User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2013 July

Previous · Index · Next

Correction required

In Robert Motherwell we say "extensive reading of symbolist literature, especially Mallarmé, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe and Octavio Paz." Of these four, Poe is pre-symbolist, Joyce is post symbolist and Paɀ I don't believe is categoriɀed as symbolist, though maybe this is arguable, he is probably better categoriɀed, like Joyce, as influenced by the symbolists (especially Mallarmé) about whom he wrote. Rich Farmbrough, 09:59, 3 July 2013 (UTC).

Undo button

Greetings Rich, you need to be more careful with your edits. I noticed you used the undo button, some editors may constitute that as "using automation". :-) Seriously though, I hope things are going well for you these days. Kumioko (talk) 01:15, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

• Coming from anyone else, like some of Rich's 'friends' watching this page and every move Rich makes, the above comment could be construed as either a warning as a prelude to ANI or taking the piss. Of course I know you better than that. Personal computers have changed the world by allowing things to be done much, much faster than purely by the human hand. I guess one might call that invention "automation" in itself, never mind what humans use it for afterwards. ;-) Have a good one! -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 01:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I was of course meaning my comment to be joking sarcasm. :-)Kumioko (talk) 01:42, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Anybody who imposes sanctions on Rich for this undo should themselves be sanctioned, because it is not a crime to revert your own edit. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It shouldn't be a crime to do a lot of things around here. But I have seen some pretty outlandish decisions by Arbcom, AE and even individual editors that somehow don't get overturned. The vagueness of the sanction against Rich is where the crime lies where anything in the judgement of the admin can be construed as automation. Excel, cut and paste, twinkle, etc. have all been identified as automation. Kumioko (talk) 14:52, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom was very specific in what types of edits Rich was forbidden to engage in, including cutting and pasting. There are many sad things about this situation. Rich's prolificity is lost to us for a year. But hopefully we can tap his expertise. After all, he still has this talk page. The Transhumanist 08:25, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Rich, remind me again, was one of the problems that you were mass-creating Category talk: pages? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, indeed it was so alleged, it was even alleged that they were automated, though this was given short shrift. Those creations are of course sanctioned by consensus, in the sense that they are established procedure. However since I was only given 3 minutes to respond to that particular allegation, before an involved admin blocked me for a month, it was never discussed. Rich Farmbrough, 15:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC).

The Signpost: 03 July 2013

• In the media: Jimmy Wales is not an Internet billionaire; a mass shooter's alleged Wikipedia editing
  Amy Chozick's profile of Jimmy Wales in the New York Times sparked significant controversy in international news outlets this week. Chozick's profile covered Wales's personal life, including his 12-year-old daughter, ex-wife, and current wife Kate Garvey, describing Wales himself as "a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours." Chozick described his current role in Wikipedia as "Benevolent Dictator for Life", a statement which garnered conflict from all corners of the web, including from Wales, who responded to the piece as a whole with a lengthy talk page statement.

• Featured content: Queen of France
  Four articles, four lists, and fifteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.

• WikiProject report: Puppies!
  This week, the Signpost went to the kennel and interviewed WikiProject Dogs. The project has several featured and good articles, along with a large number of "Did you know" entries. We asked three project members about the challenges of creating, curating, and maintaining canine content in an increasingly dog-obsessed world.

• News and notes: Wikipedia's medical collaborations gathering pace
  The key annual event in the Wikimedia calendar, Wikimania 2013, will be held in Hong Kong in just five weeks' time. Among the events will be a presentation by two people who are working to promote the development of medical content on Wikimedia projects. One is James Heilman of Wiki Project Med, a non-profit dedicated to making "clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice". The other is Lori Thicke, president of Translators Without Borders (TWB), the Connecticut-based organisation set up in 2010 to provide pro-bono translation services for humanitarian non-profits

• Discussion report: Snuggle, mainpage link to Wikinews, 3RR, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• Technology report: VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series
  The VisualEditor extension has gone live by default to registered users on the English Wikipedia, marking a huge milestone in a project that has taken the best part of a decade to reach fruition. The extension was previously described as "the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken" by the WMF team behind it.

• Traffic report: Yahoo! crushes the competition ... in Wikipedia views
  The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.

• Arbitration report: Tea Party movement reopened, new AUSC appointments
  Following a one-month period of moderated discussion, Tea Party movement has been reopened by the Committee. The proposed decisions are currently being voted upon. Race and politics remains suspended pending the return of User:Apostle12.

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• EdwardsBot (talk) 22:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #65

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • Alternative proposal for Wiktionary support
  • RfC on the sourcing requirements for bots
  • Project chat discussion about creating a new Requests for mergers page
  • One of our Google Summer of Code students is looking for feedback on mockups for Wikidata mobile
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: MeSH Code (P672), Mouse Genome Informatics ID (P671), street number (P670)
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Wikivoyage deployment planned to start July 22nd, see the coordination page here
  • Addshore joins the Wikidata development team as an intern (project chat)
  • Byrial creates Statistics showing the namespaces used in item site links
  • Proposal for a new Wikimedia Foundation Sister project called 'Global Economic Map' that could use Wikidata at its core (on meta.)
• Development
  • Very rough and tentative timeline for the next month of development: mw:Roadmap#Wikidata deployment
  • Continued work on validation and handling of partially invalid data
  • Breaking change for 'wbeditentity' in the API fixing (bugzilla:49526) - when creating new items the 'new' parameter must now be given
  • Improved handling of broken UTF-8 encoding
  • Made it possible to enter the direction in a geocoordinate also at the beginning now (for example 52°31′N 13°23′E can soon also be entered as N 52°31′ E 13°23′)
  • Introduced PropertyInfoStore for quick access to meta-info about properties
  • Deserialization of Description objects in Ask
  • Lots of bugfixing
• Open Tasks for You
  • Update, expand and translate one of the help pages to make it easier for newcomers
  • Update and expand Wikidata:Contribute to provide more information for newcomers
  • Help fix formatting and value issues for a property
  • Hack on one of these

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 16:42, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 July 2013

• Op-ed: It's time to stop pretending the English-language Wikinews is a viable project
  This is Wikinews' fundamental problem: it can neither do a good job providing a summary of world news, nor does it have any special focus that it does well. It's a collection of random articles, with only the occasional, passing resemblance to important current events.

• WikiProject report: Not Jimbo: WikiProject Wales
  This week, we traveled to Cymru with the folks at WikiProject Wales.

• Traffic report: Inflated view counts here, there, and everywhere
  The most-viewed articles on the English Wikipedia last week include...

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation Board appoints world expert in women's issues, global south
  In apparent acknowledgment of the urgency of two issues facing the Wikimedia movement—the need to engage both women and the global south—the WMF Board has appointed Ana Toni as one of its four expert members. Toni will bring rare expertise to the movement, and the Signpost understands that her skills in advocacy and her key roles in international NGOs are likely to be a natural match with the WMF as the hub of disseminating free knowledge around the world.

• Dispatches: Infoboxes: time for a fresh look?
  The fundamental idea of an infobox is clear: keep it simple and limited to essentials. At some point, however, these basic principles seem to have been abandoned, in favour of an approach akin to "the more the merrier".

• Featured content: The week of the birds
  Five articles, six lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Discussion report: Featured article process governance, signature templates, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• EdwardsBot (talk) 08:13, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #66

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • A request for comment on defining administrator activity
  • A request for comment on image properties
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • A personal note and secret from Denny Vrandečić (WMDE)
  • Denny's map gets an upgrade, take a look at the amazing visualisations!
  • Browser search plugins for wikidata have beeen created.
  • Byrial's database reports have been updated from the 2013-07-10 dump! These can be seen here.
• Development
  • Support for badges in the process of being added to the DataModel.
  • Created further UI mockups for Wikidata Mobile.
  • Front end performance improvements in a few areas (including multiple edits on pages).
  • The bug in wbeditentity where aliases were removed has been fixed.
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: eMedicine (P673), a list of (P674), Google Books identifier (P675), lyrics by (P676), ÚSOP code (P677), incertae sedis (P678), ZVG number (P679), molecular function (P680), cell component (P681), biological process (P682), ChEBI ID (P683), ortholog (P684), NCBI Taxonomy ID (P685), Gene Ontology ID (P686)
• Open Tasks for You
  • Update, expand and translate one of the help pages to make it easier for newcomers
  • Update and expand Wikidata:Contribute to provide more information for newcomers
  • Help fix formatting and value issues for a property
  • Hack on one of these

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 14:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

IRC office hours for wiki-mentors and Snuggle users

Start Snuggle

Hi. We're organizing an office hours session with the Teahouse to bring in mentors from across the wiki to try out Snuggle and discuss it's potential to support mentorship broadly. The Snuggle team would appreciate it if you would come and participate in the discussion. We'll be having it in #wikimedia-office ^connect on Wed. July 17th @ 1600 UTC. See the agenda for more info. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)}, Technical 13 (talk), TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 July 2013

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Square Enix
  This week, we explored the fantasy worlds of video game developer Square Enix by interviewing WikiProject Square Enix. The project began in September 2006 as a spin-off of WikiProject Final Fantasy, but today covers that, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and a variety of other game series, with exceptions explained in the interview below. The project is home to 32 pieces of Featured material and 104 Good and A-class articles.

• Traffic report: Most-viewed articles of the week
  The most-viewed articles on the English Wikipedia last week include...

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation's new plans announced
  Last week the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual plan for July 2013 to June 2014. It provides a surprisingly frank view—of past achievements and failures, and future goals and risks—that could be afforded only by a non-profit that is confident and beholden to no commercial or political interests.

• Featured content: Documents and sports
  Four articles, five lists, and sixteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case opens; July 22 deadline for checkuser and oversight applications
  The case Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds was opened. Voting on the Tea Party movement case continued, after a failed attempt at moderated discussion. A group tasked with deciding the content of the lead section of the Jerusalem article has reported back to the committee. Applications for checkuser and oversight permissions close on 22 July.

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• EdwardsBot (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #67

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • A request for comment for exclusion criteria in wikipedia namespace.
  • Images for the Main Page proposed and discussed on project chat.
  • Discussion on Wikivoyage notability and changes to WD:N.
  • Request for comment on sockpuppetry guidelines closes.
• Events/Press
  • Watson has received the Feigenbaum Prize which has been donated to Wikimedia and Wikidata.
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Kemler ID (P700), Disease Ontology ID (P699), Pubmed ID (PMID) (P698) , Ex taxon author(s) (P697)
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • The fourteen-millionth item, about Huangjue, a village in China, is created.
  • 239 Million language links removed from the Wikipedias, almost 5GB of text. (2012 vs 2013).
  • Saskia joins the Wikidata team to analyze the proposals for Wiktionary in Wikidata.
  • Wikivoyage deployment planned to start July 23rd, see the coordination page here.
• Development
  • Wmf11 has been deployed to test.wikidata.org!
  • Wikidata is moving from a Squid to a Varnish cache system!
  • Search ranking has been improved ready for the next deployment where Wikivoyage support will also be added.
  • Optional title normalization added to 'wbgetentities'
  • Fixed broken XML result for wbeditentity.
  • Fixed broken link to anchor in sitelinks section.
  • Templates no longer parsed in labels.
  • Technical documentation improved for Ask and WikibaseQueryEngine.
  • Work started on EntitiesByPropertyValue API module.
  • Work on ChangeOps and API module edit summaries.
• Open Tasks for You
  • Update, expand and translate one of the help pages to make it easier for newcomers
  • Update and expand Wikidata:Contribute to provide more information for newcomers
  • Help fix formatting and value issues for a property
  • Hack on one of these

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 15:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 July 2013

• In the media: Wikipedia flamewars
  The Washington Post reported Tuesday on the most controversial articles on various language Wikipedias as determined by a cross-continental research group.

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Religion
  This week, the Signpost delved into the vast and complex areas of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that make up religion. WikiProject Religion has been around since 2005 and has a complex scope, in that it only takes articles that deal with religion in a non-sectarian sense, along with any articles that do not have a dedicated daughter project.

• Discussion report: Partially disambiguated page names, page protection policy, and more
  Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

• News and notes: Wikivoyage turns ten, but where to now?; Wikipedia Zero expands into India
  Contributors to Wikivoyage, the sister project adopted by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, are celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. ... The Wikimedia Foundation has announced via press release that it has partnered with Aircel to provide free mobile access to Wikipedia.

• Traffic report: Gleeless
  Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.

• Featured content: Engineering and the arts
  Twelve articles, seven lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.

• Arbitration report: Infoboxes case opens
  The case Infoboxes was opened. The evidence phase continues in Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds. Voting on the proposed decision continues in the Tea Party movement case.

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• EdwardsBot (talk) 20:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	When I saw your page, I just got amazed. Wonderful contributions to Wikipedia. Keep editing!! BenisonPBaby 12:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #68

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • New UI Mockup suggested for Wikidata Mobile. Please give feedback.
• Events/Press
  • Next office hour on August 26
  • upcoming: COSCUP
  • upcoming: Wikimania (including hackathon)
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Wikidata learns to travel - language link support for Wikivoyage has been enabled and it was concluded that Wikivoyagers are pretty awesome
  • There is now a gadget you can use to see a map of a geocoordinate on Wikidata
  • Picture of the week could use some more input
  • Top 20 items on Wikidata that are covered in a lot of Wikipedias? Here you go.
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Dodis (P701), encoded by (P702), found in taxon (P703), Ensembl Transcript ID (P704), Ensembl Protein ID (P705), located on terrain feature (P706), Satellite bus (P707), diocese (P708), Historic Scotland ID (P709), participant (P710), Strunz 8 (P711), Strunz 9 (P712), Strunz 10 (P713), Dana 8th edition (P714), Drugbank ID (P715), JPL Small-Body Database identifier (P716), Minor Planet Center observatory code (P717), Canmore ID (P718), Notable Incident (P719)
  • Newest task forces: Global Economic Map task force
• Development
  • When a page is moved on Wikipedia or Wikivoyage the link on Wikidata is now updated (bugzilla:36729)
  • Ranking of the search results has been improved
  • Worked on URL data type
  • Added coveralls.io support for most of our components (test coverage)
  • Fixed some minor bugs related to site-links editing
  • Fixed bugzilla:52023, where multiple anon warning bubbles are displayed at once
  • Worked on SpamBlacklist to filter URL values in Wikibase
  • Improved handling of corrupt data from the database
  • Made tests more reliable
  • Made regular undo via the API work with Wikibase
  • Worked on Time value formatter
  • Error handling for ByPropertyValue API module
  • Work on implementing QueryEntity
• Open Tasks for You
  • Add some data about Hong Kong and related things. Denny promises nice visualizations ;-)
  • Help fix formatting and value issues for a property.
  • Respond to a "Request for Comment".
  • Hack on one of these.

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 22:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)