societal aspects of the pandemic rather than the medical aspects, since I don't have medical expertise).
2. Wikipedia's guidance on that is WP:DUE, which basically says to reflect the prevalence of information in reliable sources. That's very broad advice and hard to apply precisely, though, so naturally there's some amount of editorial discretion. Something that I always try to keep top of mind is, to the extent possible, removing my own personal experience and taking the broadest possible perspective. This means, for instance, making sure that COVID-19_pandemic#National_responses doesn't give undue weight to English-speaking countries (a constant battle because they tend to have more editors; looking at the page now, I see a picture of Trump has been added to the top of the section, which isn't really helpful imo). Taking a broad perspective is a skill I know from my work as a journalist, but even so it's hard to do well. For a page with the scope of COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes the questions become impossibly broad. For instance, one question we faced early on was whether or not the instances of xenophobia warranted mention in the article's lead (which is supposed to be a summary of the body, and thus has an even higher bar for inclusion). I argued for it based in part on a front-page NYT article and similar coverage (here's the discussion for the U.S. article, which is a little less messy than the one for the global page), but given all that's happened between late March and now, if we revisited the question I'm not sure I'd still support it being there; the death toll and economic impact seem like more the main story. That perspective change is partially due to the fact that there's been less coverage of xenophobia after the initial burst, but in large part it's just a call I'd make based on my understanding of the world.
3. A lot of the removals I make are pretty easy calls. They're often edits from new editors who haven't checked the talk page and don't realize that the topic they're editing about has already been discussed at length at the talk page and is the way it is because of an established consensus. See the current consensus list for some of the ones that keep coming up. (Having a list like that is pretty unusual; we borrowed it from Talk:Donald Trump, where it was pioneered. Some other pages like Talk:Global warming have an FAQ instead, which is the closest analogue.) Others are tougher calls; I apply the same sort of thinking I mentioned above, and when there are conflicts I generally follow WP:BRD to avoid edit wars.
4. Yeah, I rely on all the policies/guidelines and occasionally essays to guide my editing, and to help justify my edits when there are conflicts. I cited some above, and if you look at the talk page archives you'll see the more competent editors citing them regularly. Some of the key ones can be found linked from Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines.
5. Wikipedia is a complex operation, and this creates a need for rules, so I'm glad they exist and think they're generally helpful. Sometimes I propose changes to them if they don't seem to be working as intended, and one of the areas I work in is trying to condense them and make them more accessible to newcomers, but there's a limit to the amount it'd be possible to condense them. One of Wikipedia's most famous policies (policies supersede guidelines, which themselves supersede information pages or essays) is WP:Ignore all rules (IAR), which has existed since Wikipedia's early days (when things were a lot less structured). Different editors interpret it differently, and nowadays I think it's often invoked more in name than in practice; there are few situations in which you can do something justified only by IAR and get away with it. But the point is to avoid following rules just for the sake of following rules, and sometimes when I see a pointless piece of bureaucracy I wish it'd be invoked more. Here's a recent example of a particularly bureaucratic insidery incident.
6. Yeah, definitely. When you edit a high-traffic page regularly, you get to know the other editors that frequent that page. Some of them are more competent than others, and some are easier or less easy to work with. Wikipedia has a whole host of policies/guidelines on dispute resolution, but the basic normal process is outlined at WP:BRD: anyone can make bold edits, and if they're challenged by reverting to the status quo, people then go to the talk page and try to achieve a rough consensus on whether to make them. This can happen very informally for small questions, or it can take the form of more formal requests for comment for bigger disputes or disputes more in need of attention from a wide audience.
7. Ah, that's a big question. I'd say I have elements of each. On the deletionist side, duplicated content is a big pet peeve of mine, so I often try to consolidate pages that replicate others. On the inclusionist side, I don't spend a ton of time at WP:Articles for deletion, since I don't really enjoy deleting others' work. I'll do it when it's called for, since Wikipedia needs to set inclusion limits to keep its size manageable, but it's not a task I seek out. I think the general notability guideline, our primary criteria for inclusion/deletion, is about the right level of restrictive.

Regarding attribution, you're free to use my username and the biographical details I share on my userpage; this page and that one are publicly accessible. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:26, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your thorough response, Sdkb! I really appreciate your answers; they'll be quite useful for my research. I'll let you know if I have any follow-up questions. But, for now, I wish you the best of luck! --Dalorleon (talk) 01:26, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Kepler-Gymnasium Ulm moved to draftspace

An article you recently created, Kepler-Gymnasium Ulm, is not suitable as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Mccapra (talk) 21:21, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mccapra: Speaking as a NPP patroller myself, you made a bad call here. High schools are almost always notable, and the page as a stub was certainly lacking but also clearly a net plus to the encyclopedia, and there was nothing about it "not suitable as written to remain published", as your templated message above states. I added sources to establish notability and moved it back to mainspace, but next time please spare others the work of having to clean up after you and do a rudimentary WP:BEFORE before you draftify. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:57, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

My apologies

Hello,

So Trump talk has now become a mess, and this is just a note to say I apologize if I inflamed it with my thread. When I originally asked if the predetermined proposal would be implemented, I got a series of responses that seemed unhappy (they weren't even answers to my question), and so fearing an edit war I managed to find a slightly different version that no-one instantly hated to be used temporarily, while a better one was found. In hindsight I don't know if it was the right decision to implement it, but I thought it was at the time. Sorry if that worsened things.

Anyhow, hopefully the page will settle down soon and a permanent wording can be found. Regards, Giraffer ^{(talk·contribs)} 14:53, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

@Giraffer: No worries. We're trying to navigate a complex circumstance without a good solution, and while I'm frustrated we've ended up here, I don't blame anyone trying in good faith to work things out, and I don't think you particularly inflamed anything. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:01, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

YT

Thanks for restoring this ref [3] I had deleted from Whitey (slang). I had read the page before I deleted it and thought it didn't mention "whitey", but I just read it again and saw that it does mention that "yt" can be an abbreviation for "whitey". I don't know why I missed that. Anyway, thanks for restoring it! — Chrisahn (talk) 15:01, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

@Chrisahn: I actually had a weird deja vu moment, since I found and added the reference before I caught up on the recent spate of edits and realized I was actually just restoring it haha. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:24, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Minor change to a Happy New Year template caused a problem

Could you please comment on an undesirable effect I described at

User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2021/January#A bug? Bot removed an equal sign from section titles

and

Template talk:Happy New Year fireworks#HTML comment in a Section header and the archiving bot

which resulted from your edit Special:Diff/997387763 (the second line of the template's cod)...? --CiaPan (talk) 15:33, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@CiaPan: From the discussions you linked, it seems the issue arose because of a bug with Cluebot, which my edit just happened to trigger, so the core issue needs to be resolved by the Cluebot folks, not me. Still, I moved the hidden comment to circumvent the error. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:50, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I know the problem is in bot's parser but I thought it might be shorter to avoid it than fix it :)

And if it wasn't fixed soon we would all forget about the problem until the next new year. Thank you for a prompt action. --CiaPan (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Donald Trump

Hi Sdkb,

here's my view on the latest kerfuffle at Donald Trump (an adapted copy of my comment at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#GoodDay).

tl;dr: Let's cool down. :-)

The situation at Donald Trump is indeed very messy. Despite multiple attempts, we haven't yet been able to develop a consensus about the first sentence. You argue there has been "prevailing consensus" for using the word "was" instead of "served as", but that has been disputed, and the relevant item #17 on Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus currently simply says "Note that this item is obsolete given that Trump is no longer the current president".

You argue that in the absence of consensus, we should try to stay close to the status quo, which was "Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States", and replace "is" by "was" while changing little else. That's a reasonable position.

But others have argued that in the absence of consensus, we should try to stay close to the wording in other articles about former US presidents, which is "X is an American [occupation] who served as [n]th president of the United States". That's also a reasonable position.

So the problem is that we neither have a consensus for a long-term solution, nor a consensus for an interim stop-gap solution.

In the last two days, several users (roughly half a dozen) changed the first sentence to "served as", and you repeatedly changed it back to "was" (here, here, and here).

You added warnings about edit warring and sanctions on other users' talk pages (here, here, and here), using the words "you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree". But these words would also be a correct description of your actions on Donald Trump in the last two days.

Now you're trying to sanction other users. Somewhat understandable. But based on the same criteria, others would be justified to try to sanction you.

In conclusion: Yes, the situation at Donald Trump is messy, but neither "was" nor "served as" is a terrible solution for the first sentence. As long as we don't have a consensus, it will probably be changed back and forth a few more times. But let's not make the situation even messier by starting a back and forth of enforcement requests. Let's cool down, everyone.

I'd suggest that you take a step back, and take a deep breath. I'm sure someone will change the first sentence to "served as" again in the next 24 hours, and others will change it back to "was", whether you are involved or not. It's an unfortunate situation, and I wish I could think of a better solution. But neither "saved as" nor "was" is awful. Not really worth fighting about. I'm sure the situation will be resolved in a couple of days.

Take care!

— Chrisahn (talk) 22:28, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

@Chrisahn: Thanks for leaving the note. I have a few quibbles with your characterization which I noted at the enforcement request, but broadly I take your point and agree that we should try to de-escalate. Seeing that GoodDay self-reverted, I have moved to withdraw the request. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:45, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Recommend (in future) you hold off from handing out so many warnings & take a 24-hr waiting period, before you decide making any report on anyone. The idea for such reports are preventative, not punitive. GoodDay (talk) 23:15, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

TFL notification

Hi, Sdkb. I'm just posting to let you know that List of Pomona College people – a list that you have been heavily involved with – has been chosen to appear on the Main Page as Today's featured list for February 12. The TFL blurb can be seen here. If you have any thoughts on the selection, please post them on my talk page or at TFL talk. Regards, Giants2008 (Talk) 01:21, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@Giants2008: It looks good to me; thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:25, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Content in articles does not have to be independently notable

Please don't tell other editors that content in articles, particularly content in embedded lists, must be independently notable. That is not true. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 04:42, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: There's no rule that list entries have to be notable, but notability is listed at WP:CSC as a common selection criterion. My view is that we should always apply a criterion at least that stringent for any alumni listed directly on a college page. College pages are supposed to be about the institution, not a laundry list of impressive associated people, so it's debatable whether it's normally justified to mention any individual alumni outside of spinoff people lists (I'd prefer only statistics such as X governors or Y billionaires if they were more widely available), but I certainly have difficulty imagining any person who is both not notable enough to warrant a page but also so important to the institution that mentioning them on the institution's page as a notable alum is WP:DUE. Does your perspective differ? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:55, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

WP:CSC is a guideline for standalone lists (i.e., list articles), not embedded lists (i.e., lists that are part of other articles). It's possible that someone is noteworthy within the limited context of an institution but not independently notable.

In practice, I don't find this to be a significant problem. In nearly every case, people who should not be included in a list can be removed simply because their inclusion isn't supported by a reference. That is always a valid reason for removing material from an article.

(Much of this confusion is caused by the unfortunate selection of "notable" as the adjective of choice to say "meets our standards for an independent Wikipedia article." That definition is much more narrow than the common understanding and use of the word, including how it's used in many articles especially the sections of articles labeled "Notable <something>." Sometimes I use "noteworthy" in discussions with other editors to try to avoid this confusion when talking about material that can or should be included in an article although it doesn't merit its own independent article but that's not a common enough practice to really be helpful.)

ElKevbo (talk) 05:22, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Sortname request

I am hoping to get an honorific parameter added to template:sortname for titles like "Sir", "Rev", "Dr" etc which will be displayed but neither linked to or sorted on. E.g. {{sortname|James|Wales|ttl=Sir|dab=British Army officer}} which would display Sir James Wales, link to James Wales (British Army officer) and sort on Wales, James. Can you help? Thanks Greenshed (talk) 19:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Greenshed! MOS:HONORIFIC is pretty restrictive about the circumstances in which honorifics should be used, so I'd first double check that it's truly appropriate for the use case you have in mind. If you do want to go ahead with it, it might be better to use span data-sort-value, as shown here, rather than building it into the template, as doing that might encourage improper use. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:38, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Sorry & Thanks

Hey, Sdkb! Thanks for this revert. Actually I was using twinkle for the very first time so unfortunately that mistake happened. Now I will never use twinkle 🙁. Sorry and thanks! Hyderabadi Wikipedian (talk) 15:31, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

@Hyderabadi Wikipedian: No worries; it was just a click! Twinkle can be very useful for some more advanced tasks, so I hope you'll be ready to return to it at some point! You can always experiment first in your sandbox to find your footing. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:39, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Monymusk (dance)

Hello, Sdkb. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Monymusk".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:43, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Request from paid editor

I am utterly lost in how to create a Wikipedia page. You said there were a whole heap of things wrong with what I submitted but I find all the instructions on correct practice utterly baffling. So if we want to create an academic profile for our employer please can you tell me what is the right process. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian Paulsen (talk • contribs) 05:09, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

@Ian Paulsen: I am a volunteer. You are being paid. I generously provided you with the links you need, but I'm not going to do your work for you by holding your hand through each step of the process. Please read the links I provided to you and follow the instructions, including respecting the volunteer nature of the project. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:17, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 2

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Marilyn Manson, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Vanity Fair.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:29, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Frank LoMonte

On 5 February 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Frank LoMonte, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that lawyer and press freedom advocate Frank LoMonte helped pass legislation in 14 U.S. states outlawing censorship of student media by school administrators? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Frank LoMonte. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Frank LoMonte), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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) 00:02, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Gary Kates

Hello! Your submission of Gary Kates at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Flibirigit (talk) 06:13, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Sir I am not paid editor

Respected sir

I am not a paid editor this page is mine and i am the CEO of this website i made this article my self but they marked as a speedy deletion kindly help me to improve this article my page name is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Www.bismatrimony.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Setmroger (talk • contribs) 07:49, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

@Setmroger: You have a financial conflict of interest when writing about your own website, so yes, you are a paid editor. See WP:PAID. Regarding the rest of your request, as I told you at the Teahouse, we are not going to do your advertising for you. Read the rules and stop wasting our time as volunteers. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

News On Wiki check-in

Hi there! Thank you for your interest in our campaign to improve the public's knowledge about local newspapers. Time has flown since we got going in September, and our six month campaign ends in just a month! We'd like to check in with you about work you have done, or any articles you'd like to write or edit to do before we wrap up.

We published a mid-campaign report, highlighting strong work from several Wikipedia editors (both new wiki folks and veterans); contributions from Kristy Roschke's journalism course at Arizona State University; and strong engagement from groups like AfroCROWD and Wikimedians of the Caribbean.

As we begin our final push, we would love to learn what you have been working on, or help you with any challenges. We're hosting several informal video conference sessions in the next week. (If that format is no good for you, just let us know.) We'd love to hear what newspapers have caught your interest, any articles you've already written, and also any kind of support you could use in writing up newspapers that lack Wikipedia entries. We'll focus especially on newspapers of the Caribbean in our final month, as we continue to work on Black-owned U.S. newspapers, and newspapers of Washington State. Please register for one of these Zoom meetings. If these times don't work for you, or if you hate Zoom, etc., just reply here (please include the text "[[User:Peteforsyth]] and [[User:Shanluan]]" so we get notifications), and we'll find another way to connect with you.

• Saturday Jan. 30, 2pm Pacific / 5 PM Eastern (with Pete)
• Tuesday Feb. 2, 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (with Pete)
• Wednesday Feb. 3, 12:30pm Pacific / 3:30 PM Eastern (with Sherry)
• Thursday Feb. 4, 12:30pm Pacific / 3:30 PM Eastern (with Sherry)

We hope to hear from you soon! -Pete Forsyth (talk) 00:50, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Peteforsyth, there is a vital outstanding task for WikiProject Newspapers that the project is too inactive to take on. If you actually have a coordinated community of editors able to take on collaborations, I would strongly suggest making it your top priority.

There are currently only three featured newspaper articles on Wikipedia: the long-defunct Illustrated Daily News of Los Angeles, the Sunderland Echo (a small British paper with <10k circulation), and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Of these, the Inquirer is clearly the most significant. It's also currently undergoing a FARC, and without coordinated intervention is all but guaranteed to be delisted. It's not based in the Caribbean or Washington state or black-owned, but it is vital to the development of every newspaper article on Wikipedia that there be a roster of featured-class newspapers that editors can look to as models. The Inquirer is an indispensable part of that dwindling roster, and keeping it from getting delisted should be the #1 task right now for any newspaper-focused Wikipedian. So far, I'm the only one who's engaged. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:06, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and Peteforsyth/Shanluan, another important (albeit less time-sensitive) newspaper-related task that will take a group effort is adding wikilinks to newspapers where they appear in references. This will help readers more easily verify the reliability of newspapers used as references, which given News On Wiki's stated aim to help build trust in credible news sources should fit very squarely with the project's goals. It does require AWB; details here and in linked discussions. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:18, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Peteforsyth/Shanluan, the window closed; page has been delisted. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:54, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I agree that it's an important issue, but it's a bit outside our remit of what we're specifically trying (or equipped) to accomplish. I'll see if I can find a way to nudge it back toward FA. I'm interested to talk some more about the best approach to linking newspapers systematically in footnotes; I'm pretty familiar with AWB, so maybe I can pitch in on that as well. Excellent stuff, thank you. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 00:54, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: The next step for the linking is probably to solidify the consensus that it's a beneficial thing to do. So far, I've done a few AWB runs to change e.g. New York Times to The New York Times, with the rationale being that if someone hasn't been picky enough to get the name correct, they're unlikely to have strong feelings about linking vs. not linking. I'm a little more hesitant to do The New York Times to The New York Times runs, though, since I'm guessing at some point I'll run into someone who prefers it delinked and objects. It'd be good to have a discussion to point to that establishes that, while certainly not required, when there's a question linking should be preferred. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like a pretty sensible approach to me. I'd be happy to brainstorm what might be an effective and manageable way to broaden the discussion, if you'd like. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 06:21, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Sure, sounds good. I'm not sure exactly what venue or framing of the discussion would be best. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:22, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Might you be open to bouncing some ideas around in a voice call? I could put together some ideas here on wiki if you prefer. I look at this kind of thing more as "art" than "science," I think having a few small-ish discussions can often be more effective than trying to start with one "authoritative" one. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 06:36, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I tend to prefer on-wiki discussions for something like this if that's alright. Starting with smallish ones sounds good. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:00, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

OK, I'd suggest something like this:

• Identify a set of articles to try it on, that are in the remit of a WikiProject besides journalism/newspapers
• Boldly edit one article in that area to link every newspaper
• Using that article as an example, initiate a discussion at WT:WPNEWS or the topical WikiProject, with prominent invitations all relevant WikiProjects
• Rather than asking whether this should be done for all of Wikipedia, propose that it be expanded to all articles in the set identified above (as a further step in an experiment / conversation-starter)
• If consensus is gained, implement that, then write about it for the Signpost or similar prominent venue

For a topic, I suggest we choose an area where we know we have a good variety of newspapers-as-sources that have Wikipedia articles. I might suggest Category:Oregon politicians, which is an area I've worked in extensively, it draws on a lot of local papers, and we have articles about a lot of those papers.

It might also present a good opportunity to talk about general goals re: newspapers, such as notability standards, the featured article issue you mention, etc. But maybe that's something to come back to once discussion is underway, so that we're not bringing up too many topics at once at the outset.

Thoughts? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

• The issue with systematic linking IMO is that some Wikipedia articles might cite 10 NYT articles, but many Wikipedians would argue that you only want to link the first one to avoid seas of blue. So I would run only on pages that don't already link to The New York Times article. (t · c) buidhe 04:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

  @Buidhe: I guess it depends on how you apply MOS:LINKDUP. Personally, I tend to favor repeating links in captions/footnotes, since those things aren't read through in order the same way body text is, so a link above isn't a guarantee someone will already have come across it. As a reader, I've certainly had plenty of times where I've come across black text and wished there was a duplicate link, but I've never seen a duplicate link and been annoyed by it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Message from Phoenix7119

Hi Sdkb. Thanks for accepting my article. For a moment there, I thought I had been trapped in an episode of The Twilight Zone:) I had read through the notability guidelines enough to know that my subject meets the criteria. So, obviously, there was a breakdown in communication somewhere. But with you, and others like you, on the case, I now know for myself that Wikipedia does make an effort to be fair to everyone. You have redeemed my faith in human decency. And if you don’t mind, would you answer a few questions for me please?

(1) On the Articles for creation page, you said: “You can now create articles for yourself.” Could you tell me what this means? Do you have guidelines or a tutorial that can explain the process? (2) In regard to my Rasmussen article, you said: “the page still has some other issues.” What are the issues? Do you have guidelines or a tutorial that explain these issues?

I’m relatively new to Wikipedia. Even though I joined a few years ago, I never had time to contribute until now. So, I look forward to making contributions to Wikipedia. Thank you for your time. Phoenix7119 (talk) 12:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb. I guess I need to stop writing at 2 A.M. Wow! I really asked you how to create an article:) If you have a moment, I would like more information on how to create articles for myself. And if you could offer some suggestions on how I might correct the issues with my Rasmussen article, I would appreciate your assistance. If you're too busy, I understand. So, please point me in the right direction. Thanks again for help. Phoenix7119 (talk) 00:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Phoenix7119, re (1), it means that since you're autoconfirmed, you have the option to create an article directly in the article space (by searching for a term and clicking the redlink) rather than creating and submitting a draft through Articles for creation. It'll still be reviewed by other editors before appearing in Google search results, though.

Re (2), looking more closely at it, I'm not seeing any major issues. A few small things I notice:

• Every wealthy person likes to call themselves a philanthropist, so it'd be good to have some sourcing establishing that choosing how to spend his money was a significant occupation for him, not just that he made some donations.
• The language rose to the top of the business is a little flowery – it'd be better to just describe directly.
• The standard way to title a reputation section is just "reputation", not "Reputation as a no-nonsense businessman".

Regarding a tutorial, Help:Introduction covers the basics, but for developing your page further WP:Article development might be more useful. I hope that helps! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Sdkb Thanks so much! Yes, this information helps a lot. I'll do my best to locate additional sources and make the corrections. Also, could you help me with something else? I received the following notice yesterday: "Hello, Phoenix7119, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created may not conform to some of Wikipedia's content policies and may not be retained. In short, the topic of an article must be notable and have already been the subject of publication by reliable and independent sources." When I asked for an explanation, the person said the wrong template was used to send a "welcome message." Since the message was rather lengthy, I don't know which part of the message was the template and which part was the actual message. The person has yet to offer an explanation or clarification. So, I'm a little confused. Is there a possibility that my Rasmussen article "may not be retained?" Is Rasmussen's notability still being questioned? Since you are the most professional and straightforward person with whom I have corresponded thus far, I thought I had better ask you. I know you'll give me a straight answer. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't trouble you with something like this, but if you remember, you settled the issue with Rasmussen's notability in the first message I received from you. So, I don't understand why other people keep raising this issue. I know I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, so am I missing something? I would appreciate your help with this matter. Thanks for your time. Phoenix7119 (talk) 08:27, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Phoenix7119: The message was 100% a template (this one, to be precise). From the reply you got here, the editor misclicked, and meant to give you I think {{Welcome-belated}}. So basically don't worry about it at all; I can never promise for sure but I think it's unlikely the page would be deleted given the strength of sourcing. You can delete the message from your talk page if you want, or just leave it and carry on. Sorry about the confusion it caused! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:40, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb OK. I appreciate the clarification. Thanks so much! Phoenix7119 (talk) 09:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Alfred Woodford

Hello! Your submission of Alfred Woodford at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Espresso Addict (talk) 23:14, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Albie Pearson

According to the source, it was actually Mt. San Antonio College. Thanks for calling my attention to it; not sure how that mistake was made. Sanfranciscogiants17 (talk) 23:10, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

No problem, and glad to see it fixed! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks from me as well! Not sure how I overlooked that one. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:37, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Teahouse header

Before I'm shortly exiled to Commons, i'd be interested in your thoughts on the change I sandboxed to the header. The transclusion was in there already, i just un-nested it and it appeared again. The featured host images work alright in the testcases but the dimensions seem too big, right? Kind regards, Zindor (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Zindor, looking at the current header, the title seems to be off-center. Is there a specific problem you're trying to address with your changes? If so, maybe seek out someone better at CSS than me, and if not, just leave as is. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:47, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the featured host images disappeared when the DJ was moving the styles externally. I just remembered recently to take a look at it. I posted on TH Talk but no response so thought I'd ask you, as you'd previously done some styling on it. I'm not bad at CSS or wikitext, so will wrap my head around what's going on in there soon enough. I won't make anything live unless i've got it nailed down. Thanks, Zindor (talk) 01:12, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Dockless semi-autonomous bicycles

Hi,

First of all, forgive me if I am doing something wrong here as this is the first time I try to edit something.

I wanted to add some relevant information about bicycle-sharing systems. The added information was rejected due to "No evidence this paper has been covered in reliable sources".

This information (my edit) is supported by a couple of references, the main one being a paper published back in 2017/2018 in the IEEE Access. For those who don't know this journal, it is the open-access (meaning the content can be consulted for free) journal of the IEEE, which is the main Engineering association in the world. This IEEE Access is a Q1 scientific journal (top category) with a high impact level (3.75).

Therefore, I don´t understand how this can be deemed as a non-reliable source, I am sure plenty of references in loads of Wikipedia articles are based on similar references.

Please can you help me clarify this?

Best regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 232m232 (talk • contribs) 22:41, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi 232m232, and thanks for reaching out. I removed the addition because the way Wikipedia determines which information is significant enough to warrant inclusion is by looking at the amount of coverage it has gotten in reliable secondary sources, such as newspapers. Discussing a research paper by citing the research paper itself, as in your edit, is citing a primary source. Are there any newspapers that have discussed García's paper? If so, we can add it back. If not, Wikipedia isn't the place for that information yet. Also, if you have any personal connections to García, you should disclose that. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:18, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Category:Not Stub-Class Department of Fun articles

Hello, Sdkb,

Do you expect this category to ever be used? It is not connected to any parent category and just exists in isolation. I just happened to stumble upon it, it's not part of the Wikipedia category structure. If it is going to remain empty, it should be deleted according to CSD C1 criteria.

If you can find ONE page that is appropriately categorized into it (and not just any random page), its existence can be justified, otherwise it will be tagged for deletion. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Liz: If I'm remembering correctly, I believe it's a tracking category. The idea is, per the link at the top, all Department of Fun articles should be stub-quality, and any that are accidentally given a better rating end up in the category. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Permission to Use Interview Material

Hi SDKB! I'm a graphic design senior at Parsons School of Design, who is creating a series of zines on Wikipedia Community/Culture. I was wondering if I could feature the interview conducted by Dalorleon in a magazine that I am making? The zine, of course, will not be for profit, but instead be a free downloadable copy for whoever wants to access it. Here's a sample of what it might look like: https://www.ceciliazhang.work/blank-1-3-1 Let me know it's cool with you if I use some of your words! Thanks for reading! Hotplates (talk) 23:07, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Hotplates: Sure, that's fine; only condition is that you send me a link once it's out so I can see it! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:08, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh how exciting- thank you so much! In fact, if you're in North America, I'd be happy to send you a risographed printed copy as well. Cheers!Hotplates (talk) 00:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

That would be fantastic! I sent you an email. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:51, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

DYK for A Bread Factory

On 17 February 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article A Bread Factory, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the 2018 comedy film A Bread Factory, about the difficulty of producing meaningful artistic work in a market economy, received acclaim from critics but earned less than $18,000 at the box office? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/A Bread Factory. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, A Bread Factory), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Biblical criticism

Someone is complaining about the length of the FAC at Biblical criticism and asking if discussions such as the one you anchored could be moved to the talk page. I would deeply appreciate anything you could do to help with this. Thank you. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Swati Sharma (journalist), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Hill.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

There are multiple hills???!!! Fixed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:29, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

New message from GreaterPonce665

Hello, Sdkb. You have new messages at GreaterPonce665's talk page.
Message added 20:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

GreaterPonce665 ^(TALK) 20:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Alfred Woodford

On 1 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Alfred Woodford, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that for nearly two decades Alfred Woodford was the sole professor in Pomona College's geology department? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Alfred Woodford. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Alfred Woodford), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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) 00:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Mary Custis Vezey

 — Amakuru (talk) 00:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #17

Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.

Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.

Moving forward: more wikis to get the features

Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.

We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.

We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.

Variant testing

As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.

News for mentors

Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.

Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.

Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 5

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Susan McWilliams, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Carey McWilliams.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:21, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Gary Kates

On 9 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Gary Kates, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that historian Gary Kates turned down recruiters seeking to help make him a college president so that he could teach undergraduate history? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Gary Kates. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Gary Kates), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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) 00:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)