User talk:Rcsprinter123/Archives/12
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WikiCup 2012 June newsletter
Apologies for the lateness of this letter; our usual bot wasn't working. We are now entering round 4, our semi-finals, and have our final 16. A score of 243 was required to reach this round; significantly more than 2011's 76 points, and only a little behind 2010's 250 points. By comparison, last year, 150 points in round 4 secured a place in the final; in 2010, 430 were needed. Commiserations to Pool A's 
igordebraga (submissions), who scored 242 points, missing out on a place in the round by a whisker. However, congratulations to Pool B's 
Grapple X (submissions), whose television articles have brought him another round victory. Pool A's 
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came second overall, with an impressive list of biological did you knows, good articles and featured articles. Third overall was Pool D's 
Muboshgu (submissions), with a long list of contibutions, mostly relating to baseball. Of course, with the points resetting every round, the playing field has been levelled. The most successful Pool was Pool D, which saw seven into the final round. Pool B saw four, C saw three and Pool A saw only the two round leaders.
A quick note about other competitions taking place on Wikipedia which may be of interest. There are 13 days remaining in the June-July GAN backlog elimination drive, but it is not too late to take part. August will also see the return of The Core Contest- a one month long competition first run in 2007. While the WikiCup awards points for audited content on any subject, The Core Contest about is raw article improvement, focussing heavily on the most important articles on Wikipedia. As ever, if you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 11:06, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 02 July 2012
- Analysis: Uncovering scientific plagiarism
- News and notes: RfC on joining lobby group; JSTOR accounts for Wikipedians and the article feedback tool
- In the news: Public relations on Wikipedia: friend or foe?
- Discussion report: Discussion reports and miscellaneous articulations
- WikiProject report: Summer sports series: Burning rubber with WikiProject Motorsport
- Featured content: Heads up
- Arbitration report: Three open cases, motion for the removal of Carnildo's administrative tools
- Technology report: Initialisms abound: QA and HTML5
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- EdwardsBot (talk) 12:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
I have closed Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Marking inactive bots so as:
Closed per request at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure. I have read Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive754#Block Review, User talk:Rcsprinter123/Archives/10#May 2012, and this discussion.
The consensus is that Rcsprinter123 (talk · contribs) is permitted to mark bot user pages in Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive bots inactive with several caveats.
1. Rcsprinter123 should verify whether the bots are truly active by checking the contributions page and the log page. Some bots' revisions do not show up in the contributions page but in the logs page. Failure to do so may lead to editing restrictions or blocks. Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot-like editing states (my bolding):
Human editors are expected to pay attention to the edits they make, and ensure that they don't sacrifice quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity. For the purpose of dispute resolution, it is irrelevant whether high-speed or large-scale edits that involve errors an attentive human would not make are actually being performed by a bot, by a human assisted by a script, or even by a human without any programmatic assistance. No matter the method, the disruptive editing must stop or the user may end up blocked.
The community rejected Rcsprinter123's position that:
As for whether or not the bot in question is active, that shouldn't be my problem because the people updating the inactive list should have weeded out the editing ones. It is hardly my fault that 7SeriesBOT was on that list, because someone else must have made the mistake of not seeing they do deleting only instead. I had, and have put my trust in that list to tell me which pages to do, and if it is checked and updated often enough, I don't see any problem with what I am doing. Rcsprinter (converse) 19:54, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
This is reflective of a poor attitude incompatible with doing this semi-automated task. Participants have found that Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive bots has contained errors in the past. As 28bytes (talk · contribs) notes, "Propagating wrong information across the 'pedia is indeed the problem of whoever does it, and if you're not willing to take responsibility for the edits, you shouldn't be making them."
2. To prevent friction, if an inactive bot's operator has edited within the past three months, Rcsprinter123 should ask them if their bot is inactive. He should give the operator one week to reply, after which, if there is no response, he may tag the bot as inactive. If the operator's response is to disagree with the changing, he is advised to "just pop their bot into an 'ignore' file and put a copy of the list of bots you're ignoring into a prominent place related to your monitoring activities" (from Tony Sidaway (talk · contribs)). If he would like to tag the bot as inactive over the bot operator's objections (this is inadvisable), he must gain consensus first at a community venue like Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard. Cunard (talk) 23:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 09 July 2012
- Special report: Reforming the education programs: lessons from Cairo
- WikiProject report: Summer sports series: WikiProject Football
- Featured content: Keeps on chuggin'
- Arbitration report: Three requests for arbitration
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- EdwardsBot (talk) 11:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:51, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
I have closed Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Marking inactive bots so as:
Closed per request at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure. I have read Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive754#Block Review, User talk:Rcsprinter123/Archives/10#May 2012, and this discussion.
The consensus is that Rcsprinter123 (talk · contribs) is permitted to mark bot user pages in Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive bots inactive with several caveats.
1. Rcsprinter123 should verify whether the bots are truly active by checking the contributions page and the log page. Some bots' revisions do not show up in the contributions page but in the logs page. Failure to do so may lead to editing restrictions or blocks. Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot-like editing states (my bolding):
Human editors are expected to pay attention to the edits they make, and ensure that they don't sacrifice quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity. For the purpose of dispute resolution, it is irrelevant whether high-speed or large-scale edits that involve errors an attentive human would not make are actually being performed by a bot, by a human assisted by a script, or even by a human without any programmatic assistance. No matter the method, the disruptive editing must stop or the user may end up blocked.
The community rejected Rcsprinter123's position that:
As for whether or not the bot in question is active, that shouldn't be my problem because the people updating the inactive list should have weeded out the editing ones. It is hardly my fault that 7SeriesBOT was on that list, because someone else must have made the mistake of not seeing they do deleting only instead. I had, and have put my trust in that list to tell me which pages to do, and if it is checked and updated often enough, I don't see any problem with what I am doing. Rcsprinter (converse) 19:54, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
This is reflective of a poor attitude incompatible with doing this semi-automated task. Participants have found that Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive bots has contained errors in the past. As 28bytes (talk · contribs) notes, "Propagating wrong information across the 'pedia is indeed the problem of whoever does it, and if you're not willing to take responsibility for the edits, you shouldn't be making them."
2. To prevent friction, if an inactive bot's operator has edited within the past three months, Rcsprinter123 should ask them if their bot is inactive. He should give the operator one week to reply, after which, if there is no response, he may tag the bot as inactive. If the operator's response is to disagree with the changing, he is advised to "just pop their bot into an 'ignore' file and put a copy of the list of bots you're ignoring into a prominent place related to your monitoring activities" (from Tony Sidaway (talk · contribs)). If he would like to tag the bot as inactive over the bot operator's objections (this is inadvisable), he must gain consensus first at a community venue like Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard. Cunard (talk) 23:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 July 2012
- Special report: Chapters Association mired in controversy over new chair
- WikiProject report: Summer sports series: French WikiProject Cycling
- Discussion report: Discussion reports and miscellaneous articulations
- Featured content: Taking flight
- Technology report: Tech talks at Wikimania amid news of a mixed June
- Arbitration report: Fæ faces site-ban, proposed decisions posted
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- EdwardsBot (talk) 12:15, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 July 2012
- Paid editing: Does Wikipedia pay? The skeptic: Orange Mike
- From the editor: Signpost developments
- WikiProject report: Summer sports series: WikiProject Olympics
- Arbitration report: Fæ and Michaeldsuarez banned; Kwamikagami desysopped; Falun Gong closes with mandated external reviews and topic bans
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- Technology report: Translating SVGs and making history bugs history
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- EdwardsBot (talk) 12:20, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Reflinks/Youtube bug
Hi,
Recently you used Reflinks to clean up some refs on David Schulhof. Unfortunately, there's a bug in Reflinks which creates spurious author names for Youtube pages. It's discussed here. I doubt the bug can be fixed soon; so in the meantime it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for this, and maybe put in the right author names by hand..? bobrayner (talk) 13:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
We are currently running a study on the effects of adding additional information to SuggestBot’s recommendations. Participation in the study is voluntary. Should you wish to not participate in the study, or have questions or concerns, you can find contact information in the consent information sheet.
We have added information about the readership and quality of the suggested articles using a Low/Medium/High scale. For readership the scale goes from Low to High , while for quality the scale goes from Low to High .
SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:19, 25 July 2012 (UTC)