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User talk:Floating Boat/Archive 3

< User talk:Floating Boat
Latest comment: 12 years ago by Floating Boat in topic Derby
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Welcome to being an instructor

Latest comment: 12 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
 
 Hello, Floating Boat/Archive 3! On behalf of the CVU Academy, I'd like to welcome you to training budding anti-vandals! I'm sure you'll have a fantastic time - we're quite glad to have you! On another note, it is recommended that you watchlist: the instructor status page, the enroll page (for new students), our main talk page, and our questions page. Also, make sure you read this page for info on instruction methods and teaching requirements. If you're looking for a place to get ideas on how and exactly what to teach the resources page should give you some guidance. Finally, please join the special CVUA IRC (#wikipedia-cvua connect) in order for easy communication. Thanks, and please let us know if you have any questions! Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:51, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
As the message says if you need any help, just ask. Also, there is a prospective student on WP:CVUA/E so if you're looking for a student, go for. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:51, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Thank you Callanecc, but I've done everything on the template because of this. I've commented on the current request. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Sorry I thought you were quite a bit newer. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
It's absolutely fine, you couldn't have seen it because I archived a few minutes ago. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 13:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
Three hip hop discographies were promoted this week, alongside seven other lists.
After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment).
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

WikiProject Christianity September 2012 newsletter

 

ICHTHUS

September 2012

Membership report
The parent Christianity WikiProject currently has 344 active members. We would like to welcome our newest members, User:Floating Boat, User:Dewey420, and User:Jpacobb. Thank you all for your interest in this effort. If any members, new or not, wish any assistance, they should feel free to leave a message at the Christianity noticeboard or with me or other individual editors to request it.


From the Editor
Ichthus is one of the ways that the WikiProject Christianity’s Outreach department helps update our members. We have recently added some new sections to the newsletter. Please let us know if there are changes you would like to see in the format, or if there are any particular things you would like to see included. And if you have anything you would personally like to add, by all means let us know. The talk page of the current issue is probably the best place to post such comments.

With that, I wish you all happy reading!

P.S. Please click here to add the new Christianity noticeboard to your watchlist to follow the latest discussions relevant to WikiProject Christianity and subprojects.

By John Carter


Church of the month

 
by User:Diliff
The Chapel of Keble College, Oxford


Contest of the month
We currently have a remarkable lack of Wikipedia:Wikipedia-Books. Right now, Category:Wikipedia books on Christianity contains only 12 books. We certainly could have at least one book on each major grouping within Christianity. One of the challenges for this month, then, is working to put together books on relevant topics. For this month, one contest is for editors to assemble the basic Wikipedia books for each of the main topics of the extant related projects. When finished, they should their creation of the books at the main Christianity noticeboard, and at the end of the month the project will award barnstars to those who have made a significant efforts in developing this underdeveloped content.

Also this month, we are going to have have a challenge to create and improve some of our more important missing or low-quality articles. Last month's challenge articles were Karl Beth and Nerses IV the Gracious. Both articles are currently candidates for the DYK section of the main page. This month's challenge articles are the Stub-class article James Hastings and the not yet started Rudolf Sohm, A barnstar will be awarded to any editor who can get these articles up to DYK quality level and ultimately selected for the DYK section of the main page.


Calendar
Thie coming month (mid-September through mid-October) includes feasts dedicated to the honor of the Martyrs of Korea, Saint Matthew, Vincent de Paul, Michaelmas, Saint Jerome, Theresa of Lisieux, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, Francis of Assisi, Our Lady of the Rosary, and Teresa of Avila.

Featured content and GA report
Since the last report, Albertus Soegijapranata, and Reginald Heber were promoted to FA. Grade I listed churches in Greater Manchester was promoted to Featured List, and Jackie Hudson, Joyce Kilmer, Divine command theory, Bosa of York and Argument from morality were promoted to GA level. DYKs featured this past month include Church of Saint Benoit, Istanbul, All Saints Church, Hollingbourne, Neustädter Kirche, Hannover, St Mary's Church, Kirkby Lonsdale, Albert Ndongmo, If We Are the Body, List of places of worship in Tonbridge and Malling, Kulubnarti church, All Saints Church, Ulcombe, Val-Saint-Lambert Abbey, Igny Abbey, Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, Brăila, Places of Worship Registration Act 1855, Collegiate Church of San Gimignano, and St Matthew's Church, Burnley. Our profoundest thanks and congratulations to all those involved!

Wikimedia Foundation report

 

As some of you may have seen, the Simple English Wikipedia has been experiencing some difficulties lately. This particular entity could be of great value to several individuals who are trying to learn English. As some of you who do speak foreign languages know, one of the most easily available, and, in general, useful learning aids for people is a text they know already, which allows them to focus on the specific words of the new language. Various recorded readings and translations of the Bible are among the best examples of this. Any efforts to try to enhance this vital means of informing a large segment of our readership is more than welcome. People interested in helping develop it are encouraged to leave a note regarding their specific articles of interest at the Christianity noticeboard. It would be wonderful if we could report some significant contributions to this sister site next month. And, of course, if we do have something to report, those involved would receive our greatest thanks.

Christian art

 
The Guardian Angel by Pietro da Cortona.


Spotlight

 

WikiProject Calvinism is one of our more important subprojects. It is specifically devoted to developing content relating to the Calvinist tradition, and the primary point for development of content relating to the Pilgrims, Presbyterians, Reformed churches, Congregational church, Reformed Baptists, and Low church. We definitely encourage everyone to do what they can to help this project develop the content relating to this extremely important Christian tradition.


I believe
... that human nature is insufficient for salvation, and the grace of God is required to do so. I believe that God has preordained who will and will not achieve salvation. I believe that Jesus's atonement was sufficient for the purposes for which it was done. I believe that God's grace is of such power that it can overcome any person's resistance. I believe that those whom God has chosen for salvation will, by the undeniable power of God, persevere in God's grace. I am a Calvinist.


Help requests
Please let us know if there are any particular areas, either individual articles or topics, which you believe would benefit from outside help from a variety of other editors. We will try to include such requests in future issues.

Ichthus is the newsletter of Christianity on Wikipedia • It is published by WikiProject Christianity
For submissions contact the Newsroom • To unsubscribe add yourself to the list here
EdwardsBot (talk)

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
We now have a Facebook page at facebook.com/wikisignpost. We invite you to "like" the page and join the discussion there.
This week, we shine the spotlight on the Indian Cinema Task Force, a subproject that seeks to improve the quality and quantity of articles about Indian cinema. As a child of WikiProject Film and WikiProject India, the Indian Cinema Task Force shares a variety of templates, resources, and members with its parent projects. The task force works on a to-do list, maintains the Bollywood Portal, and ensures articles follow the film style guidelines. With Indian cinema celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2013, we asked Karthik Nadar (Karthikndr), Secret of success, Ankit Bhatt, Dwaipayan, and AnimeshKulkarni what is in store for the Indian Cinema Task Force.
Eight featured articles, six featured lists, ten featured pictures, and one featured topic were promoted this week.
The world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is entering its final two weeks. The month-long event, of Dutch origin, is being held globally for the first time after the success of its European-level predecessor last year. During September 2011 more than 5000 volunteers from 18 countries took part and uploaded 168,208 free images. This year, volunteers and chapters from 35 countries around the world have organised the event. The best photographs will be determined by juries at the national and finally the global level.
1.20wmf12, the 12th release to Wikimedia wikis from the 1.20 branch, was deployed to its first wikis on September 17; if things go well, it will be deployed to all wikis by September 26. Its 200 or so changes – 111 to WMF-deployed extensions plus 98 to core MediaWiki code – include support for links with mixed-case protocols (e.g. Http://example.com) and the removal of the "No higher resolution available" message on the file description pages of SVG images.

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Academy/Enroll.
Message added 17:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sriharsh1234 17:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Sriharsh1234's talk page.
Message added 18:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sriharsh1234 18:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Differentiating reference syntax in editing window

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi Float-- based on the village pump discussion on giving reference syntax a unique color to differentiate from other text while editing, I've opened up an RfC to expand the audience on the topic. You are welcome to participate anytime. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 00:16, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

What would I like to learn first

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to learn how to distinguish between blatant vandalism and good faith edits Sriharsh1234 06:05, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I think reading Wikipedia:Assume good faith and WP:What is not vandalism would be good to start with, and then I'll ask you a couple of questions after you've told me you've read them. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
I finished reading the pages. Now ask whatever you want to ask. Thanks. --Sriharsh1234 24th september 2012 11:08 IST
See your training page. You can bookmark the page for easier access. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:50, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hi Andie, [Ma'am Floating Boat], how are you? It has been a long time since we last interacted. How's the editing coming along these days? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:56, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The editing's going along just fine, but these days I'm more active on Twitter than Wikipedia :) A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:59, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Really? I haven't seen you much though. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 14:40, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

CVUA

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi Floating Boat. I'm leaving you this message because you have previously been involved with Counter-Vandalism, and may still be. The Academy project has been restructured, placing responsibility for it on the trainers themselves and as part of the process I am trying to find out who is still interested in remaining as active trainers.

In future, there will be no clerking or coordination, so If you are still active and can respond to requests from students within around 48 hours, you need do nothing until a new student contacts you on your talk page. Nevertheless, if your status changes, please update your entry on the table of active trainers at the new WP:CVUA page. If you no longer have sufficient time to commit to the CV training project, that's fine, but please remove your name from the active list. While on your travels however, should you come across users who are having a hard time with their reverts, don't hesitate to send them a link to the CVUA. Thanks, and happy editing! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:36, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't have as much time now as I did over the summer, but I can still check in almost every day. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:16, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at User:Floating Boat/CVUA/Sriharsh1234.
Message added 02:13, 26 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sriharsh1234 02:13, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week. The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine New Yorker, and were covered by the Signpost two weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist (summarized in the research index) sheds new light on the English Wikipedia's declining editor growth and retention trends. The paper describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have lead to a more restrictive environment for newcomers". The number of active Wikipedia editors has been declining since 2007 and research examining data up to September 2009 has shown that the root of the problem has been the declining retention of new editors. The authors show this decline is mainly due to a decline among desirable, good-faith newcomers, and point to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.
This week, we tinkered with WikiProject Robotics. From the project's inception in December 2007, it has served as Wikipedia's hub for building and improving articles about robots and robotics, accumulating two Featured Articles and seven Good Articles along the way. The project covers both fictitious and real-life robots, the technology that powers them, and many of the brains behind the robotics field
In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in the UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week, including Dodo, along with six featured lists and five featured pictures.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

My next question

Latest comment: 12 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

What is my next question? Please answer as soon as possible. Thanks Sriharsh1234 08:16, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, what would you like to learn next? A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 09:37, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
I would like to learn the various policies, and which level of warning will be appropriate. Please post new questions on my CVUA page. Thanks! Sriharsh1234 06:02, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm a bit busy right now in real life, but I'll post you some questions tomorrow or Tuesday. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 13:11, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

CVUA

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi. As you are currently training User:Sriharsh1234 I'm just letting you know that I have declined their request for Rollback permission until the CVUA course has been successfully taught and completed. I will be checking the result before approving any new requests for counter-vandalism user rights. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:08, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know - I was not aware that he had applied for rollback. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 12:47, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Does Wikipedia Pay? is a Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved. This week, a scandal centering around Roger Bamkin's work with Wikimedia UK and Gibraltarpedia erupted ... In light of these events, opinions on how to avoid future controversy are as important as ever. ... The Signpost spoke with Jimmy Wales to better understand how he views the paid editing environment and what he thinks is needed to improve it.
Following considerable online and media reportage on the Gibraltar controversy and a Signpost report last week, the Wikimedia UK chapter and the foundation published a joint statement on September 28: "To better understand the facts and details of these allegations and to ensure that governance arrangements commensurate with the standing of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK and the worldwide Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia UK's trustees and the Wikimedia Foundation will jointly appoint an independent expert advisor to objectively review both Wikimedia UK's governance arrangements and its handling of the conflict of interest."
Five articles, three lists, and nine images were promoted to "featured" this week.
The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities ... In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series, we spent some time bonding with WikiProject James Bond. The project is in the unique position of having already pushed all of its primary content to Good and Featured status, including all of Ian Fleming's novels, short stories, and every film that has been released. Work has begun in earnest on the article Skyfall for the release of the new Bond film later this month. The project could still use help improving articles about Bond actors, characters, gadgets, music, video games, and related topics

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at User:Floating Boat/CVUA/Sriharsh1234.
Message added 06:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Sriharsh1234 06:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge.
Message added 00:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SarahStierch (talk) 00:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback: Unification of usernames in different wikis

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello Floating Boat, thank you for answering my query on the help desk. It seems I was wrong about the possibility of using the same username on the it and en wikis, the page Wikipedia:Changing username says it cannot be done. It suggests to en users who made few contributions (I wrote ca. 15 new pages, are they few?) to change their username, I will consider that. About vandalism, I removed a big one on the article Italy around two years ago, there was a long nonsense phrase. I see you are studying French, that's a very beautiful language, phonetically perhaps the most beautiful one among the western languages (I can't say anything about the other ones since I don't know them).
I am geographically curious, may I ask you where you live? I live in Parma, which is most probably the Italian city that has more namesakes in the U.S. (seven). Greetings from the "Bel Paese" (the beautiful country), --Gabodon (talk) 07:06, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Counter vandalism

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi. Please note that the page at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Questions is discontinued. Please address any enquiries to WT:CVUA. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's Collaborative

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
WikiWomen Unite!
Hi Floating Boat! Women around the world who edit and contribute to Wikipedia are coming together to celebrate each other's work, support one another, and engage new women to also join in on the empowering experience of shaping the sum of all the world's knowledge - through the WikiWomen's Collaborative.

As a WikiWoman, we'd love to have you involved! You can do this by:

We can't wait to have you involved, and feel free to drop by our meta page (under construction) to see how else you can get involved!

Can't wait to have you involved! SarahStierch (talk) 04:16, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Wikipedia in education is far from a new idea: years of news stories, op-eds, and editorials have focused on the topic; and on Wikipedia itself, the Schools and universities projects page has existed in various forms since 2003. Over the next six years, the page was rarely developed, and when it did advance there was no clear goal in mind.
On this day five years ago, the WikiProject Report debuted as a new Signpost column with an overview of WikiProject Biography. Today, we're celebrating two milestone: five years of the WikiProject Report and the tenth birthday of our first featured project. WikiProject Biography is by far the largest WikiProject on Wikipedia, with over one million articles under the project's scope. As a comparison, WikiProject Biography is three times larger than Wikipedia's second largest project, and if WikiProject Biography were split into its 14 subprojects and work groups, it would still make the list of the 20 largest WikiProjects... four times.
This week the Signpost interviews Arsenikk, an editor of six years who has brought sixteen lists through our featured list process, mostly regarding transportation in Norway but also about the 1952 Winter Olympics and World Heritage Sites in Africa. Arsenikk tells us about why he joined the project, what moves him, and how editors can join the sometimes daunting world of featured lists.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for September 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment). Three of the seven headline items in the report have already been covered in the Signpost: problems with the corruption of several Gerrit (code) repositories, the introduction of widespread translation memory across Wikimedia wikis, and the launch of the "Page Curation" tool on the English Wikipedia, with development work on that project now winding down. The report also drew attention to the end of Google Summer of Code 2012, the deployment to the English Wikipedia of a new ePUB (electronic book) export feature, and improvements to the WLM app aimed at more serious photographers.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...

WikiProject Christianity October 2012 newsletter

 

ICHTHUS

September 2012

Membership report
The parent Christianity WikiProject currently has 347 active members. We would like to welcome our newest members, User:Dplcrnj, User:Danmuz, User:Zigzig20s, and User:Jasonasosa. Thank you all for your interest in this effort. If any members, new or not, wish any assistance, they should feel free to leave a message at the Christianity noticeboard or with me or other individual editors to request it.


From the Editor
Ichthus is one of the ways that the WikiProject Christianity’s Outreach department helps update our members. This newsletter is one of the ways we do try to help people keep up with the project. We would always welcome any input for things to be included in it or additional editors to keep it going. Please let us know if there are changes you would like to see in the format, or if there are any particular things you would like to see included. And if you have anything you would personally like to add, by all means let us know. The talk page of the current issue is probably the best place to post such comments.

With that, I wish you all happy reading!

P.S. Please click here to add the new Christianity noticeboard to your watchlist to follow the latest discussions relevant to WikiProject Christianity and subprojects.

By John Carter


Church of the month

 
by User:Taxiarchos228, recently promoted to Featured Image
St. Paul's Church, Basel


Contest of the month
For the upcoming month, the contest will be to develop content related to the Christmas season, including Advent and other related topics. Please feel free to see and take part in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Christianity noticeboard#Contest of the month - Advent/Christmas content.

One of last month's challenge articles, Rudolf Sohm, has been substantially developed by User:Jack1956 and User:StAnselm. Our deepest thanks to both of them!!

Calendar
Thie coming month (mid-October through mid-November) includes All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and major commemorations dedicated to the honor of the Ignatius of Antioch, Luke the Evangelist, Simon the Canaanite, Saint Jude, the dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the beginning of the Nativity Fast, James of Jerusalem, Reformation Day, and others.


Featured content and GA report
Since the last report, Augustinian theodicy by User:ItsZippy was promoted to FA. Grade I listed churches in Merseyside by User:Peter I. Vardy was promoted to Featured List. The images in the Church of the Month and Christian art sections of this newsletter were promoted to Featured Picture status. John Wheelwright by User:Sarnold17, Christmas Party (The Office) by User:Gen. Quon and If We Are the Body by User:Toa Nidhiki05, were promoted to GA level. DYKs featured this past month include Cathedral of Saint Demetrius, Craiova, by User:Biruitorul, Nerses IV the Gracious by User:John Carter, Church of St Candida and Holy Cross by User:BarretB, St Laurence's Church, Morland by User:Peter I. Vardy, St Mary's Church, Longfleet by User:Bermicourt, Chor von St. Bonifatius by User:Gerda Arendt, St Andrew's Church, Penrith by User:Peter I. Vardy, Holy Rosary Cathedral (Vancouver) by User:Bloom6132, Sacred Heart Cathedral (Kamloops) by User:Bloom6132, St Columba's Church, Warcop by User:Peter I. Vardy, St Oswald's Church, Ravenstonedale by User:Peter I. Vardy, and W. E. Biederwolf by User:John Foxe. Our profoundest thanks and congratulations to all those involved!

Christian art

 
Portrait of John Henry Newman by Sir John Everett Millais.
This image was promoted this past month to FM by the work of User:Spongie555. Thank you, Spongie!

Spotlight

 

WikiProject Holidays/Christmas task force is the group whose purpose is to help develop the content related to the Christmas season, including Advent, New Year's, and related holidays. As many of us know, in several parts of the world, including the United States, the Christmas season is not only the time of one of the greatest holidays of the Christian liturgical year, but it is also the "make or break" time for many retailers, whose profitability for the year often depends on their success in this time of the giving of sometimes significantly expensive gifts. In other parts of the world, the winter solstice period and sometimes specifically Christmas itself means something that might surprise many Christians, like the Christmas in Japan, where Christmas is one of the times hotels receive the greatest number of, often unmarried, couples staying there for the night. The solstice season is also significant to several other religions. Many of these days are also legal holidays in several places. In Belarus, for instance, both the Western and Eastern Christmas commemorations are legal holidays. We would certainly welcome the members of this project to donate some of their time and talents in the upcoming months to improving this significant content.


Help requests
Please let us know if there are any particular areas, either individual articles or topics, which you believe would benefit from outside help from a variety of other editors. We will try to include such requests in future issues.

Ichthus is the newsletter of Christianity on Wikipedia • It is published by WikiProject Christianity
For submissions contact the Newsroom • To unsubscribe add yourself to the list here
EdwardsBot (talk)

The Signpost: 15 October 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There is wide agreement among English Wikipedians that the administrator system is in some ways broken—but no consensus on how to fix it. Most suggestions have been relatively small in scope, and could at best produce small improvements. I would like to make a proposal to fundamentally restructure the administrator system, in a way that I believe would make it more effective and responsive. The proposal is to create an elected Administration Committee ("AdminCom") which would select, oversee, and deselect administrators.
This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
On the English Wikipedia, five featured articles, ten featured lists, and four featured pictures were promoted, including USS Lexington, a ship built for the United States Navy that, although ordered in 1916 as a battlecruiser, was converted to an aircraft carrier. It was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea during the Second World War.
The volunteer-led Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and interested community members are looking at Wikimedia organization applications worth about US$10.4 million out of the committee's first full year's operation, in just the inaugural round one of two that have been planned for the year with a planned budget of US$11.4M.
A trial of the first phase of Wikimedia Deutschland's "Wikidata" project–implementing the first ever interwiki repository—may soon get underway following the successful passage of much of its code through MediaWiki's review processes this week.
This week, we experimented with WikiProject Chemicals. Started in August 2004, WikiProject Chemicals has grown to include over 10,000 articles about chemical compounds. The project has a unique assessment system that omits C-class, Good, and Featured Articles. As a result, the project's 11 GAs and 9 FAs are treated as A-class articles. WikiProject Chemicals is a child of WikiProject Chemistry (interviewed in 2009) and a parent of WikiProject Polymers.

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge.
Message added 00:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SarahStierch (talk) 00:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 October 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Unlike the long-running disputes that have characterised attempts to reform the RfA process on the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia's tradition of making decisions not by consensus but knife-edged 50% + 1 votes has led to a fundamentally different outcome. In 2009, the project managed to largely settle the RfA mode issue in 2009 indirectly.
One clarification request concerns the civility enforcement case – specifically, Malleus Fatuorum's perceived circumvention of his topic ban. It has resulted in thousands of bytes spent in vitriolic discussions, multiple blocks, and "no confidence" motions against the Arbitration Committee and one arbitrator, among other ramifications.
Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006, is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
The WikiProject Report normally brings tidings from Wikipedia's most active, inventive, and unique WikiProjects. This week, we're trying something new by focusing on Wikipedia's dark side: the various regional and national WikiProjects that are dead or dying. How can some tiny municipalities and exclaves generate highly active, cross-language, multimedia platforms be successful while the projects representing many sovereign countries and entire continents wallow in obscurity? Today, we'll search for answers among geographic projects large and small, highly active and barely functioning, enthusiastic about the future and mired in past conflicts.
Eleven articles, including one on Franz Kafka, three lists, one image, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status this week.

*sigh*

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Sadly, I clicked there. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 06:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Haha, I nearly fell for it but I just hovered over the link in the end. :P A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 06:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
We all know what happens if you click this, though. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 06:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Anonymouse321's talk page.
Message added 06:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Anonymouse321 (talk • contribs) 06:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

New editors' contributions

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

In case you haven't looked at the reply at the Village pump, the answer is that new contributors are the most recent 1% of user accounts created. Apparently it has nothing to do with a user's edits/user rights, but rather how many accounts have been created afterward. Kind of an interesting way of determining new users, isn't it? –– Anonymouse321 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, that's rather quirky - I didn't know or expect that. Anyway, thanks for letting me know, as I haven't been on in a while so hadn't seen the reply. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 18:29, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Revert

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Thanks for your vigilance and revert on the personal attack on my talk page! CTF83! 00:43, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

You're very welcome. A boat that can float! (watch me float!) 05:25, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

My reply to your post on the help Desk

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Good evening Andie,

You wrote a reply, to which I posted;

@ User talk:Floating Boat ... Perhaps you should. It is not obvious to me.
@ Astronaut Thanks, I thought that too, but cannot find it anywhere.

Please explain.

Sincerely, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/The Welsh Buzzard 19:26, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

My apologies, I thought you knew. I remember under Preferences, there used to be a setting for 'Mark edits as minor by default' but I can't find it now. Sorry again. a boat that can float! (watch me float!) 04:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Good morning Andie,
Thank you for replying. I remember seeing Mark edits as minor by default too, but I can't find it either. This has since been explained here by User:Hersfold.
On a lighter note, I woke up this morning convinced that I had solved your riddle; that the answer is, "A screw." Get it?
 
Cheers! -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/The Welsh Buzzard 09:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 October 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
This week, we're checking out ways to motivate editors and recognize valuable contributions by focusing on the awards and rewards of WikiProject Military History. Anyone unfamiliar with WikiProject Military History is encouraged to start at the report's first article about the project and make your way forward. While many WikiProjects provide a barnstar that can be awarded to helpful contributors, WikiProject Military History has gone a step further by creating a variety of awards with different criteria ranging from the all-purpose WikiChevrons to rewards for participating in drives and improving special topics to medals for improving articles up to A-class status to the coveted "Military Historian of the Year" award.
The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday ... Wikidata.org, a new repository designed to host interwiki links, launched this week and will begin accepting links shortly. The site, which is one half of the forthcoming Wikidata trial (the other half being the Wikidata client, which will be deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia shortly) will also act as a testing area for phase 2 of Wikidata (centralised data storage). The longer term plan is for Wikidata.org to become a "Wikimedia Commons for data" as phases 2 and 3 (dynamic lists) are developed, project managers say.
Thirteen articles, ten lists, nine images, one topic, and one portal were promoted to featured after peer reviews.
A paper in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, coming from the social control perspective and employing the repertory grid technique, has contributed interesting observations about the governance of Wikipedia.

The Signpost: 05 November 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
The Signpost's weekly roundup of topics for discussion on the English Wikipedia.
This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at I Jethrobot's talk page.
Message added 07:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 07:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 November 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Last week, media outlets reported a ruling by a German court on the problem of businesses using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. The issue goes beyond the direct management of marketing-related edits by Wikipedians; it involves cross-monitoring and interacting among market competitors themselves on Wikipedia. A company that sells dietary supplements made from frankincense had taken a competitor to court. The recently published judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Munich, in dealing with the German Wikipedia article on frankincense products, was handed down in May and is based on European competition law.
Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
In late September, the Technology report published its findings about (particularly median) code review times. To the 23,900 changesets analysed the first time (the data for which has been updated), the Signpost added data from the 9,000 or so changesets contributed between September 17 and November 9 to a total of 93,000 reviews across 45,000 patchsets. Bots and self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers. The new analyses were consistent with the predictions of the previous analysis.
As promised, we're expanding our horizons by featuring projects that cover underrepresented areas of the globe. This week, we headed to WikiProject Brazil which keeps track of articles about the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country. The project has shown spurts of activity and continues to serve as a hub for discussions, despite the project's collaborations, peer reviews, and outreach activities being largely inactive.

WikiProject Christianity October 2012 newsletter

 

ICHTHUS

November 2012

Membership report
The parent Christianity WikiProject currently has 349 active members. We would like to welcome our newest members, User:Hayayika and User:Pikachu Bros.. Thank you all for your interest in this effort. If any members, new or not, wish any assistance, they should feel free to leave a message at the Christianity noticeboard or with me or other individual editors to request it.


From the Editor
Ichthus is one of the ways that the WikiProject Christianity’s Outreach department helps update our members. This newsletter is one of the ways we do try to help people keep up with the project. We would always welcome any input for things to be included in it or additional editors to keep it going. Please let us know if there are changes you would like to see in the format, or if there are any particular things you would like to see included. And if you have anything you would personally like to add, by all means let us know. The talk page of the current issue is probably the best place to post such comments.

With that, I wish you all happy reading!

P.S. Please click here to add the new Christianity noticeboard to your watchlist to follow the latest discussions relevant to WikiProject Christianity and subprojects.

By John Carter


Church of the month

 

Saint-Augustin, Paris by User:Saffron Blaze

Recently promoted to Featured Image. Great work!


Contest of the month
For the upcoming month, the contest will continue with the Christmas theme, including Advent and other related topics. Please feel free to see and take part in discussion at the Christianity noticeboard.


Calendar
This coming month (mid-November through mid-December) includes the Advent season. Other major feasts are those of Margaret of Scotland, Matthew the Evangelist, Hilda of Whitby, Elizabeth of Hungary, Edmund the Martyr, the Presentation of Mary, Saint Cecilia, Clement of Rome, Catherine of Alexandria, Andrew the Apostle, Francis Xavier, Saint Barbara, John Damascene, Nicholas of Myra, Saint Ambrose of Milan, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Lucy of Syracuse, and others.


Featured content and GA report
Since the last report, Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych by, among others, User:Truthkeeper88, User:Ceoil, and User:Kafka Liz and Mitt Romney by User:Wasted Time R were promoted to FA. List of 2000s Christian Songs number ones by User:Toa Nidhiki05 was promoted to Featured List. The two images in the Church of the Month and Christian art sections of this newsletter were promoted to Featured Picture status, as were these two images of Michelangelo's Pieta   and of Giovanni Bellini's Saint Francis in the Desert  . Derek Webb by User: Pepsi2786 and others, and Scipione Piattoli by User:Piotrus were promoted to GA level. DYKs featured this past month include Archdiocese of Râmnic, by User:Biruitorul, Diocese of Caransebeş by User:Biruitorul, Wythburn Church by User:Peter I. Vardy, St. Gumbertus, Ansbach by User:Gerda Arendt, User:Dr. Blofeld, and User:Nvvchar collectively, St. Johannis, Ansbach by User:Gerda Arendt, User:Dr. Blofeld, and User:Nvvchar collectively, Nikollë Bojaxhiu by User:ZjarriRrethues, All Saints Church, Lydd by User:Dr. Blofeld, User:Rosiestep, User:Gilderien, and User:Ipigott collectively, St Mary's Church, Acton Burnell by User:Peter I. Vardy, St Eata's Church, Atcham by User:Peter I. Vardy, Nativity of St. John the Baptist Church, Piatra Neamț by User:Biruitorul, Anna Schäffer by User:Shii, List of Archbishops of Vancouver by User: Bloom6132, James Francis Carney by User:Bloom6132, St Luke's Church, Chelsea by User:PKM and User:Johnbod, Gregory Orologas by User:Alexikoua, Ambrosios Pleianthidis by User:Alexikoua, and St Giles' Church, Barrow, by User:Peter I. Vardy. Our profoundest thanks and congratulations to all those involved!

Christian art

 
Three scenes of the legend of the Miraculous Sacrament, in which communion wafers were reported to bleed after being stabbed, in the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, Brussels by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier.
This image was promoted this past month to FM by the work of User:Alvesgaspar. Thank you, Alvesgaspar!

Spotlight

 

The core topics work group is the group whose specific purpose is to help identify and develop those articles which are of greatest importance to an overall understanding of the broad subject of Christianity, based on what is included in the core topics list. These articles include some of specific churches and individuals, history, philosophical and theological matters, and more. We have had some recent discussion regarding which articles should be included in this list, and it probably makes sense to revisit the selections, and try to figure out how best to work to make them high quality articles. Discussion is beginning at WT:X regarding these matters, and all input is welcome.


Help requests
Please let us know if there are any particular areas, either individual articles or topics, which you believe would benefit from outside help from a variety of other editors. We will try to include such requests in future issues.

Ichthus is the newsletter of Christianity on Wikipedia • It is published by WikiProject Christianity
For submissions contact the Newsroom • To unsubscribe add yourself to the list here
EdwardsBot (talk)

The Signpost: 19 November 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations for the inaugural round 1 of funding. Requests totalled US$10.4M, nearly all of the FDC's budget for both first and second rounds. The seven-member committee of community volunteers appointed in September advises the WMF board on the distribution of grant funds among applying Wikimedia organizations. The committee, which has a separate operating budget of $276k for salaries and expenses, considered 12 applications for funds, from 11 chapters and from the WMF itself for its non-core activities. The decision-making process included community and FDC staff input after October 1, the closing date for submissions. Taken together, the volunteers decided to endorse an average of 81% of the funding sought—a total of $8.43M, which went to 11 of the 12 applicants. This leaves $2.71M to be distributed in round 2, for which applications are due in little more than three months' time.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Turtles. The young project started in January 2011 and has accumulated 5 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, and 6 Featured Pictures. The project maintains a combined to-do list and hot articles meter, a popular pages ranking, and a collection of resources for turtle articles. We interviewed Faendalimas and NYMFan69-86.
WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner was forced to clarify this week that proposed structural changes to the Foundation's Engineering and Product Development Department were not a "done deal" and that it was "important that you [particularly affected staff] realise that ... your input is wanted". The reorganisation, announced on November 5 and planned for the middle of next year, will see its two components split off into their own departments.
Seven featured articles, four featured lists and ten featured pictures – including the photograph that spawned the Streisand effect – were promoted this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include the question of ticker symbol placement and the notability of various types of creative performer.

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at I Jethrobot's talk page.
Message added 09:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 09:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 November 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
On November 24, a general assembly of Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) voted on the fate of the Wikimedia Toolserver, a central external piece of technical infrastructure supporting the editing communities with volunteer-developed scripts and webpages of various kinds that are assisting in performing mostly menial tasks.
An open-access preprint presents the results from a study attempting to predict early box office revenues from Wikipedia traffic and activity data. The authors – a team of computational social scientists from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Aalto University and the Central European University – submit that behavioral patterns on Wikipedia can be used for accurate forecasting, matching and in some cases outperforming the use of social media data for predictive modeling. The results, based on a corpus of 312 English Wikipedia articles on movies released in 2010, indicate that the joint editing activity and traffic measures on Wikipedia are strong predictors of box office revenue for highly successful movies.
Six articles, one list, and six images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Wikidata, the new "Wikimedia Commons for data" and the first new Wikimedia project since 2006, reached 100,000 entries this week. The project aims to be a single, human- and machine-readable database for common data, spanning across all Wikipedia projects, which will "lead to a higher consistency and quality within Wikipedia articles, as well as increased availability of information in the smaller language editions" while lowering the burden on Wikipedia's volunteer editors—whose numbers have stalled overall, and continue to dwindle on the English Wikipedia.
This week, we uncovered WikiProject Deletion Sorting, Wikipedia's most active project by number of edits to all the project's pages. This special project seeks to increase participation in Articles for Deletion nominations by categorizing the AfD discussions by various topic areas that may draw the attention of editors. The project was started in August 2005 with manual processes that are continued today by a bevy of bots, categories, and transclusions. The project took inspiration from WikiProject Stub Sorting and some historical discussions on deletion reform. As the sheer number of AfDs continues to grow, the project is seeking better tools to manage the deletion sorting process and attract editors to comment on these deletion discussions.

BLP warning

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Thank you and my apologies. Still need to figure out the intricacies of Wikipedia editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph.gruber (talk • contribs) 19:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

It's fine. Just a gentle warning, that's all. - a boat that can float! (watch me float) 13:39, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The global jury of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the world’s largest photo contest, announced its results on 3 December.
Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Deployments of MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 cause widespread problems for users across wikis when HTML and CSS updates came temporarily out of sync. On the first wikis targeted for deployment, this was caused by the different cache invalidation rates for HTML (typically one month) and CSS (typically five minutes). The retrospective on the problem highlighted the fact that that the test wiki – the WMF's answer to a production environment that individual developers can no longer practically emulate themselves – actually demonstrated the exact problem that would later manifest itself on production wikis. It went unnoticed.
This week, we went searching for white roses in the lands of WikiProject Yorkshire. The project began in May 2007 as a way to improve articles about the historic English county of Yorkshire and its modern-day administrative divisions and cities. Since then, the project has accumulated 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, 91 Good Articles, and a monstrous list of Did You Know entries. Despite all of the effort improving Yorkshire articles, the project has experienced waning participation in the last few years. The project still publishes a newsletter each month, monitors the popularity of and recent changes to its articles, maintains a portal, and collects resources for contributors to use.

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
The Visual Editor project – an attempt to create the first WMF-deployable WYSIWYG editor – will go live on its first Wikipedias imminently following nearly six months of testing on MediaWiki.org. A full explanatory blog post accompanied the news, explaining the project and its setup. Once a user has opted-in, the editor can handle basic formatting, headings and lists, while safely ignoring elements it is yet to understand, including references, categories, templates, tables and images. At the last count, approximately 2% of pages would break in some way if a user tried the Visual Editor on them; it is unclear whether any specific protection will be put in place beyond relying on editors to spot problems.
In celebration of Human Rights Day, we checked out WikiProject Human Rights. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles, including 12 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, 66 Good Articles, a large collection of Did You Know entries, and a few mentions "in the news". The project monitors listings of popular pages and cleanup tags. We interviewed Khazar2, Cirt, and Boud.

Happy Birthday!

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Seconded! :) —Theopolisme 12:10, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Awww, thanks! - a boat that can float! (happy holidays) 16:01, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit. Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities.
In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
Four articles, three lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week, including a picture of a three-week old donkey (also known as an 'ass').
MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation. The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups.

WikiProject Christianity Newsletter - December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 

ICHTHUS

December 2012

Membership report
The parent Christianity WikiProject currently has 350 active members. We would like to welcome our newest member, User:Harishrawat11. Thank you all for your interest in this effort. We would be able to achieve nothing here without the input of all of you. If any members, new or not, wish any assistance, they should feel free to leave a message at the Christianity noticeboard or with me or other individual editors to request it.


From the Editor
Ichthus is one of the ways that the WikiProject Christianity’s Outreach department helps update our members. This newsletter is one of the ways we do try to help people keep up with the project. We would always welcome any input for things to be included in it or additional editors to keep it going. Please let us know if there are changes you would like to see in the format, or if there are any particular things you would like to see included. And if you have anything you would personally like to add, by all means let us know. The talk page of the current issue is probably the best place to post such comments.

With that, I wish you all happy reading!

P.S. Please click here to add the new Christianity noticeboard to your watchlist to follow the latest discussions relevant to WikiProject Christianity and subprojects.

By John Carter


Church of the month

 

This image of The Baptistry of Saint John in Pisa by User:NotFromUtrecht

was recently promoted to Featured Image. Thank you and congratulations for the great image!


Contest of the month
As I imagine many of our editors will be editing at a greatly reduced level for the next few weeks, what with the Christmas and New Year's holidays coming, there is no specific content-related contest this month. The contest, if anything, is to make the most of the season, in whatever way, if any, you deem appropriate.


Calendar
This coming month (mid-December through mid-January) includes the Advent season, and one of the two greatest holidays of the Christian year, Christmas. Other major feasts in the next month include those of the Feast of the Epiphany, Baptism of the Lord, Saint Stephen, Thomas the Apostle, Holy Innocents, John the Evangelist, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Saint Genevieve, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Saint Sava.


Featured content and GA report
Since the last report, Anne Hutchinson nominated by User:Sarnold17 was promoted to FA. Grade I listed churches in Lancashire by User:Peter I. Vardy was promoted to Featured List. The image in the Church of the Month and Christian art sections of this newsletter were promoted to Featured Picture status. Come to the Well by User:Toa Nidhiki05 and others, and Dwight Christmas by User:Gen. Quon and others were promoted to GA level. DYKs featured this past month include King's Chapel, Gibraltar, by User:Prioryman, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Albany, New York) by User:Daniel Case, Tingsted Church by User:Ipigott and User:Rosiestep, St. Mary's Church (Albany, New York) by User:Daniel Case, Stubbekøbing Church by User:Ipigott and User:Rosiestep, Notre Dame Cathedral (Phnom Penh) by User:Bloom6132, and St. James' Church, Cardington by User:Peter I. Vardy. Our profoundest thanks and congratulations to all those involved!

Christian art

 
The nave of the Parish Church of Urtijëi. This image was created by User:Moroderen. Thank you, Moroderen!

Spotlight

 

In the spirit of Christmas, the spotlight for the coming month might actually best be on those people closest to you. We know that a lot of our editors here are associated in some way or another with schools, and many if not most of them are going on rather extended breaks for the holidays. This can give some of us a chance to meet up with old friends, spend time with our families and those close to us, and, in a sense, "recharge" for the new year. So, for all of you who are in some way part of that group, we wish you the very best of holidays. We hope you all return to editing after the holidays with your spirits lifted and with your energies at peak level. There are some small matters in development here as well, and it is our hope that some of them will be ready come the next newsletter. But, until then, we wish you all the happiest and holiest (if appropriate) holidays.

Help requests
Please let us know if there are any particular areas, either individual articles or topics, which you believe would benefit from outside help from a variety of other editors. We will try to include such requests in future issues.

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EdwardsBot (talk)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

Talkback

Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
 
Hello, Floating Boat. You have new messages at Arctic Kangaroo's talk page.
Message added 10:08, 1 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hop n hop (on the arctic ice) 10:08, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Floating Boat

 

Pratyya (Happy New Year) — is wishing you a Happy New Year! Welcome the 2025. This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year! May the 2025 goes well for you.

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:User:Pratyya Ghosh/Happy New Year}} to their talk page with a Happy New Year message.

Happy New Year to you too!

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
 


The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) — is wishing you a Happy New Year! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:New Year 1}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks also for the message on my talk page! The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 03:35, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 December 2012

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

Derby

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It was constructive. There is no need for the statement "it's a town, not a city", and the current edit reads: "Derby, is a city,not a town.town...", which does not make sense. I will be reverting it back to it's previous incarnation.

I think Huggle messed up again. Go ahead. - a boat that can float! (watch me float) 14:17, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
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