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NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello Vexations,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

• Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
• Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.

Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News

• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Discussions of interest

• A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
• There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
• What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250

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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #8

Welcome to the eighth 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.

May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.

General news

• The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
• Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.

Early results from newcomer homepage release

A newcomer homepage on Czech Wikipedia (displayed in English language)

• The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
• After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
  • About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
  • About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
  • Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
  • Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.

Next steps for homepage

Mockup of mobile newcomer homepage

• Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
  • Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
  • Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
• User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.

Future of team in the next year

• The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
• Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
• Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
  • Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
  • Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
  • Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
  • Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
• We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.

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

09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019

Hello Vexations,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

thanks for helping with eliza douglas page... anne imhof needs work! see u around ~~ Rgm38 (talk) 22:20, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #9

Welcome to the ninth 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.

Opening Growth features to more wikis

The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.

Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:

• Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
• Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
• EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.

General news

Indicator that encourages users to look at their Notifications for responses to their questions

• A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
  • Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
  • Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
  • Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
• Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
• We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language. This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.

Mobile homepage and early analysis

Button to help newcomers find their homepage from their empty Contributions page

• The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
• We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
• Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
• As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.

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

14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 24

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Vielmetter Los Angeles, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Patrick Wilson (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:23, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Precious

visual arts and trust

Thank you for quality articles around visual arts and its people, such as Texte zur Kunst in 2014, The Boating Party in 2017 and Eugène Murer in 2018, for a to-do-list as a user page, for requesting references and adding categories and assessments, for supporting trust of the community, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

You are recipient no. 2259 of Precious, a prize of QAI. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt, wow Vexations (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Our pleasure ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:45, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Mary Reynolds (artist) has been accepted

Mary Reynolds (artist), which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. If your account is more than four days old and you have made at least 10 edits you can create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

• If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
• If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .

Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Vexations (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

You put these on your own talkpage? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:16, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I know it looks weird. I submitted and subsequently accepted the draft, because the createor had not resubmitted it after it was declined. Because I have great confidence that the article would survive an AfD, ( I know a little bit about Duchamp and his entourage), I decided that it was not necessary to keep it in the AfD queue any longer. Feel free to revert me if you feel I violated any policies. Vexations (talk) 13:24, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

I do not, I just can't keep my mouth shut. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:25, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to support my candidacy at RfA. Know that you're definitely missed at NPP and I hope you'll find your interests wondering back that way sometime in the future. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:55, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #10

Welcome to the tenth 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.

General news

• Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
• You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!

Growth at Wikimania

Opening panel in the Community Growth space

• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
• Here are the most important links:
  • Notes and learnings from Wikimania
  • Video of Growth team presentation about our work and learnings from the past year
  • Slides from Growth team presentation
• These are some of our topline notes:
  • Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
  • Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
  • Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.

Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!

Mockup of newcomer tasks

• The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
• We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
• These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
  • Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
  • How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
  • How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
• We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
• You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?

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

18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Florine Stettheimer

Thanks for the request. I enjoyed learning about this artist!

Tdslk Thanks for your edits, they're very welcome improvements. Vexations (talk) 12:39, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

A survey to improve the community consultation outreach process

Hello!

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.

Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.

The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.

Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions notice for post 1932 American politics and related people

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

You have shown interest in post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

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

Doug Weller talk 13:32, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #11

Welcome to the eleventh 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.

General news

• Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
• Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
• The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!

Help panel results

Mockup of guidance while doing a suggested edit, using the help panel

The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).

• In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
• This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
• We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
• We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.

Newcomer tasks deployment

Mockup of topic matching in newcomer tasks

• The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
• We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
• These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
  • V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
  • V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
• The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.

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

15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

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Adrian Stimson

Hello! I was half way through creating a stub for Adrian Stimson when I discovered you already have a much better start-class draft going. I added two collections I found; you already had everything else I found. I leave it to you. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 02:05, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

ThatMontrealIP, OK, I'll see what I can do. It's disconcerting, but not surprising, to see that AA has an article, as does John Tims, but neither Adrain Stimson|Stimson]], nor Old Sun do. I'd like to find some more references. Your help is much appreciated. Vexations (talk) 02:22, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

You might like

I thought you might enjoy this Maurizio Cattelan interview, where someone has been hired to pretend to be Cattelan.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:06, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

ThatMontrealIP, nice :). Vexations (talk) 00:20, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Vexations

Hi @Vexations: Re: Universal Constructivism. It was a link I put in, it wasn't changing the underlying link. I dIo notice is linking a redirect @ Anthropophagy (art) which links to Manifesto Antropófago. So it can't be left as linking to a redirect. scope_creep^Talk 22:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Scope creep, I created that redirect Anthropophagy (art) so that we could point to the article about the manifesto. Universal constructivism, as I hope you'll appreciate, is not influenced by the actual consumption of human flesh, but rather by the Manifesto written by de Andrade, who uses the term metaphorically. I what I did confuses our readers, perhaps a better solution is to link to Manifesto Antropófago directly. Thanks, Vexations (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Yip, I think a direct link would be ideal. Interesting article though. I'm very widely read but almost nothing on that side of the Atlantic. Was it widely read? The idea of channelling tribal rites as a metaphor for cannibalising both physical and organic cultural aspects and ideas of another society is probably unique to that location, but the idea of cannibalising the ideas of other nations, of trying to emulate them, to adapt them, is not. It is a time-test cultural trope, if such a thing could be said to exist. I find it immensely interesting the mindbogglingly complex nature of human society. The fact they were untouched by war, coloured it. scope_creep^Talk 00:12, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Scope creep, sounds good. The history of early modernism in South America is fascinating. My Spanish, unfortunately, isn't good enough to do any serious work in that area. Vexations (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

PS

I was going to make up my own card with either this or this, but it veered too far away from true wiki work. Happy holidays! ThatMontrealIP (talk) 03:01, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

I went ahead and created something a little less eye-cringing. Only a little less.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

Sweet Brown Snail by Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Thank you for all your edits and contributions this year. Wishing you a happy holiday! ThatMontrealIP (talk) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cheers

Merry Christmas, Vexations! Or Season's Greetings or Happy Winter Solstice! As the year winds to a close, I would like to take a moment to recognize your hard work and offer heartfelt gratitude for all you do for Wikipedia. May this Holiday Season bring you nothing but joy, health and prosperity.Onel5969 TT me 23:26, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Fascinating accidental artist...

See Emma Hauck. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. I was unaware of Hauck. Her work reminds me of that of Hanne Darboven. Vexations (talk) 04:39, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 5

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Kerlin Gallery, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Stephen McKenna and Mark Francis (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 11:26, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Andy Ngo, editor at large

Vexations, since there has been a lot of back and forth reverting recently I decided it might be better just to comment here vs revert your good faith edit here [[1]]. It got me looking and I agree that the "about us" page doesn't mention Ngo. However, recent articles published by PM that mention Ngo say he is editor at large. For example this one is less than 24 hr old [[2]]. In the body of the article it says Ngo is editor at large. I think that would count as verified. Just thought I would let you know. Springee (talk) 20:27, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Springee, it is a very strange title to give to an editor who is new to the publication. As far as I can tell, Ngo has contributed 8 articles to the Post Millenial in the three months that he has been there. Typically, the title is reserved for an editor who has a long history with a publication, and remains associated, albeit not as full-time staff. I think it's worth clarifying that Ngo is not part of the full-time editorial staff, but a freelance contributor with a fancy title. Vexations (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I have no idea what Ngo's real relationship is. I think it's 100% accurate to say the PM calls him Editor-at-large. What that work actually involves... no idea and your concerns could be very valid. However, I don't think we should leave a tag that questions the title since the PM is currently using it. It would probably be worth raising a question on the talk page. Springee (talk) 21:42, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Roger Steinmann, self-published sources

Vexations, thanks for checking Roger Steinmann. I’m new, therefore I need some support in addressing the issue. Is it the

• The facts Roger Steinmann writes about himself on his own page,
• The news-paper clips and documents he has posted or
• Both of it?

I’ve seen Self-published sources, but to be honest, I’ve focused more on the second part Using the subject as a self-published source: "There are living persons who publish material about themselves, such as through press releases or personal websites. Such material may be used..."

Bullet 1.-4. looks fine to me. Is it 5.? Or is it other things?

What can I do to fix this? Can you please help?

Thanks, Ogcgn (talk) 06:35, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Ogcgn, It's things like this: http://www.roger-steinmann.com/, http://www.roger-steinmann.com/biography.html, http://www.roger-steinmann.com/images/710_D_2016-11-02_PHONY,_WGA.JPG, http://www.roger-steinmann.com/filmdocuments.html. For example

http://www.roger-steinmann.com/awards.html shows that Steinmann won a Fujica single 8 C100. If no independent, reliable source took notice of such an award, it really doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Sources should have been published by reputable publishers. Of course, it's fine to provide a link to a copy of a published source, if it doesn't violate any copyrights. A source like https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gerald-i-wolff-dead-casting-director-producer-was-77-1244331 for example, is fine. It just doesn't mention Steinmann. Vexations (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, I have addressed a lot of issues... please see Talk:Roger_Steinmann. May you please have another look if this goes in the right direction? Thanks. Ogcgn (talk) 23:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Data Ladder

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Data Ladder I believe you just inadvertently added your !vote contribution near the top of the discussion rather than at the end past the relist and you may wish to correct that. Thankyou.Djm-leighpark (talk) 07:21, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, thanks, I used reply-link, which adds a reply below the text I respond to, but not necessarily in chronological order, if other replies aren't indented correctly. It usually works well on XfDs too. I'll fix my reply. Vexations (talk) 11:42, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

spam

So this whole spam thing is a little more sinister than I thought. There are two addresses they are using and two phone numbers, both of which the phone numbers and addresses belong to a deceased woman. Praxidicae (talk) 21:04, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Praxidicae, ew... be careful. Vexations (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

heres a semi full list I just found. Praxidicae (talk) 21:22, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Good job. I have converted your list to utilise {{LinkSummary}} as it is used here, and there is an equivalent for metawiki, which will enable quick blacklisting.

@Praxidicae: if we suspect corruption, especially illegal rather than immoral, then I think that we should be notifying Legal. They can watch and take control when/if/as they need to do so. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:31, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Billinghurst I actually had that thought earlier but I already filed an FTC report about fraud and sent additional info to the FBI. While paid editors are certainly using this shitspam as sources they aren't, or at least I assume not, the creator of these sites. I'll talk with you more about it offwiki. :) Praxidicae (talk) 13:19, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Praxidicae, stuff like [3] is written by an AI, though, isn't it? It takes only a few minutes to create a wordpress site that way. Vexations (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but you'll notice several of the sites from the first set we talked about also include semi-well written "articles" about perennial vanity spammers because they flood those outlets with content about them in between the shitty spam posts. As an example, we know Californiaherald is a completely fake news site, yet this article about a spammer here is mostly legible. They supplement everything between actual spam bursts about what I can only assume are clients with the spambot gibberish because many people, particularly outside of Wikipedia don't tend to be critical of sources on social media, so it's basically citogenesis in the form of churnalism. Praxidicae (talk) 13:50, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Praxidicae, I've always thought that the spammers adopted a technique that reputation management firms have developed to drown out negative coverage of their subjects. That's where the money is, after all. These non-celebrities don't have any money, they need cheap solutions. It troubles me more that quasi-reputable sources pick up these stories. It reminds me of the incredible success of Operation Infektion. Vexations (talk) 14:02, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

There is so much wrong with all of this I don't even know where to begin. I've gone down the rabbit hole of finding other clearly black hat SEO fake news sites thanks to the use particularly of oneworldherald. Take a look at my fake news userpage now...this is going to require a LOT of cleanup and a ton of blacklisting. Praxidicae (talk) 14:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Billinghurst, Praxidicae, and Vexations:What will the strategy be for attacking this spam farm? Count me in.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 15:04, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Praxidicae, Vexations, and ThatMontrealIP: Strategy from here is to document what we have for presentation to the community and clearly document a consensus that these sources, and others like them, are out of scope not for Wikipedia, and maybe suggest that they are not for Wikimedia. (We know that this is going to become bigger in a media sense.) If the latter is concluded, we take it to m:talk:spam blacklist. To this point for this spamhaus it is predominantly enWP from my quick xwiki analysis, though seeing some stuff at the other wikis. The community will also need to think about how we manage notability for influencers, it is almost a step further on wrt BLP.

Tactically, we start tidying articles. We also start looking and categorising the refspam houses so we can better understand what they were doing, and watch them morph. There will be more than one will be my guess, what we are seeing is the most mature; or maybe just the most used, and least hidden. I still feel a flag to WMF would be useful somewhere in this process.

Praxidicae, are you comfortable hosting the discussion alongside the build list, or can you think of a better place to build that analysis and discussion? — billinghurst sDrewth 21:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: When looking at some of these articles, and asking some questions of a couple of link users, I would say that there are elements a quiet game going on here. Push the stuff out as puff pieces with the end game that media, article writers (publicists and Joe Public) just grap it and use it as it is on the web ... so truth, so part of the issue is that reflection and assessment of reliable sources. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Billinghurst:, you had the word push exactly right. I came across this service, called "Pusher", which does exactly what you are describing for music sites. Pay $99 and they will push your material to multiple sites. I got there scrutinizing sources used in Draft:Yes Please (band)‎.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:20, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

[4] Best comment I've read this year! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Growth team updates #12

Welcome to the twelfth 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.

General news

• A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
• Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks

We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.

Suggested edits by type of edit.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits

• About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
• When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
  • 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
  • 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
• Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
• Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed

The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".

• On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
• In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks

Prototype of how the help panel will "peek" from the bottom of the page to offer guidance on mobile.

Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.

• Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
• Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
• Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

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

17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

"Possum lady" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Possum lady. Since you had some involvement with the Possum lady redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:10, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

fake news websites

Hi. I hope you are doing well. Do you think we should post at RSN to seek consensus to ban some particular websites from being used as sources? There is a configuarion, if you try to use a banned website, it triggers a filter and the edit cant be saved. What are your thoughts regarding this? I think it is better to than arguing at AfD. Do you have any websites in mind? Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 02:06, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Haha

I just went through and sent a bunch of NPP invites today. You came up in my list based on the criteria I was querying, but I knew you were already aware of the project (obviously), so didn't send one to you, but I see you've requested it back again anyway. Cheers mate, — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, I've been upgrading some of my tools to quickly evaluate the sources in an article. Trying to get them to work with User:Headbomb/unreliable.json. How are your python skills? Vexations (talk) 22:37, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, none sorry :/ — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

New page reviewer granted

Hi Vexations. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group. Please check back at WP:PERM in case your user right is time limited or probationary. This user group allows you to review new pages through the Curation system and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or nominate them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is vital to maintaining the integrity of the encyclopedia. If you have not already done so, you must read the tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the deletion policy. If you need any help or want to discuss the process, you are welcome to use the new page reviewer talk page. In addition, please remember:

• Be nice to new editors. They are usually not aware that they are doing anything wrong. Do make use of the message feature when tagging pages for maintenance so that they are aware.
• You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted. Please be formal and polite in your approach to them – even if they are not.
• If you are not sure what to do with a page, don't review it – just leave it for another reviewer.
• Accuracy is more important than speed. Take your time to patrol each page. Use the message feature to communicate with article creators and offer advice as much as possible.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you also may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In cases of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, or long-term inactivity, the right may be withdrawn at administrator discretion. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Fine analysis

This was far from being the first time I've been impressed or indeed astounded by the amount of research you're prepared to do into sources in a routine AfD – Chapeau!, as the Italians say. Oh, and pleased to see the section above this, too! Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, That was awfully nice of you. Thanks,Vexations (talk) 01:59, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Nagarro page

Hi Vexations, Since you have marked that Nagarro needs non primary sources, I am sharing some links. Please let me know if these meet notability guidelines.

https://www.avendus.com/index.php/india/newsroom/avendus-capital-inc-advises-nagarro-inc-on-its-strategic-relationship-with-allgeier-holding-ag https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-allgeier-acquisition-in-the-techno/brief-allgeier-acquisition-in-the-technology-segment-idUSASM000HUK https://www.dqindia.com/nagarro-acquires-conduct-a-norway-based-it-solutions-provider/ https://www.marketscreener.com/ALLGEIER-SE-37926218/news/Allgeier-achieves-further-growth-in-revenue-and-EBITDA-in-the-first-half-of-2019-29065576/ https://thesiliconreview.com/magazine/profile/we-specialize-in-the-change-the-business-end-of-the-spectrum-of-technology-services-nagarro Buzztrack (talk) 11:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Buzztrack, do you seriously think that https://www.avendus.com/index.php/india/newsroom/avendus-capital-inc-advises-nagarro-inc-on-its-strategic-relationship-with-allgeier-holding-ag is an independent source? Come on. It's a press release. Marketscreener? It says at the bottom of the page: Allgeier SE published this content on 14 August 2019 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein.. And you want to know if I think these meet notability guidelines? Of course they don't. Vexations (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Takealot Company Edits

Hi there!

Thanks for flagging my error. This was purely unintentional and I have updated my UserPage accordingly. Please let me know of whatever edits are required to remove the COI and I will happily do so! — Preceding unsigned comment added by JasonWarnerSA (talk • contribs) 13:28, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

JasonWarnerSA, I have added the connected contributor template to the talkpage of Takealot.com. Instructions on how to handle your conflict of interest are in the message on your talk page. Vexations (talk) 13:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Vexations - much appreciated! I will update accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.94.70.87 (talk) 13:57, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Hotjar

I'm glad the Hotjar page finally was allowed to be created. Did you eventually reconsider your decision? Pilot333 (talk) 16:19, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) the sourcing on that page is all puffed up from nothing-- one word mentions and paid coverage in bad sources. Nominated for deletion.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 18:44, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Pilot333, no. Vexations (talk) 22:41, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I didn't know TPS was a thing lol. Pilot333 (talk) 23:26, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

"MTV Moive & TV Award for Best Performance in a TV Show" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect MTV Moive & TV Award for Best Performance in a TV Show. Since you had some involvement with the MTV Moive & TV Award for Best Performance in a TV Show redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Regards, SONIC678 04:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

How did you find archived article?

Hi @Vexations:! Hope you're doing well. I saw that you found an archived article over at the Nakamura talk page, and I was wondering how you did that. I did not find it when I was doing my research, and it would be useful to be able to more easily find archived pages.

Did you search directly on the Internet Archive? Did it come up in whatever search engine you were using? Just curious. Thanks! Jlevi (talk) 17:29, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Jlevi, I don't remember exactly, but google finds http://www.thegwpf.com/researcher-predicts-cooler-climate-northern-hemisphere-2015/ that links to a server that no longer exists, but the archive had a copy. Vexations (talk) 18:44, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Somehow I didn't think of looking at non-RS sources at all. I suppose there's something one can glean from them at times.Jlevi (talk) 19:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion notifications

Please be careful using Twinkle to notify users of speedy deletions. Unus Annus was originally a redirect overwritten by a new user multiple times. Jalen Folf (talk) 21:27, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

JalenFolf, you wouldn't want to let this continue though would you? Delete and salt seems appropriate at this point. Vexations (talk) 21:30, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Nicola López (artist)

Hello! Just a heads up that I put the blp sources tag back on Nicola López (artist), since nine of the shows are unsourced. I think it was distilled from a CV somewhere, so the shows need to be checked and have dates and sources added. Hope all is well. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 20:08, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

ThatMontrealIP, I'll either find the sources or remove the entries. You know how I feel about copy/pasting CVs and sourcing. I wish we could have a bit more text about the work. From reading the article alone, I'd have no idea what it's like. Fortunately, there's enough info in the sources. I like Trevor Paglen's very accessible piece in the Brooklyn rail for example. Vexations (talk) 20:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Excellent. This is actually an article that I saved form speedy deletion, as it had some copyvio material in it. I'm not much on article expansion, so your efforts would be appreciated!ThatMontrealIP (talk) 20:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Here is a pretty good article on Nicola López. Bus stop (talk) 03:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)