User:The ed17/Archives/50

WikiCup 2012 February newsletter
Round 1 is already over! The 64 highest scorers have progressed to round 2. Our highest scorer was, again thanks mostly to a swathe of good articles on The X-Files. In second place was, thanks an impressive list of did you knows about racehorses. Both scored over 400 points. Following behind with over 300 points were, , and. February also saw the competition's first featured list: List of colleges and universities in North Dakota, from. At the other end of the scale, 11 points was enough to secure a place in this round, and some contestants with 10 points made it into the round on a tiebreaker. This is higher than the 8 points that were needed last year, but lower than the 20 points required the year before. The number of points required to progress to round 3 will be significantly higher.

The remaining contestants have been split into 8 pools of 8, named A through H. Round two will finish in two months time on 28 April, when the two highest scorers in each pool, as well as the next 16 highest scorers, will progress to round 3. The pools were entirely random, so while some pools may end up being more competitive than others, this is by chance rather than design.

The judges would like to point out two quick rules reminders. First, any content promoted during the interim period (that is, on or after 27 February) is eligible for points in round 2. Second, any content worked on significantly this year is eligible for points if promoted in this round. On a related note, if you are concerned that your nomination, be it at good article candidates, a featured process or anywhere else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAC, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which would otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, 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 receiving or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk &bull; email) and The ed17 (talk &bull; email) 00:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

WikiCup reconfirmation
Just wanted to check in here and confirm that if Freddie Mitchell ends up being promoted to FA, I cannot receive points for it. Correct? Eagles  24/7  (C) 00:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes you can; any content nominated or promoted in the interim period is eligible. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:20, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Even if the majority of the work was in 2011? Eagles  24/7  (C) 00:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see the issue now. No, it would not be eligible. Apologies. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, just wanted to be certain. Eagles  24/7  (C) 00:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. That's a good-looking article; I wish you luck at FAC. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Eagles  24/7  (C)  00:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: February 2012
Unsubscribe · Global message delivery 20:17, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

talk page use for Template:Country data Netherlands?
He Andrwsc/Ed17; the template is protected so that only admins can edit. Probably this is done to avoid too many changes on a very heavily used template. I suggest thus to use a bit of restraint in editing even if you are one of the few who can edit there.... L.tak (talk) 21:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we have it figured out now. :-) Thanks. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

NPA issue...
Clearly I'm "involved" here, but if you could take a look at this... - The Bushranger One ping only 22:41, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I noticed this and dealt with it. Hope that was ok. --John (talk) 23:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The chap doesn't seem to get it - I've reblocked him for a week and removed his talk page access. Let me know if he resumes once his block expires. Parsecboy (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well gee, I didn't have to do much here...! Thanks! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

bajia
edit. Ritish? British? PMG (talk) 13:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Parsecboy (talk) 13:41, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Unintended deletion
Thanks for reverting my my disastrous change which truncated 33 kb from the Battleship Richelieu page. It looks like my connection must have been interrupted while transmitting the edit. NeilFraser (talk) 16:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No worries, I figured it was unintentional, so I didn't warn you or anything. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I appreciated you reverted the NeilFraser's edit on French battleship Richelieu page.
 * As I supposed you understood it, I try to give on English Wikipedia a comprehensive view on the last modern French battleships, from the Dunkerque class battleships, then the Richelieu class battleships, finally to the Alsace class battleships, focusing on the background, design, and characteristics, and giving a little more details on the carreer and history, for each battleship, in specific articles as French battleship Dunkerque, French battleship Strasbourg, French battleship Richelieu, and French battleship Jean Bart, for the warships which saw service, which excludes specific articles on battleships as Clemenceau which was only laid down, or Gascogne which was only designed.
 * I would appreciate you tell me what you think of what I tried to do, and do you think it's interesting, for OMT. And forgive my precarious English.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 00:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Paul. Your English may not be the best, but the information you are putting into these pages is quite good. Us native English speakers can fix the prose (like User:Allens did to Richelieu-class battleship), but not all of us can find and add the information into articles. I've looked through the Richelieu articles, and here's my thoughts:
 * The class article is quite long – 13469 words or 81kb of prose right now, which would put it at #16 among longest FAs according to this list. Are there any places you can cut some text to make it easier to read? I believe 10,000 words is generally accepted as the upper limit. I can't find any easy things to cut though, aside from in the "History" section, which you may be able to summarize and point readers at French battleship Richelieu and French battleship Jean Bart instead.
 * The class article is also superbly detailed. While this isn't bad in itself, we also have to appeal to a general audience. My advice is to try to cut some of the Richelieu comparisons with other battleships and eliminate many of the conversions – generally you only need to convert it once towards the beginning of the article or at the beginning of long sections, but you don't need to covert the same numbers multiple times in the same paragraph. :-) Alternatively, I wonder if the ship-to-ship comparisons couldn't be summed up in a single large table?
 * There's quite a few [ citation needed ] or "clarification needed" tags in the articles. Adding cites or clarifying the passages would make the articles much more readable!
 * Just some food for thought for you. Overall, I think you're doing extremely well. Let me know if I can help with anything! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Ed. Thank you for your answer. You saw I began to add the citations and clarifications needed, wanted by User:Allen. I have just a little difficulty with the citation needed about the low effeciency of salvo of less than four shells, as in the 1929 Italian battleship project with only three twin turrets, that I could not yet find in Breyer's, Jordan's, Dumas's or Giorgerini and Nani's books.
 * I completely agree with you about the overabondance of unit conversions. But, more important, I desagree with some of them, as I found in Jordan and Dumas book, p.22 and p.38, that the French Navy authorities used long tons for Standard Washington displacement, and metric tons for other displacement (trials, normal, full load). So there is no necessity to convert 35,000 tons, 23,333 tons, or 17,500 tons, neither when the source is in English language as H.T.Lenton Warships of World War II, or Breyer's books.Thanks for your opinion.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 00:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay in responding, I read it and forgot to come back and respond when I was next online. For the conversions, I would just provide a conversion on the first occurrence of a number. They're really only there for convenience so a reader has a base on which to judge the real size of the ships. Take how I did North Carolina-class battleship, for example. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

β-testing
Hi! You indicated you'd like to help us beta-test the new MediaWiki 1.19 extension for the Education Program. Click here to get started!

Thanks, Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 March 2012

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 * EdwardsBot (talk) 17:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

The Revolt of the Whip
Hey, Ed, you might be interested on this book which has been just published. --Lecen (talk) 00:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey Lecen! Hope you're well. It's not really a question of "might" be interested. ;-) It's been on my list of books to buy, but I'm going to wait a few months so the price will go down (poor university student = me). Thanks! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:56, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!
Thanks for fixing my word order. :D Silly little brain farts that inverse words. :D

LauraHale (talk) 10:35, 12 March 2012 (UTC) 
 * Haha! Anytime! I had a good laugh while fixing it. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:05, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Ambassador Program Restructuring
Take a peek here. Long story short, the idea is to morph on the volunteer side into a wikiproject which should help show the difference between the WMF and the volunteer side (and give us a chance to try to shed some of the IEP issues, and focus more on what is going right). Anyways you are more than welcome to participate in the process, in particular if you want to help write the new OA selection process go here Epistemophiliac (talk) 00:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll certainly help with the OA selection process. I think we'll be able to port most of the existing process in, though. My only thought is that the Selection Committee should probably be the one waiving the requirements, not the Steering Committee. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:23, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Tweak as you want, its a rough draft/work in progress at this point, trying to incorporate on-wiki all the talk - so changes are welcome. Epistemophiliac (talk) 02:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 March 2012
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Happy First Edit Day

 * Holy crap, it's been six years already. Thanks Armbrust. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:50, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 March 2012
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WikiCup
Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've responded, thanks. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

User:EdwardsBot/Status
Hi. Regarding this, you'll have to change "Start" to "Really start" at User:EdwardsBot/Status in order to bypass the bot's database replication lag protections. However, these users will not be delivered to with the bot, as the bot is only aware of the links on that page as of a few days ago (due to the lag). Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:24, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note, MZM. I'll deliver the newsletter to the others manually. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LXXII, March 2012
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

User:XHolmes
I thought this was a bit harsh. He started articles on a well chosen trio of Chicago public housing projects that I would never have even known about without his effort. I thought he deserved credit for writing about them. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:25, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, he started articles that were copied and pasted from sources before he was blocked – I don't think that deserves DYK credit. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:26, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 March 2012
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Thank you!

 * You're welcome! I hope I can help in some way. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:47, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

German collaboration
Hi Ed! I noticed that you tried to foster a collaboration with the German "Portal Diskussion:Militär". One German editor expressed his concerns regarding my work on the English Wikipedia and therefore believes that a collaboration to be devastating. I always believed to have worked in accordance to the rules here on the English Wikipedia but for sure my doing cannot be considered error free. If it helps the project and/or eases collaboration with the German community I have no emotional problems with handing in the awards presented to me, down-rating of the articles I worked on, and even resigning is not out of the question. I cannot deny that my personal interest lies in the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, its recipients, and all its facets from a propaganda point of view to the individual bravery it required to earn the distinction. I follow the discussions on the German Wikipedia often but passively. The level of personal abuse around this topic is so excessive on the German Wikipedia. I don't want to be a focal point for such abuse or personal insult. I value the open, honest and constructive discussions we have established here in our review processes. As indicated, if it helps the collective objective here I gladly resign. Thanks for listening MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One of your start-class articles was raised as an example of (I think) poor sourcing. I'm assuming he is referring to one of the German-language books there, as it looks to me like the English sources are from reputable publishers. Regardless, I think he was trying to make a wider point about the English Wikipedia and not one specifically at you, and in any case I'd never ask for you to give all that up. :-) The bigger issue right now is getting more people to sign on, as while an international newsletter could be fun, I'd like for it to go to more than three people there. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:46, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe the point is a bit more complicated. If my understanding of the German Wiki is correct, the problem resides in the notability guidelines for biographies in the German Wiki. Here on the English Wiki the guiding factors are rather simple in comparison; someone who has received their countries highest military decoration is notable. On the German Wiki, someone who has received their countries highest military decoration is not per say considered notable; it is only considered an indication that this person may be notable. Notability must therefore be established by other means, other means are for instance, and this is only way of proving notability, that these people are covered in reputational, first class historical references. Do you see the problem here: by questioning or discrediting the references used to construct the article content, a critic has a tool to eliminate the content of an article and in some instances go as far as to have the article deleted from Wiki. This is an ongoing war in the German Wiki between inclusionists and exclusionists. MisterBee1966 (talk) 16:00, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. It looks like we may be able to move past that, thankfully, but I'll have to keep that in mind for the future... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:00, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello Ed, after waiting a while if there are any more reactions for supporting a collaboration between the two projects in en:Wiki and de:Wiki it seems to me that sadly there isn't any real interest in such a grouping together. On the other hand this can (maybe) be good because it keeps all the "Political POV-Warriors" from discovering the en:Wiki Project as a battleground. Best regards --Bomzibar (talk) 13:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That's disappointing, but I guess not entirely unexpected – I went looking for the people I got into a discussion with there in 2009 but found they had all been blocked or retired. I suppose that's probably true of most military history people there, given the acrimony you describe. Thanks anyway for trying Bomzibar. Hopefully we cross paths again soon. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:37, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sure we will because I think I will have some free capacities in future I planned to devote to the international newsletter which I will devote to The Bugle now I think. Maybe it's possible to ask at the MGFA (Bundeswehr Military History Division I mentioned earlier) if they can donate some articles out of their english magazine for it. And for that do you maybe know which active users out of the military history project are historians and military historians or studying it? --Bomzibar (talk) 18:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess I can't complain then. ;-) I know that User:Hawkeye7 is an Australian military historian, User:Parsecboy is in grad school for the same thing, User:Rjensen is a historian (not sure if milhist or what), and User:Rif Winfield is a naval historian. That's about it though (note that the latter two are not, to my knowledge, active members of the project). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Second opinion
How do you feel about this claiming points? I am not sure I feel that this review is an appropriate one for the article in question. J Milburn (talk) 13:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's pretty harsh, but I don't know if we should start making content decisions in borderline cases like this ... it's a bit of a slippery slope, and the reviewer is supposed to be allowed some discretion. I'd just leave him/her a note detailing the issues with it and keep an eye on his/her future GA reviews. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:38, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, completely reasonable. Thanks for your thoughts. J Milburn (talk) 15:39, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Any changes...
...you want to make before the next newsletter goes out? J Milburn (talk) 16:36, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

WikiCup 2012 March newsletter
We are over half way through the second round of this year's WikiCup and things are going well! , of Pool B, is our highest overall scorer thanks to his prolific writings on television and film. In second place is Pool H's, thanks primarily to work on biological articles, especially in marine biology and herpetology. Third place goes to Pool E's, who also writes primarily on biology (including ornithology and botany) and has already submitted two featured articles this round. Of the 63 contestants remaining, 15 (just under a quarter) have over 100 points this round. However, 25 are yet to score. Please remember to update your submission pages promptly. 32 contestants, the top two from each pool and the 16 next-highest scorers, will advance to round 3.

Congratulations to, whose impressive File:Wacht am Rhein map (Opaque).svg became the competition's first featured picture. Also, congratulations to, who claimed good topic points, our first contestant this year to do so, for his work on Featured topics/1982 Atlantic hurricane season. This leaves featured topics and featured portals as the only sources of points not yet utilised. However, as recent statistics from show, no source has yet been utilised this competition to the same extent it has been previously!

It has been observed that the backlogs at good article candidates are building up again. While the points for good article reviews will be remaining constant, any help that can be offered keeping the backlog down would be appreciated. On a related note, if you are concerned that your nomination, be it at good article candidates, a featured process or anywhere else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. As ever, 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 receiving or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk &bull; email) and The ed17 (talk &bull; email) 23:29, 31 March 2012 (UTC)