I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.
I've made the judgement call, such as it is, but I'm having computer troubles, and therefore don't have access to the closure tools. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.3% of all FPs01:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
the FM is a bit of an unnanounced surprise - and wasnt sure of the process of evaluating within the larger scheme of things as any person or their dog (as in on the internet no one knows you are a dog) had over the years created a vast 20k +collection of very irregular and unchecked items, it has taken a few of use over 14 months to get the unassessed importance to 0 - and now there will be at least 4 to 5 passes of the whole set for a whole range of improvements - (a big problem is some project taggers dont always understand project tagging) - and if what you just did is consistent across all projects on wp en- that is FM = NA, that is a start for standardising that at least... thanks for creating it anyways... JarrahTree09:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I know you aren't taking these photos, but you are getting them to our readers. Thanks for helping out with populating all these Featured Media categories! awkwafaba (📥) 18:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Ah, I see...how weird that it even ended up scheduled. I saw it and thought, "Food! I can help with that" lol —valereee (talk) 12:24, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Armbrust, that discussion was closed as No Consensus, other than not having it on Intersex Awareness Day. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.3% of all FPs16:06, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
This edit was made in response to the fact that the image was no longer scheduled as POTD for any date, so the {{picture of the day}} template was out of place on the file description page. The actual descheduling had been done by someone else. — RAVENPVFF·talk·00:33, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Checking the logs, the reason given for its removal was "rescheduling". I really, really don't know what's going on there. Since the Main Page discussion is largely positive, I say we just put it in as quickly as possible after... say, 2 weeks' chance to state ones' views. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.3% of all FPs11:11, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
While we're at it, can we just schedule the Michele Merkin image? It's cheesecakey, sure, but that's not a very good reason to censor it, and it feels more weird every year. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.3% of all FPs16:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
The POTD scheduled for 17 September 2020 is Template:POTD/2020-09-17. Now I notice that the general rule is that images that have appeared as POTD should not appear again because of the backlog of images that have not yet appeared, and this image appeared in 2006. I would like to make an exception for it because it has been nominated, and the caption written, by User:FEMSmatt, who has made no other edits to Wikipedia. I would not like his only contribution to be rejected on a technicality, and as an electron micrograph of bacteria, it adds interest and variety to POTD. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:13, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Excellent news! I have a copy supposedly on its way to me, but Snooker Scene have been quite delayed at getting it to me. Does the Almanac list the qualifying century breaks in 1984? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)20:34, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
My best guess is either a stealth edit conflict, or accidentally editing an old revision somehow. It certainly wasn't intentional. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.5% of all FPs19:15, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm currently writing a report against another user, who has been involved in too many edit wars.
You seem to have interacted with them during an edit war [3].
However, I need support from other editors, otherwise administrators will not take the matter seriously.
Would you be interested in cooperating?
I would need you to review my current report and, if you agree with supporting it, add your signature to it.
Since you nominated a bunch of PDC categories for renaming, I was just wondering if you could point me to some naming convention guidelines. Is it just that we should use exact page names? I was using Category:PDC world darts champions as my baseline. Thanks! DLManiac (talk) 00:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
We went ahead and got the 2018 Category 5 hurricanes to FA so there would be less pressure in the future for maintaining the featured status of the Category 5 Pacific hurricanes topic. Also, there should be a new FT coming within the next few months that contain those three Category 5 hurricanes. I'm glad you noticed that Walaka got promoted as sometimes I feel that very few care about the work being done. NoahTalk23:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I saw you're thanks on Commons for some of the Preston edits, regarding Preston here, the sub categories of Category:City of Preston, Lancashire should probably be disambiguated since as can be seen from Preston/Category:Preston there's a lot of uses but some like Category:Tourist attractions in Preston indicate (by being included in Category:Tourist attractions in England by city) that they are for the city (settlement) not the city (district). Maybe they should be renamed to "Preston, Lancashire" rather than "City of Preston, Lancashire" for this reason. As a side note I'm not sure we should generally sub divide by district in England rather than just by county (or sometimes settlment) but that's a different discussion. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:43, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
FYI: Unfortunately, user Elvorixtalk hasn't enough edits for their votes to be eligible to count. Didn't want to advertise that on the FPC page itself, thus this alert... Cheers, --Janke | Talk14:18, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate your support and trust in my recent run for admin. I've had an interesting first few weeks and am learning a lot by being able to better watch (through tools) what admins do. Please call on me if you see making an error, or if you just need help. Thanks again. BusterD (talk) 18:00, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Tyrone Madera From the lead of WP:FPC: "For promotion, if an image is listed here for ten days with five or more reviewers in support and the consensus is in its favor, it can be added to the Wikipedia:Featured pictures list." ArmbrustTheHomunculus03:34, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! I was looking for it but having trouble locating it for some reason. So quorum has nothing to do with the total number of voters? Tyrone Madera (talk) 16:29, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Dear Armbrust,
I just saw that you had added a non-free rationale, corrected the license tag and even uploaded a new coloured version of the "File:SOAS Crest.jpg". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SOAS_Crest.jpg I would like to use that file you uploaded in the infobox of the french version of the SOAS wikipedia article but it wouldn't let me. The use of low-resolution images of crests to illustrate in an educational article about the entity represented by the image is also legal in France. However, I have no idea how to do so. Could you please help me by putting your file in the french infobox if you know how to do it? Thank you very much in advance. --서윤하은 (talk) 09:25, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.
Overall
Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebroxnoted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthonypointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)
Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.
Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.
Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
January 2020
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.
A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.
May 2020
We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
Hey there! Just nominated this on Commons FPC, and was asked if it was possible to change the filename to help keep the focus on her and not the old-timey racism of how she was promoted at the time (without changing description of image). I know en-wiki FPs are a little awkward as regards filemoves on Commons, if I wanted to move it to, say, File:1899 poster of Mme. M. Sissieretta Jones.jpg, is that a huge problem? Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.6% of all FPs11:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Just had a vague idea that it was impossible to edit pages here that were file redirects on Commons. That may be old knowledge. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.6% of all FPs21:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Anyway! Have moved it. One of those things where I'm not sure it does anything really, but it makes someone feel better and costs very little, and, who knows, maybe does some good after all. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.6% of all FPs09:46, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the fix. That... weird missed item in the Featured lists haunted the lists for ages. I put it in at the point I found it lest there was some reporting that had missed it, and... it broke something. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 7.9% of all FPs19:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
I assume the template was used by mistake, but I did not create the image. I merely realised when I came across a high resolution version of the image on OSTI that it was superior to the existing image and replaced it. Kylesenior (talk) 06:34, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
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_(cropped_to_40%25).jpg){kind=small}
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,_Madeira,_Portugal,_2019-05-31,_DD_40.jpg){kind=link}
