User talk:Ragesoss/Archive24

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

• Traffic report: A year stuck in traffic
  In fact, the majority are relatively evenly split between three themes: people of interest, television, and websites.

• Arbitration report: Examining the Committee's year
  In 2013, the arbitration committee closed 10 cases, 9 amendment requests, and 26 clarification requests.

• In the media: Does Wikipedia need a medical disclaimer?
  On New Year's Day, an article by Tim Sampson published in The Daily Dot and republished shortly after on Mashable covered the currently ongoing medical disclaimer RfC.

• Book review: Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia
  Dariusz Jemielniak's book is the newest about Wikipedia, published in Poland in 2013 and with an English edition forthcoming in 2014.

• News and notes: The year in review
  This was the year in which one journalist described the flagship site, Wikipedia, as "wickedly seductive". It was the year Wikipedia's replacement value was estimated at $6.6bn, its market value at "tens of billions of dollars", and its consumer benefit "hundreds of billions of dollars". But it was also the year in which one commentator forecast the decline of Wikipedia—that the project is in trouble from its shrinking volunteer workforce, skewed coverage, "crushing bureaucracy" and 90 percent male community.

• Discussion report: Article incubator, dates and fractions, medical disclaimer
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia and around the Wikimedia movement include...

• WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Fifth Edition
  The year 2013 has come and gone, adding 50 new WikiProject Reports to our long list of projects we've had the privilege to meet. Last year saw the continuation of our Babel series, featuring WikiProjects from other languages of Wikipedia. We also expanded our selection of special reports, offering readers a growing collection of helpful tips and tools as they participate in WikiProjects.

• Featured content: 2013—the trends
  Over the past year 1181 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured picture candidates (FPC), which promoted an average of 46 pictures a month. This was followed by featured article candidates (FAC; 32.5 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 18 a month).

• Technology report: Looking back on 2013
  2013 saw a lot of changes to MediaWiki software and Wikimedia infrastructure.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 04:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

• Public Domain Day: Why the year 2019 is so significant
  Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.

• Traffic report: Tragedy and television
  The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.

• Technology report: Gearing up for the Architecture Summit
  MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.

• News and notes: WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
  On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.

• Op-ed: WikiCup competition beginning a new year
  At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.

• WikiProject report: Jumping into the television universe
  This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Television.

• Featured content: A portal to the wonderful world of technology
  Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 07:30, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Nnkapoor and Voxcanis

Ragesoss, I am the TA for Voxcanis. I was just setting up the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nnkapoor (talk • contribs) 21:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:Nnkapoor! I thought that was probably the case, but wanted to double check. A few quick tips:

• You should sign your posts to talk page, by adding four tildes (~) at the end. That will automatically add your username and the time of the post.
• When you start a new thread on someone's talk page, you should create a new section for it. (If you use the "new section" tab, just be sure to include a subject line, which will turn into a header like the one I'm adding now.)
• It's good practice to keep discussions in one place, and simply ping other participants by linking to their usernames. So for example, on User:Voxcanis's talk page, you could have replied there and added "User:Ragesoss" somewhere in your post, and as long as you signed it (with four tildes), I would get the same type of Notification that you got.

--ragesoss (talk) 21:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I will work on that. I am still getting used to all of this. Thank you so much for your help. (~) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nnkapoor (talk • contribs) 21:46, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

No problem, Nnkapoor. It can be scary at first, all this wiki markup. Four tildes in a row to sign your post (which can be inserted automatically using the little signature icon in the toolbar at the top of the edit window.) You can also indent a post (to create a threaded conversation, with visible breaks between one person's comment and the next) by adding one or more colons to the beginning of the line.--ragesoss (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Meetups coming up in DC!

Hey!

You are invited to two upcoming events in DC:

• Meetup at Capitol City Brewery on Saturday, January 25 at 6 PM. Please join us for dinner, drinks, socializing, and discussing Wikimedia DC activities and events. All are welcome! RSVP on the linked page or through Meetup.
• Art and Feminism Edit-a-Thon on Saturday, February 1 from Noon – 5 PM. Join us as we improve articles on notable women in history! All are welcome, regardless of age or level of editing experience. RSVP on the linked page or through Meetup.

I hope to see you there!

(Note: If you do not wish to receive talk page messages for DC meetups, you are welcome to remove your username from this page.)

Harej (talk) 00:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

• News and notes: German chapter asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites?
  Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.

• Technology report: Architecture Summit schedule published
  The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.

• Op-ed: Licensed for reuse? Citing open-access sources in Wikipedia articles
  It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.

• In the media: Is Google hurting Wikipedia traffic?; "Wikipedia-Mania" in the New York Times
  Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"

• Traffic report: The Hours are Ours
  We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Sociology
  This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Soft deletion/Proposed deletion

Wikipedia:Soft deletion/Proposed deletion, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Soft deletion/Proposed deletion and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Soft deletion/Proposed deletion during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

• Book review: Missing Links and Secret Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries from Across the Known Multiverse
  A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."

• News and notes: Modification of WMF protection brought to Arbcom
  The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.

• Featured content: Dr. Watson, I presume
  Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.

• Special report: The few who write Wikipedia
  On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.

• Technology report: Architecting the future of MediaWiki
  This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.

• In the media: Wikipedia for robots; Wikipedia—a temperamental teenager
  An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.

• Traffic report: No show for the Globes
  While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 00:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hello! I don't really have much to say, and I'm not trying to bother you, but you are a volunteer for HSCI3013 at OU and part of our first Wikipedia assignment is to talk to someone helping with the class on Wikipedia. They didn't really tell us we were required to say anything in particular, so I hope you have a nice day.Leav5419 (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello and thanks!

Hello, I'm also a student in HSCI3013 at OU. Just created an account on Wikipedia and I'm very thankful to you for offering to help us if needed.

Jomoakin (talk) 05:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Bonus credit for HSCI 3013

I was thinking of allowing bonus credit for students who either earned barnstars or participated in projects like the Tyop Contest. Do you think this would be a good idea work, or would it be closer to releasing untrained rookie editors to run rough-shod with little guidance? Kirwanfan (talk) 16:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Kirwanfan: the Tyop Content is a good idea for extra credit. Barnstars don't make an ideal goal for earning bonus points, because it's pretty stochastic; you can do a lot of great work and not get any barnstars, or you could do one little thing that someone notices and get a barnstar for it. (It's also potentially more subject to gaming, although that's a relatively minor issue.) But if you throw in bonus points for barnstars without framing it as a goal to shoot for (rather than a mostly random bit of recognition that sometimes happens), it'd be fine. Another more involved possibility would be extra credit for giving feedback on articles that have been put up for peer review or Good article nominations. Those are cases where other editors are specifically looking for ways the articles can be improved, and just being willing to read through and think about the text with a critical eye goes a long way. (I don't suggest that the students do formal Good article reviews, which have some specific conventions around the details of Wikipedia policy and style guidelines, but rather just post their suggestions for improvement on the article talk pages.)--ragesoss (talk) 16:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Just Wanted to Say Thanks!

I'm a student in the course HSCI 3013 at OU and just wanted to say thanks for being a Wikipedia Ambassador for us! Lind6710 (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Greetings from Another Student

Just stopping by to introduce myself... I'm Jeanette, and I'm looking forward to being in this class and receiving much Wikipedia guidance from you. Thanks. :3 Tran3105 (talk) 22:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Just here to say thanks in advance for helping out with HSCI 3013. I'm sure I'll have a large number of questions later. SeanMcMahon (talk) 00:07, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi and thank you!

Hey Ragesoss, thank you for helping our HSCI class, I look forward to learning a lot from you during the course!Petejhua (talk) 01:20, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Greetings from yet another student

Hi Ragesoss! Thanks for helping out our class. I look forward to working with you this semester! Vu1708 (talk) 05:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Regards

Hello. I am a student enrolled in the University of Oklahoma's HSCI 3013 class. Soon enough we will all be caught up in a foray of editing and reviewing, so thank you in advance for lending us your support in this task. We have a sizable class, so it is very much appreciated to have you as a guide. Axbaksh (talk) 06:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Ragesoss. Thank you for supporting HSCI 3013 course. I'm look forward to learning from you during the semester. Duythai25 (talk) 07:37, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello

Hello, my name is Brittany Dennis. I am a student at the University of Oklahoma and is currently enrolled in the History of Science before Newton. For an assignment, we are to talk to two people and you are one of the online volunteers for our class.

Denn4657 (talk) 17:36, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Saturday: NYC Art And Feminism Wikipedia Editathon

Please join Wikipedia "Art and Feminism Editathon" @ Eyebeam on Saturday February 1, 2014, an event aimed at collaboratively expanding Wikipedia articles covering Art and Feminism, and the biographies of women artists! There are also regional events that day in Brooklyn, Westchester County, and the Hudson Valley. --Pharos (talk)

Greeting Ragesoss

Hello I am student at Bucknell University. You are one of the online volunteers for our class and we must greet you as an assignment. I look forward to contributing to wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rory.Bonner (talk • contribs) 04:26, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

• Traffic report: Six strikes out
  There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.

• WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
  Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
  Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".

• Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
  The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.

• Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
  An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

• Traffic report: Six strikes out
  There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.

• WikiProject report: Special report: Contesting contests
  Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: Wiki-PR defends itself, condemns Wikipedia's actions
  Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".

• Arbitration report: Kafziel case closed; Kww admonished by motion
  The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.

• Recent research: Translation assignments, weasel words, and Wikipedia's content in its later years
  An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 10:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

History of Ecology

Hello Ragesoss! I am a student at Bucknell enrolled in the History of Ecology course. I am so excited to begin working on our Wikipedia page and am so grateful that you will be helping us improve our page! Thanks for your help! Dcbru (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Coming up in February!

Hello there!

Our February WikiSalon is coming up on Sunday, February 23. Join us at our gathering of Wikipedia enthusiasts at the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery with an optional dinner after. As usual, all are welcome. Care to join us?

Also, if you are available, there is an American Art Edit-a-thon being held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum with Professor Andrew Lih's COMM-535 class at American University on Tuesday, February 11 from 2 to 5 PM. Please RSVP on the linked page if you are interested.

If you have any ideas or preferences for meetups, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC.

Thank you, and hope to see you at our upcoming events! Harej (talk) 18:42, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Upcoming Edit-a-Thon

Hi. I am organizing an Edit-a-thon on women in science for March 28th. It's going to be cosponsored by the OU HSCI department, the Library, and hopefully several other departments around campus. I'd be interested in any advice as far as set-up, advertising, where to advertise within Wikipedia, or anything else. If there's any way to bring you down for the event, I would be interested in that as well. Hunter Heyck expressed interest in the idea, so we might be able to arrange travel if you'd be willing to give a talk. Anyway, let me know if you're interested. The initial meetup page is in my sandbox if you want further details. Thanks, Kirwanfan (talk) 20:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I've moved the meetup page from my sandbox to it's actual page. Kirwanfan (talk) 16:56, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Kirwanfan: It's looking good! I can't come in person (I'm flying to Chicago the next day for the HSS strategic planning meeting) but I can try to set aside a few hours to participate remotely. The page says Thursday, March 28, but according to my calculations that's a Friday. There are a few things you can do to advertise within Wikipedia:

• Compile a list of users who have signed up for any related WikiProjects (namely, WikiProject Women scientists, History of Science, and maybe WikiProject Women's History) and the participants in things like Wikipedia:Meetup/Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2013 - Brown. Then send talk page messages to all of them.
• Create a geonotice, which will show up on the watchlist of any Wikipedians within a set geographical area, such as central OK. If you add a request on that page, I can make sure it gets implemented if no one else does first.

Maybe User:Keilana or User:Mary Mark Ockerbloom have other ideas? I don't actually have much experience organizing edit-a-thons.--ragesoss (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kirwanfan, I'm happy to discuss and share ideas with you anytime! A couple of things I've found useful for advertising in a university are emailing relevant departments (history, science departments) and asking them to distribute a notice to their students. You can also engage with relevant student groups, especially those with a heavy social media presence. At Loyola, we've gotten at least half of all our participants via Facebook advertising and feminist groups. Also, flyers in a high-traffic area don't necessarily get participants directly but they do get the word out about your event and that will help with word-of-mouth advertising. I hope this helps! Best, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 22:03, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

• In the media: WikiVIP; Art Feminism; Medical articles; PR manipulation; Azerbaijani Wikipedia
  As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.

• Technology report: Left with no choice
  Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.

• News and notes: WMF bites the bullet on affiliation and FDC funding, elevates Wikimedia user groups
  In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is

• Featured content: Space selfie
  Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.

• Traffic report: Sports Day
  Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.

• WikiProject report: Game Time in Russia
  In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:00, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Upcoming Saturday events - March 1: Harlem History Editathon and March 8: NYU Law Editathon

Upcoming Saturday events - March 1: Harlem History Editathon and March 8: NYU Law Editathon

You are invited to join upcoming Wikipedia "Editathons", where both experienced and new Wikipedia editors will collaboratively improve articles on a selected theme, on the following two Saturdays in March: Saturday March 1: Harlem History Editathon (RSVP), focusing on Harlem history, landmarks and biographies Saturday March 8: NYU Law Editathon (RSVP), focusing on innovation law and intellectual property (with social dinner afterward) I hope to see you there! Pharos (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by removing your name from this list.)

Hello

Hello! I'm in the HSCI 3013 class. I realize I'm doing this a bit late, but I suppose it's better late than never. I've never really used Wikipedia before for anything more than cursory searches, so I kept putting off doing anything with it. Of course, now that I'm here, it doesn't seem that bad... Anyway, thanks

Rochelle Lunsford (talk) 05:04, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

• News and notes: Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
  The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.

• Technology report: ULS Comeback
  Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.

• WikiProject report: Countering Systemic Bias
  WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.

• Featured content: Holotype
  Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

• Traffic report: Chilly Valentines
  Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March

Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March - You are invited!

New England Wikimedians is excited to announce a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that will be taking place at colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts as part of Wikiwomen's History Month from March 1 - March 31. We encourage you to join in an edit-a-thon near you, or to participate remotely if you are unable to attend in person (for the full list of articles, click here). Events are currently planned for the cities/towns of Boston, Northampton, South Hadley, and Cambridge. Further information on dates and locations can be found on our user group page. Questions? Contact Girona7 (talk)

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

• Forum: Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
  About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.

• Featured content: Odin salutes you
  Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• WikiProject report: Racking brains with neuroscience
  This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.

• Special report: Diary of a protester: Wikimedian perishes in Ukrainian unrest
  Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.

• News and notes: Wikimedia chapters and communities challenge Commons' URAA policy
  Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.

• Traffic report: Snow big deal
  The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.

• Recent research: CSCW '14 retrospective; the impact of SOPA on deletionism
  The monthly roundup of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:27, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

DC Meetups in March

Happy March!

Though we have a massive snowstorm coming up, spring is just around the corner! Personally, I am looking forward to warmer weather.

Wikimedia DC is looking forward to a spring full of cool and exciting activities. In March, we have coming up:

• Evening WikiSalon on Wednesday, March 12 from 7 PM – 9 PM. Meet up with Wikipedians for coffee at the Cove co-working space in Dupont Circle! If you cannot make it in the evening, join us at our...
• March Meetup on Sunday, March 23 from 3 PM – 6 PM. Our monthly weekend meetup, same place as last month. Meet really cool and interesting people!
• Women in the Arts 2014 meetup and edit-a-thon on Sunday, March 30 from 10 AM – 5 PM. Our second annual Women in the Arts edit-a-thon, held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Free lunch will be served!

We hope to see you at our upcoming events! If you have any questions, feel free to ask on my talk page.

— Harej (talk) 05:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

New article on Science Hill

Hi Ragesoss, I just completed a draft article on Science Hill and used many of your building photos in the article. I'd be delighted if you looked it over and offered feedback or edits. Many thanks, Nickknack00 (talk) 00:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Nickknack00, that looks fantastic! I put some of the headers into more standand style, but overall it's really excellent! I'll look through my archives, because I think I have some other photos of buildings from the list that don't have pics yet. Be sure to nominate this for "Did You Know" as soon as you publish it, so it can get a spot on the Main Page for a little while.--ragesoss (talk) 14:12, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

ragesoss Thanks for the feedback and edits. Please upload any photos you have! There's a repository on I'll try and capture more photos in the early spring, once the snow has melted in New Haven, and I'll take your nomination advice once I've done that. Nickknack00 (talk) 02:05, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014

• Traffic report: Brinksmen on the brink
  There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.

• Discussion report: Four paragraph lead, indefinitely blocked IPs, editor reviews broken?
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: Wikipedia Library finding success in matching contributors with sources
  This week, the Signpost caught up with the Wikipedia Library (TWL), which aims to connect reference resources with Wikipedia editors who can use them to improve articles. Funded through the Wikimedia Foundation's Individual Engagement Grants program, TWL has a new "visiting scholars" initiative and a microgrants program in the works.

• Featured content: Full speed ahead for the WikiCup
  The WikiCup competition is ongoing, while six articles, three lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status of the English Wikipedia this week.

• WikiProject report: Article Rescue Squadron
  This week, the Signpost delved into the English Wikipedia's Article Rescue Squadron.

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Signpost interview

I noticed you're on the membership list for WikiProject History. The Signpost is looking to feature WP History in an upcoming issue. You might consider answering some of their interview questions. Thanks. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:06, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Chris: I don't think I'm active enough with the WikiProject to make a good interviewee for it.--ragesoss (talk) 19:48, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

• News and notes: Wikimedians celebrate International Women's Day, Women's History Month
  Wikimedians around the world gathered to celebrate Women's History Month and the associated International Women's Day by holding editathons. If you lived in the United Kingdom, you had the opportunity to attend Wikimedia UK's event at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of University College London and host to one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts in the world.

• Traffic report: War and awards
  An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.

• Featured content: Ukraine burns
  Five articles, two lists, and 52 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• WikiProject report: Russian WikiProject Entomology
  This week, we interviewed Anaxibia from the Russian-language Entomology WikiProject.

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Silent Spring

You're one of the major contributors to the well written Rachel Carson article. I noticed that the Silent Spring article has been neglected. As a starting point I've taken a lot of material from the Rachel Carson article and placed it in the Silent Spring article. Do you have time to look at the Silent Spring article or have ideas on how to improve it? --Harizotoh9 (talk) 02:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Harizotoh9! I know there are several sources specifically about Silent Spring and its influence that are cited in the Rachel Carson article, so those would be good places to start. What a Book Can Do by Priscilla Coit Murphy, in particular, probably has a lot of good info that should make its way into the article. In many ways, Silent Spring is actually a bigger and more complex topic than Carson's article, so you may want zero in on a particular aspect (such as expanding on its reception, and separating that out into its reception in the years following its publication and its reception later on in retrospect). Just a simple search for Silent Spring on Google Scholar brings up a bunch of relevant articles. My method to get started on something like this is just to start reading whatever seems the most interesting, until you start to get a feel for the overall topic.--ragesoss (talk) 12:43, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: March 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014 Headlines Education Cooperative Kickoff Meeting in Prague Frank Schulenburg selected as Wiki Ed executive director Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in February 2014 Teaching students to use Wikipedia critically as a first source in research Welcome, Floor Koudijs! Articles of Interest in other publications To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here. If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

natural theology

When writing the article for my topic on Natural Theology, How can I expand the knowledge that was already put out there by other authors on Wikipedia?

We are also doing an outline for our course, I would like to know if you had any ideas on how I could approach the assignment

RyH11 (talk) 00:36, 21 March 2014 (UTC)Ryan

RyH11: natural theology is a very big topic, but also one that has not been covered very systematically on Wikipedia. My recommendation would be to start with a close reading of a good short overview of the topic. The "Natural Theology" chapter by John Hedley Brooke in Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction (2002, edited by Gary B. Ferngren) might be a good one. After you think you have an understanding of the topic in broad strokes, make an outline based on that. Then, see how the existing content in the article would fit into that outline, and rework the existing content into the new outline and fill in the missing parts using the sources in Brooke's bibliography (and whatever else you come across in your research that is helpful). Hope that helps.--ragesoss (talk) 12:54, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 March 2014

• Forum: Wikimedia Commons mission: free media for the world or only Wikimedia projects?
  Non-US editors and chapters have taken issue with a multitude of image deletions done on the Wikimedia Commons to comply with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a US law that brought the country into compliance with the Berne Convention.

• WikiProject report: We have history
  This week, we visited WikiProject History, an ancient project with roots dating back to 2001. The project is home to 196 pieces of Featured material and 483 Good and A-class articles independent of the vast accomplishments of its various child projects. WikiProject History maintains a lengthy list of tasks, oversees the history portal, and continues to build Wikipedia's outline of history.

• Interview: Nate Ott: the writer behind 71 articles in the largest-ever good topic
  In a record-breaker, the English Wikipedia has a new largest good topic: the 71-article Light cruisers of Germany, which concerns the light cruisers used by Germany during the 20th century.

• Featured content: Spot the bulldozer
  Twelve articles, fourteen lists, and six pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• News and notes: Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny
  One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.

• Traffic report: Into thin air
  The utterly mystifying events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has not fallen from the sky so much as vanished from it entirely, has left an information-starved public scrambling for precedents, some logical, some... not.

• Technology report: Wikimedia engineering report
  The Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014 has been published. A summarized version is also available. Major news include

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

David Ehrenfeld

Hello RageSoss,

My name is Eric and I am a part of the History of Ecology class at Bucknell. I am currently working on an outline for my Wikipedia article on David Ehrenfeld. I was just wondering if there is a certain protocol for writing about individual people rather than more broad topics. When writing my outline should I focus more on his personal life or his work? Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Emm031 (talk) 16:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Emm031: Hi! It's really up to you, as different writers like to organize biographies in different ways. The way I like to do for most scientific biographies is to organize it cronologically, grouped into phases of the subject's career/work, but combining relevant details from personal life and work as it goes. So typically, I'd start with early life (including family background) and education, then go on through several sections that cover the main things the person was working on in each period, and any significant developments in their personal life that happened in the same period. As for whether to focus more on personal life or work, I'd recommend that you just follow your sources; if you have a lot more material about one than the other, let that be a guide to how you balance the coverage. Hope that helps.--ragesoss (talk) 18:01, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you RageSoss!Your advice will definitely help in writing my outline! Emm031 (talk) 02:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Biogeography

Hi RageSoss, My name is Carly and I am working on contributing to the Biogeography page with two classmates from my History of Ecology class. We were wondering if we should focus on only adding information to the history section of the article, or if we should contribute to the other sections that seem to also need expansion. We believe that we could provide the most information to the history section by adding details of specific contributors to the study of biogeography as a science, in addition to it's progression. Please let us know what else you would recommend adding to either just the history section, or overall. Thank you very much. Ced015 (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Ced015: I'm not sure whether Professor Stuhl wants you to focus on the history or not, but the article certainly has room for improvement throughout, so from my perspective I'd suggest going for whatever improvements you have good sources for. In terms of the history section, I'd caution you to avoid to much focus on individuals in an article like this, as this can often lead to a great man history that obscures the overall development of the field. (Of course, you probably can't avoid some of that, but it's something to watch out for.) If you don't have it already, you should definitely make plenty of use of Janet Browne's The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography to cover early developments in biogeography. I don't know off the top of my head where to point you for the later history, but I think there's an okay overview in Peter J. Bowler's The Earth Encompassed. Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 18:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

United States Atomic Energy Commission

Good morning RageSoss, My name is Shane and I am working on the Wikipedia page for the United States Atomic Energy Commission for the history of ecology class. I am looking to add a section/sections about the relationship between the Commission and the discipline of ecology (e.g. how Ecology got more funding for projects because of it, etc.). I think this is a fairly important section when discussing the overall page but I was wondering, how much do you think I should focus on incorporating this into the lead section? Also, are there any other sections that you think the page is most lacking or that could be improved at all? I don't want to focus completely on the relationship with ecology and then have the article become unbalanced since other sections may then be underdeveloped because of my work. Thanks! Srk017 (talk) 13:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

That's tricky, because the article as a whole is not very well developed, and the lead is correspondingly pretty slim. I'm not well versed in the history of the AEC (and it's a big, complex topic), but if you start researching the connection between AEC and ecology, you'll probably come across material on the affects it had on other disciplines as well, so that might be a good place to start. I know there are some specific ecology projects (tracing radioactive isotopes through ecosystems) that have been written about in depth, but [[United States Atomic Energy Commission is probably not the place to go into detail about that (one or more of those projects probably have articles of their own, or if not, they should). A good rule of thumb is to whatever is in the lead be roughly proportional to its overall representation in the body of the article.--ragesoss (talk) 18:20, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Article editing

Hello I have a question. I am editing the physics in medieval Islam, but when I was moving my article out of my sandbox, it created a new article. Can you help me understand how to fix this or why it happened? Denn4657 (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Denn4657. What happened was that you moved your sandbox page to Physics in Medieval Islam, but the existing page that you wanted to expand is capitalized differently: Physics in medieval Islam. Since you were drafting content to expand an existing article, you don't actually need to use the "move" function at all, but simply copy the wiki text that you drafted and add it in to the existing article. After you've done that, leave me another message and I will take care of the page you accidentally created by moving your sandbox.--ragesoss (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello again. I managed to copy what I wrote and got rid of most of the article that I was editing. Thank you for helping me.

Denn4657 (talk) 18:16, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Denn4657: It looks like you've overwritten what was already in the article, instead of combining your work with it. You may want to return to the history of the article and make sure that you're keeping the best of both. In particular, the lead section that was there before gave a nice little intro to the topic, and the list of sources is probably work keeping as well (even if they aren't actually being used in the article).--ragesoss (talk) 18:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Environmental Impact of War

Hey Ragesoss, I am working on an outline for my History of Ecology class at Bucknell University with Professor Stuhl. I decided to focus on the Environmental impact of war. The introduction to the article is well written, but leaves out Vietnam, WWII, Mao Zedong's great leap forward, and the Rwandan Genocide. Should I focus more on the progression of the impact of war on the environment by highlighting historical events? Should I add a new section for each topic mentioned above? Or should I take a more modern approach and create a new section that incorporates the research I have done (found on my user page)? Is my focus too broad or should I focus merely on one section since I only have a few weeks of school left. Thank you Mrjohnson007 (talk) 18:38, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Adding sections on specific topics would be an easy way to fit with the current structure of the article. But I would say it's not that great of a structure overall... just a list of "issues", primarily. However, it's a structure that will make it easier later on to refactor the article thematically and/or into broader historical periods. Maybe you could start by adding some new sections about specific key topics that are missing, and then start refactoring both the new and existing content into more useful sections based on the broader issues that your sources cover.--ragesoss (talk) 18:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Mrjohnson007 ping.--ragesoss (talk) 18:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Genetics and the Origin of Species

Hi Ragesoss,

My name is Jorie and I am in Professor Stuhl's History of Ecology class. I am reaching out to you to ask you a question about my outline for my article, Genetics and the Origin of Species. I wanted to talk about the public reaction to Dobzhansky's book and his theory of modern evolutionary synthesis. This could get to be somewhat controversial, so I was wondering if you had any advice for how I should go about this.

Thanks so much, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Jorie

Jcf028 (talk) 18:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)jcf028

Hi Jorie. For this article, I wouldn't worry to much about getting embroiled in wiki controversy yourself. There is a great, thoughtful group of editors who like to work on the history of evolution, and and long as you stick with fairly representing what your sources say -- and attribute anything controversial to the source that claims it, instead of simply stating it as fact -- you'll be find. Good luck! Were you able get get the Smocovitis and Provine sources I suggested beneath your initial bibliography?--ragesoss (talk) 19:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ragesoss,

Thanks so much for you response! I will attribute the controversial portions to their assigned sources. Yes, I did receive the Smocovitis and Provine sources! I have only briefly looked them over but they look great! I will definitely use them in my article.

Thanks again for all your help!

Jorie

Jcf028 (talk) 02:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)jcf028

Devleloping outline

Hey ragesoss I plan on editing an existing article that is already pretty well developed. I'd like to provide a little more specific information and stronger explanations for certain sections. any suggestions on developing an outline for this? Rory.Bonner (talk) 00:45, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Rory.Bonner: Because the article is so well developed already, I would start by doing a close reading of the current article from beginning to end, and then think about what major problems (if any) you see with the way it's organized. Then, write several paragraphs that essentially summarize the whole article -- either in its current organization, or with whatever significant changes to the organization you think should be made. The idea with the lead section is that it should be capsule summary of the whole article, but that's definitely not the case with the current lead section. And if you can put the overall summary into your own words in a few paragraphs, you'll be a good position to start improving on the body of the article without either duplicating what's already there or unbalancing the coverage to focus too heavily on any one aspect. Hope that helps! --ragesoss (talk) 13:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

History of Ecology: Outline

Ragesoss -

I am currently working in a group for a course with the goal to improve the "history of ecology" Wikipedia page. We hope not only to add more information, but to reorganize the page as well. Our currently outline is a redeveloped lead section which we will use to edit the rest of the document. Do you think we have added relevant information to the lead section and what are you opinions on the organization of the section?

Section:

Ecology is generally spoken of as a new science, having only become prominent in the second half of the 20th century. Its history stems all the way back to the 4th century. One of the first ecologists whose writings survive may have been Aristotle or perhaps his student, Theophrastus, both of whom had interest in many species of animals. Theophrastus described interrelationships between animals and their environment as early as the 4th century BC. Ecology developed substantially in the 18th and 19th century. It began with Linnaeus and his work with the economy of nature. Soon after cam Humboldt and his work with botanical geography. Wallace and Mobius then contributed with the notion of biocoenosis. Warming’s work with ecological plant geography led to the founding of ecology as a discipline. Darwin’s work also contributed to the science of ecology. Ecological thought expanded even more in the early 20th century. Major contributions included: Suess’ and Verndasky’s work with the biosphere, Arthur Tansley’s ecosystem, and Cowles ecological succession. Ecology influenced the social sciences and humanities. Human ecology began in the early 20th century and it recognized humans as an ecological factor. Later Lovelock advanced views on earth as a macro-organism with the Gaia hypothesis. Conservation stemmed from the science of ecology. Important figures and movements include Shelford and the ESA, National Environmental Policy act, Marsh, Roosevelt, Forbes, and post-dustbowl conservation. Later in the 20th century world governments collaborated on man’s effect on the biosphere and earth’s environment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrewscutt (talk • contribs) 15:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Andrewscutt: Without knowing enough about the history of ecology myself to judge the balance of content, I'd say this is along the lines of what an appropriate overview of the article should look like. I look forward to seeing what you and your classmates do with this article.--ragesoss (talk) 15:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Humboldtian Science

Hi Ragesoss,

My name is Ali and I am currently taking Professor Stuhl's History of Ecology course at Bucknell University.

I am sure you have know a lot about our semester long project with Wikipedia, for which I have been assigned to work on and develop the Humboldtian Science page.

Through my research I can see that this article is well established and does a pretty good job of outlining and defining Humboldtian Science.

However there are a few questions I have that I would like to get your opinion on...

1) The article currently offers a pretty bulky "Biography" section about Humboldt. I was wondering how important you think this is for this particular page considering is there is already a pretty lengthy page dedicated personally to the history of Alexander von Humboldt? I think it is important to mention a few historical event in relation to the development of Humboldtian Science specifically and have chose to include those in the outline I have constructed for this article.

2) I think one of the most important aspects of Humboltian science is that it takes a holistic approach to studying science, it is both empirical and pays tribute to the aesthetics of nature, since this is such an important part of this science I was wondering if you thought it would be appropriate to write an entire section about this (there is enough research to support it) or to work in the most crucial details to some of the existing sections?

Thank you for all of your help! Alilafferty (talk) 16:17, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Alilafferty: Your suggestions on both points sound right on to me: carving down the biographical elements to ones that are directly relevant to the idea of Humboldtian science, and expanding on the key aspects that are underdeveloped. (This article is actually one that one of my students did when I was a teaching assistant.) Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 16:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

History of Marine Biology

Hello Ragesoss! My name is Sara Palombo and I am a student in the History of Ecology class working on Wikipedia articles. I have chosen to focus on the Marine Biology page and will be adding to the History section of that page. As I looked over the current age and began gathering information for my outline/article, I began to worry that I am going to overwhelm the page with History. I don't know if I should perhaps condense the amount of information I am collecting to make sure the History section of the pace is not too long as many of the other sections on the page are rather short. I want to be thorough in my work on the history of marine biology but I am worried about making the page too much about the history. I was just wondering if you had any suggestions on how to go about this issue I am facing. Should I condense the information I have or should I include lots of information and hope others follow and add more on to the other sections? Thank you so much for all your help!

Sarakpal (talk) 16:38, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sara. I wouldn't worry about overwhelming the article, since the history of marine biology is clearly an important topic in its own right that deserves to be covered in detail. What you might consider instead is just starting a new history of marine biology article to give a longer overview, and then use a short version of that (such as just the lead section, if it's written in good summary style to give a quick overview of the topic) for the marine biology article's History section. Although it's grown in the meantime to be a little too big, that's the approach that was previously used for the History section of the Biology article. And if you start a new article, you might be ablew to get it onto the main page for a "Did You Know" entry. Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Kosmos (Humboldt) Outline Help

Hi Sage! My name is Ashley and I'm in Professor Stuhl's History of Ecology class at Bucknell. I'm working on the Kosmos (Humboldt) page and was hoping for some guidance as I try to compose an outline. Since the page is about the book rather than Humboldt himself, I was worried about making the page too focused on Humboldt and not enough about Kosmos specifically. I was wondering if you have any advice as to what information I should or shouldn't include about the book or about Humboldt? Thank you for your time! Ashleyweir (talk) 19:53, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ashley. Similar advice to what I gave above about Genetics and the Origin of Species probably applies here as well... the things I'd look for in a solid article about an historically important book would be:

• Relevant background and context, helping the reader understand the world that Kosmos came into
• Information about the writing and publication of the book
• An overview of the contents of the book itself
• An in-depth discussion of its reception and influence

Hope that helps!--ragesoss (talk) 19:57, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

An exciting month of wiki events!

Hello there,

I am pleased to say that April will be a very exciting month for Wikipedia in Washington, DC. We have a lot of different events coming up, so you will have a lot to choose from.

First, a reminder that our second annual Women in the Arts Edit-a-Thon will take place on Sunday, March 30 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Coming up in April, we have our first-ever Open Government WikiHack with the Sunlight Foundation on April 5–6! We are working together to use open government data to improve the Wikimedia projects, and we would love your help. All are welcome, regardless of coding or editing experience. We will also be having a happy hour the day before, with refreshments courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation.

On Friday, April 11 we are having our first edit-a-thon ever with the Library of Congress. The Africa Collection Edit-a-Thon will focus on the Library's African and Middle East Reading Room. It'll be early in the morning, but it's especially worth it if you're interested in improving Wikipedia's coverage of African topics.

The following day, we are having our second annual Wiki Loves Capitol Hill training. We will discuss policy issues relevant to Wikimedia and plan for our day of outreach to Congressional staffers that will take place during the following week.

There are other meetups in the works, so be sure to check our meetup page with the latest. I hope to see you at some of these events!

All the best,
James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 01:29, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 March 2014

• Comment: A foolish request
  April Fools' Day is rapidly approaching. Every year, members of the community pull pranks and make (or attempt to make) humorous edits to pages across the project. Every year, the community follows April Fools' Day with a contentious debate about whether or not it is necessary to impose limits on April Fools' Day jokes for future years. It is a polarizing issue.

• Traffic report: Down to a simmer
  Topics like the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 eased down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.

• Recent research: Wikipedians' "encyclopedic identity" dominates even in Kosovo debates
  Have you wondered about differences in the articles on Crimea in the Russian, Ukrainian, and English versions of Wikipedia? A newly published article entitled "Lost in Translation: Contexts, Computing, Disputing on Wikipedia" doesn't address Crimea, but nonetheless offers insight into the editing of contentious articles in multiple language editions through a heavy qualitative examination of Wikipedia articles about the Kosovo in the Serbian, Croatian, and English editions.

• News and notes: Commons Picture of the Year—winners announced
  Results for the two-stage 2013 Commons Picture of the Year have been announced. This year's winning photograph (above) shows a lightbulb that has been cracked, allowing inert gas to escape—and oxygen to enter, so that the tungsten filament burns. From the flames rise elegant curls of blue smoke.

• Featured content: Winter hath a beauty that is all his own
  Four articles, two lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Op-ed: Why we're updating the default typography for Wikipedia
  On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing, four major iterations, and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we’ve arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.

• Technology report: Why will Wikipedia look like the Signpost?
  As you have probably read on this weeks op-ed, or via various other channels of announcement, 3 April will see the introduction of the Typography refresh (or update) for the Vector skin on all Wikipedias. Other projects like Commons will have this update rolled out a few days prior.

• WikiProject report: From the peak
  This week, the Signpost interviewed the English Wikipedia's Mountains WikiProject.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:19, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Sofia Simmonds

Hello! Your submission of Sofia Simmonds at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 15:52, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Definitely something shiny owed...

		The Helping Hand Barnstar
		Huge amounts of thanks for picking up the slack on my talkpage and helping out the WEP students there while I was away. Yunshui 雲‍水 07:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Outline for History of Ecology

Hello Ragesoss, my name is Octavio and I am currently in professor Stuhl's history of ecology course. I am working on the article the Kaibab Plateau and this is the outline I composed for it. I was wondering if you could give me some advice as to what aspect of the outline I should focus on so that I can write on it for the Kaibab Plateau article. Thank you so much.

One possible addition to this article would be to talk about how the Kaibab Deer affected students and professors studying conservation. After scientists conducted studies and came up with a solution to what had caused the fluctuations among the deer population, these results were able to be used in classrooms in order to learn what had happened to the Kaibab deer. This was important and controversial because there was still a debate as to what had actually happened to the Kaibab deer. The Kaibab deer are a great example of how human intervention most likely caused the anomalies in the deer population and ultimately led to their extinction.

Another possible addition to this article would be to provide the different alternatives that people believed were the cause of the abnormal changes in deer population. There were different theories which were all plausible at the time. Some people believe that the growth and decline of the deer population was due to restrictions made on hunters so that the Kaibab deer could live freely and increase their population. Others believed that the cause was due to the killing of the predators that were causing the deer population to go extinct. Others believe that the decline of the deer population was due because there were so many deer that they ended up over browsing the area of the Kaibab Plateau. In this section I could also explain what was the actual reason that the deer population fluctuated, most likely due to human intervention.

Finally another possible addition to this article would be to add a small amount of background information about this area. In this section I could talk about how the Kaibab Plateau formed and how it became an important area of preservation. In this section I could also explain the different ways in which the natives to this area treated the land also how hunters and travelers treated the land and how that may have affected the fluctuations in deer population. Aoc001 (talk) 14:23, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Octavio! All three of those topics sound like good things to be covered in the article. If it's not feasible for you to balance your expansion of the article across all of those topics, then I personally would find the first one the most interesting to see covered in detail. Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 16:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

History of Saint Helena

Hey Ragesoss, I'm Wade, a student in History of Ecology and Bucknell, and I'm doing my project on the History of Saint Helena Island. I noticed that most of the information on the page is the social history of the island and that isn't important for my focus. I am hoping to add more depth to the history with my ecological sources. I hope you can look at my bibliography and outline to let me know if the information i'm adding is pertinent and appropriate for wikipedia. I'm looking forward to your input. --User:Baldwinwt — Preceding undated comment added 18:50, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Wade. Your bibliography and outline look good to me; it seems like you're headed in the right direction. Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 19:06, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Sofia Simmonds

The DYK project (nominate) 16:02, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 April 2014

• News and notes: Wikimedia conferences—soul-searching about costs, attendance, and future
  The run-up to the conference has seen the unfolding of two fractious threads on the Wikimedia public mailing list, both of which may serve as background for the last session at Berlin: "Future of the Wikimedia Conference".

• WikiProject report: Deutschland in English
  This week, we visited with WikiProject Germany.

• Special report: On the cusp of the Wikimedia Conference
  The annual Wikimedia Conference is about to start in Berlin, hosted by Wikimedia Germany, which won the bid to hold the event over three others. This will be the fifth time the chapter has hosted the Wikimedia Conference—it did so from 2009 to 2012, with attendance ranging from 100 to 180 Wikimedians. This year 160 people are expected at the four-day event, which is mainly for representatives of affiliated Wikimedia organisations. The conference has been built around two themes: Organisation, structures, and grants and Success and impact.

• Featured content: April Fools
  The Signpost's "Featured content" writers had a bit of fun this week.

• Traffic report: Regressing to the mean
  The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.

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You're invited!

NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square

Dear Fellow Wikimedian, New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. We hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

The Signpost: 09 April 2014

• News and notes: Round 2 of FDC funding open to public comments
  Community review is open for the four applications in the second and final round of applications to the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013–14. Three eligible organisations have applied for funding under the newly named "annual program grants": Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Norway, and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which last November was recognised as eligible to apply for FDC funding purposes.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Law
  This week, we interviewed the Law WikiProject.

• Special report: Community mourns passing of Adrianne Wadewitz
  "I remember laughing and talking and laughing and talking at Wikimania 2012. I took this picture of her that she used for a long while as a profile pic. Someone on Facebook said it looked 'skepchickal', which she loved."

• Traffic report: Conquest of the Couch Potatoes
  Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.

• Featured content: Snow heater and Ash sweep
  Five article, five lists, and ten pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:07, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: April 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2014 Headlines Consolidation of Portals and newsletter for the Global Education Program Remembering Adrianne Wadewitz Remembering Cynthia Ashley-Nelson Engineering students in Panama work on Spanish Wikipedia Jisc/ Wikimedia UK partnership Wikimedia Sverige: New resource for Swedish teachers on Wikiversity Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in March 2014 Happenings at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus Educational programming continues on Wikinews Welcome, Anna Koval! Exploratory research started for setting up a Wikipedia Education program in the Netherlands LiAnna Davis joins Wiki Ed as head of communications and external relations To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Precious

art forms
Thank you, Sage, for quality articles for project history of science such as Johannes Kepler, for images and references and "Learn to see the beauty in the redlink", for the beauty of Kunstformen der Natur and memories, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (9 December 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:04, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hi Sage. Just wanted to drop by and say thanks for taking the time to read over and express your support for our Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship grant proposal that we put together! I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 18:05, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 April 2014

• Special report: 2014 Wikimedia Conference—what is the impact?
  The annual Wikimedia Conference wound up last Sunday, 13 April—a four-day meeting costing several hundred thousand dollars, hosted in Berlin by Wikimedia Germany and attended by more than 100 Wikimedians.

• Op-ed: Five things a Wikipedian in residence can do
  Hey you—yeah you, the Wikipedian! Do you want to help a museum, a library, a university, or other organization explore ways to engage with Wikipedia? Great—you should offer your expertise as a Wikipedian in residence!

• News and notes: Wikimedian passes away
  Cynthia Ashley-Nelson, who edited as "Cindamuse" on the Wikimedia projects, passed away in her sleep at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin on 10 April.

• WikiProject_report: To the altar—Catholicism
  This week, we visited WikiProject Catholicism.

• Wikimania: Winning bid announced for 2015
  After just over a month of deliberation, the Wikimania jury has selected Wikimedia Mexico's bid to host Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, with a proposed date of 15–19 July.

• Traffic report: Reflecting in Gethsemane
  If I were the kind of person who made snap judgments based on flimsy evidence, I'd say our readership is in a funk.

• Featured content: There was I, waiting at the church
  Fourteen articles, four lists, seven pictures, and one topic attained "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.

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Discerning pages that link to others?

Hi there! I was chatting with Ced015 Lgn006 and Eak016 earlier today about their work on the page Biogeography. They are interested in soliciting more feedback from editors outside of our course. They were wondering if there is a mechanism in place by which one can detect the set of Wikipedia pages that offer internal links to Biogeography? They thought that might be a smart way to target particular pages and thus groups of editors with interests in the subject area. Is such a thing possible? If not, do you recommend other means of inviting editors to give comment on this page? Thanks for your thoughts! --Enstandrew (talk) 16:03, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Ced015, Lgn006, Eak016 and Enstandrew: To answer the technical question first, in the left-hand sidebar there's a Tools section that includes "What links here", which shows all the pages linking to that page: Special:WhatLinksHere/Biogeography. However, there are so many such pages that you probably want to narrow it down. One good way to do so is to focus on the pages listed in navigation templates that include Biogeography, which you can find by limiting the search to the "Template" namespace, like this. The particularly relevant templates are {{Biogeography}}, {{Modelling ecosystems}} and {{Biodiversity}}.

That said, I don't think posting to other article talk pages is a particularly good way to seek feedback. I would instead recommend one or more of these routes:

• Request some attention on the talk pages of relevant WikiProjects, such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ecology, or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography.
• Request a peer review. (This may take longer than you have left to produce any feedback, though.)
• Directly ask active editors who have been working on related articles recently. (For example, check the recent histories of the most relevant articles that link to Biogeography.)

Hope that helps.--ragesoss (talk) 16:41, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Ragesoss. We appreciate your advice and will be reaching out to active editors working on related articles to get some feedback on our contributions to the Biogeography page. Ced015 (talk) 01:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

OER inquiry

Hi Ragesoss, I'm sending you this message because you're one of about 300 users who have recently edited an article in the umbrella category of open educational resources (OER) (or open education). In evaluating several projects we've been working on (e.g. the WIKISOO course and WikiProject Open), my colleague Pete Forsyth and I have wondered who chooses to edit OER-related articles and why. Regardless of whether you've taken the WIKISOO course yourself - and/or never even heard the term OER before - we'd be extremely grateful for your participation in this brief, anonymous survey before 27 April. No personal data is being collected. If you have any ideas or questions, please get in touch. My talk page awaits. Thanks for your support! - Sara FB (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

David Ehrenfeld Article

Hi ragesoss, My name is Eric and I am a member of the history of ecology class at Bucknell University. I am currently in the process of creating a new page on David Ehrenfeld, a prominent figure in conservation biology. Would you be able to review my article as it is still in the creation process for becoming a live article? It still says that the review could take up to a month and my final article is due next week. If you could help me it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.Emm031 (talk) 02:29, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Emm031 (and Enstandrew and Yunshui): I've gone ahead and made the draft live. There's suprisingly little directly biographical information available, but Ehrenfeld definitely exceeds the requirements of Wikipedia:Notability (academics), and the article is well-sourced enough to make that clear. (As a side note: we generally recommend the grades be based only the work students do, not on whether or not it ends up sticking around as a live article. I think this is the way Enstandrew is doing it, but I'm noting this for other readers.)--ragesoss (talk) 14:03, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your help on making the draft live! I really appreciate it. I am also looking to add a few pictures to the page, but due to the lack of material out there on Ehrenfeld, there doesn't seem to be many photos on the internet that meet Wikipedia standards. Any suggestions? Lastly, I have fixed the bare citation issue. Is there any way to remove the tag at the top of the page that denotes that I still need to fix it? Thanks again for all of your help RageSoss. Emm031 (talk) 02:35, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Emm031: It looks like you've figured out how to remove that tag, and you've also found a freely-licensed photo of Ehrenfeld. Well done!--ragesoss (talk) 13:42, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon invite

You're invited to the Peabody Essex Museum Edit-a-thon Spring 2014

On May 3rd, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts will be hosting a Native American and Chinese Art edit-a-thon from 9:00-5:00 pm. You are more than welcome to attend, as there will be free food and drink, and an outing afterwards. If you are interested, please sign up here, as we would love to see you there!

If you have any questions, please leave a message at Ed Rodley's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

Two edit-a-thons coming up!

Hello there!

I'm pleased to tell you about two upcoming edit-a-thons:

• This Tuesday, April 29, from 2:30 to 5:30 PM, we have the Freer and Sackler edit-a-thon. (Sorry for the short notice!)
• On Saturday, May 10 we have the Wikipedia APA edit-a-thon, in partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, from 10 AM to 5 PM.

We have more stuff coming up in May and June, so make sure to keep a watch on the DC meetup page. As always, if you have any recommendations or requests, please leave a note on the talk page.

Best,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 20:38, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Videos for Wikimania 2014

Hi

We’re searching peoples how help us making videos at the wikimania in London. Victor Grigas has written that you have some skills in video production. If you’re interested please check this 2 wikimania-submissions:

• https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Video_production_on-site_at_Wikimania
• https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_to_produce_video_%26_audio_files_for_Wiki_projects,_for_instance_interviews

For further information please contact .js. I’m only the bearer. --Bjferstern (talk) 13:31, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

.js and Bjferstern: Thanks. I would be interested in helping out, but unfortunately I don't anticipate getting the chance to come to Wikimania this year.--ragesoss (talk) 13:39, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't be there too. I will help from home as Cutter. --Bjferstern (talk) 16:22, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2014

• News and notes: WMF's draft annual plan turns indigestible as an FDC proposal
  Like hammering a square peg into a round hole, the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted a draft annual plan for 2014–15 to its own Funds Dissemination Committee. Unlike the WMF's submission to the FDC's inaugural round in October 2012, the "proposal" does not seek funding.

• Traffic report: Going to the Doggs
  Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.

• Breaking: The Foundation's new executive director
  The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that its new executive director will be Lila Tretikov, until now a chief product officer in Silicon Valley.

• WikiProject report: Genetics
  This week, we unraveled the mysteries of WikiProject Genetics.

• Interview: Wikipedia in the Peabody Essex Museum
  Ed Roley, Associate Director of Integrated Media at the Peabody Essex Museum, talks about GLAM engagement with Wikipedia.

• Featured content: Browsing behaviours
  Four articles and sixteen featured pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Recent research: Wikipedia predicts flu more accurately than Google
  Can you predict the number of seasonal influenza-like illness in the U.S. using data from Wikipedia?

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:24, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Skepchickal

I nominated a photograph you uploaded, for Featured Picture consideration, at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Skepchickal.

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons,

— Cirt (talk) 19:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Cirt: Thank you. I'm touched that you nominated this. Her loss is still a heavy weight on my heart.--ragesoss (talk) 20:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome, and agreed. However, it looks like it won't pass. Oh well, was worth a try. I wonder if you have any ideas on how to modify it, and perhaps I could nominate an alternate version? — Cirt (talk) 20:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 May 2014

• News and notes: New system of discretionary sanctions; Buchenwald; is Pirelli 'Cracking Wikipedia'?
  The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. A new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.

• Traffic report: TMZedia
  For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems the human race most wants is a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.

• In focus: Foundation announces long-awaited new executive director
  In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.

• WikiCup: 2014 WikiCup enters round three
  Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain.

• In the media: Google and the flu; Adrianne
  Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.

• WikiProject report: Singing with Eurovision
  Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went to the stage to talk with one of the project's members.

• Featured content: Wikipedia at the Rijksmuseum
  Four articles, two lists, and five pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

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BAGBot: Your bot request RagesossBot

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RagesossBot as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 18:34, 10 May 2014 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Meet up with us

Happy May!

There are a few meetups in DC this month, including an edit-a-thon later this month. Check it out:

• On Thursday, May 15 come to our evening WikiSalon at the Cove co-working space in Dupont Circle. If you're available Thursday evening, feel free to join us!
• Or if you prefer a Saturday night dinner gathering, we also have our May Meetup at Capitol City Brewing Company. (Beer! Non-beer things too!)
• You are also invited to the Federal Register edit-a-thon at the National Archives later this month.

Come one, come all!

Best,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 20:20, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Summer class

I'm teaching another course this summer. If you're around, I'd love to have you as a volunteer. Also, if you have any suggestions for articles relating to pre-1700 HSCI that need work, we would lie happy for suggestions. Thanks, Kirwanfan (talk) 03:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Kirwanfan: Sure, happy to. I'll look into articles... or better yet, a more systematic way of coming up with good student topics for history of science classes.--ragesoss (talk) 12:56, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: May 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2014 Headlines Wiki Camp 2014 at Vanadzor EduWiki Conference in Belgrade 2014 Participation of "Servicio Social" students in Wikipedia grows at Tec de Monterrey Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in April 2014 Wikimedia Sverige: Meeting the educators Egyptian students and professors celebrate last term's accomplishments Articles of interest in other publications To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 14 May 2014

• Investigative report: Hong Kong's Wikimania 2013—failure to produce financial statement raises questions of probity
  On 2 May 2012, the Wikimania jury announced that Hong Kong's bid to hold the 2013 event had beaten four other proposals. Moderator James Forrester wrote: "The Jury has confidence that the Hong Kong bidding team will pull off a magnificent Wikimania,"—and indeed there were positive comments about the event from most attendees.

• WikiProject report: Relaxing in Puerto Rico
  This week, the Signpost jumped over the ocean to chat with the Puerto Rico WikiProject.

• News and notes: 'Ask a librarian'—connecting Wikimedians with the National Library of Australia
  Editors of Australian-related topics on the English Wikipedia may have noticed an odd addition if they viewed the article's talk pages. For example, on Talk:Darwin, Northern Territory, they might be drawn in by the question mark, nested within what is often a sea of WikiProject templates: "Need help improving this article? Ask a librarian at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library." Just what is this?

• Featured content: On the rocks
  Six articles, seven lists, and four pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Traffic report: Eurovision, Google Doodles, Mothers, and 5 May
  Eurovision is known for being political, and it was a doozy this week.

• Technology report: Technology report needs editor, Media Viewer offers a new look
  The Media Viewer is scheduled to launch on the English Wikipedia next week.

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Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons

Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England

As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows: May 21st at Northeastern University's Snell Library, in the Digital Scholarship Commons on the second floor May 22nd at Brown University's Rockefeller Library, in the Digital Scholarship Lab June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time. If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

The Signpost: 21 May 2014

• News and notes: "Crisis" over Wikimedia Germany's palace revolution
  Last Sunday the board of Wikimedia Germany passed 9–1 a vote of no confidence in the chapter's executive director, Pavel Richter, who has held the position since 2009. With more than 50 employees, an annual budget approaching $10 million, and the right to conduct its own fundraising through the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) site banners, Wikimedia Germany is the second-largest organisation in the movement after the WMF itself. The decision was announced on the Wikimedia mailing list by the chapter chair, Nikolas Becker.

• Featured content: Staggering number of featured articles
  Thirteen articles, sixteen pictures, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Traffic report: Doodles' dawn
  It's a relief to see Google Doodles having an impact again; their wide coverage means that they inspire curiosity on many subjects which, for reasons of nationality, ethnicity or gender, might not be known in the English-speaking world. It's a shame then, that Wikipedia so often fails to keep up; articles on Google Doodles are almost invariably C-class, and seldom do justice to their subjects. Still, interest in Google Doodles has been waning in recent months—Audrey Hepburn last week was the first to top the list since December—so any rise in popularity is worth celebrating.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:03, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Survey for editors who mentor newcomer

Dear Wikipedia Ambassador,

I am seeking input on your experience as a mentor to new Wikipedians. This survey is designed to provide insight for the development of a new mentorship support tool on Wikipedia. If you have a moment, please take this survey, it should not take more than 10 minutes of your time to complete.

https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4V2SSrhU2NFOVAV

Also, if you are able to, I would greatly appreciate it if you would send the following survey to the mentee you worked with:

https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4V1quUdMZ1By3Ah

Thank you in advance for your participation, Gabriel Mugar 13:33, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Washington, DC meetups in June

Greetings!

Wikimedia DC has yet another busy month in June. Whether you're a newcomer to Wikipedia or have years of experience, we're happy to see you come. Here's what's coming up:

• On Wednesday, June 11 from 7 to 9 PM come to the WikiSalon at the Cove co-working space. Hang out with Wikipedia enthusiasts!
• Saturday, June 14 is the Frederick County History Edit-a-Thon from 11 AM to 4 PM. Help improve local history on Wikipedia.
• The following Saturday, June 21, is the June Meetup. Dinner and drinks with Wikipedians!
• Come on Tuesday, June 24 for the Wikipedia in Your Library edit-a-thon at GWU on local and LGBT history.
• Last but not least, on Sunday, June 29 we have the Phillips Collection Edit-a-Thon in honor of the Made in America exhibit.

Wikipedia is better with friends, so why not come out to an event?

Best,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 01:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 May 2014

• News and notes: The English Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion; wiki inventor interviewed on video
  With the promotion to featured article of Grus (constellation) on 17 May, Casliber became Wikipedia's second featured-article centurion, following Wehwalt's groundbreaking achievement last December. Cas's first FA, Banksia integrifolia, a group effort, was promoted on 16 November 2006. His first solo project, Diplodocus, followed in January 2007; he has rarely been off the FAC since. In a second story, Ward Cunningham, an American computer programmer who invented the wiki, was interviewed by the WMF.

• Featured content: Zombie fight in the saloon
  Wikipedia editor Sven Manguard's work is quite underappreciated a lot of the time, most likely because people haven't heard of it yet: He's developed good relationships with game companies, and is thus able to get full-resolution screenshots released under a Creative Commons license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. This week's trove of new featured items on the English Wikipedia comprises seven articles, three lists, and four pictures.

• Traffic report: Get fitted for flipflops and floppy hats
  In the US, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and summer is definitely on people's minds this week, with summer films Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past, the apparently designated summer song "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea, and summer TV show, Game of Thrones.

• Recent research: Predicting which article you will edit next
  Wikipedia in the eyes of its beholders; "Chinese-language time zones" favor Asian pop and IT topics on Wikipedia; and bipartite editing prediction in Wikipedia.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

New England Wikimedians summer events!

Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!

After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested: Cape Cod Wiknic and Photography Blitz on June 14th in Barnstable County, with complete travel reimbursements available for those who participate Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial Edit-a-thon on June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand 3rd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, which will feature at least one guest speaker, and possibly many more Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: Wikimania 2014 in London If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

New England Wikimedians summer events!

Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!

After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested: Cape Cod Wiknic and Photography Blitz on June 14th in Barnstable County, with complete travel reimbursements available for those who participate Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial Edit-a-thon on June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand 3rd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, which will feature at least one guest speaker, and possibly many more Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: Wikimania 2014 in London If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

The Signpost: 04 June 2014

• Special report: IEG funding for women's stories: a new approach to the gender gap
  Individual engagement grants (IEGs) are announced twice yearly by a volunteer WMF committee, the most recent of which we covered last December. The scheme, launched at the start of last year, awards funds to individuals or teams of up to four to produce high-impact outcomes for the WMF's online projects. It favours innovative approaches to solving critical issues in the movement.

• News and notes: Two new affiliate-selected trustees
  New trustee Frieda Briosch from Italy: we face "a couple of headaches", she says: "how to boost editors, which includes the development of the next strategic plan, and how to keep our project always 'glamorous'."

• Op-ed: "Hospitality, jerks, and what I learned"—the amazing keynote at WikiConference USA
  I never feel quite adequate trying to paraphrase Sumana's words: she is so articulate. I highly encourage every person who reads this article to directly watch her keynote—it directly speaks to a lot of Wikimedia's most significant issues, made with great eloquence. We have a serious issue with retaining editors, and parts of her speech could serve as a pretty good partial blueprint towards how we could begin to fix that problem.

• Featured content: Ye stately homes of England
  David Iliff, or Diliff, as he is known on here outside of the file pages for his many, many, excellent photographs, is one of Wikipedia's longest-standing professional-standard photographers. This week, the Signpost salutes him.

• In the media: Reliable or not, doctors use Wikipedia
  The month of May saw significant coverage concerning the reliability of Wikipedia's medical articles.

• Traffic report: Autumn in summer
  The northern summer is a time when one is meant to celebrate the exuberance of life; instead, commemoration of the dead was a significant theme this week.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:02, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 June 2014

• News and notes: PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
  Eleven public relations agencies have declared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects.

• Traffic report: The week the wired went weird
  It seems that, more than commemorating the great moments in our history, more than even anticipating great sporting events, what our audience wants is the weird.

• Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
  William Beutler (WWB), author of the blog The Wikipedian, is a long-time editor and community-watcher. He is also a paid editor (WWB Too). Well—not anymore—because he gave up direct editing of articles in 2011. Instead, for the past three years he has followed Jimmy Wales' Bright Line rule in acting as a researcher and consultant for companies and clients that want to suggest changes to Wikipedia articles and engage on the Talk page.

• Special report: Questions raised over secret voting for WMF trustees
  Last week we reported the announcement of two new affiliate-selected WMF trustees. The board of trustees is the most powerful and influential body in the movement, and chapters have been permitted to select two of the 10 seats since 2008, for two-year terms that start in even-numbered years.

• Featured content: Politics, ships, art, and cyclones
  Five articles, one list, twelve pictures, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.

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This Month in Education: June 2014

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 6, June 2014 Headlines Wikipedia Education Project in Uruguay Sanothimi Campus celebrates 12 years of Nepali Wikipedia Wikipedia Primary School Project Israeli Ministry of Education and Wikipedia collaboration: teachers and students will be trained to write Wikipedia articles Wikimedia Serbia teacher education course accredited by the Republic of Serbia Geneva education department produces two films on Wikipedia editing by students Busy 2014 for Education at Wikimedia UK, so far Getting ready for WikiCamp 2014 Armenia News from Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in May 2014 Czech senior citizen program supported by a WMF grant Wikimedia Sverige: Classrooms and ambassadors Wiki Education Foundation attends WikiConference USA Update on the education portal Articles of interest in other publications Highlights  · Single page edition To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

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Saturday June 21: Wiki Loves Pride

Upcoming Saturday event - June 21: Wiki Loves Pride NYC

You are invited to join us at Jefferson Market Library for "Wiki Loves Pride", hosted by New York Public Library, Metropolitan New York Library Council, Wikimedia LGBT and Wikimedia New York City, where both experienced and new Wikipedia editors will collaboratively improve articles on this theme: Saturday June 21: Wiki Loves Pride NYC (RSVP), focusing on LGBT history and culture. 11am–4pm at Jefferson Market Library. We hope to see you there! Pharos (talk)

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The Signpost: 18 June 2014

• News and notes: With paid advocacy in its sights, the Wikimedia Foundation amends their terms of use
  The Wikimedia Foundation has amended its terms of use to ban editing for pay without disclosing an employer or affiliation on any of its websites. The broad scope of these changes will allow the WMF to selectively enforce their terms of use to avoid ensnaring well-meaning editors.

• Featured content: Worming our way to featured picture
  Five articles, five lists, 22 pictures, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Special report: Wikimedia Bangladesh: a chapter's five-year journey
  The Bangladesh chapter of the Wikimedia movement was formed in 2009. They received official local registration from the national authorities on 10 June 2014. The long road in between was subject to much persistence, patience, and luck—along with a good deal of worry.

• Traffic report: You can't dethrone Thrones
  To the surprise of absolutely no one, the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the main draw this week, taking four slots. People appeared desperate to bone up on their trivia; checking not only this year's World Cup, but the last one. Even so, they still couldn't push Game of Thrones from the top ten. It will be interesting to see what happens come next week's season finale.

• WikiProject report: Visiting the city
  This week, the Signpost came in from the hinterland to interview members of the Cities WikiProject.

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Cascadia

We look forward to your arrival in the Pacific Northwest! Hope you like trees, coffee and microbrews! :) --Another Believer _(Talk) 20:50, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Another Believer! I rather love all three of those!--ragesoss (talk) 20:55, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Sunday July 6: WikNYC Picnic

Sunday July 6: WikNYC Picnic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" in Central Park, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck. Sunday July 6 WikNYC Picnic (RSVP). 1pm–8pm at southwest section of the Great Lawn, north of the Delacorte Theater. Also, before the picnic, you can join in the Wikimedia NYC chapter's annual meeting. 11:30am-12:30pm at Yeoryia Studios, 2067 Broadway. We hope to see you there!--Pharos (talk) 16:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 25 June 2014

• News and notes: US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan
  The US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) have committed to engaging with Wikimedia projects in their newest Open Government Plan. The biannual effort is a roadmap for how the agency will accomplish its goals in the digital age.

• Traffic report: Fake war, or real sport?
  Despite the interest generated by its season finale, Game of Thrones still couldn't top the World Cup, which still dominated interest, as evidenced by the fact that this top 10 is virtually identical to last week's, just with a different dead celebrity.

• Exclusive: "We need to be true to who we are": Foundation's new executive director speaks to the Signpost
  In her first interview since taking office, Lila Tretikov, the Wikimedia Foundation's new executive director, speaks about grantmaking, the global south, and the gender gap.

• Discussion report: Media Viewer, old HTML tags
  Discussions on the English Wikipedia this week include...

• Featured content: Showing our Wörth
  Ten articles and eleven pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• WikiProject report: The world where dreams come true
  This week, the Signpost visited the land of Disney, blockbusters, explosions, dream sequences, and cultural masterpieces: film.

• Recent research: Power users and diversity in WikiProjects
  In a recent paper, Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash investigate the question of sustainability in online communities by analysing trends in the growth of WikiProjects.

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The Great American Wiknic and other events in July

I am pleased to announce our fourth annual picnic, the Great American Wiknic, will take place at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, July 13 from 1 to 5 PM (rain date: July 20). We will be hanging out by the statue of Dante Alighieri, a statue that was donated to the park in 1921 as a tribute to Italian Americans. Read more about the statue on Wikipedia. If you would like to sign up for the picnic, you can do so here. When signing up, say what you’re going to bring!

July will also feature the second annual Great American Wiknic in Frederick, Maryland. This year’s Frederick picnic will take place on Sunday, July 6 at Baker Park. Sign up here for the Frederick picnic.

What else is going on in July? We have the American Chemical Society Edit-a-Thon on Saturday, July 12, dedicated to notable chemists, and our monthly WikiSalon on Wednesday, July 16.

We hope to see you at our upcoming events!

Best,

James Hare

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The Signpost: 02 July 2014

• In the media: Wiki Education; medical content; PR firms
  The Los Angeles Times highlighted a recent Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) course at Pomona College in their article "Wikipedia pops up in bibliographies, and even college curricula". We interviewed Char Booth, the campus ambassador for the course, for additional details.

• Traffic report: The Cup runneth over... and over.
  With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.

• News and notes: Wikimedia Israel receives Roaring Lion award
  Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) has won a Roaring Lion in the category of Internet and cellular for its public outreach during the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia in July 2013.

• Featured content: Ship-shape
  Six articles, five lists, seventeen pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• WikiProject report: Indigenous Peoples of North America
  This week, the Signpost visited the Indigenous peoples of North America WikiProject.

• Technology report: In memoriam: the Toolserver (2005–14)
  In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Wikimedia Deutschland's Toolserver project was switched off, marking the end of one of the Wikimedia movement's longest running Chapter-led projects. The Toolserver, which was in fact a collection of servers, first came online in 2005, hosting hundreds of webpages and scripts ("tools") made available for use by Wikimedia readers, editors and administrators.

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The Signpost: 09 July 2014

• Special report: Wikimania 2014—what will it cost?
  Last May, James Forrester announced to the world that London had been awarded the 2014 Wikimania conference. Functioning as the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, it is separate from the chapter-focused Wikimedia Conference. The first, located in Frankfurt, took place in 2005 and had 380 attendees. London, the tenth, is now expected to attract 1500. With Wikimania ambition, attention, and attendance rising significantly over the last nine years, how have this year's monetary costs come to be?

• Wikicup: Wikicup's third round sees money, space, battleships and more
  After an extremely close race, round three is over. 244 points secured a place in Round 4, which is comparable to previous years—321 was required in 2013, and 243 points in 2012.

• Wikimedia in education: Exploring the United States and Canada with LiAnna Davis
  The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world; students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. The Education program Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014.

• Featured content: Three cheers for featured pictures!
  Five articles, six lists, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status last week on the English Wikipedia.

• News and notes: Echoes of the past haunt new conflict over tech initiative
  As with the troubled release of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) flagship VisualEditor project, the release of the new Media Viewer has also been met with opposition from the English Wikipedia community.

• Traffic report: World Cup, Tim Howard rule the week
  Unsurprisingly, the World Cup continued to dominate the English Wikipedia's viewing statistics. In particular, the record-breaking performance of US goalkeeper Tim Howard and the tournament-ending injury to Brazil's Neymar drove large amount of views to their articles.

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This Month in Education: July 2014

---

This Month in Education – Volume 3, Issue 7, July 2014

---

Headlines • Highlights • Single page edition

---

• MACEDONIA: Internet marketing students learn about Wikipedia and suggest ways to improve its fundraising
• ISRAEL: Haifa University students write Wikipedia articles for academic credit
• MEXICO: Editing about Literary Theory in UNAM
• MEXICO: Professor training continues as part of the Wiki Learning program
• CZECH REPUBLIC: Education program presented at BarCamp
• GERMANY: Wikimedia Deutschland June Activities
• UK: 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference
• UK: VLE content reuse at Wikimania
• TWL: The Wikipedia Library
• WMF: Learning & Evaluation to publish quarterly newsletter
• WMF: Updates from the Wikipedia Education Program and the Wikipedia Education Collaborative
• Articles of interest in other publications: Brazil, South Africa, The Signpost, and more

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed in the archives.

14:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 16 July 2014

• Special report: $10 million lawsuit against Wikipedia editors withdrawn, but plaintiff intends to refile
  On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been withdrawn without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team—but this action is being described as "strategic" so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."

• Traffic report: World Cup dominates for another week
  This week it's still more and more World Cup, with five entries out of the top ten (and 14 out of the Top 25).

• Wikimedia in education: Serbia takes the stage with Filip Maljkovic
  It all started in late 2005, when we first held lectures about Wikipedia in two educational institutions (universities) ...

• Featured content: The Island with the Golden Gun
  Eight articles, three lists, and 28 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• News and notes: Bot-created Wikipedia articles covered in the Wall Street Journal, push Cebuano over one million articles
  The Swedish Wikipedia's prolific Lsjbot, which has created a significant proportion of the site's 1.7 million articles and has nearly single-handedly pushed it to being the fourth-largest Wikipedia, was covered in the Wall Street Journal this week. The newspaper reported that the bot has created 2.7 million articles, which is apparently a reference to the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias, where Lsjbot is also active, and that "on a good day", it creates 10,000 articles.

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Delayed reply from voxcanis

Dear Sage: I am sorry that I did not see your kind message from last Spring. Nathan was doing all the Wikipedia side of the class. I would like to catch up now, including doing the tutorials that students are expected to complete. Are you still available for consultation? Yrs, Peter

Battle of Fort Stevens Edit-a-Thon!

Greetings!

Sorry for the last minute update, but our friends at the DC Historical Society have scheduled a Battle of Fort Stevens Edit-a-Thon to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle fought in the District. The event will last from noon to 2 PM on Wednesday, July 30. Hope you can make it!

Best,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 21:17, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 July 2014

• Wikimedia in education: Education program gaining momentum in Israel
  "Great success" in Israel universities is leading to collaboration and editing in high schools.

• Traffic report: The World Cup hangs on, though tragedies seek to replace it
  Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.

• News and notes: Institutional media uploads to Commons get a bit easier
  Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) today are facing fewer barriers to uploading their content onto Wikimedia projects now that the new GLAM-Wiki Toolset Project has been launched. The tool, which is the fruit of a collaboration between Europeana and several Wikimedia chapters, relieves GLAMs from having to write their own automated scripts and gives them a standardized method of uploading large amounts of their digitized holdings.

• Forum: Did you know?—good idea, needs reform
  The English Wikipedia's did you know (DYK) section has been a feature of the site's main page since February 2004. From the beginning, the section has served as a place to highlight Wikipedia's newest articles. But over the last few years, the did you know section has gotten steadily larger and more complex, and non-notable or plagiarized articles have occasionally slipped through the reviewing process, leading numerous editors to call for reforms to the system. We asked two editors to share their views.

• Featured content: Why, they're plum identical!
  Ten articles, five lists, and 25 pictures were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.

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Mark project defunct?

Ragesoss, I see that you have been a contributor to WikiProject Citizendium Porting. I am inclined to mark it as defunct, as there has been no work on it in a couple of years and it seems unlikely that Citizendium will be a useful source of content for Wikipedia articles in the future. Is that o.k. with you? RockMagnetist (talk) 18:00, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

RockMagnetist: Yes, that seems like the right move at this point. Thanks!--ragesoss (talk) 23:32, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 July 2014

• Book review: Knowledge or unreality?
  In Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Dariusz Jemielniak discusses Wikipedia from the standpoint of an experienced editor and administrator who is also a university professor specializing in management and organizations. In Virtual Reality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It's True?, Charles Seife presents a more broadly themed work reminding us to question the reliability of information found throughout the Internet.

• Recent research: Shifting values in the paid content debate
  Kim Osman has performed a fascinating study on the three 2013 failed proposals to ban paid advocacy editing in the English language Wikipedia. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach, Osman analyzed 573 posts from the three main votes on paid editing conducted in the community in November 2013.

• News and notes: How many more hoaxes will Wikipedia find?
  Another hoax on the English Wikipedia was uncovered this week—not by any thorough investigation, but through the self-disclosure of an anonymous change made when the editors were in their sophomore year of college. The deliberate misinformation had been in the article for over five years with plenty of individuals noticing, but not one suspected its authenticity. This leads to one obvious question: how many more are there?

• Wikimedia in education: Success in Egypt and the Arab World
  A "program of heroes" is leading the charge in Egypt.

• Traffic report: Doom and gloom vs. the power of Reddit
  We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the top 10, with Gaza Strip, Israel, and Hamas. The top 25 also includes Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner, the American actor who died on July 19th, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and deaths in 2014.

• Featured content: Skeletons and Skeltons
  Two articles, four lists, and seven pictures attained featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:07, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Sunday August 17: NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share

Sunday August 17: NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share

You are invited to join the the Wikimedia NYC community for our upcoming wiki-salon and knowledge-sharing workshop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Sunday August 17 NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share (RSVP). 2pm–5pm at Yeoryia Studios at Epic Security Building, 2067 Broadway (5th floor). Afterwards at 5pm, we'll walk to a social wiki-dinner together at a neighborhood restaurant (to be decided). We hope to see you there!--Pharos (talk) 15:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

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canvassing

Hi Sage, I am a bit confused at what happened at Talk:Intelligent design. I thought canvassing was out of bounds. Can you help me understand how your responding to it was OK? (or maybe you interpret the guideline differently than I do). Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Jytdog: Here's my take on it. The guideline describes a spectrum from completely okay to completely not okay in terms of asking for input. (If it addresses responding to requests for input, I haven't reviewed that lately.) User:Samsara pinged me with a neutral message (and without knowing me to have a particular bias about the topic) asking for a second opinion, since he knows I'm familiar with the topic area. That would have been totally fine with an on-wiki talk page message. Since it was done privately, it's a message that goes slightly afoul of the guideline — a minor faux pas — but that's why I made sure to note explicitly in my reply that he'd asked me to take a look: to ensure the type of transparency that is the main purpose of the canvassing guideline.--ragesoss (talk) 16:15, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Reading the full WP:CANVAS guideline now, I see there's a section about responding to canvassing, but it doesn't really address minor cases like this where the only problem is the transparency issue. Given that this wasn't disruptive canvassing, I'd say simply fixing the transparency (as here) would be the best approach.--ragesoss (talk) 17:52, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

thanks for responding! Jytdog (talk) 18:22, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 August 2014

• Technology report: A technologist's Wikimania preview
  As the start of Wikimania proper on 8 August approaches, the Signpost looks ahead to what its dozens of presentations might offer the technologically-inclined, whether attending in person or taking advantage of what promises to be a strong digital offering.

• Traffic report: Ebola
  Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with the Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19.

• Featured content: Bottoms, asses, and the fairies that love them
  Eight articles, fifteen pictures, and two topics were promoted to featured status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• Wikimedia in education: Leading universities educate with Wikipedia in Mexico
  "Major growth" expected in Mexican university after a Wikipedia program is formally accepted by the school's administration.

• News and notes: "History is a human right"—first-ever transparency report released as Europe begins hiding Wikipedia in search results
  The Wikimedia Foundation has published its first transparency report, covering from July 2012 to June 2014. The move comes on the same day the organization announced that Google, in order to comply with a recent court order upholding the "right to be forgotten", has removed a number of Wikipedia articles from their European search results.

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The Signpost: 13 August 2014

• Special report: Twitter bots catalogue government edits to Wikipedia
  Slate reports that Tom Scott, co-creator of the emoji social network Emojli, created a Twitter bot called Parliament WikiEdits to automatically tweet a link to any Wikipedia edits made from an IP address belonging to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Scott's bot initially did not tweet any links to edits made from Parliament and, according to Scott, an "insider" reports that their IP addresses changed. Despite this, Scott's Twitter bot has inspired similar creations in numerous other countries.

• Traffic report: Disease, decimation and distraction
  It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

• Wikimedia in education: Global Education: WMF's Perspective
  "Education is at the core of the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission."

• Wikimania: Promised the moon, settled for the stars
  Wikimania 2014 was held last week in the Barbican Centre in London. Below, the Signpost's former "Technology report" writer Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) shares his thoughts on a bustling conference.

• News and notes: Media Viewer controversy spreads to German Wikipedia
  Wikimedia Foundation staff members have now been granted superpowers that would allow them to override community consensus. The new protection level came as a response to attempts of German Wikipedia administrators to implement a community consensus on the new Media Viewer. "Superprotect" is a level above full protection, and prevents edits by administrators.

• Op-ed: Red links, blue links, and erythrophobia
  Erythrophobia is the fear of, or sensitivity to, the colour red. Recently, I have seen more and more erythrophobic Wikipedians; specifically, Wikipedians who are scared of red links. In Wikipedia's early days, red links were encouraged and well-loved, and when I started editing in 2006, this was still mostly the case. Jump forward to 2014, and many editors now have an aversion to red links.

• In the media: Monkey selfie, net neutrality, and hoaxes
  The Observer reported (August 2) that Google would "restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe's controversial new 'right to be forgotten' legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia."

• Featured content: Cambridge got a lot of attention this week
  Eight article, six lists, and two topics were promoted to featured status last week.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:56, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: August 2014

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

• Wikimania: Education at Wikimania
• U.S & Canada: U.S. and Canada Program Spring 2014 wrap-up
• Taiwan: Wikimedia Taiwan dreams of Open Knowledge
• Armenia: Vanadzor, Armenia again welcomes WikiCamp
• Netherlands: Education pilot projects by Wikimedia Nederland
• Sweden: Wikimedia Sverige creates Open Badges for education program
• Germany: Wikimedia Deutschland's July education activities
• Tech: VisualEditor for students and educators
• Media: Articles of interest in other publications: Israel, India, Armenia, Ukraine

Headlines · Highlights · Single page · Newsroom · Archives · Unsubscribe · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 August 2014

• Interview: Improving the visibility of digital archival assets using Wikipedia
  Dorothy Howard interviews Michael Szajewski, archivist for digital development and university records at Ball State University.

• Traffic report: Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
  Comedian Robin Williams' untimely death takes the top spot.

• WikiProject report: Bats and gloves
  At the plate with WikiProject Baseball!

• Op-ed: A new metric for Wikimedia
  Denny Vrandečić argues that "We should focus on measuring how much knowledge we allow every human to share in, instead of number of articles or active editors."

• Featured content: English Wikipedia departs for Japan
  Ten articles and three pictures were promoted to featured status last week.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:10, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for updating schedule

Thank you for updating Education Program:Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Expanding Wikiproject Medicine (2014 Spring) from fall to spring. I had tried to do this earlier but was unable to do so.

Also, we plan on using this course page continually, because this is a student club and not actually a class. Are you aware of other instances of the education program software being used in this way? It has been useful for what it is. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry: I didn't update anything; I actually just made a null edit to make sure I hadn't broken anything with a template I changed. Changing the names of courses was really buggy — and often resulted in people losing track of their course pages because they accidentally changed the name and didn't know where it went — so it was disabled a while back. It's currently not possible to update the term after a course has been created.

I think this is the only course being used precisely this way, but there are others that have been used for non-standard classes without a clearcut start and end date. It's certainly fine to do that. And if you have any feedback about the features and user experience that are particular to this scenario, feel free to ping me about them.--ragesoss (talk) 21:02, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

How could I have changed the name? The class asked me to change this some time ago and I did not know that it was possible. It is not possible for me to look at the history and see what you did. What is a null edit in this case? Just click edit, save, and nothing else? Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry: Yes, I just clicked save with a null edit. There used to be additional fields for page name and term, so that you could change those at any point. But the interface didn't make very clear that changing those would immediately move the page (with no redirect, and without moving any associated pages like talk pages or the transcluded pages built by the course page wizard), and it there were also database problems related to page moves. I'm hoping to reimplement page moves in a more standard way (with a Move tab) at some point, but for now, the only option is to create a new course and re-add the students and their articles.--ragesoss (talk) 13:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 August 2014

• In the media: Plagiarism and vandalism dominate Wikipedia news
  Journalistic integrity, Congressional edits, and other news.

• News and notes: Media Viewer—Wikimedia's emotional roller-coaster
  More discussions about Media Viewer, Superprotect, and software development

• Traffic report: Viral
  "This was a week when an actual virus, Ebola, competed for attention with several viral social phenomena; most notably the Ice Bucket Challenge..."

• Featured content: Cheats at Featured Pictures!
  Sixteen articles, five lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted.

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Wikipedia and YOUR History: Taking Control of the Internet

Come one and come all. To a presentation at the Laurel Historical Society about how you can help verify, validate, and edit the information that is on the front line of local history.

Picture your self leading the masses to improve Wikimedia one article at a time.

• Show the Internet who is the better editor.
• Be the creator of culture that you know you are.
• Spread the knowledge of noteworthy people who no one but you cares about.
• Lead the charge to a better Wikipedia --- eventually.

Geraldshields11 (talk) 02:08, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia and YOUR History: Taking Control of the Internet

See you at the Laurel Pool Room, 9th and Main Street, Laurel, MD on Thursday, September 11, 2014 at 7:00 PM EST. See http://www.meetup.com/Wikimedia-DC/events/205494212/ for more information. Geraldshields11 (talk) 02:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia DC invites revolutionaries, free thinkers, and other sundry editors to a DC WikiSalon

The WikiSalon is a special meetup usually held during the first and third full weeks of every month, from 7 PM to 9 PM. It's an informal gathering of Wikimedia enthusiasts, who come together to discuss Wikimedia wikis and collaboratively edit. There's no set agenda, and guests are welcome to recommend articles for the group to edit or edit on their own.

If you're coming by Metro, the closest station is Dupont Circle (on the Red Line). If you're driving, a lot of parking opens up downtown after 6:30 PM, so finding a parking space (even a free one) should be easy. Once you've found the building, go to Cove on the second floor. We will be in the conference room.

When: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: The Cove, Dupont Circle, 1730 Connecticut Avenue NW, 2nd floor, 20009, DC

For more information, see http://www.meetup.com/Wikimedia-DC/events/205500822/

My best regards, Geraldshields11 (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2014

• Arbitration report: Media viewer case is suspended
  "On 1 September, the Arbitrators voted to suspend the Media Viewer case for 60 days. After the suspension period is up, the case is to be closed unless the committee votes otherwise. The case suspension comes in response to several new initiatives and policies announced by the Wikimedia Foundation that may make the case moot. In the same motion, the committee declared that Eloquence's resignation of the administrator right was "under the cloud" and that he can only regain the right through another RfA."

• Featured content: 1882 × 5 in gold, and thruppence more
  Two articles, one list, and ten pictures were promoted

• Op-ed: Automated copy-and-paste detection under trial
  Doc James and some collaborators are working on quick detection of copyright violations

• Traffic report: Holding Pattern
  "This week we saw three of the top ten articles remain in place, with the Ice Bucket Challenge at #1, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at #2, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at #5, all for a second straight week..."

• WikiProject report: Gray's Anatomy (v. 2)
  "This week, the Signpost went out to meet WikiProject Anatomy, dedicated to improving the articles about all our bones, brains, bladders and biceps, and getting them to the high standard expected of a comprehensive encyclopaedia."

• Recent research: A Wikipedia-based Pantheon; new Wikipedia analysis tool suite; how AfC hamstrings newbies
  The latest roundup of research about Wikimedia

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:03, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia DC's Wonderful meetups

Wikimedia DC's Upcoming meetups

• Thursday, September 11: “Wikipedia and YOUR History: Taking Control of the Internet, One Article at a Time!”

  A presentation at the Laurel Historical Society about how you can help verify, validate, and edit the information that is on the front line of local history. Laurel Pool Room, 9th and Main Street in Laurel, MD. 7 PM.

• Wednesday, September 17: WikiSalon

  Come for the pizza, stay for the conversation. 7 PM – 9 PM

• Saturday, September 20: September Meetup

  Get dinner and drinks with fellow Wikipedians! 6 PM

• Sunday, September 21: Laurel History Edit-a-Thon

  Local history for Wikipedia! 10:15 AM – 4 PM

• Saturday, September 27 – Sunday, September 28: Please RSVP for the Open Government WikiHack at Eventbrite by clicking on the link. The National Archives and Records Administration and Wikimedia DC are teaming up to come up with solutions that help integrate government data into Wikipedia. 10:30 AM – 5 PM each day

My best regards, Geraldshields11 (talk) 22:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2014

• Op-ed: Media Viewer software is not ready
  Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.

• Traffic report: Refuge in celebrity
  Even though it's not quite 3/4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity.

• Featured content: The louse and the fish's tongue
  The amazing and strange tongue-eating louse replacing a fish's tongue! Because isopods, the subject of a new featured article, are both awesome and really damn weird!

• WikiProject report: Checking that everything's all right
  This week, the Signpost decided to have a look around with WikiProject Check Wikipedia a maintenance project not concerned so much with articles' content, but in all the tiny errors that are to be found scattered within them. Their front page gives a list of things they mainly focus on ...

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:56, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

This Month in Education: September 2014

Updates, reports, news, and stories about how Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are used in education around the world.

• Wikipedia Education Collaborative welcomes five new members
• Wikimedia Deutschlands recent activities: events, events and more events
• Working with Wikipedia expands at Tec de Monterrey
• Digital agenda for education and open badges to be tested
• Most successful Czech course continues again this year
• Articles of interest in other publications

Headlines · Highlights · Single page · Newsroom · Archives · Unsubscribe · MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2014

• In the media: Turkish Twitter outrage, medical translation, audience metrics
  The Hürriyet Daily News reports on a series of posts on Twitter from Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ömer Çelik.

• WikiProject report: A trip up north to Scotland
  As Scotland is deciding its future this week, we thought it might be a good idea to get to know the editors of WikiProject Scotland and talk to them about the project.

• News and notes: Wikipedia's traffic statistics are off by nearly one-third
  A prominent Wikipedia researcher has discovered that the encyclopedia's widely used article traffic statistics are missing out on approximately one-third of total views.

• Traffic report: Tolstoy leads a varied pack
  There is no unifying theme we can slap on top article popularity this week.

• Featured content: Which is not like the others?
  Four articles, two lists, and 51 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:37, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you for the help...

Hello Sage...Thank you in advance for chatting with me about what I'm trying to do with my students on WP. I definitely have some ideas / questions to run by someone with your experience and expertise. Let me know if you'd like to chat via IRC or talk page (or email, or phone). Whatever works best for you. I'm in EST. Thanks again ! UOJComm (talk) 16:24, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Request for help with your photo of Adrianne Wadewitz

Thank you for taking this photo of Adrianne Wadewitz: File:Wikimania 2012 portrait 102 by ragesoss, 2012-07-13.JPG.

1. I've nominated a text she wrote for consideration as a Featured Text at Wikisource. Text = s:Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed.
2. Nomination = s:Wikisource:Featured_text_candidates#Wikipedia_is_pushing_the_boundaries_of_scholarly_practice_but_the_gender_gap_must_be_addressed.
3. There is confusion at s:User_talk:Erasmo_Barresi#Thanks_much about the status of the photo and whether it can be used on that document page on Wikisource.
4. Can you please make a statement at s:Talk:Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed that it is alright with you, the photographer and copyright holder, to use that image at that document page on Wikisource ?

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 19:58, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much, — Cirt (talk) 20:40, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I've uploaded the cropped version on Commons: c:File:Cropped portrait of Adrianne Wadewitz.jpg. Thanks for your help.--Erasmo Barresi (talk) 14:21, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2014

• Featured content: Oil paintings galore
  Six articles, four lists, one topic, and 17 pictures were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.

• In the media: Indian political editing, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Congressional chelonii
  The Hindustan Times speculates (September 18) that politicians and their supporters are "sanitizing" their articles in advance of the 2014 Maharashtra State Assembly election. The Times notes the absence of significant controversies in the articles of particular politicians and the presence of heavily promotional language.

• Recent research: 99.25% of Wikipedia birthdates accurate; focused Wikipedians live longer; merging WordNet, Wikipedia and Wiktionary
  0.75% of Wikipedia birthdates are inaccurate, reported Robert Viseur at WikiSym 2014. Those inaccuracies are "low, although higher than the 0.21% observed for the baseline reference sources". Given that biographies represent 15% of English Wikipedia, the third largest category after "arts" and "culture", their accuracy is important.

• Traffic report: Wikipedia watches the referendum in Scotland
  This could be the beginning of a new era for this list. Until now, decisions to remove suspicious content have been largely educated guesswork. This week though, we have a new collaborator who can shine a light on the origins and patterns, sorting once and for all the webwheat from the cyberchaff.

• WikiProject report: GAN reviewers take note: competition time
  A year and a week later, we're with some of the members of WikiProject Good Articles, who wanted to share the news of their upcoming contest within the project, the GA Cup. The aim of this friendly competition, which is held in the same light friendly manner of the WikiCup and the Core Contest, is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed articles at Good article nominations which has been a constant problem for quite a few years for those running the GA process.

• Arbitration report: Banning Policy, Gender Gap, and Waldorf education
  Banning Policy finishes the workshop phase on 23 September. Parties have proposed findings of fact on the topics of the 3RR, the role of Jimbo Wales, and proxying for banned users. A request for arbitration was posted on 20 September about Landmark Worldwide.

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:50, 28 September 2014 (UTC)