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Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 112

< Wikipedia:Simple talk

Some questions

There is an article on curry . But the curry powder is not an article, it is red. Is this necessary? If there is a curry article, why should curry powder be red? --Windell (talk) 11:31, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am thinking about the link in the article Freak the Mighty. --Windell (talk) 11:33, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Red links are a signal to editors that we do not have an article. It is a suggestion which someone might take up if they think the topic is important. Obviously, we have fewer articles than the main English wikipedia, because we have far fewer editors. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also second question: Dr. Dolittle is not only a film but a book. On the English wikipedia it is linked to the book. Same article on English wikipedia is about the book, if you check. Can anyone help me make that to an article on book? Or make an other article that is the book? --Windell (talk) 12:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Books and films are separate pages here. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone help me make an article on book? I mean they have the same title. I can't do that once more. --Windell (talk) 17:42, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The enwiki article en:Doctor Dolittle is actually about the character, not a book or movie. They have separate articles about the books and movies. I just moved our article to Dr. Dolittle (movie) for clarity, and fixed the Wikidata link. An article here for the book would have a different title anyway, because none of the books is called just "Doctor Dolittle". For example, the first book is called The Story of Doctor Dolittle. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Finally a good answer. --Windell (talk) 12:23, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do that. --Windell (talk) 15:29, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle not working?

I noticed that Twinkle isn't loading for me anymore. It works on the English Wikipedia, but not on Simple English. I noticed that Glaisher has edited the MediaWiki pages for Twinkle and may have accidentally broken something in the process. Could someone investigate? Thanks. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 20:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is a rather complex script (for me) and some changes made to this script appear odd to me, I think it's better to wait for Glaisher to look at the issue again. -Barras talk 21:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As of right now, it loads for me. Eurodyne (talk) 00:27, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not working for me, either. I don't have the "warn" tab at the top of talk pages. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The rollback works. The other stuff doesn't. Eurodyne (talk) 05:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm only seeing the standard rollback, not the Twinkle rollback links. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:57, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed now. Sorry, it broke due to a really silly mistake of mine. Also another reason for its breakage (for users who have those two gadgets enabled) is due to the update of very old two other gadgets (newpagesbox.js and recentchangesbox.js) which is compatible with Monobook only. I just made it so that those two are now loaded only on Monobook skin so it shouldn't be an issue for now; still those two needs to be rewritten because the code is really old. I apologize once again and made a note to myself not to edit scripts while half asleep. If it still doesn't work, please clear your cache. Regards, --Glaisher (talk) 10:47, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
For me, Twinkle options reappeared after your fix -- thanks! Now I'm getting the message "could not parse twinkleoptions.js". I haven't changed my twinkleoptions.js since April 2013. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:38, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle is working for me, but the preferences aren't—for some reason, pages I tag are still being added to my watchlist and the shared IP warning is still being added after warning messages, even after I (attempt to) disable that stuff through the preferences panel. -Mh7kJ (talk) 23:03, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also fixed now. Please clear your cache and let me know if the issue persists. --Glaisher (talk) 12:11, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

unfinished articles - how can I save them?

Hello I have been trying to find out how to save an unfinished article, ie when it has been started but isn't ready to be published yet. I can't see any appropriate button to click on, and neither could I find instructions anywhere about this. Thanks, Hirodaicommunication (talk)

Create a sandbox page "user:Hirodaicommunication/whatever" and stick the text there. When it's ready for the world, create a new page with the topic title, and transfer your edited text there. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discographies for band members

Should a discography for an individual person include recordings released by a band the person is/was in? Recently I've seen discographies for individuals include band recordings, sometimes with nothing else. Some of these were stand-alone discography articles, and some were discography sections in the musicians' individual articles. An example is in Keith Richards. Richards has done some solo recordings, but all the things listed in the discography here are from The Rolling Stones. I think discographies for individuals should include only things released under their own name, not things released by a band. Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 04:57, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, otherwise they might not be notable except as a member of a notable band or group. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:36, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please clarify, Mac. I'm not sure what you mean. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:54, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Adding Coordinates to Articles

I've recently started adding missing coordinates to articles through Category:Articles needing coordinates. When I add the {{coord}} template, to the pages in that category, the hidden category Category:Articles needing coordinates, doesn't go away. Is it possible to remove a hidden cat from an article or make the hidden cat go away on its own? Eurodyne (talk) 04:26, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That message is coming from the infobox, which expects to see parameters for the coordinates. I'm not an expert in that code, but I don't see a way to suppress this check. For articles with infoboxes, can you add the coordinates via infobox parameters instead of as a separate template? --Auntof6 (talk) 06:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, I don't know where to add it in the infobox... Eurodyne (talk) 17:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You would use the latitude and longitude parameters (latd, latm, etc.). The doc for Template:Infobox settlement explains how to use them. See Dublin for an example. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for feedback on my funding proposal to work with UNESCO

Hi all

I’m looking for feedback and endorsement for my Wikimedia Foundation PEG grant to be Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO. As you probably know UNESCO does a lot of work on universal primary education and improving Wikipedia is a very useful tool for them to achieve this, especially in relation to Wikipedia Zero. I’d very much appreciate if you would have a look and endorse the project, the most relevant objectives to Wikipedia are:

1. Train UNESCO and its partner organisations to contribute to Wikimedia projects: Provide UNESCO and its partners with the skills, tools, resources and connections to contribute to Wikimedia projects in a meaningful, measurable and sustainable way. To integrate into the Wikimedia community both online and by matching them with local Wikimedia organisations and volunteers for in person support and collaboration. The project will create and improve content receiving 100,000,000 views per year on Wikimedia projects, educate 1000 people in over 200 organisations to learn more about Wikimedia projects. This will include 500 newly registered users trained to contribute to Wikimedia projects and 500 articles formally reviewed by experts.
2. Make content from the archives of UNESCO and its partners available on Wikimedia projects: This project will facilitate the upload of 30,000 images, audio files, videos, data and other content to Wikimedia projects from UNESCO archives (24,000 images), UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and other sources including 10 organisations changing their content license to be Wikimedia compatible, a completed pilot project is outlined in the Goal section.

I ran a pilot project that resulted in the images found in the Wikimedia Commons category Images from the archive of UNESCO, here are a few examples:

  •  
    The Soda volcano, Oromia, Ethiopia.
  •  
    Rubble of the cathedral after the earthquake that hit the Capital Port au Prince just before 5 pm on 12 January 2010.
  •  
    Young monk, wearing a special costume, July-August 1991, Sikkim, India.
  •  
    Sabha, 6, getting ready to walk to school from her house on the borders eastern Gaza strip, where she and her family are still living in tents.
  •  
    Not far from Mohenjo-Daro (or Mohenjodaro) - These Mohana fishermen/hunters use lures from real birds to catch more birds. They will either eat them or sell them. Mohenjodaro, Pakistan.
  •  
    Priest of rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, a high place of Ethiopian Christianity, still today a place of pilmigrage and devotion.

If you think this is a worthwhile project please click this link and then click the endorse button.

Many thanks

Mrjohncummings (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to simplify Template:Infobox person

As per the earlier discussion on this page, I have started a proposal to simplify Template:Infobox person. Please go to Template talk:Infobox person#Proposal to simplify this template to read about it and give your input. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:29, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There has been very little discussion on this, and no consensus to change anything. Unless the discussion picks up, I'd say this is a dead issue. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

can someone please protect my archives

Can someone please protect my archives? I don't want vandals desecrating or defacing my archive pages, please. Angela Maureen (talk) 04:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have fully protected these pages:
If that isn't what you wanted, let me know. By the way, this kind of request should be left on the Admins' noticeboard, not on Simple Talk. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please see comment

…in the Talk section of this venues' Main Page, here [1]. Your guidance and feedback would be most helpful. Cheers, Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 15:06, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template:CatTrack

Does this template serve any purpose any more? I can't tell from the code what it's intended to do. The enwiki copy says that the tool that uses it doesn't exist any more. I was going to propose it for deletion, but I thought I'd ask for input here first. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:08, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would say go ahead and propose it. The lack of documentation makes the use unclear. George Edward C – Talk – Contributions 07:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #1—2015

 

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

  • starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
  • takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
  • might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
  • is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray .

The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor. (T67815, T73746.) This change fixed a couple of existing bugs and improved usability. (T73077, T73078.)

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once.(T78234.)

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedia requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace. (T86688, T87027.) If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

— Elitre (WMF)

18:30, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Simplify Fluffernutter

Would anyone mind simplifying Fluffernutter? Thanks, Eurodyne (talk) 23:13, 17 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Using your same user name throughout Wikipedia

I use the same Wikipedia user name throughout Wikipedia, e.g. for Dutch, English, German pages. Now i tried to make an account with the same user name for the Simple English Wikipedia and it says it conflicts with a user name that is used on another Wiki. Can this policy be changed?

Best regards,

Han

If you own the SUL for that name and login on one of those wikis and come to this page, an account should be created automatically for you. If one isn't then that means someone else owns the global account for that nickname. -DJSasso (talk) 15:17, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't even know that a SUL (Single User Login) for one user name on all Wikipedia projects existed. I merged my accounts and it worked like a charm. Didn't even know I had already five different accounts. Glad the Single User Login is default now for all new accounts made.

Thank you very much!

Best regards,

Han

Jgamleus (talk) 19:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Edits on South Pole

An editor, User:Alex.panther87, has been adding problem information to South Pole. The paragraph added is:

  • Not all correct -- it states that years go by without sunrises or sunsets at the south pole
  • Not understandable -- there is one incomplete sentence and another sentence that doesn't make sense
  • Not really about the south pole anyway -- most of it is general info about Antarctica, the midnight sun phenomenon, and the Arctic and Antarctic circles

That last item is why I didn't try to fix the text -- IMO, it doesn't really fit very well into the article. I tried leaving a message about it on the editor's talk page, but that didn't seem to have any effect so I ended up leaving an actual warning. Could someone else watch the article for a bit so that it isn't just me trying to fix this? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:11, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll put the page on my watchlist, and I'll watch for that username and article in #cvn-simplewikis. :) --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 10:44, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

[Global proposal] m.Wikipedia.org: (all) Edit pages

 
MediaWiki mobile

Hi, this message is to let you know that, on domains like en.m.wikipedia.org, unregistered users cannot edit. At the Wikimedia Forum, where global configuration changes are normally discussed, a few dozens users propose to restore normal editing permissions on all mobile sites. Please read and comment!

Thanks and sorry for writing in English, Nemo 22:32, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

PGA and PVGA

I've got a few articles awaiting review there. I'd appreciate it if someone could especially attend to the PVGA and possibly promote it. If anyone would like to help me "peer review" the GA, leave me a note on my talk page. Eurodyne (talk) 05:21, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Time to reevaluate DYK?

The DYK template on the front page hasn't been updated in 2 months now. There are 3 hooks in the queue right now, and none have been added to the queue since January 15. The DYK process has been going through a lot of long lulls, and I think it might be time to think if it's worth keeping as part of our front page. Only (talk) 03:37, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I personally really like DYK and don't know what to put in replace of that. I think it's worth keeping if a few editors can get back actively into it. There's no real harm of updating the DYK template every 1-2 months. Eurodyne (talk) 22:03, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We have been here before. The one thing we don't want on the front page is poorly organised DYKs, with language problems and/or inadequate sources. Therefore the system depends on having at least one experienced and competent editor to supervise it. Over the last year or so Goblin has done the supervising, and it has done well. Things happen in real life which mean we sometimes lack a key person in one of our areas of activity. Then, with DYK, it goes into a lull. We can live with that, I think. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:50, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My issue is that we just accept this as norm. We accept that we're going to have long lulls at times at DYK. I'm not sure why we should accept it. The desire of the system is to have it updated more than once every couple of months. It's inconsistent that some spans we're updating every week then suddenly nothing for months. As a viewer or casual reader of our front page, you might get the impression that we've stopped caring/editing if you're seeing the same hooks for a couple of months. Only (talk) 12:56, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Or it might encourage them to help out? Wikipedia has no deadline and being that we are a very small wiki, there are going to be things like this that spring up. Some wikis, with usership higher than ours, don't update their front page at all for months at a time. -DJSasso (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the holding area and need someone to move one of my approved hooks, "Macadamia nut" into the holding area as well. Let me know what you think. Eurodyne (talk) 05:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2015)

Hello Wikimedians!

 
The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 21:14, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator page.
This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

heart attack vs myocardial infarction

I think the term myocardial infarction might be technical for some readers. Couldn't you replace the term with heart attack so the article can be less technical? Angela Maureen (talk) 19:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and have moved it over. Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:51, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have moved it back. If you think it should be changed, please have a wider discussion first. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:54, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
People use heart attack to talk about more than one thing. There are health problems that cause the heart to stop in other ways. People call these problems "heart attacks". But, people only say myocardial infarction when they mean this particular heart-stopping problem.
This is why editors might choose the complicated name. However, the simpler name is easier to read. (I don't care which name is used.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to make "heart attack" a disambiguation page. Many people call a "myocardial infarction" an "MI." Would it be better to use that name? StevenJ81 (talk) 05:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The primary meaning of "heart attack" is myocardial infarction, so "heart attack" should redirect there. We could have Heart attack (disambiguation) if we have other meanings for it. If you're suggesting we use the term "MI" instead of "myocardial infarction", that can be done in individual articles (after using the full term once), but it shouldn't be the page name: see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations for the guideline on that. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:23, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing:, just FYI, the heart doesn't necessarily stop during an MI. That is cardiac arrest, a separate thing. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:23, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and that was one reason why I think "heart attack" is a better term for us, because it is not really ambiguous. Whereas an infarct, medically speaking, is a small area of dead tissue caused by an inadequate blood supply. But "myocardial infarction" is so much more impressive! Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Mac, I'm not following your thinking here. Why does the heart not necessarily stopping during an MI make "heart attack" a better article title? --Auntof6 (talk) 03:47, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm saying is that (in this case) there is no extra precision to be got from using the latinate term. We should always prefer common names unless it results in a concept being poorly described. In this case the common phrase is perfectly OK. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:07, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree if the common term weren't ambiguous and often used incorrectly, but that's not the case here. It may be OK to use the common term in an article, but the page should have the more exact title. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:04, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Inspire Campaign: Improving diversity, improving content

This March, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas for improving gender diversity on Wikimedia projects. Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women, and many important topics are still missing in our content. We invite all Wikimedians to participate. If you have an idea that could help address this problem, please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 31.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help this project better represent the world’s knowledge!

(Sorry for the English - please translate this message!) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:01, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Review of Purplebackpack89's community ban

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Result: I must say I was not an active editor here when the original ban was put in to effect. And having reviewed this request, and past discussions it concerns me that Purplebackpack89 (talk · contribs) has seen fit to bring up other peoples character and their past in an effort to somehow clear Purplebackpack89 (talk · contribs) of that users wrong doing. If anything that proves the fact that Purplebackpack89 (talk · contribs) does not appreciate the ban that was put into place, nor has any remorse for that user's previous actions. As a result the community ban remains in effect, and no other review of this ban will be considered for a time of 1 year from today 16:35, 12 March 2015 (UTC) . -- Enfcer (talk) 16:35, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all,

Purplebackpack89 (talk · contribs) has requested an unblock, which means we need to re-consider the community ban placed against him. The original discussion can be found here. The last discussion about this can be found here. -Barras talk 21:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - As before, there seems to be no expression of understanding the block. The user's only rationale for unblocking is "because it's been a long time." Only (talk) 12:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - apparently the same reason I have used over the last three and a half years still apply. Support continued ban; it's not like his absence has harmed any articles, either. I also propose further refusal of appeal(s) for another extended duration, but I will leave the closing administrator to think of a duration he deems fit. Chenzw  Talk  12:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • To date there has been no assurance that the series of escalations (issues with civility), which led to the final indef block, will not happen again. Such problems create a poisonous atmosphere for collaboration on this wiki. I note that you did not start off with one indef block, but with multiple blocks concerning POV pushing, edit warring, civility issues, escalating all the way up to indef. Chenzw  Talk  16:28, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Only and Chenzw pretty much sum it up. He still does not seem to get why he was banned. I would agree with Chenzw's proposal. -DJSasso (talk) 13:07, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • No the comments (mine atleast) are specific to your unblock request comment you just made. It showed no sign of you understanding why you were blocked or remorse for it. No promise to no longer have such problems or anything like that. All it said was that its been a long time so you should unblock me now. Which is pretty much exactly what you said the previous time and were rejected for it. You were even told that you needed to show that you understood the problems and that you would not continue them. Instead you came back here with an almost identical request of its been a long time so you should unblock. So it doesn't surprise me people are saying you still don't get it. Especially since you again repeated that your actions didn't harm articles, when it was made clear to you that the community believed your actions did harm articles. -DJSasso (talk) 15:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Kennedy admitted to his problems and promised not to continue them. As you state in your comment, you don't seem to believe you did anything wrong, which leads me to believe you will continue to edit the way you did before. which thus means the ban continues to be necessary to prevent you from disrupting the wiki. Your block didn't start at indef. You had many blocks before that. You were given something like 9 blocks prior to finally pushing the community over the edge to issue an indef. You were given plenty of opportunities to change and you didn't. And your comments here lead me to believe you still haven't. I am sorry. -DJSasso (talk) 17:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please see my response on the users talk page in relation to this. Kennedy (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please take note of this comment by PBP89 on his talk page. -Barras talk 15:12, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose: Instead of stating on talk page and unblock request "the only way to find out if I have changed or not is to unblock for awhile", is to instead list specific ways you have changed for the better and tell exactly how you plan on being a good editor this time. Sorry. Fylbecatulous talk 17:34, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.


What can I do here now?

Hello, I am interesting to read and write here in Simple English. My English is not good, I learned in my youth Russian at first foreign language, English was the language of the "enemies" ;). Today is English a world wide famous language, and I need to read English in many countries. I think, you can me help for better understand Simple English, an I can help you for better make Simple English wiki, isn t it?.

What can I do here now?

Greatings Mikota3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikota3 (talk • contribs) 16:05, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mikota3: I have replied on your talk page. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:23, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Auntof6, thank you very much for your answer! --Mikota3 (talk) 08:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template help needed, I think

Template:Infobox country seems to be putting the stray characters <tr class="mergedrow"> <tr class="mergedbottomrow"> at the top of Hong Kong. Can someone please look at this? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:26, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed it. -DJSasso (talk) 14:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 16:50, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

SUL finalization update

Hi all, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Heads up -- articles flagged as course assignements

Not too long ago, we had the {{Course assignment}} added to quite a few articles, with the text "This article is/was the subject of an educational assignment in Spring 2015". I've just been looking at a few of these articles, and the text added by the apparent students is not only often complex, it is often ungrammatical and sometimes doesn't make sense. I'm just giving you all a heads up that these might need extra attention. By the way, does anyone happen to know of a central contact for this group of students? --Auntof6 (talk) 04:59, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello!

I only wanted to say hello! I´m new hear, today I have written the article Marinilabiliaceae. Please take a look at it. I'm from the german Wikipedia and also write by the english wikipedia. All the best, --Kogge (talk) 21:13, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Kogge. I am a Newbie here and in WP also, but still: Welcome here. I know your good wiki-work from the german Wikipedia. I can often read vour name there. I am also a german speaker and have also only a basic command of English and admire your bravery to write in the Great English Wikipedia. Greatings --Mikota3 (talk) 08:27, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Nice to see a german here. My english is also not very good. I can read it, but writing is difficult. I hope I will learn here. All the best, --Kogge (talk) 10:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Castilleja Class Project

This year, in honor of US Women's History Month, this group would like to create/populate pages on notable female authors who write award winning or very popular books read by middle school students. The teachers want to hold this class fairly soon--Monday, March 23, 2015, at 8am-12 noon, Pacific. They have done projects in the past and have been very careful to follow all guidelines. I will be working with them, so please let me know if you find any problems etc.--Peterdownunder (talk) 05:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For details, check here:Wikipedia:Schools/Projects/Notable Female Authors--Peterdownunder (talk) 22:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Templates that retrieve info from Wikidata

I think we could use some of these. I just saw where a user changed population figures in several articles about French cities. Without references, it's hard to know whether those figures are legitimate. The same is true with other kinds of information. If our settlement infobox template could get population and other data from Wikidata (or other infoboxes could get other info), this would be much less of a problem.

I don't know how to set this up. Is anyone else familiar with it? --Auntof6 (talk) 17:08, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, we need to import the Wikidata module, then use it like this: {{#invoke:Wikidata|getValue|PXXX|{{{localvariable|FETCH_WIKDIATA}}}}}. This will, if localvariable is undefined, default to the value of PXXX. An example would be as follows: {{#invoke:Wikidata|getValue|P1082|{{{population|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}}}} This would, if population is undefined, default to Wikidata's value. The local variable will override the variable at Wikidata, to clarify. Hope this makes sense, --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 18:12, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think I understand. After importing the module, would we put the code you indicate as a parameter value in the article that invokes the template, or would it go into the template itself? --Auntof6 (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Either, it depends whether we want to have it apply to all articles with the template or that article only. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 20:30, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Class Project on Notable African American Innovators

We will be working with about 20 students to do some editing on Simple English Wikipedia. Students will add content to pages of notable African American innovators. They will be using Biography.com and library resources as their reference material. They will cite the sources they reference in the Simple English Wikipedia article. Given that multiple authors will be editing the same article, it will not make sense for them to use their individual sandbox to edit the page, so please bear with us as the pages are being developed. The class occurs from 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM United States Central Time on Tuesday afternoons. Visionovervisibility (talk) 16:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For details, check here:Wikipedia:Schools/Projects/Notable African American Innovators Visionovervisibility (talk) 16:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Biology stub

I noticed the Biology stub is not appearing on the page, yet does appear in the change view. Has anyone else noticed this? User:Rus793 (talk) 18:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Appears fine for me. Have you tried purging the cache/clearing your cookies? --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 18:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It didn't at first for me but once I edited the page it did show. Probably just a caching issue. -DJSasso (talk) 19:47, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Other stubs show up fine, just not the Biology stub. Clearing the cache does not help. It does show up as a hidden category however. In an article I patrolled this morning, Sporosarcina ureae, I even tried viewing it in IE and it didn't show up in that browser either. I just wondered if anyone else was experiencing this. Thanks User:Rus793 (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
NM, found the problem. User:Rus793 (talk) 17:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Level of vandalism

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that we've had more vandalism lately than we used to? I've been trying to think of things we could do to address it, and I've only come up with two ideas. One is to restrict unregistered editors from creating articles, as I believe they do on enwiki (their restriction might also apply to new users who aren't yet autoconfirmed). I think the software has this ability. I'm just not sure that's the kind of vandalism we usually get.

The other idea is to implement en:Wikipedia:Pending changes. Pending changes would apply only to pages that it's set up on, not all pages. It doesn't stop vandalism, though, it just stops it from being visible to people who read here but don't have accounts. This would require people to accept or reject changes to pages covered by the function. That's similar to patrolling, but it would be more important to keep up with it. It might be a substitute for semi-protection in some cases. Editors would have to be defined as reviewers, but we could start by setting up all the patrollers as reviewers since the functions are similar.

I'm not sure either of those would work well here, but that's all I've thought of so far. This wiki isn't as small as it used to be, but the editor base hasn't grown with it so we might need some automated solution(s). Any other ideas? --Auntof6 (talk) 11:20, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is un-needed, we simply don't get enough bad pages from IPs to justify it. The second one could indeed be an option, which I think we should consider. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 11:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Goblin bot used to pick up a lot of this level stuff, whatever happened to it?--Peterdownunder (talk) 13:01, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Toolserver shut down, and Goblin himself is quite busy atm. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 13:24, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think @Chenzw: also has access to the bot/code. Maybe he can help? -Barras talk 13:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed I have the code, the bot used to be on the (now defunct) Toolserver. Give me a day or two to recall the setup requirements and I will get it back working again. Chenzw  Talk  14:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I think pending changes would be a good idea. We will need consensus for this before requesting for it to be activated on this wiki. Chenzw  Talk  14:15, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that bot! That could certainly get us back to a manageable level. It still might be helpful to implement pending changes for a limited number of pages, though. There are some pages that get vandalized periodically in ways that would be hard for a bot to pick up, and which are fairly complete and unlikely to need much editing. Examples of such pages are the list articles of various gods and goddesses. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:43, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The situation is that we get many bad new pages and edits which are either vandalism or incompetent. My tallies are always over 90%, and sometime much higher than that. It is very obvious that there are two main sources: long-term "professional" vandals banned from English wiki, and bored and unsupervised schoolchildren. Bad edits from the school and other IPs is so usual that the occasional good edit really surprises one! I believe bad page edits are much worse and more common since the VisualEditor was launched. Also, I see many edits aimed at others probably in the same classroom, often a kind of cyber-bullying or boasting.
I think we should try and slow down the rate of both bad new pages and vandalism on existing pages. I agree absolutely with the comment (from Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions) "Much of the incentive to vandalize is removed by not immediately showing vandalism".
We could semi-protect certain biographies with a long, long history of vandalism (such as Ricky Martin) and some content pages like cat and dog. I'm not talking hundreds of pages. How long for? Try three months for a start. Pending changes could be used for all other pages for a trial period, say three months.
I've never really understood why an editor is allowed to put up a new page without being registered. It would be good if the pending software could cover that as well. Otherwise, if we use pending on existing pages, we will get many more bad new pages, depend on it! Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Afaik, there isn't a pending changes configuration that can do that (nor Flagged revisions). We'd have to introduce something like AFC, which would be a hastle, and, in my opinion, not worth it. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 18:09, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think there’s any question we are getting more vandalism lately. Restricting unregistered editors is certainly an option. It is where most of the vandalism is coming from. I don’t see the class-struggle argument; registered users against unregistered users. After all, how hard is it to register? If a contributor wants to remain an IP user, then it can be with the understanding that certain limitations come with it. And the community decides what those limitations are. I think before we decide to make all patrollers reviewers, we should first take a look at which patrollers are actually marking new pages patrolled. In addition, reevaluate the protection policy and see where it can help us cut down on the vandalism. If a bot can help with vandalism and not cause collateral problems then we should use it. The bottom line is we are spending too much of our time combating vandalism. It is time better spent on improving pages and creating new ones. User:Rus793 (talk) 14:05, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pending changes

Per the comments above, can we get consensus on this? I personally support. I also recommend that the review bit be added to the patroller group per Auntof6. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 14:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I currently do not think that we have reached a level of vandalism where we need more tools to "make vandalism less attractive". What we can think about though is to modify our edit filters so that they catch vandalism better. Edit filters are also able to disallow editing. The situation being as it is, we already have too few editors; those that we have (and that are not vandals) should focus on creating new pages, or improving existing ones. Personally, I don't see our admin team doing more patrolling as they already do. If certain pages get vandalised more often (likely those about sexuality or other controversial topics, such as nudity or abortion), we should consider a longer-term edit protection for those pages, and not an introduction of a completely new system. Please note that both German and English wikipedia are much bigger than we are, and what works for them does not necessarily work for us with the same ease of use. --Eptalon (talk) 10:46, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't read most of the above but I disagree with enabling FlaggedRevs here. This is the Simple English Wikipedia and FlaggedRevs makes the system more complicated. Also another thing to note is that FlaggedRevs only works properly when there are enough reviewers. My understanding is that this wiki is currently having a shortage of editors so if we don't have enough users to review the edits, it will be a complete failure as at German Wikiquote, for example. See q:de:Spezial:Sichtungsstatistik: "The average review delay for pages with edits currently pending review is 1,029 d 17 h". What's the point of unregistered users making edits if they are not going to be visible for months.. Additionally, if our experienced editors here spend time on reviewing the edits instead of doing edits, how are we going to get more edits? I think the disadvantages outweigh the benefits here. Glaisher (talk) 17:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like us to try restoring the bot first–not that I have the competence to do such a thing. <rueful grin>
It's really important to remember, though, that New Page Patrol and Pending Changes are two completely different kettles of fish. Adding PC could help us with existing pages prone to vandalism, but it's not designed to help weed out vandalism-by-page-creation. Only NPP–automatic or manual–can do that. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • As long as we get the anti-vandal bot up and running, I believe we can handle any other vandalism issues that may arise with our current ability to auto-confirm restrict the article as we see necessary, so as long as the bot can be revived I have to agree with the dissenting opinions above and say that it isn't necessary at this time. -- Enfcer (talk) 23:44, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How to make a page

I don't know how to make a page. Can you please tell me what to do about the article that I'm going to make. Thanks TheSimpsonsStuffII 12:15, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi there and welcome!
  1. Check your subject meets our notability criteria.
  2. Use the article wizard to create your article, or go to the page that you want, and click create!
Hope this helps :D, --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 12:29, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Children's movies vs. family movies

We have Category:Family movies and Category:Children's movies. I'm wondering if we need both. After a discussion with User:Jim Michael, I'm not seeing a way to objectively determine what movies should go in which category. I'm usually the first to say that we don't have to do things the same way as English Wikipedia, but I do see that they have only the children's films category. Moreover, their article Children's film says that "family film" is an American term, and "children's film" is a European term. If the difference is just geographical, that suggests that the two are the same thing, or close enough, in which case we wouldn't need both.

I'd like to see us either come up with some way to determine what goes where, or eliminate one category. Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I do somewhat see a difference, in the group of people the movie addresses. Fairy tales made into a movie (e.g. Cindrella, but also Bambi or Dumbo) clearly target children (aged 5-10); A 12-15 year old will usually not find enough depth to not get bored. On the other hand, there are the "standard" family movies, where there are protagonists of every age; in such a movie, a 10-12 year old will find an adolescent character with whom to identify. And finally, while Tolkien's "the Hobbit" was written as a childrenś book, it clearly targets the 10-15 year old crowd, and I doubt a 6 year old will find it interesting. I see however that sometimes, movies/books are hard to judge; in what category does "Alice in Wonderland" fall? Some of theriddles Alice comes across are clearly logical in nature, and show that Caroll had a background in Logic/mathematics. --Eptalon (talk) 13:59, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Films based on fairy tales, such as Frozen, are usually children's films. Family films are those which can be enjoyed by the whole family, such as Mrs. Doubtfire and The Nutty Professor. It is common for children's films to be marketed as family films, which conflates the two. Jim Michael (talk) 14:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but being based on a fairy tale wouldn't be a good definition: there must be children's films that aren't based on fairy tales. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:59, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Eptalon, but where do we find what age group a movie is aimed at? I suppose we could have a category called "Children's and family movies"... --Auntof6 (talk) 10:59, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think, the two could porbably be merged as proposed below. I do not have a "failsafe method" how to make a difference between both categories. But please consider:
  • For a film to be interesting to an adoleescent (10-15 year old), we need a character in the film that person can identify with (same sex, same age group)
  • ..or a subject the film is about the adolescent is interested in (common "problems" of authority, of growing up, of changing from a child to an adult)
In general, a movie "for children" will offer neither.--Eptalon (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would merge the two under the name Family movies. Generally children's moves are also called family movies. And I don't think we are simple need to be so specific as to try and separate the two. -DJSasso (talk) 16:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
OK, I'm going to be bold and merge them. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Subclassing Italian painters?

Hello,

Category:Italian painters currently has 55 entries, probably spanning from about 1200 to the modern day. In my opinion, we should subclass them. I do however see two options:

  • By century where the painter was mostly active
  • By classical period (Renaissance, Baroque,...)

Since I am no expert in history of art, I cannot judge which of the two looks more promising. If we make say 5-6 subcategories, we would end up with about 10 entries per category, assuming that they evenly span those categories. I am posting this here, because I would like to ask the community for input, before doing anything. --Eptalon (talk) 12:09, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's no reason we can't do both, I suppose. I have a little trouble with categorizing artists by century because it gets tricky with those who lived in multiple centuries. To me, it doesn't make sense to categorize an artist born in, say, 1895 as a 19th century artist, because they probably weren't creating notable art when they were five. They were certainly a 19th century person, but not a 19th century artist. The century category only makes sense for the centuries when the artist was working, and that can be hard to know. Some we can be sure of because they only lived in one century, but I wouldn't create the subcategories if we can't apply them to all artists. That's my two cents. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We could create "Baroque painters/artists" and "Renaissance painters/artists" and cover with that the period of rougly 1350-1620; for the people before and after, we would need to create the appropriate categories. Italian baroque painters would then be rooted in Italian painters and Baroque painters (or artists). If it makes sense to distinguish painting from the other arts is debatable as well... --Eptalon (talk) 17:18, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is baroque defined by time? I thought it was a style. The style was certainly most prevalent during a certain time. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:51, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm against splitting this category. Style categories are hugely elastic, and subtleties would not be understood by most editors. Quite a few artists painted in more than one style. Categories should, if possible, be based on indisputable facts, so if you are determined, then go with dates. Overlaps? just list both centuries. But I don't think we need it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 20:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 I am pretty certain that assigning a particular painter to a particular style can be done without much controversy, most of the time. Rembrandt is seen as a Baroque painter, if there are certain of his works that influenced other styles, then he can also be listed with these other styles (Yes, I know, he was a dutch painter of the 17th century). When I made the proposal above, my intention was to meaningfully subdivide the currently 55 Italian painters into categories. I haven't looked, but likely, the same categories can be used for other European painters who were contemporary. --Eptalon (talk) 21:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd never dream of looking for Rembrandt under "Baroque". En wiki uses "Dutch Golden Age" (!!) and Dutch portrait painters (the latter is very reasonable). Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Another way of dividing them would be by city of birth ("Painters from...", etc.). I think some Italian cities have more than their fair share. Note, though, that it's OK to have 55 entries in a category. Sometimes I think we're too quick to subdivide categories. In this case, if someone were trying to remember the name of a certain painter and the category were subdivided, it would be quite a bit harder to find the one wanted. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:51, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also think subcategorising makes searching more difficult unless you know exactly what you are looking for. The idea of listing by Italian town or region is quite possible. It has the merit of recognising that Italy was not a unified country before the mid-19th C. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This gives us two "axes", one geographic, the other by time period; we can then re-use the time-period categories for other painters. For the geographic axis, I would go for the regions (there are currently 20, but we obviously only need those where we can get three entries). And yes, Dutch Golden Age painting followed many of the tendencies of Baroque art, so, to some extent Rembrandt was a Baroque artist... --Eptalon (talk) 08:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All I said was "Style categories are hugely elastic, and subtleties would not be understood by most editors". So, if we must have categories, I would go for geog + time. Re geog, if we leave Italy and think of French painting, then neither region nor cities seems to work. This is partly because France has been unified for much longer than Italy, and because for a long time Paris has been so dominant in both politics and art that, wherever a painter was born, they are moulded by Paris.
Can we start with just "17th century Dutch painters", "19th century French painters" etc, and see if we can do that? Using century of main activity. We may not need another level. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 I have started subclassing; most entries seem to be 15th/16th century (Italian painters). The system works well in the case of born 1380/1390s- mid/end 1400s -> 15th century painter. The system is not optimal for people born about mid-century, and died mid of the next century (they'd logically get both categories). So what do we do there? --Eptalon (talk) 12:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You put them in both. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:09, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All the work is odne, we have categories from the 13th century to the 18th century; the ones remaining are 19th/20th century painters. Feel free to twaek categorisation...--Eptalon (talk) 21:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Style guidelines: please note

I'd like to remind our editors that Wikipedia has a manual of style (MOS). It's at Wikipedia:Manual of Style. It contains information about how different things in articles should be written or formatted. It's a guideline, so it's not mandatory, but it should be followed unless there's a good reason not to.

I'm giving this reminder because there are some items in the manual that are often being overlooked lately. They include:

  • Date formats: when writing the day part of a date, write it without "th", "rd", etc. after it. For example, write "May 9, 2015", not "May 9th, 2015". Write "3 June", not "3rd June". See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dates for more info.
  • In headings, the only words that are capitalized are proper nouns and the first word of the heading. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Wording for more info.
  • Use words and wording that won't go out of date.
    • Example 1: "Jane Doe is currently appearing on Broadway" will go out of date when Ms. Doe moves on to something else. Instead, say something like, "On May 4, 2000, Jane Doe began appearing on Broadway." That will be true no matter how long Ms. Doe's play runs.
    • Example 2: Some infoboxes have values to indicate time spans, such as for the run of a TV series, or the length of a marriage. When the thing is ongoing, instead of writing something like "1999-present", consider writing "1999-". That way, it won't go out of date if the time span ends and the article doesn't get updated. The templates suggest including the word present, but that doesn't serve us well here because we don't have enough editors to keep up with everything that needs updating.
See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Writing_precisely for more information, including other words that go out of date (such as recently, nowadays, soon, today, etc.).

One other item that isn't in our version of the MOS, but still applies: when mentioning a person by name, the first time the name is given, you use the full name. In most cases after that, you use only the surname. The most common reason for using the given name alone is when you're talking about other people with the same surname. There are some exceptions that depend on how names are used in other countries and languages. See en:WP:SURNAME for more information.

There's more in the MOS. It's actually pretty interesting for anyone wanting to write good articles here. It might help to compare ourselves to employees of a publishing company -- if you work for a company, you write the way the company wants things written. The manual of style describes the way Wikipedia wants things written. Take a look at it. If you have any questions about anything in it, I'm happy to answer if I can. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bithynia

Hello, I have a question to the article Bithynia. On my screen I see over the map following link: [2], and when I follow this link I can read: "Basic Search - Error - Unable to Open Result Set. - /usr/local/nlapp/prod/websearch/data/S_WWWfcagPDevs". Is that not a mistake? Greatings --Mikota3 (talk) 11:51, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is a broken citation. The web page isn't there any longer. it's called link-rot where links to web pages become broken over time. The web page changed, moved or is simply gone. The url you see in the article is due to a small glitch in the {{cite book}} template. Thanks for pointing it out. User:Rus793 (talk) 13:18, 2 April 2015 (UTC
Hello Rus793, thanks for the answer and the reaction. Greatings --Mikota3 (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Add the template {{Dead link}} so it can be fixed (or at least noted).StevenJ81 (talk) 14:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Stewards confirmation rules

Hello, I made a proposal on Meta to change the rules for the steward confirmations. Currently consensus to remove is required for a steward to lose his status, however I think it's fairer to the community if every steward needed the consensus to keep. As this is an issue that affects all WMF wikis, I'm sending this notification to let people know & be able to participate. Best regards, --MF-W 16:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #2—2015

 


Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:


 


Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:


 


After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead. (T90734)

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users at the English Wikipedia, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon. (T90666)

Let's work together

  • Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
  • Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
  • The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
  • File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF)

19:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Transwiki attribution: note on talk page vs. link in edit summary

User:Msannakoval is asking if we can add something to the policy page Wikipedia:Transwiki attribution about giving attribution via links in edit summaries (as opposed to giving attribution on a talk page). I thought I remembered a discussion where it was said that the talk page method is preferred. If anyone has any input on this, please reply at Wikipedia talk:Transwiki attribution#Attributing content from other Wikimedia projects. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Auntof6, for asking about this. Unfortunately, I was unclear in my original inquiry and may have caused some confusion. I talked about giving attribution in edit summaries. I should have caveated that this would be in addition to, not instead of, the talk page method. Sorry about that. I've amended my first post and will clarify that further at Wikipedia talk:Transwiki attribution#Attributing content from other Wikimedia projects. All the best, Msannakoval (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

net neutrality

i have started a new article on net neutrality in simple wikipedia its not much right now net neutralityJonnymoon96 (talk) 19:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Propose policy change - allow WikiProjects in mainspace

Right now Simple English Wikipedia does not allow WikiProjects to exist in mainspace. At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject I request that User:Bluerasberry/WikiProject Medicine be allowed to move to mainspace as a general WikiProject rather than remain as a user project in userspace. The main reason I have for this is that only WikiProjects in mainspace, and not those in userspace, can be listed in Wikidata.

Comments are requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:48, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Color list on color articles

I strongly recommend you to use the table instead of a chart to show color shades. Here's an example.

From this (the chart) :

Light Bubbles (Bubbles Light) (Xona.com Color List) (Hex: #F5FFFF) (RGB: 245, 255, 255)
Bubbles (Xona.com Color List) (Hex: #E7FEFF) (RGB: 231, 254, 255)
Beau Blue (Plochere) (Hex: #BCD4E6) (RGB: 188, 212, 230)
BABY BLUE (www.99color.net) (Baby Blue) (Maerz and Paul) (Hex: #89CFF0) (RGB: 137, 207, 240)
Baby Blue Eyes (Plochere) (Hex: #A1CAF1) (RGB: 161, 202, 241)
Little Boy Blue (Pantone TPX 16-4132) (Hex: #6CA0DC) (RGB: 108, 160, 220)

To this (the table) :

Name Color HEX Code Red Green Blue Hue Sat Lum Source
Light Bubbles #F5FFFF 245 255 255 180* 100% 98% Xona.com Color List
Bubbles #E7FEFF 231 254 255 183* 100% 95% Xona.com Color List
Beau Blue #BCD4E6 182 212 230 246* 46% 82% Plochere
Baby Blue #89CFF0 137 207 240 199* 77% 74% www.99color.net
Baby Blue Eyes #A1CAF1 161 202 241 209* 74% 79% Plochere
Little Boy Blue #6CA0DC 108 160 220 212* 62% 64% Pantone TPX 16-4132

The table is better since it's sortable and has HSL information. I have little to no time to come here. That's why I hadn't been editing Wikipedia. I came here today and saw that Ruby (color) was a new color article created using a chart rather than a table. That's why I posted this notice. I stopped editing since I became busy with other things and the charts needing to be changed became longer. Since I finished about 3/5s the articles, I want you to finish the rest. --Toran107 (talk) 02:14, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think this advice is excellent, but I see En wiki has yet another system, which has the virtue of saving space. I hope other editors take the time to think about it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:11, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nominations are being accepted for 2015 Wikimedia Foundation elections

This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

 

Greetings,

I am pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections. This year the Board and the FDC Staff are looking for a diverse set of candidates from regions and projects that are traditionally under-represented on the board and in the movement as well as candidates with experience in technology, product or finance. To this end they have published letters describing what they think is needed and, recognizing that those who know the community the best are the community themselves, the election committee is accepting nominations for community members you think should run and will reach out to those nominated to provide them with information about the job and the election process.

This year, elections are being held for the following roles:

Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the board elections page.

Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.

Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud
The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.

The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 20 to 23:59 UTC May 5 for the Board and from 00:00 UTCApril 20 to 23:59 UTC April 30 for the FDC and FDC Ombudsperson. This year, we are accepting both self-nominations and nominations of others. More information on this election and the nomination process can be found on the 2015 Wikimedia elections page on Meta-Wiki.

Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections -at- wikimedia.org

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 05:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help[reply]

Content Translation beta feature is now available

Hello, Content Translation has been enabled as a beta feature on the Simple English Wikipedia. In addition to translating from any other language, in the Simple English Wikipedia you can use Content Translation to simplify pages from the English Wikipedia. In-built features like link adaption will support the process. To enable the beta feature please go to Special:ContentTranslation or to your contributions page and create a new translation by selecting the source language, the article name and target language. If the article already exists then a warning will be displayed. After you translate or simplify the article, you can publish it directly as a new page on the Simple English Wikipedia. In case the article gets created in the Simple English Wikipedia by another user you will see an option to save the newly published translation under your user namespace. The number of published pages can be seen on the Content Translation stats page.

Since, this is the first time we have installed the tool on this Wikipedia, there are chances that there may be some problems or service disruptions which we are not yet aware of. We will be monitoring the usage to check for any failures or issues, but please do let us know on the Content Translation talk page or through Phabricator if you spot any problems that prevent you from using the tool. For more information, please read about how to use the tool. You can also view a short screencast on how to use Content Translation. Thank you.--Runa Bhattacharjee (talk) 16:20, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2015)

Hello Wikimedians!

 
The TWL OWL says sign up today!

Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

  • MIT Press Journals — scholarly journals in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences (200 accounts)
  • Loeb Classical Library — Harvard University Press versions of Classical Greek and Latin literature with commentary and annotation (25 accounts)
  • RIPM — music periodicals published between 1760 and 1966 (20 accounts)
  • Sage Stats — social science data for geographies within the United States (10 accounts)
  • HeinOnline — an extensive legal research database, including 2000 law-related journals as well as international legal history materials (25 accounts)

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:12, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at Global our new coordinator signup.
This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List

Content Translation beta feature will be enabled on 21 April 2015

Hello, Content Translation will be enabled as a beta-feature in the Simple English Wikipedia on 21 April, 2015. It is currently available on http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ContentTranslation for testing translation. You need to create a new account for this wiki as it is currently not covered by the central authentication system. Once logged in please enable the beta-feature to see the tool. You can translate from any article in the available source languages. Please let us know your comments and feedback through the Content Translation talk page or Phabricator. Thank you.--Runa Bhattacharjee (talk) 09:53, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As a personal comment, please make sure that you stay within our rules for Simple English. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:05, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Amazing that we've been asked whether we actually want/need that. For my taste it is rather rude to implement such a feature and so to use this project as test ground without consulting the community before. -Barras talk 20:06, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies if it sounded that way. The reason we generally do a pre-announcement is to make sure that we are aware of concerns or special information we may not know of otherwise. We have had some discussions during Wikimania 2014 (I cannot recall names at this point, sorry) about simplewiki being able to leverage the tool, possibly even better than some other languages. We already provide simple as a source so that people can translate from it. Please feel to let us know if there are any specific things we ought to be aware of. Essentially, nothing would change unless a user enables the beta-feature. Thanks.--Runa Bhattacharjee (talk) 10:33, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You might be right, Runa, about simplewiki being in a good position to leverage the tool. But there is also a risk here. I assume that the translation tool, as being implemented here, does not have a restricted vocabulary. And in any case it will not restrict the grammar. We'd like it to be easy for people to bring content here–but we don't want them writing English that is not "simple", either.
Here's a question for you. In its implementation here, is there a way to make sure there is a link in the tool to our various guides to Simple English? (There are 3-4 vocabulary lists, plus maybe 2-3 other WP-space articles.) StevenJ81 (talk) 13:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
About your concern about vocabulary, the tool by itself will not generate any content because there is no translation system that can translate from English to simple version of it. However, it will have an editing interface where links etc. will be automatically adapted from simplewiki that are appropriate wherever links exist in the original version of the article, thus reducing a lot of back and forth movement while editing. Our assumption here is that if an article exists in English, simplewiki editors are most likely rewriting much of that article to create the simpler version. It will be a learning exercise for the development team as well to understand special use cases for which we can introduce new features on the interface or perhaps help other languages also to get started with a simple version wiki. We will really appreciate any suggestions that you may have.
As for the placement of links to guides, we currently do not have a provision for wiki-specific modifications on the editing interface. But we are constantly exploring ways to improve it. I think this would be a good enhancement request and can add it to phabricator so that we don't forget about it. Meanwhile we now have the beta-feature enabled (announcement coming up shortly) and we will really appreciate feedback on what can be done better to make it more useful. Thanks.--Runa Bhattacharjee (talk) 16:17, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:StevenJ81, you might want to look at MediaWiki:Cx-create-new-translation-desc. Any admin could simplify or change that text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:48, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Simplified. The tool doesn't seem to be working for me, just a blank frame and my user toolbar. --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 05:52, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've had the same problem, George (in Safari 8 and Firefox 37 on Mac OS 10.10). It showed the tool if I re-loaded a time or two. But I haven't been able to save anything in it yet (only tried once). I told the devs about it. It would be helpful if a few other people would try it out and post their results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:27, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
From the pages I've seen that used this here, Content Translation is a disaster for us. Automated translations in general result in poor grammar, and trying to translate into what is essentially a subset of English is probably beyond this tool's ability. Here we not only need good English, we need simple English. Content Translation gives neither. It's not good to require our audience to understand that a particular article is poorly written because a machine created it: many of them don't recognize when something is poorly written at all and will struggle to understand it. I'd like to see this tool either disabled or, if possible, enabled for use only in userspace. Having these bad translations puts extra burden on our editors and administrators to keep things clean and simple, which is our mission here. The articles I've seen created with the tool have all been either deleted or moved to userspace anyway, due to the poor, non-simple language. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a good tool for this wiki and needs to be turned off. The tool is already creating unnecessary work for editors and can only get worse. Please, disable it here. User:Rus793 (talk) 19:27, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template help needed with Template:Infobox television season

This template has some issues that are causing the next/previous coding not to work right. I suspect the sequencing of the different items is out of synch, possibly in more than just that specific parameter, but I'm not sure exactly how that works. Could someone take a look? You can see the problem in the example on the template's doc page. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:19, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Color list on color articles

Before you comment here, please read the older comments on this topic.

The same, older discussion archived

Macdonald-ross, usually en.wiki has a section about a "sub-color" in the color article which is usally a shade of a main color but on simple.wiki we have a page of a color with a chart of "sub-color"s. I prefer we stick to the table system I introduced. --Toran107 (talk) 23:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion on 100 Names of God

Just came across this article. I'm not really sure if this is really an appropriate article for this site. Any comments? 64.6.124.31 (talk) 21:03, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is actually vandalism, if you look closely. I tagged it for WP:QD as such. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have deleted it.--Eptalon (talk) 22:26, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Eptalon. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:01, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And 64.6.124.31, thank you for bringing it to our attention. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:45, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Semiconductor

I recently came across this article. I'm not sure if the references/footnotes for this article are formatted right. 69.149.147.0 (talk) 18:46, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, recent edits to Dopamine look like vandalism. 69.149.147.0 (talk) 18:57, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a look at Semiconductor and see if I can improve the citations. Thanks for mentioning it. User:Rus793 (talk) 19:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections 2015

 

This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2015 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Questions and discussion with the candidates for the Board will continue during the voting.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 17 to 23:59 UTC May 31. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2015 Board election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 17:20, 17 May 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help

Simplification help

I have an article in userspace here that I originally wrote on en and moved over and simplified. I would like someone to take a look at it and make sure its simple enough before I move it out of userspace. It's User:ONUnicorn/Hammerton Killick. Thank you. ONUnicorn (talk) 14:43, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is not nearly simple enough IMO. My advice would be to stop trying to say exactly the same things as you wrote originally. Try a different angle. What three things should everyone know about this man? Organise the text so readers get that at least. At present it's hard to see the wood for the trees. As a wiki, what advice we have is mostly about the choice of words and sentence styles (available by links from our main page). Opinions differ as to how useful that is. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it needs to be limited to three things, but I agree that it needs some work. If you like, I could work with you on specific things that could be improved. For example, the first paragraph in the military service section has too much detail that isn't strictly about Killick. That could be condensed into one sentence just about the ships, so that we know why that was a concern of his, and be combined with the following paragraph. I also see a couple of other things that need to be addressed that aren't just about simplifying. Let me know if you'd like me to give you more input. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:14, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for your input. I'll work on simplifying it more. @Auntof6:, your help would be greatly appreciated! ONUnicorn (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Attention AWB users

I just updated AWB to version 5.5.7.0, and now AWB won't connect to Simple English Wikipedia. I have created a bug report and will report back when I get a reply. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:31, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The issue has been resolved. They issued an updated version of the 5.5.7.0 update, and it works now. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Catherine of Braganza

I just found this article. Looks like it might be vandalism but I'm not sure. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 14:17, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Seems like a funny subject for vandalism, and contains just enough factual information (clear or not) that I don't think we can mark it for speedy deletion as vandalism. I'm marking it for RfD, and we'll see what people have to say. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Auntof6: Should have checked for that. Sorry. Thanks for fixing. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:53, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. It's a good reminder for me, too, because we admins are supposed to check for that kind of thing before deleting anything. In this case, I thought I remembered that we had a good article on her, so I checked the history. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Volleyball articles

Hi, all. Several new articles on national volleyball teams just came in, courtesy of @Jacilason. I've welcomed that user, and asked for the template {{Infobox national football team}} to be switched to {{Infobox national volleyball team}}. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:52, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IBM Watson Assist

Wikipedia is great and I enjoy using it. It has often occurred to me that Wikipedia should ask IBM to give back by helping to analyze and organize the vast collection of Wikipedia data that it used to build it cognitive database. Thank You James (JCJOIII) JCJOIII (talk) 21:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)5/21/2015[reply]

I don't know what kind of analysis or organization you have in mind, but the best place for this suggestion is probably Meta-Wiki or Wikidata. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:41, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Solar panel

Can someone check the footnotes on this article? They don't seem to be formatted right. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 19:57, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a recent edit on Pythagoras looks like vandalism. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 20:02, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
RE: The solar panel article, I think I have fixed the footnotes, but I can't be 100% sure. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 20:03, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Did an WP:AGF rollback on the last edit of Pythagoras. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Listen To A Sentence And See Each Word Selected As It Is Being Spoken

As a trial I have put a link at User:Endo999 that will take the Wikipedia user to a portal that will speak selected sentences with a Karaoke effect, that is, the word being spoken will be selected when it is being spoken.

Simply go to the portal and double click on a word in the next webpage to have all the words in the sentence starting with the double clicked word spoken with the Karaoke effect.

This is an attempt to see how the Karaoke Text To Speech effect works for people learning English.

Endo999 (talk) 22:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The default webpage, which the portal shows, is the simple wikipedia front page. The user can surf the simple wikipedia from this point and listen to double clicked sentences, with a karaoke effect.

Endo999 (talk) 00:10, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neema House

This article probably needs some cleanup; some parts don't seem "encyclopedic". 184.2.107.214 (talk) 02:42, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

French Commune Articles

It seems (to me) that there are a lot of one- or two-line articles on 'communes' in France. Most of them contain little useful information and just give the place name and province. They have all been marked as stubs, but nothing else has been done on them. I am asking about deletion here, because I think debate upon the usefulness of these pages should not be spread over 200-300 'Articles For Deletion' pages. Thoughts? A Sentient Sock (talk) 23:03, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I tagged several as having too little information. Just waiting on the original submitter to improve them or other editors to see if anyone wants to do something with them. Otherwise submit them as QD for no content. User:Rus793 (talk) 23:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Did the same editor create all these pages? Because, to an untrained eye, these could have been made by a bot, given how similar they are. A Sentient Sock (talk) 23:33, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We have had this discussion many times over the years. The current consensus is that the pages will not be deleted. However, we have certainly taken action and advised against the mass creation of one line stubs in the past, and would continue to do so in the future.--Peterdownunder (talk) 23:38, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Inconvertible

Should this page be deleted or renamed? 184.2.107.214 (talk) 00:21, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Citations

There seem to have been at least two changes in the new editing app. One I like: I typed double left brackets and suddenly I was given an easy-to-use automatic Wikipedia link option. The other change goes the other way: when I tried to enter a citation, I got a message about a template. I have no idea what it means. (I went back to the source editor, which is a lot easier for me.) Can't we use simple instructions in Simple English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdammers (talk • contribs) 21:49, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If no one wants to make this app less opaque, could some one at least tell me how to use it?Kdammers (talk) 16:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What "new editing app" are you talking about? --Auntof6 (talk) 17:52, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
VE:Citations.Kdammers (talk)

Gurjar

Are the recent edits here vandalism? 64.6.124.31 (talk) 18:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We'll see. I reverted, with a request for sources if the information is correct. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:48, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Involving the community: TDYK, proposals for Good articles, and Very Good articles..

Hello community, This is a gentle reminder:

My basic question: Do we have enough editors which are willing to run and maintain these processes, or should we simply get rid of them? To be interesting, I think that DYK should be updated once a month, and people proposing articles should also get feedback in that timeframe.--Eptalon (talk) 13:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barnsley F.C.

This article looks more like a talk page than an article. 69.149.147.0 (talk) 19:04, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And should the Jesus article be reverted to this version? 69.149.147.0 (talk) 19:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are quite right, it seems to have been an error in an anti-vandalism tool. Reverted. :) --George (Talk · Contribs · CentralAuth · Log) 19:12, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Battlefield Hardline

This article doesn't seem to be formatted right. 69.149.147.0 (talk) 19:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IP User 94.197.121.128

Just rolled back clear vandalism. There was some history from this IP in January, so possibly someone wants to look into an IP block? StevenJ81 (talk) 20:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Portsmouth F.C.

Should the last three edits be considered vandalism? 69.149.147.0 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It appears they were; all three have been reverted. User:Rus793 (talk) 20:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template issue with Template:Infobox settlement

When the "website" parameter is used with this template, the value isn't displayed in the infobox. Could someone look at the template to try to find out why? See Dublin for an example. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:04, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The template specifies using {{URL}} for the website, so I changed the Dublin article that way. That said, I still couldn't get it to work, and I'm stumped. (I tried a few things, and when nothing worked, I rolled myself back.) And as far as I can tell, no article using this template seems to show its website. Since the code specific to this row is identical to that in English Wikipedia, and since the template works properly in Wikipedia, I can only imagine that whatever other adaptation was made for the template here broke this. I don't mind trying to dig into this tomorrow if nobody gets to it sooner. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:18, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Steven. I tried various combinations, too, and checked multiple articles before deciding that the template was the issue. Maybe the problem is with the underlying infobox template. I don't think it's required to use the {{url}} template -- that's just an example of a way that gives a clean appearance. Whatever you put there just produces text that gets plugged into the infobox as a value. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting

It looks like the formatting for the articles Daniel James, Jr. and Ahmed Zewail need fixing. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. You are welcome to fix that kind of thing yourself when you see it. :) --Auntof6 (talk) 20:01, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. This was a case that I wasn't sure what the "right fix" was. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 21:11, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tehran#Economy

Part of this section seems poorly written and confusing. Does anyone have a better way of phrasing it? 64.6.124.31 (talk) 21:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core

Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.

There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.

Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Reading, Berkshire

The infobox for this article was removed a couple days ago. Should it be added back in? (The editor who removed it didn't provide an explanation.) 64.6.124.31 (talk) 15:47, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Simple_talk/Archive_112&oldid=8899271"