User talk:Elmidae/Archive 9
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October 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
- October 2019—Issue 007
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Meinhard Michael Moser by J Milburn |
King brown snake by Casliber |
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: Did You Know (DYK)What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA. How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life (5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
New Page Review newsletter November 2019
Hello Elmidae,
This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.
- Getting the queue to 0
There are now 799 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.
- Coordinator
Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.
- This month's refresher course
Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.
- Tools
- It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
- It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
- Reviewer Feedback
Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.
- Second set of eyes
- Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
- Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
- Arbitration Committee
The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.
- Community Wish list
There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.
To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
Red kangaroo Edit
Hey Elmidae, Just getting in contact to say thanks for pulling me up, I realise now I can't change something without looking at the other wiki pages that also explain the same topic. I'm very new to wikipedia editing, which is why I'm messaging you here really... I'd been instructed to change all "Macropus rufus" to "Osphranter rufus" within my PhD thesis (unfinished) because of an update in taxonomy. I had Macropus rufus in my thesis because thats what I was taught at uni and the wiki page said that's what the scientific name was (bad to blindly trust wiki without checking, I know). So when I was told I needed to change it, I thought I should help out and change the wiki page. I may be grossly generalising/mischaracterising a big change (I'm not a taxonomist, obviously) but the update in taxonomy was that Macropodinae is now a subfamily of Macropodidae, and Osphranter is now the Genus for red kangaroos. Before I changed it in my thesis I checked with my supervisors and in the Australian Faunal Directory, it's https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/Osphranter_rufus if you wanted to look. You're obviously much more across how wikipedia and everything works than I am, I wouldn't know how to even begin changing all the other pages that outline the taxonomic ranks, but I'm pretty sure it's Osphranter rather than Macropus now. I'll leave it with you though, I wouldn't want to f*** it all up, haha. I'll stick to easy edits about things I know until I'm a bit more confident with the workings. All the best Deane Smith (talk) 03:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Deane Smith: Well, my revert was more for within-Wikipedia consistency (where we are currently using Macropus as genus and Osphranter as subgenus) than because it reflects The Truth. Fact is, in taxonomy as in several other of the more bureaucratic science areas, it all depends on what authority you follow. There's no one arbiter who gets to decide that some classification is valid and another invalid; there's only frequency of use, and WP follows the most common one. You should see the fun that has been going on here with the giraffe species - one? two? six? All depends on whose publication you think is the authoritative one...
- Apparently the Australian government has decided to go with sources that champion Osphranter - fair enough. As far as I can see, that's not the most widespread use though, so I don't think the change will be reflected in WP yet. That page you linked is very useful as an overview of past synonyms, BTW, and I'll be happy to integrate them into the article box tomorrow. Good luck with the thesis! :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 04:09, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- at no cost, I can give an opinion on this. ~ cygnis insignis 19:15, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- Tne new mammal database is going with Osphranter. Plantdrew (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Cygnis insignis and Plantdrew: Either of you should naturally feel free to update if you think the literature base is there. Note that in that case the entire subgenus structure at Macropus would have to be treated as dissolved, and 11 or 12 other articles will have to be brought in line. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:07, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
Palava City
Thanks for your review, i want to understand any particular reason for reverting that change.
- @Ohgnis: there's no such parameter as "news" in the settlement infobox - see Template:Infobox_settlement - so your edit did not show up. Consider adding the website under a heading "External links" at the very end of the article instead. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Elmidae: Thanks, Shall do as needed. :)
A survey to improve the community consultation outreach process
Hello!
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.
Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.
The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.
Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
Barbatia reeveana
Hi! Thanks for reviewing this article. That was fast! I noticed you deleted my comment about most individuals being either male or female. I certainly welcome the feedback, but I gather there is some record of hermaphroditism in this species, and nature is so wonderfully varied in life histories (for example, sequential male and female sexes in pandalid shrimp, alternating sexual and asexual reproduction in kelp) that I thought this comment might be helpful to some. I'm happy to leave things as they are, but if you think there might be some merit to this thought, please make whatever change you think might adequately communicate the idea.
Thanks!Jordanroderick (talk) 20:51, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Jordanroderick: - ah, that makes more sense :) Feel free to reinstate, but then I would suggest explaining about the hermaphrodite records for this species; otherwise the statement looks somewhat isolated/odd. Cheers --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:55, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
Big Brother (Albanian TV series)
Hey Elmide I just saw your review of this redirect in my watchlist and this is actually an improper WP:CUTPASTE move. The article (while unsourced) has existed at Big Brother Albania and was moved there as a result of this discussion. The user also moved all subsequent pages like seasons back to their old page names as well. Alucard 16❯❯❯ chat? 20:35, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Alucard 16: Oh, splendid. Undid that C&P; I suppose all the others will have to be reverted as well. As for the original article it shouldn't exist in that state of sourcing either :/ - but I'm not going to become embroiled in Big Brother sourcing. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- OK, looks like there are no further cut & pastes here? I'll leave the sorting-out of actual move desirability to involved editors then. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:50, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell there were no other copy and past moves it looks like the editor actually was able to move the other pages correctly. Alucard 16❯❯❯ chat? 22:14, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Nikolay Kedrov Jr.
Hi Elmide; you reverted my article on this chap to its previous state, which was a redirect to his sister. I've restored his page, adding some inline references. If you still have problems with it, I hope you'll flag them; but please don't restore the redirect to Lila Kedrova. That page does have a few facts about her brother, but they are completely unsourced. JBritnell (talk) 07:55, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
- @JBritnell: Thanks, that looks sufficiently sourced now. I'm currently trying to figure out why I can't make a sidebar link to the ruWP article (which is preferred to having it sit in external sources) - will implement once I do. Cheers --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:57, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks. The link to ruWP isn't really important, so I wouldn't waste your time on it. JBritnell (talk) 17:37, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Message added 21:15, 2 December 2019 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. at any time by removing the
Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:15, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
- @L235: Umm. You are aware that this editor edits under his real name and has multiple times self-identified as the Augur developer in question, right? And not to put too fine a point to it, but your fellow admins are quite happy to search up and refer to this exact information in AN/I discussions. A little moderation in oversighting zeal please? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for raising this matter, Elmidae. As my email to you indicated, this was a tentative suppression; WP:OSPOL provides that
"Suppression is a tool of first resort in removing [non-public personal information]"
(emphasis added), and therefore potentially suppressable material is often suppressed pending review. After I brought this issue to the oversight team for review, oversighters declined to reverse the suppression and no oversighters expressed a preference for reversing the suppression. Therefore, I will not be reversing the suppression. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 00:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)- @L235: Oh well. Matters seem well in hand at the article, so I suppose this bit of information isn't really needed there. Cheers :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:34, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks for raising this matter, Elmidae. As my email to you indicated, this was a tentative suppression; WP:OSPOL provides that
November 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
- November 2019—Issue 008
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
King brown snake by Casliber |
News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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Cheers
New Page Review newsletter December 2019
- Reviewer of the Year
This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.
Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.
Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.
Rank | Username | Num reviews | Log |
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1 | Rosguill (talk) | 47,395 | Patrol Page Curation |
2 | Onel5969 (talk) | 41,883 | Patrol Page Curation |
3 | JTtheOG (talk) | 11,493 | Patrol Page Curation |
4 | Arthistorian1977 (talk) | 5,562 | Patrol Page Curation |
5 | DannyS712 (talk) | 4,866 | Patrol Page Curation |
6 | CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) | 3,995 | Patrol Page Curation |
7 | DragonflySixtyseven (talk) | 3,812 | Patrol Page Curation |
8 | Boleyn (talk) | 3,655 | Patrol Page Curation |
9 | Ymblanter (talk) | 3,553 | Patrol Page Curation |
10 | Cwmhiraeth (talk) | 3,522 | Patrol Page Curation |
(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)
- Redirect autopatrol
A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.
- Source Guide Discussion
Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
- This month's refresher course
While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Happy Holidays
Thank you for continuing to make Wikipedia the greatest project in the world. I hope you have an excellent holiday season. Lightburst (talk) 23:39, 21 December 2019 (UTC) |
Good luck
Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune.
このミラPはElmidaeたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます!
フレフレ、みんなの未来!/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE!
ミラP 02:55, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Happy New Year!
-
MMXX Lunar Calendar
Have a great 2020 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.
– 2020 is a leap year – news article.
– Background color is Classic Blue (#0F4C81), Pantone's 2020 Color of the year
– Utopes (talk) 04:33, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
December 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
- December 2019—Issue 009
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Apororhynchus by Mattximus |
Cactus wren by CaptainEek |
News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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