This is an archive of past discussions with User:James Allison. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
Coordinator
A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.
This month's refresher course
Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.
Deletion tags
Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.
Paid editing
Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools
Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.
Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.
Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.
DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.
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Upcoming: Wikidata Zurich Training in Zurich on the weekend of November 2-3. There will be presentations and hands-on sessions on editing, querying and coding for Wikidata.
Namescript fills in labels, descriptions and aliases of items about names, making it easier to create such items (you only need to provide a few statements).
AfroCine: Join the Months of African Cinema this October!
Greetings!
After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
Diversity winner
Gender-gap fillers
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Upcoming: Wikidata Zurich Training in Zurich on the weekend of November 2-3. There will be presentations and hands-on sessions on editing, querying and coding for Wikidata.
This Recent changes tool allows to get a list of unpatrolled Wikidata changes with enhanced filters that are more adapted to Wikidata than the standard Recent Changes page. Available actions include mass patroling and easier revert interface.
soweego links Wikidata to large third-party catalogs. Together with its friend Mix'n'match, it helps Wikidata to become the universal linking hub of open data.
Two Wikidata users were nominated for a “WikiEule”, the German Wikipedia community’s annual awards: MisterSynergy (nomination) for an “EngagementEule” (special commitment to the wiki projects) and Tobias1984 (nomination) for an “OrgaEule” (organizational work).
You can nominate projects for the WikidataCon award until October 7th at 23:59 UTC (today).
During the summer, WikidataJS became WikibaseJS! More specifically:
Lei (Nico) Zheng, et al. (2019) The Roles Bots Play in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 3, Issue CSCW, Article 215 (November 2019), 20 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3359317 (also blog post).
Lina M. Rojas-Barahona, et al. (2019) Spoken Conversational Search for General Knowledge. Proceedings of the 20th Annual SIGdial Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue. ACL Anthology ID: W19-5914 + arXiv:1909.11980
Tool of the week
ShowTalkLabels: with this script enabled, when a talk page is shown on your watchlist or similar pages, the label of the related entity is shown.
Other noteworthy stuff
We now have d:Q70000000 (3,5-dimethyl-3H-pyrazole, chemical compound) and Lexeme:L200000 (spiritualistically, English adverb)
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk Pages
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
The Wikidata Wor(l)dmap is showing translations of the same concept on a world map. To use it, type a word (for example "water") in the search field, then observe the map. You can zoom in the map. The data comes from Wikidata item labels and the coordinate location property of the language.
Panandâ, a mobile app powered by Wikidata (and Wikimedia Commons), was selected as one of the five finalists in the App for Social Good category in the Android Masters 2019 competition organized by Google Developer Group Philippines. The final event will be held on November 16.
Issue with Wikidata Query Service: aggregate variables can no longer reuse the names of other variables (T235540).
You can translate labels in the background image of Wikidata front page by adding translation to this file
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Happy birthday, Wikidata!
Today, on October 29th, it’s Wikidata’s 7th birthday. Time to reflect and celebrate and to look forward to see where we are going from here. Message from the Wikidata development team
The Community Wishlist Survey 2020 from Wikimedia Foundation started. This year, it is focused on small projects and Wikidata-related wishes will not be included.
You can help expanding the list of databases, encyclopedias, etc. which could be added to Mix'n'match. Can be used for property creation too.