User talk:Abductive/Archive 22

A citation bot job
Hi again Abductive

I see that you just ran Citation bot across Category:Indo-Aryan languages, another category which doesn't concentrate bot-fixable issues. The bot edited only 18 of 104 pages.

If you want to do something which uses the bot more effectively, a new task has just become possible. Per this discussion, as of yesterday the bot can now handle Bare URL inline. So feeding the bot lists of the pages which use that tag will have a high return.

https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=19859851 gives the list of draft and mainspace uses of the tag. To get the list in plain text, go to the output tab, where "plain text" is the rightmost option on the top line.

Hope this helps. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 07:22, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I have been holding off running jobs lately because I noted that the bot was hitting API limits. 18 out of 104 pages is a symptom of this. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:29, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems unlikely to be an API limits problem, since my jobs and those of Headbomb are getting high edit rates. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You'll note that my recent run of Category:Ion channels got 246 out of 308, or just shy of 80%. How do we explain that? Back when I first discovered the bot, I often got that kind of performance. I believe that the bot, which is now at 1,956,713 edits, has become a victim of its own success. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:53, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Bot overload of the APIs is a factor, but that does not explain the big differentials in edit rate which I have repeatedly documented between jobs which are selected because they concentrate fixable issues versus speculative trawls which often don't.
 * With Category:Ion channels, it seems that you got lucky and found a set of articles which the bot had not already processed. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:15, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * See e.g.this set of 1000 bot edits, in which Headbomb's job of 1705 pages got 244/263 pages edited (from 1038/1705 to 1300/1705). -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Bot may not be ready for large runs

 * section moved from User talk:BrownHairedGirl, to keep the conversation in one place

I've been running the bot individually on articles with bare url inline, and it hasn't been consistently fixing them. Check out Edinburgh Chess Club; it fixed one bare url to chessedinburgh.co.uk but not the other two to the same site. This has been my general experience with citation bot; improvements are slow in coming, it is inconsistent across many metrics, and finks out at random times. Abductive (reasoning) 08:57, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. Or this one, title=Google.... Abductive  (reasoning) 09:03, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Abductive, the bot is nearly always fuzzy, due to the intermittent availability of external resources. it never consistently fixes anything which requires an external lookup.
 * But while the bot doesn't consistently fix all the bare URLs on a given page, it does fix a lot of issues. For example, I did a few runs of articles from my buildings list.   Total 10,446 articles, of which well over half were edited.  The result is that 7,231 still have bare URLs.  That is about a 30% clearup rate, which is the long-term average for my bare URL runs.
 * So a bot run on the pages which transclude Bare URL inline can be expected to get similar results. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you running the bot with the Thorough mode checked or unchecked? Abductive  (reasoning) 02:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Always checked. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:44, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I often run unchecked, because I seem to recall somebody saying that only articles on topics that are doi-heavy need Thorough mode, which otherwise slows down the bot a lot. Maybe User:AManWithNoPlan could be asked to clarify this? Abductive  (reasoning) 02:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that info. My bot jobs are all about expanding bare URLs, so if thorough mode isn't helping with that, I will happily switch it off to reduce load on the bot. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:04, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It might be worth doing a test run to see if there is any difference to the bare url work. The errors I pointed out above were done with Thorough mode checked. (Because doing them individually is Thorough.) Abductive  (reasoning) 03:13, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see how that a test run would tell me much, unless the change was extreme, because I can't compare it with a run on the same articles in thorough mode. So I hope that  will be able to enlighten us. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:17, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Generally a small run will tell you if the the run is successful. Things that can go wrong include: not very many pages being fixed, the changes being insignificant, something being missed that should be reported and fixed before running lots of pages.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:47, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That's good general advice, but what I was really hoping for was your input on was whether thorough mode makes any difference to bare URL cleanup.  Sorry that I wasn't clearer about that. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:30, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I did little test runs (on randomly selected articles Stadio Danilo Martelli, Mid Buchanan High School, Godfrey Stephens, Dale Carter, Beaver Mills Lumber Company, Ralph D. Scurfield, Ashok Khemka, List of films shot in Iceland and John Neff (musician)), and it appears that Thorough mode is required to make corrections to bare urls. It made no bare url corrections when I ran it unchecked first, then made 3 bare url corrections with it checked. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:48, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tests. That is useful to know.
 * So I will continue to use thorough mode. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:17, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

CitationBot mis-fixed Battle of the Bulge
Hi, I wanted to let you know that I reverted. Of the 3 issues "fixed" in the edit, only 1 was useful (changing  and   to   and   when   existed). The other 2 "fixes" were breaking: 1. Changed to. That citation uses the  parameter, which exists in the CS2 citation template, but not in the CS1 cite book template. This caused a CS1 parameter error. Note that this also changed this ref's style from CS2 to CS1, when the article consistently uses CS2. 2. Changed  to   in. Even though the citation in the reference is to a particular chapter, the url to the reference is to the entire book, not to the chapter. The pre-existing usage was not wrong or erroneous behavior.

Please be more careful not to introduce unfixes to references. Thanks. &emsp;—&#8239;sbb&#8239;(talk) 14:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * This is an issue for the bot maintainers. Abductive  (reasoning) 19:15, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter
The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, 🇧🇼 The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski,  BennyOnTheLoose, 🇷🇼 Amakuru and  Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:01, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

"Vitamin E oil" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Vitamin E oil. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 September 6 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:35, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Another DOS
This evening, you fed Category:Clusters of differentiation to. It contains a lot of ref-heavy pages, so it took the bot just under five hours to process it all.

And in that time, the bot edited only 35 of the category's 308 pages. That's an edit rate of only 11.4%, one of the lowest you have achieved. This was at the bot's busiest time of the day, which you had said you would try to avoid.

If you were actively setting out to mount a denial-of-service attack on the bot, then you had a huge success. If you had any other purpose in mind, then it was reckless disruption.

I have documented this sort of thing now for about 6 weeks, and several other editors have asked you stop.

I have now had enough. So I want to ask you simply: will you now pledge to stop feeding batch jobs to citation bot?

Unless the answer is a clear yes, I will take this to ANI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) 00:42, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Service was not interrupted, at least not by me. I note that other users have been taking up two channels. I will make every effort to ensure that I do not load down the bot, and I deny that it was intentional, or in any way a denial-of-service attack or reckless disruption. Abductive  (reasoning) 01:02, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Please hold off on the rapid-fire clusters of toolbar-initiated Citation bot runs
Hi! I've noticed that you seem to be running large numbers of simultaneous Citation bot requests using the toolbar link, which has the effect of tying up the bot's channels and freezing out jobs that other users attempt to start. Since the bot finished running my previous batch job with an edit to Selective laser sintering over three-quarters of an hour ago, all but one of its edits have come either from a preexisting batch job by BrownHairedGirl or from your toolbar runs. The bot still hasn't been able to find a slot in which to run a batch job I submitted over a half-hour ago (at least, that's what I presume based on its lack of output of anything from my batch job), which I'm strongly suspecting is due to you clogging up the bot with your massed toolbar runs as usual. Right now, I'm inclined to agree with BrownHairedGirl that you need to cut it out with the flooding of Citation bot via the toolbar. (EDIT: The bot's finally managed to slot in my batch job, having required the better part of an hour to find an open slot in which to do so.) Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty ⚧ Averted crashes 03:03, 7 October 2021 (UTC) However, there has been so much of this for so long that making an ANI complaint will take a lot of effort to collate even a decent summary of Abductive's antics. So it may take a few days before I am ready to do so. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:19, 7 October 2021 (UTC) As one example among many, note that this one-request-at-a-time issue was raised by me ten days ago at User talk:Citation_bot (permalink). Despite that, the problem has been recurring since then .. so your claim that you have consistently modified my use of the bot in response is demonstrably false. Similarly, you persisted with low-return category trawls for months after being asked to stop. I can not know whether you are deliberately lying about this, or whether you are somehow unable to understand the reality of your misconduct and your repeated resistance to requests from many editors to stop your DOS attacks. But the cause of that gap between reality and Abductive's assertions doesn't matter much: either way, the remedy is to ban you. And no, I do not find any use of the bot by me to be illegitimate. That is yet another example of your strategy of FUD: counter-attack a with a false accusation. There are at least two cases where I have helped you to use the bot constructively, and plenty of uses which I have not criticised ... so your claim is simply a malicious smear designed to deflect from your sustained disruption. Enough. Your comment of 17:02 repeats that FUD strategy, and will therefore probably form part of the evidence bundle for ANI. Feel free to provide yet more evidence of your IDHT problem and FUD tactics. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:30, 7 October 2021 (UTC) You are not just disruptive, you are an almighty timesink. If you had really changed your ways, your opening response to the complaints me and would have been along the line of "oops, very sorry, I will stop that immediately" ... but instead we have multiple screenfuls of your denials, evasions, malicious and false counter-attacks, and all the rest of your FUD show. And that's on an issue which was discussed at length ten days ago. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have been having exactly the same problem. Several times in the last few days, i have found that even tho there are free channels, I find that I cannot get at them because Abductive's piled-up toolbar requests are in the way.  So the start of my batch gets delayed for an hour or more. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:22, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you think we should submit a complaint at the appropriate noticeboard re: Abductive's Citation bot DOSing? (If so, it's probably best if you do it, given that you've a longer history trying to get them to knock it off than I have, and that I'm editing from my Kindle's web browser, whose limitations include no tabbed browsing, no copy/paste, and a tendency to frequently eat edits that I try to submit.) Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty ⚧ Averted crashes 13:43, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I too experience the slow response when there are three channels in use. It is a function of load. Abductive  (reasoning) 13:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, Abductive, this particular issue is not a problem of load. It is a problem of one user creating a bottleneck by conduct which they have been repeatedly asked to stop. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * yes, I do think it's time for a WP:ANI proposal to simply ban Abductive from Citation Bot. For more than two months, Abductive's use of the bot has included repeated DOS abuse, and despite requests from many editors to stop it, Abductive not only persists but engages in a disruptive series of responses designed to deflect and displace the concerns of other editors rather than reform his usage.  It's utterly exhausting.
 * I have already agreed to 's suggestion to submit only groups of articles. Abductive  (reasoning) 15:35, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I saw that assurance, Abductive.  Thank you for that.
 * However, I have seen many such assurances from you before, and in most cases you have either ignored your promise or moved on to a different form of disruption. I am long since fed up with playing whack-a-mole over your various type of DOS attacks, and even more fed up with your total lack of interest in using the bot collaboratively.  I am also utterly fed up with the time-wasting FUD techniques which you use when confronted.
 * So your promise has zero credibility, and my patience is exhausted. You have shown sustained contempt for all the editors who asked you to behave better, so it's time for a ban. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have consistently modified my use of the bot in response to your claims. What you call whack-a-mole is my trying to do what you ask, but you find any use of the bot by me to be illegitimate. And you are accuse me here of "FUD techniques", which I had to look up. Such accusations are based on an assumption of bad faith on my part. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:30, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:AGF does not require the assumption of good faith to be sustained when there is clear evidence of bad faith, and on your case that evidence exists aplenty.
 * I probably wont reply here again, but if you want to add yet more evidence in support of a ban to the evidence you have already posted here and elsewhere, then feel free to post more of your reality-denying FUD. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:47, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Your concern over low-return trawls seems only to apply to me, and not other users whose use of the bot results in rates that are lower. As I have stated in the past, this is not a good metric, but finding fault with only one user over it does not seem fair. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:02, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My focus on your low-return speculative trawls was because they far exceeded the combined totals of low-return speculative trawls by every other user of the bot, and because you repeatedly engaged in FUD techniques when challenged by me and by other editors.
 * Perhaps before I repeatedly modified my use of the bot, my rates of return were not to your liking. But I have drastically cut back my use of the bot, both in the amount of use, and in a variety of steps I have taken to improve my rates of return. In addition, I have just now agreed to use the bot in a way that satisfied the complainant above. You seem to be confounding your perception of me personally with my present use of the bot. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:43, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * As above, my experience of your promises leads me to give them no value. And the sheer amount of FUD that you have pumped into this thread is voluminous evidence of your disruptiveness, which can be added your similar conduct on every other occasions when anyone has tried to get you to STOP BEING DISRUPTIVE.
 * At no time did I or do I act in bad faith. Continued lengthy accusations are not the same thing as evidence of my acting in bad faith. 17:59, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Here's just one piece of the pile of evidence of bad faith. See the latest bot contribs: Abductive fed the bot Category:Organotin compounds, which generated only 4 edits for 26 pages. That's an abysmal 15% edit rate, and they were were bulky pages which took a lot of bot time. Either you consciously chose a low-return speculative trawl, or else you tried for a higher return, and failed yet again. Either way, it's bad faith ... because you have repeatedly been shown how your choices of speculative trawl are poor, yet you ignore those warnings. You have no "I didn't know" excuse, because you have warned dozens and dozens of times that your choices are abysmal. That persistence with disruptive batches despite your promises is a clear illustration of your sustained bad faith. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC) There is no sign that Abductive understands the problem, and they have repeatedly asserted that there is in fact no problem and that they should not be asked to do any prep work. After several months of repeated discussions with Abductive, I see no evidence that they bring to the table any relevant skills, insight, willingness to work, or ability to collaborate. All I see from Abductive is a persistently truculent form of IDHT. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, the issue is using the bot to the detriment of other users. Nobody was blocked from using the bot, and the run was not 2200 pages long or something. You seem to be confounding legimate usage of the bot on (tiny) categories with loading the bot to the point that single users, some who don't even complain on the bot talk page, can't get anything run at all. In addition, you cherry-pick the runs to make a case for low returns; perhaps it would be better to compare all runs by all users over a few days, and see who has what rate of return. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * At the time that the OP posted above, Abductive [edited to add: the OP] had just started a job on 1,963 articles (This is the first diff, and this is the final diff in the batch.) that appears to have modified only 354 pages, according to Citation Bot's activity log (if my copy/paste/analyze work was done correctly). That's an 18% hit rate, with 1,609 articles left untouched, over 11.5 hours. It would help if Abductive would provide a detailed account of changes they have made since the start of that job to avoid clogging up the bot's queue in this way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:49, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you mean the OP had started a job of 1,963 articles. Abductive  (reasoning) 20:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, crap, you are completely right and I am completely wrong. My vast apologies. It seems like a lot of jobs are being fed to Citation bot that have a pretty low hit rate. had a 2,197-page job with 1,075 hits during the same general time period (10 hours), which is a considerably better 49%, but it looks like you all could collaborate on figuring out how to filter batches of articles that will be more likely to be edited by the bot. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:41, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95, sadly there is little scope for collaboration. The problems with Abductive's use of the bot have persisted for months, and Abductive has repeatedly responded with various types of FUD -- as they have done in this thread.
 * Actually I do have a method in development that in my last test run of 100 back on Oct 4 found edits for 38. I need to simplify, formalize and improve it, but if anybody is interested let me know. But I still feel this metric of edit efficiency means nothing to a user waiting for the bot to fix the single article they just worked on. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:21, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This is ridiculous. For the umpteenth time, the reason to oppose the low-return trawls is that they achieve little, but significantly impede access to the bot for editors waiting for the bot to fix the single article they just worked on.  How many million times does this simple point have to be hammered into Abductive before they get it? --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:25, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My returns aren't low, and they are not trawls. And I am striving to improve them. Furthermore, I don't do maximal runs, even if I could guarantee 100% edit results, because they go for many, many hours, and then all it takes is three more runs of any length by any user, no matter how good or bad their returns are, to lock everybody else out of the bot (this is happening right now). When is the last time I did a run of 2200? Abductive  (reasoning) 23:11, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Prunus elaeagrifolia
I'm interested in the note [a] that you put at Prunus elaeagrifolia. Was it based on a source? The epithet elaeagnifolia would more obviously be based on Elaeagnus + i + folia, meaning 'with leaves like Elaeagnus'. The etymology of Eleagnus varies a bit by source; I'm currently constructing something for the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:08, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There was a source online, and it might even be one of the ones in the article, but since so much time has passed I can't be sure what the source was. If you can't find it let me know. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I've looked at the sources in the article that I can find online, and searched in Google Scholar for "elaeagrifolia elaeagnifolia", and all I've found, so far anyway, is sources using elaeagnifolia with elaeagrifolia as a synonym/typographic variant. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm looking for it. Abductive  (reasoning) 09:32, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. IPNI is muddled, I've found. It agrees that the correction to "elaeagnifolia" is wrong for Pyrus elaeagrifolia, but not for Prunus elaeagnifolia which it says has the basionym Amygdalus "elaeagnifolia" although Amygdalus ealeagrifolia notes that the "n" is incorrect (albeit with currently a typo). I've pointed out to them the inconsistencies. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that was it, I seem to recall that phrase "The correction is unwarranted". Abductive  (reasoning) 09:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's the sentence He seems to have meant elaeagrifolia, "wild olive-leaved"; from elaea, "olive tree"; agrios, "wild". which isn't sourced that I'd like to either source or remove. IPNI doesn't say what the original derivation was, and none of my books on plant names do either. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, well, I read it at the time, I think in a resource on HathiTrust, but I can't find it now. So go ahead and change it, I'm always happy when someone works on my stubs. Abductive  (reasoning) 10:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll look for a bit longer, because I think the explanation is right, and important in the article as it supports the use of this spelling. I'd like to move it to the main text, but then it definitely should be sourced. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:26, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'll look some more too. Abductive  (reasoning) 06:30, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I found this scrap of text floating around, according to W. Greuter (pers. comm. via e-mail on 29 Apr 2011), this name was likely intentionally based on the Greek "elaeagros" meaning wild olive tree, not "elaeagnos", and thus the original spelling is not a correctible orthographic error which dates to 09-Mar-2017, before I created the article. Abductive  (reasoning) 10:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Excellent! There can hardly be anyone more expert on the ICNafp than Walter Greuter. Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:40, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Glad to be of assistance. Abductive  (reasoning) 10:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 November newsletter
The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is, who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were:


 * 1) with 5072 points
 * 2) with 3276 points
 * 3) with 3197 points
 * 4) with 1611 points
 * 5) with 1571 points
 * 6) with 1420 points
 * 7) with 1043 points
 * 8) with 528 points

All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.


 * wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5.
 * wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5.
 * wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5.
 * wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4.
 * wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5.
 * wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5.
 * wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall.
 * wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2022 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Shiba inu coin
Looking through the edit history you seem very intent on claiming shib to he a pump and dump and adding fraud to the line. This is completely untrue and unfounded accusations. I highly suggest you do a little more research into these kind if things before editing, shib is infact a defi ecosystem with upcoming layer 2 solutions, working exchange (dex), nft gaming, staking systems and is supported by a massive community of almost 1million holders. If you would like help locating valid sources fir this information let me know, for now I'll leave it to you to do the right thing. 49.195.146.38 (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Cap Haitien explosion
Thank you for providing the coordinates for the Cap Haitien explosion. Are you able to provide a source for the geolocation information? Regards. Pmallas (talk) 18:23, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: and. Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: and. Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for Trundle edit and an FYI
Hi -- thanks for the tidying up you did in this edit, but FYI I did revert the part of your edit that changed the sentence spacing. I'd set it to two spaces, which is a fairly common preference among Wikipedia editors, and I don't think it's something that should be changed without discussion. I hope you don't mind the revert, and I appreciate the other fixes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:46, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No worries.  Abductive  (reasoning) 15:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Fixes to moss genera reference
Citation bot (on your suggestion) is making a number of changes of this form, adding a date to a website on moss classification. The Website is periodically updated (lastly on March 31, 2020) so I don't understand why the 2014 date is being added. I think these changes should be reverted. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:15, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The date is drawn from the website, in the metadata. It seems the bot doesn't look at the modified date. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Perth, Scotland
Why the change to “edward”? Seasider53 (talk) 09:27, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Introduced an error while trying to fix a different error.... Abductive  (reasoning) 13:22, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Archive
Hi, never editor here. Can you teach me how I can find or make archived links as you did here? Bruxton (talk) 23:44, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter
And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were:


 * Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings.
 * 🇨🇽 AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds.
 * Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs.
 * GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs.
 * 🇺🇳 Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews.
 * Flag of Provo, Utah (1989–2015).svg SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways.
 * 🇺🇳 Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items.

These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. 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 WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

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 WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 May newsletter
The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:


 * 1) Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path.
 * 2) 🇨🇽 AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews.
 * 3) Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs.
 * 4) Transgender Pride flag.svg Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs.
 * 5) Vexilloid of the Roman Empire.svg Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews.
 * 6) Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources.
 * 7) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews.

The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). 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 your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

S. bideni
You beat me to it! The second I read the article in the NYT I was racing to see if someone had made a page for it yet. Good on you - looking forwarding to updating and expanding it in the future. Cheers Kazamzam (talk) 02:40, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Cool, feel free to make any changes you deem necessary, as I am not very familiar with the topic. Abductive  (reasoning) 04:22, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit to WP:PLANTS template
To expand on my edit comment, WP:NPOV means that we can't rely on one taxonomic database alone. Yes, PoWO is usually a good, up-to-date source, but there are situations where it shouldn't be used. For ferns, it does not accept the consensus of the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG), taking a very "lumping" approach to some fern taxa. We agreed to use World Ferns which does follow PPG I. As an example, see the opening paragraph of Blechnum. There are also cases where plants native to a region are treated differently by the standard regional floras; this applies to some Australian plant taxa, for example, and where there are differences, editors have sometimes preferred to follow Australian sources (while of course mentioning alternatives). Peter coxhead (talk) 07:05, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I have modified and shaded the guidance. Guidance is needed, this is a perennial problem. Abductive  (reasoning) 07:17, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree it can be a problem, but such changes to the template need discussion first at WT:PLANTS. PoWO is far from always right, even about spelling and authorities; I have quite a list of errors that I've informed them about. IPNI is supposed to be the definitive international authority on names, but it too has errors. It's important to cross-check with other reliable sources, such as Tropicos. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * All that can and should be put in the guidance. Read my lengthy discussion with User talk:John Cummings; he very much would like guidance on the WP:PLANTS documentation pages, and is thinking of adding it himself. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:36, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * My real problem in that discussion is What there is complete unanimity on is the following: Plants of the World Online is the only database used for the validity of the species, its family, authorities, synonyms, year of publication, and distribution. There certainly isn't complete unanimity on this. For example, ask Australian plant editors what they would do for an Australian plant if the Australian Plant Census disagrees with PoWO, or the name in the Australian Plant Name Index is spelt differently. (I'm not saying I always agree with them.) We should be advising editors to check a range of reliable taxonomic databases, and discuss and research further if there are significant differences. The list at WikiProject_Plants/Resources needs a bit of pruning/updating, I think, but it's what the project has offered to editors. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:49, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * All that can and should be placed front and center. There is call for guidance, and the Project has been remiss in failing to provide it. Abductive  (reasoning) 09:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Making articles "tidy"
I understand the issue with coordinates, but how does removing subheadings within a large infobox that group similar parameters together, as in this edit, make the article "tidy"? Alansohn (talk) 14:40, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I assume people copy-pasted those in from Template:Infobox settlement, where they serve as instructions. I'm pretty sure they're useless in an established article, but I don't mind them, I suppose. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:51, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

FAR for Belgrade
I have nominated Belgrade for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  04:34, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:46, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

"To Palace"
Re this edit to the Han dynasty article. I have no objection to what seems to be routinue formatting cleanups. However, an edit summary like "To palace" is essentially meaningless, and resulted in myself (and presumably many other page watchers) going through the entire edit (it is 'suspicious' by default, via the '-6000') to gather whether there was vandalism included or not... Would ask that you give more specific edit summaries when doing such cleanup. Best – Aza24 (talk) 02:28, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * - My question is, what were the previous coordinates pointing to? Doesn't it strike you as odd that a popular page like that one has essentially random coordinates in it? Abductive  (reasoning) 02:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't really work with coordinates on Wikipedia, so I'm not familiar with their intricacies and such. It looks like the old ones were pointing to Chang'an, maybe, but this would not be helpful either since this was one of two capitals the dynasty went through (technically one of three, but the empire barely existed by that time). Frankly, I doubt they are much help in such an article for the first place, especially if the new ones just indicate 'China'. Aza24 (talk) 02:38, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I see. Well, I usually mention "coordinates" and "tidy" in my edit summaries, this time I wanted to point out that the main palace still exists, so how could an FA have such shockingly bad coordinates? But I decided to not say all that. Abductive  (reasoning) 02:41, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * As another editor who spent a lot of time checking though what appeared to be a massive edit but turned out to be mostly imposing personal spacing preferences with a few minor fixes, I have to agree that this edit summary was particularly unhelpful. Kanguole 07:39, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * My bad. Abductive  (reasoning) 07:52, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The guys at WP:PLANTS are removing all spaces in the infoboxes?
At 's talk page, you said "The guys at WP:PLANTS are removing all spaces in the infoboxes". That's the first time I've heard about that. Who else is doing this?

I'm mostly concerned about consistency within an article. If different taxobox parameters are spaced differently, I standardize the spacing. Usually I space to the format that is already being used by the most parameters, and almost always the most-used format has spaces before and after the =. The presence of a space between the | and the parameter name is more varied, but I would estimate a space is present more often than not (either way, I usually stick with the format already used by the most parameters).

There are some taxoboxes with the each of the = justified to all appear in the same column (by inserting a varying number of space between the parameter name and the =). I find that these rarely have ALL of the parameters consistently justified, and frequently standardize the spacing in these a single space before the = (I'll do this even when the majority of parameters are using variable spacing).

I don't bother inserting spaces in taxoboxes where they have been consistently removed. However, I come across more taxoboxes with varied spacing/justified = than I do taxoboxes with no spaces whatsoever (since I make some effort to alter the justified ones, but not the unspaced ones, the ratio between the two is tipping towards unspaced over time). I am only aware of one other editor who actively removed spaces from taxoboxes, and they haven't been very active in a couple years.

When the contents of templates within articles are edited with Visual Editor, a consistent spacing scheme for the parameters is applied. The spacing scheme can be customized for each template. For taxoboxes, the spacing scheme applied by Visual Editor is "| image = " (space between pipe and parameter name, space before and after =). While the number of edits made to taxoboxes via Visual Editor is quite low, I don't see any reason to try and enforce a different spacing format than what Visual Editor would enforce. And I don't see any reason to change the format Visual Editor enforces when that is already consistent with the format in most taxon articles.

I monitor new pages on plant taxa, and you're one of about 5 editors whose contributions I don't even look at, because I trust you have everything right. While I don't think unspaced parameters are "wrong", they aren't standard. Plantdrew (talk) 01:48, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Seems like a lot of people are doing it. Like I said, I just started to do it after I noticed it being done on the regular. I think they think it looks tidier, and I don't disagree. Maybe it matters if one is using WP:HILITE or not. Abductive  (reasoning) 02:28, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I really appreciate the detailed response. There was one point that I didn't quite get though:, if an infobox tries to use variable spacing so that the parameter values are aligned but is inconsistent in it, do you mean that you'll remove the alignment and reduce to a single space on each side of the equals sign? – Uanfala (talk) 23:09, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * , yes, in that case I remove the alignment and reduce to a single space. It's an exception to my usual rule of "standardize on whatever parameter spacing format is already predominant". In my experience, when somebody adds new parameters (e.g. type_species, synonyms;) to an article with aligned parameters the new parameters usually don't get aligned; removing the alignment seems more likely to keep things consistent going forward (and I'm not sure that it's even possible to support aligned parameters in Visual Editor). Plantdrew (talk) 01:18, 11 May 2022 (UTC).
 * That's interesting. I find the aligned version to always be more readable in wikicode, and I thought that it was the de facto standard (at least for the other, non-taxonomic, infoboxes, like Template:Infobox settlement or Template:Infobox scientist). Now, if I have to manually type out a new infobox (rather than adapt one from an existing example), I wouldn't bother with justifying, but that's only because I'm too lazy to type all the spaces. My expectation was that someone may eventually come and do the alignment in an easy way, and I wouldn't expect the effort would ever be made in the opposite direction. Even when only some of the values are aligned, it's still, for me, more readable than when none are aligned. – Uanfala (talk) 10:34, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * , I agree that it is easier to read. The only discussions about aligned parameter values I have found are Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Infoboxes/Archive_17 and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Infoboxes/Archive_15; there is no consensus to align paremeters. Infobox settlement and infobox scientist achieve aligned parameters with Visual Editor by including enough spaces to account for the longest parameter name (well, Infobox settlement includes one more space than needed, and infobox scientist doesn't actually add enough spaces to align the very longest parameter name); that does make for a lot of extra spaces in infoboxes where none of the longer parameter names are used. There is a script for this; User:Majavah/Aligner. Plantdrew (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * If you look through my contribs you'll find a nice mix of spacing improvements much as User:Plantdrew describes. As far as Speciesbox goes, I attempt to follow the consensus. Abductive  (reasoning) 01:29, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

NYC Wiknic, June 26
Hold the date. Meetup/NYC Wiknic in Crotona Park, Sunday June 26.

Watch Meetup/NYC/Wiknic June 2022 for further details as they become available.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

June 22: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
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"Synthyris" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Synthyris and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 22 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 20:18, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Sun June 26: Bronx Wiki-Picnic
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--Wikimedia New York City Team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:42, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Citation bot
Hello there, I just wanted to inform you that the automatic cite web to cite magazine conversion from the Citation bot that you have implemented on several articles is currently under a discussion to reevaluate this bot's approach, and has generally been agreed to not be used among several editors, especially of those who frequently edit the articles where this bot's changes have been made at, and they have been reverted as such. Please feel free to read and contribute to the discussion on this here: User talk:Citation bot. Trailblazer101 (talk) 20:58, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 July newsletter
The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were:


 * ICS Zulu.svg BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects.
 * Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs.
 * Transgender Pride flag.svg Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations.

Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). 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 your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:50, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Thu July 14: Astoria Beer Garden Wiki-Picnic
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July 27: WikiWednesday Salon NYC (+Aug in-person for Wikimania)
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Fri/Sat/Sun Aug 12-14 with Saturday flagship Wiki World's Fair at Queens Museum
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I have unreviewed a page you curated
Hi, I'm Iztwoz. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed or created, Disa zombica, and have marked it as unreviewed. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Iztwoz (talk) 09:37, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry think it's OK now - seems to happen when a patrolled check is given. --Iztwoz (talk) 09:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Aug 24: WikiWednesday Salon NYC (+Sep annual meeting)
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WikiCup 2022 September newsletter
The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st!

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

"C-diff" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect C-diff and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 14 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Sep 28: Wikimedia NYC Annual Election/Members Meeting (+October 2 picnic)
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Sun Oct 2: WikiNYC Post-Election Wiki-Picnic
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A Dobos torte for you!

 * Thanks! Abductive  (reasoning) 19:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

AFD
Hi, I'd like to ask if you can take part in Articles for deletion/Verdis (2nd nomination) as you're an active part of WikiProject Micronations, same as me. MicroSupporter (talk) 19:57, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Sat Oct 29: Wikidata Day in NYC
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Shields
? Abductive  (reasoning) 16:36, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * No problem. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:36, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Reference formatting script
Hi, did you use a script to format the citations in this edit? If you did could you send me a link for it please, I've been looking for a script like this for a while. Mesidast (talk) 19:18, 20 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link to the script. I've made my own copy here which can now handle hyphenated citation parameters so feel free to use it if you don't want to do those ones manually now. Mesidast (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Awesome, I'll check it out! Abductive  (reasoning) 20:03, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately haven't got the syntax highlighter issued sorted yet but I'll look into it when I can. Mesidast (talk) 20:05, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Sat Nov 12: WikiConference North America in NYC
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WikiCup 2022 November newsletter
The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is
 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by
 * Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was
 * ICS Zulu.svg BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by
 * Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were
 * Transgender Pride flag.svg Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations,
 * 🇺🇳 Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was
 * PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and
 * Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians.

During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field.


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round.
 * 🇺🇳 Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2.
 * Pirate Flag of Jack Rackham.svg Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition.
 * Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4.
 * Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1.
 * Flag of Provo, Utah (1989–2015).svg SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1.
 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5.
 * Transgender Pride flag.svg Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall.
 * Transgender Pride flag.svg Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall.
 * Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Question on extra spaces
Hey, Abductive, I was reading a comment on someone else's talk page (this was back in May) where you wrote "The guys at WP:PLANTS are removing all spaces in the infoboxes." Say it isn't so. I have horrible astigmatism and when I am the primary editor of an article, I do have equal signs aligned so I can work. I will muddle along in articles that do not have this. It's a preference, but for me, not just one based on a compulsive need, if that makes sense. Can you direct me to where "the guys" at the plants project say they are doing this and maybe where they give an explanation? I'd like to not go in cold and just leave a comment on the talk page. Thanks in advance for your time. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 12:57, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, what I was referring to is an observation that new plant articles tend to either have infobox spacing looser, like Shorea patoiensis or tighter, like Schoenus inconspicuus. I basically never see spacing lined up vertically like Sunshine (Australian TV series) in species articles. This is, I think, because  has so few fields that ever get used. (Quite a few new plant articles aren't even consistent, with extra spaces and no spaces in the same infobox.) Also, people who use syntax highlighting (the blue pen at the top of the editing window) can see the infobox text better. In any case, editors tend to defer to the spacing or lack thereof already present in the article—I was talking about a trend I perceived towards tighter spacing in newly created articles.  Abductive  (reasoning) 15:12, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. I'll rest easy. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 15:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I may be the strange one, but mine are pretty, just like clean code. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 15:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Have you seen the habit at WP:WikiProject Disaster management of cramming the entire infobox with no spaces and no carriage returns, as in 2018 collapse of the rue d'Aubagne? Abductive  (reasoning) 15:25, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * OMG. WHY? I'll stay away from project! – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 15:30, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Have you seen the topic I raised on the talk page of the plants project about someone being trigger-happy with the notability template in a few of the quite notable flora articles? Guess I didn't tag you. Head on over there a minute and put in your 2 cents, if you wish. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 15:35, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to 2022 Istanbul bombing, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use your sandbox for that. Thank you. AgisdeSparte (talk) 10:39, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Nov 30: WikiWednesday Salon in Brooklyn + online
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Rhodes
Hi. This change at Rhodes broke the table in the "Towns and villages" section. Could you explain what you meant to do? Kind regards, Robby.is.on (talk) 19:50, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * , I'm not sure how that happened. My usual attempt to tidy the refs somehow led to adding a space in the wikitable that broke it, and then I failed to notice to results. Thank you for fixing it, and I'll use preview going forward. Abductive  (reasoning) 20:54, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah. You're welcome. Yes, I've made so many mistakes myself that I rarely skip "preview" these days. ;-) Happy editing, Robby.is.on (talk) 21:33, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

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Please be more careful with Citation bot
I've reverted this edit, which is actually the second time someone has used Citation bot to make that change to that article. The |series addition is largely duplicative and badly formatted, and it's problematic when people keep adding ISBNs to works without verifying pagination. I used an online copy of the old 1910s original, and unless you can be sure that pagination is going to be the same in the modern reprint edition that ISBN goes to, that edit could well screw up the pagination, which would constitute introducing verifiability issues to a featured article. Hog Farm Talk 17:57, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Abductive!


Happy New Year! Abductive, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

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Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: and. Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Abductive!


Happy New Year! Abductive, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

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Citation bot rebooted in the middle of your run
AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No prob. Abductive  (reasoning) 06:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2023 March newsletter
So ends the first round of the 2023 WikiCup. Everyone with a positive score moved on to Round 2, with 54 contestants qualifying. The top scorers in Round 1 were:


 * Unlimitedlead with 1205 points, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with two featured articles on historical figures and several featured article candidate reviews.
 * Epicgenius was in second place with 789 points; a seasoned WikiCup competitor he specialises in buildings and locations in New York.
 * 🇩🇪 FrB.TG was in third place with 625 points, garnered from a featured article on a filmmaker which qualified for an impressive number of bonus points.
 * 🇺🇸 TheJoebro64, another WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points gained from two featured articles on video games.
 * Iazyges was in fifth place with 532 points, from two featured articles on classical history.

The top sixteen contestants at the end of Round 1 had all scored over 300 points; these included LunaEatsTuna,  Thebiguglyalien,  Sammi Brie,  Trainsandotherthings,  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski, 🇮🇩 Juxlos,  Unexpectedlydian,  SounderBruce, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Kosack,  BennyOnTheLoose and  PCN02WPS. It was a high-scoring start to the competition.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. The first round finished on February 26. Remember that any content promoted after that date but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. 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 WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! 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 WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Edit warring
Your recent editing history at Blair Peach shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

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WikiCup 2023 May newsletter
The second round of the 2023 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to have scored 60 points to advance into round 3. Our top five scorers in round 2 all included a featured article among their submissions and each scored over 500 points. They were:


 * Iazyges (1040) with three FAs on Byzantine emperors, and lots of bonus points.
 * Unlimitedlead (847), with three FAs on ancient history, one GA and nine reviews.
 * Epicgenius (636), a WikiCup veteran, with one FA on the New Amsterdam Theatre, four GAs and eleven DYKs
 * BennyOnTheLoose (553), a seasoned competitor, with one FA on snooker, six GAs and seven reviews.
 * 🇩🇪 FrB.TG (525), with one FA, a Lady Gaga song and a mass of bonus points.

Other notable performances were put in by Sammi Brie,  Thebiguglyalien,  MyCatIsAChonk,  PCN02WPS, and  AirshipJungleman29.

So far contestants have achieved thirteen featured articles between them, one being a joint effort, and forty-nine good articles. The judges are pleased with the thorough reviews that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). 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 your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:14, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! - Abductive  (reasoning) 10:13, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Curiouser and curiouser
I was looking at what links to the page I just published, Penstemon caespitosus and found your sandbox. Other than all being plants what's the link between them? MtBotany (talk) 01:56, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Those are all garden plants listed at https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plantfinder/plantfindersearch.aspx that were redlinks. Abductive  (reasoning) 01:59, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ahhh! Thanks for the explanation, it would have left me wondering otherwise. Glad I turned one more of your links blue and followed it here, I like your work. MtBotany (talk) 02:03, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, keep whittling away at it! I keep meaning to turn more of those blue myself... Some are synonyms, but the whole list needs to be blue someday. Abductive  (reasoning) 02:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * My personal K2 is to get every last plant native to or naturalized in Colorado in Wikipedia at "C" or better status. I'm using Ackerfield's Flora of Colorado as my starting list and checking it by POWO. I'm learning so darn much. And if I survive long enough I might see it done, it's only 2600 or so species. :) MtBotany (talk) 02:16, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Foxley, Herefordshire
Hi. Could you explain why you added links to the web archive on multiple ref-links in Foxley, Herefordshire? The links work without the additions, and these added links don't resolve to the archive and receive a Google warning block of "This site can’t provide a secure connection". An explanation would be useful. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 08:50, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I do that on nearly every article I edit. Feel free to revert as I have just done. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Tidy citation script
Hi Abductive, firstly wanted to thank you for using the script but secondly I remember us talking about it previously and you preferred it not making an edit summary, marking as minor, etc so I've added a new section, customisation, on the documentation page with a guide on how to disable those features if you want. Might make it handier to use for you.

Anything you think should be added or changed let me know, thanks. –  Mesi dast   (talk) 09:07, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll take a look. Abductive  (reasoning) 09:33, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2023 July newsletter
The third round of the 2023 WikiCup has come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 175 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:


 * Thebiguglyalien, with 919 points from a featured article on Frances Cleveland as well as five good articles and many reviews,
 * Unlimitedlead, with 862 points from a high-scoring featured articles on Henry II of England and numerous reviews,
 * Iazyges, with 560 points from a high-scoring featured article on Tiberius III.

Contestants achieved 11 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 47 good articles, 72 featured or good article reviews, over 100 DYKs and 40 ITN appearances. As always, any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). 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 your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

On the date of the Permian-Triassic transition
Is there any consensus for removing the three digits off the date of the end Permian-beginning Triassic? As I noted on Featured article candidates/Horizon Guyot/archive1, this transition is known with more precision than other era transitions b/c the Permian-Triassic mass extinction has been dated to a high precision. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I only removed two digits (unless I slipped up). The 0.002 million years is 2000 years, which means somebody is either joking, or adding the 2000 years since the year 0 of the common era to convert between mya and millions of years BC. This is .0008% of 251,902,000. Additionally, there is ± 0.024 mya uncertainly figure associated with whatever source the nonsense figure is coming from. Many places on Wikipedia use the circa template or say "approximately", then say 951.902 mya. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction itself article says "The extinction occurred between 251.941 ± 0.037 and 251.880 ± 0.031 million years ago". Finally, even if the 251.902 ± 0.024 mya figure is mentioned in some articles, that does not mean that these Guyots started or stopped erupting exactly then, unless sources say that the Permian-Triassic mass extinction triggered the eruptions. Abductive  (reasoning) 20:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's this source, I guess the 2000 years figure is merely the median value and thus always comes with a margin of error. Even your figures are medians down to a millennium. They aren't the dates of the guyots; merely the definitions of the words "Mesozoic" or "Triassic". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 21:19, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Aquilaria filaria
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Aquilaria filaria, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows: Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/43&editintro=User:Qwerfjkl/boteditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:Qwerfjkl&preloadtitle=Qwerfjkl%20(bot)%20–%20Abductive&section=new&preloadparams%5b%5d=&preloadparams%5b%5d=1165911686 report it to my operator]. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 06:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aquilaria_filaria&action=edit&minor=minor&summary=Fixing+reference+error+raised+by+%5B%5BUser%3AQwerfjkl%20(bot)%7CQwerfjkl%20(bot)%5D%5D Fix] | [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&preload=User:Qwerfjkl%20(bot)/helpform&preloadtitle=Referencing%20errors%20on%20%5B%5BSpecial%3ADiff%2F1165911686%7CAquilaria%20filaria%5D%5D Ask for help])

How do you do that?
I've seen quite a few people add archives to citations using IABot, but I can't seem to figure out how or where people do that. Could you possibly provide me a link explaining how to get it and use it? Thanks Panamitsu (talk) 06:01, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Derna
Hi..The storm struck Libya on Sunday 9/10, but the dams collapsed about 2.15 am 9/11. Unfortunately, I found no reliable English-language source about this information! Maher27777 (talk) 07:43, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Whitespace in bullet lst
Can you please avoid removing the whitespace between the asterisk and the text in bullet lists as you did here? Apart from being completely pointless, it is unhelpful because it makes the source code harder to read, and more dissimilar from the rendered text. There is probably a reason why all code examples at MOS:INDENTMIX include a whitespace after the '*'. I also notice that further down, you actually added whitespace to Cite Web templates, presumably to improve readibility, which I agree is a good idea, so why not apply the same principle to bullet lists as well? Regards --Deeday-UK (talk) 17:52, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, to me it makes it easier to read, and many pages have a mix of spaces and no-spaces before the asterisks, but sure, I can leave the spaces. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:57, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Not going to primary sources, such as tweets, for reactions
Hi there! I saw your post talking about not using primary sources for reactions from world leaders. I would be interested in your reasoning! Thinking it might be either not looking for a personal reaction, but a national one, or perhaps that tweets might later be deleted. I'm always up to learn a thing or two! 2600:4041:43C4:ED00:8966:1BFB:C7FA:6892 (talk) 17:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * If a tweet is a mundane expression of condolences, it is not encyclopedic. Sure, if a politician's tweet says something impactful, it could be referenced, but then one expects analysis and commentary by secondary sources—and it is those sources that should be used. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:00, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Useless "semantic scholar" IDs
Citation bot's edit summary in special:diff/1181044214 claims that you "suggested" this edit. The only thing there is the addition of a Semantic Scholar link which is pure spam: its only content is a link to the publisher site which was already linked from the page. Can you please not "suggest" such additions in the future? Frankly Citation Bot should stop spamming Semantic Scholar links in general; at least 90% of them are worthless. –jacobolus (t) 15:10, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand that these changes that bot makes are not appreciated by some users. However I have no way to know in advance which article in a batch will be changed by the bot in any particular way. This is something best brought up on the bot's talk page. One could request that if the only change that it finds is the addition of one of those links, the bot could be programmed to not make the change. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:56, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * So when it says "suggested by Abductive" what does that mean then, if you didn't make the suggestion? –jacobolus (t) 17:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Citation bot has a batch option in which a user can request thousands of articles at a time. At present I and many other users are making such requests. Citation bot is looking at perhaps 10,000 articles a day and finding something to change about 3000 times a day. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * What's the purpose of that? The human is not meaningfully involved in the process. It sounds like some kind of bureaucratic workaround to evade existing policy rules or something. In my opinion if humans' names are going to be attached they should take responsibility for the edits. –jacobolus (t) 17:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The bot operators are pretty responsive on the bot's talk page. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand why you should attach your name to thousands of bot edits which you had nothing personally to do with. What's the point of that? –jacobolus (t) 18:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Outside of my control. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:21, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * It's clearly not out of your control that you are "suggesting" these X,000 edits per day or whatever, and attaching your name to them. I just don't understand why you are doing that, if they otherwise have nothing to do with you. –jacobolus (t) 18:24, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I am requesting the bot to do what it does in order to improve Wikipedia. The bot is automatic and so far has done 4,478,902 edits. Any concerns about the bot's behavior are best brought up on the bot's talk page, so that a bot-wide correction can be made should consensus be reached there. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:36, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I just don't understand why human editors are "requesting" this of the bot, if the request has no practical effect on the outcome. Why does the bot need your request? What's the point of attaching your name to these edits? –jacobolus (t) 18:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * These are questions best asked on the bot's talk page. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The bot page says "Can run in a continuous mode that automatically revisits articles, but currently used on specific articles whenever requested by a user." And the discussion on the linked usage page seems to describe invocation on specific pages. But what you are talking about here is not you making a request about a specific page, but rather you signing off on the bot making thousands of edits, which is not from what I can tell discussed anywhere on the bot's page. Is there some place where you were granted the authority to activate the bot in such an indiscriminate way / where this style of "request" is described? Shouldn't you, as the "requester", be willing to take responsibility for the bot's actions? If not, why are you signing your name on the edits? I still don't get it. –jacobolus (t) 00:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand what you are saying. I believe that the present situation accrued as a result of the early history of the development of the bot, and if you ask on the bot's talk page, it may be possible to effect a change. Abductive  (reasoning) 03:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. I'm not trying to give you a hard time here. I'm just honestly kind of confused. I'll stop spamming your talking page now though. :-) –jacobolus (t) 04:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

About 1,400,000 bytes additional on Sandbox
Sorry, but I have to revert your edit because it's too laggy. But can I ask you a question pls, how long does it take you to make this? ☀DefenderTienMinh⛤☯☽ ( talk ) 05:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
 * How long to appear once I hit 'Submit'? Or how long to make the spreadsheet? It took maybe 30 seconds to show in the Sandbox. It took me about 40 minutes to build the spreadsheet including collecting the datasets. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:08, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
 * You're truly a master. But one thing is, can I copy these contents then paste it to my subpage? ☀DefenderTienMinh⛤☯☽  ( talk ) 05:13, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
 * If your computer can handle it, sure, I mean, it's in the history. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect use of Citation bot
When you run Citation bot, please ensure you clean up after it and report the errors. This change made the article strictly worse, with a similar made for this page. Izno (talk) 08:13, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * That's quite unusual. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:03, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 November newsletter
The WikiCup is a marathon rather than a sprint and all those reaching the final round have been involved in the competition for the last ten months, improving Wikipedia vastly during the process. After all this hard work, BeanieFan11 has emerged as the 2023 winner and the WikiCup Champion. The finalists this year were:-


 * BeanieFan11 with 2582 points
 * Thebiguglyalien with 1615 points
 * Epicgenius with 1518 points
 * MyCatIsAChonk with 1012 points
 * BennyOnTheLoose with 974 points
 * AirshipJungleman29 with 673 points
 * Sammi Brie with 520 points
 * Unlimitedlead with 5 points

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the competition, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days.


 * Unlimitedlead wins the featured article prize, for 7 FAs in total including 3 in round 2.
 * MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in total.
 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Lee Vilenski wins the featured topic prize, for a 6-article featured topic in round 4.
 * MyCatIsAChonk wins the featured picture prize, for 6 FPs in total.
 * BeanieFan11 wins the good article prize, for 75 GAs in total, including 61 in the final round.
 * Epicgenius wins the good topic prize, for a 41-article good topic in the final round.
 * LunaEatsTuna wins the GA reviewer prize, for 70 GA reviews in round 1.
 * MyCatIsAChonk wins the FA reviewer prize, for 66 FA reviews in the final round.
 * Epicgenius wins the DYK prize, for 49 did you know articles in total.
 * 🇺🇦 Muboshgu wins the ITN prize, for 46 in the news articles in total.

The WikiCup has run every year since 2007. With the 2023 contest now concluded, I will be standing down as a judge due to real life commitments, so I hope that another editor will take over running the competition. Please get in touch if you are interested. Next year's competition will hopefully begin on 1 January 2024. You are invited to sign up to participate in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors. It only remains to congratulate our worthy winners once again and thank all participants for their involvement! (If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.) Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:51, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Loro Parque
Abductive - I've noticed that you've contributed to the Loro Parque article and I was hoping you could review some suggested additions that I've added to the article's talk page. As I mention, I'm connected to the subject so wanted to have the changes properly reviewed and made on my behalf. Thanks, Fitzroy7182 — Preceding undated comment added 15:00, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

German prune wipe-out
Hi Ab, Thanks for your remarks on the Plum pox Talk page. The article also looks promising as a possible source for the Prune plum article. Frans Fowler (talk) 02:55, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, glad to be of help. Abductive  (reasoning) 02:58, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect use of Citation bot (2)
Please review the edits you make with Citation bot and fix any errors it introduces into articles. On five occasions I have noticed in Citation bot's recent contributions, where it has introduced the "periodical ignored" template error by incorrectly changing the citation template type, you have been the editor to have asked it to edit the article, and in none of the five cases did you fix it afterwards.The diffs are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The very first sentence of User:Citation bot says Ideally, Citation bot would not create errors when run on an article, but in any case it's the responsibility of editors using the tool to review its work. Folly Mox (talk) 21:58, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I haven't seen these sorts of errors before now, perhaps there is a new systemic problem. Abductive  (reasoning) 22:10, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This edit looks like a Citation bot error. It changed a citation to a web page to cite book. This edit also did the same, even though a web page was the intended citation target. I recommend filing a bug. As for the others, changes to the Citation Style 1 modules have resulted in the display of formerly hidden error messages. The errors were always present, and gnomes have been fixing them, but they now show for all editors. Please check your Citation Bot edits for red error messages in preview before saving, or on the rendered page after saving, and tidy up as needed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:17, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I did report the bug. Abductive  (reasoning) 23:21, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message
 Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Best check...
Hi Abductive: It's always best to check the previous edit(s) of an article if they've been made by an IP before adding yours. Here, you basically "okayed" a vandalism edit by an IP, which thus went undetected until today. This was the vandal's edit, right before yours... MeegsC (talk) 14:17, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:54, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

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Samuel Sparshott
Hi Abductive, and best wishes of the season to you.

I've been trying to sort out a bit of a muddle with the sources in the above article. There was originally nothing wrong at all with the sources themselves, except that a lot of them needed the parameter "|url-access=subscription", which I have now added. However, before I could do that, I had to remove quite a lot of archive urls which you had added - I think in error?

Those archive urls were useless because in each case anyone who did not have a subscription to the website still could not access the source, and they still had to subscribe. You did also add an archive for the url of one other site, which was already publicly available, and was not a deadlink, and your new archive url lost the picture, which was the most important reason for that source. I am normally happy with your edits on articles which are on my watchlist - I'm not sure what happened this time. Maybe it was my fault by not originally marking the references "subscription only"? Anyway, all the best. Storye book (talk) 13:08, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * A lot of people dislike the archive urls added by Iabot, and it seems that Citation bot disliked those particular ones as well. I have put the bots=deny template in the article. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:57, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Much appreciated. Storye book (talk) 17:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Re: Cote, West Sussex (diff). Please would you kindly explain this edit to me? I can understand that an archived url can be of use in WP if it's an old article, and you are rescuing a url which has moved or has been lost. But what use is it when the bot's newly-added archive url just leads to the front page of a subscription website, just like the original url still does, for non-subscrtibers? For those of us with a subscription, the original url still leads to the citation as required. But the bot's new citation helps nobody - neither the subscribers nor the non-subscribers, I use subscription sites for citations all the time. Would it help if I went through all "my" created articles and added a bot=deny template to all of them? I'm not sure how all this works. Storye book (talk) 09:21, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's an interesting question. When you last edited the Cote, West Sussex article, there were a number of archived sources that led to a subscription paywall, which as you say, is sub-optimal. When I set IABot to work on the article, it inserted a number of links to web.archive.org which showed the websites being archived within a web.archive.org header, leaving the main links as it found them. With the existing links to a subscription site, it appears to have added an archive link that also leads to the subscription site. I believe that even if the archived webstite dies, these archived pages will still be available to Wikipedia readers. I suspect that this is the desired behavior of IABot, should we go to the bot's talk page and make further inquiries? Abductive  (reasoning) 11:03, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * And, when I set Citation bot to work on the article just now, it removed nearly all archive links to the subscription-only britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk. Abductive  (reasoning) 11:14, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that. Hopefully, it will now be less confusing for the reader. Storye book (talk) 17:22, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2024 WikiCup!
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2024 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close on 31 January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are:, , and. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Pilgrims' Cross, Holcombe Moor
I have just entered the above article for DYK, where it will probably attract citation bots, as my previous few DYK entries did. As you know, that was a nightmare, because I use mostly subscription-only sources, such as the British Newspaper Archive (BNA). And as you have also seen, the problem with that is that the citation archive bot can only provide paywall urls which may be useful to US readers (who knows?), but the bot's paywall locks out people like me, who have paid subscriptions. The same for British local library paywalls, to which British library ticket holders have free entry, using their library ticket number - and the bot locks us out of that as well (that source includes Who's Who, The Times, etc.).

So - what I'm asking here, is: is there any way that we can put a template on that kind of article (or those kinds of citations) which will keep the bot away? Or alternatively - is there any way of adding a request to articles like mine, requesting bot-controllers to individually check out each of the bot's new archive url's to make sure that they are not paywalls which are useless to Brits who need to curate those articles by making sure that they remain true to the sources?

Sorry to bother you with this, but the problem has been taking me ages to sort out each time, and I guess it must be a bother to you, as well. Thank you for your patience with all this, and for your hard work sorting it all out previously. Storye book (talk) 17:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure, its, I put it in the article for you.  Abductive  (reasoning) 20:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much indeed. I shall add the template to one or two of "my" other articles. Storye book (talk) 10:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

FAR for Galaxy
I have nominated Galaxy for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Greenish Pickle!  (🔔) 12:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

CS1 error on List of sequenced animal genomes
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of sequenced animal genomes, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows: Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:Qwerfjkl/Botpreload&editintro=User:Qwerfjkl/boteditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:Qwerfjkl&preloadtitle=Qwerfjkl%20(bot)%20–%20Abductive&section=new&preloadparams%5b%5d=&preloadparams%5b%5d=1205106655 report it to my operator]. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 22:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_sequenced_animal_genomes&action=edit&minor=minor&summary=Fixing+reference+error+raised+by+%5B%5BUser%3AQwerfjkl%20(bot)%7CQwerfjkl%20(bot)%5D%5D Fix] | [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&preload=User:Qwerfjkl%20(bot)/helpform&preloadtitle=Referencing%20errors%20on%20%5B%5BSpecial%3ADiff%2F1205106655%7CList%20of%20sequenced%20animal%20genomes%5D%5D Ask for help])

WikiCup 2024 February newsletter
The 2024 WikiCup is off to a flying start, with 135 participants. This is the largest number of participants we have seen since 2017.

Our current leader is newcomer, who has one FA on John Littlejohn (preacher) and 10 GAs and 12 DYKs mostly on New Zealand coinage and Inuit figures. Here are some more noteworthy scorers:


 * , with one FA on Hö'elün, two GAs on Mongolia-related articles, and two DYKs;
 * , with one FA on Doom (2016 video game), one GA on Boundary Fire (2017), and 11 reviews;
 * , with one FA on Holidays (Meghan Trainor song), a nine-article FT on 30 (album), and two DYKs;
 * , with one FA on OneShot and one DYK;
 * , with five GAs and five DYKs on television and radio stations;
 * and, both with one FA and one DYK each.

As a reminder, competitors may submit work for the first round until 23:59 (UTC) on 27 February, and the second round starts 1 March. Remember that only the top 64 scoring competitors will make it through to the second round; currently, competitors need at least 15 points to progress. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. However, please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs which could otherwise be caused by the Cup. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (,, and ) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Briarcliff Manor Fire Department
This was ten years ago, but you raised questions at Talk:Briarcliff Manor Fire Department/GA1 about whether the GA review was done properly, and whether the article is adequately supported by secondary sources. That article is now under GA reassessment: give your input at Good article reassessment/Briarcliff Manor Fire Department/1 if you still have interest. Apocheir (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thanks! Abductive  (reasoning) 01:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 March newsletter
The first round of the 2024 WikiCup ended at 23:59 (UTC) on 27 February. Everyone with at least 30 points moved on to Round 2, the highest number of points required to advance to the second round since 2014. Due to a six-way tie for the 64th-place spot, 67 contestants have qualified for Round 2.

The following scorers in Round 1 all scored more than 300 points:


 * , who has 916 points mostly from one FA on John Littlejohn (preacher), 15 GAs, and 16 DYKs on a variety of topics including New Zealand coinage and Inuit figures, in addition to seven reviews
 * , who has 790 points from two FAs on Felix M. Warburg House and Doom (2016 video game), two GAs, one DYK, and 11 reviews
 * , who has 580 points from one FA on Hö'elün, two GAs on Mongolia-related articles, two DYKs, and five reviews
 * , who has 420 points mostly from nine GAs and seven DYKs on television and radio stations
 * , who has 351 points from one FA on Holidays (Meghan Trainor song), a nine-article FT on 30 (album), and three DYKs
 * , who has 345 points from one FA on OneShot, one DYK and two reviews

In this newsletter, the judges would like to pay a special tribute to, who unfortunately passed away this February. At the time of his death, he was the second-highest-scoring competitor. Outside the WikiCup, he had eight other featured articles, five A-class articles, eight other good articles, and two Four Awards. Vami also wrote an essay on completionism, a philosophy in which he deeply believed. If you can, please join us in honoring his memory by improving one of the articles on his to-do list.

Remember that any content promoted after 27 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. 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 WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Can't put Coord template at top, it messes up certain mobile viewers.
Greetings, is there some documentation of the issue anywhere? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * , I saw mention of somewhere, perhaps at the Village Pump, quite a while ago. It is the reason WP:ORDER says to put the Coord template below the Authority Control template (or in the infobox). I don't see any actual documentation, sorry. Abductive  (reasoning) 08:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Undisclosed payment template
Hello. I didn't receive any payment when I translated Kateryna Osadcha article few years ago, nor have I been asked by anyone to write it. I do not know the motivation of those who write and update the Ukrainian version of the article, and agree that some of the information that I translated, that since been deleted, might've been redundant but judging from a short revision history of this version of the article, I do not think that any actions that took place on English Wikipedia violated content policies. Tuirse (talk) 23:24, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

March 2024
Your recent editing history at Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you do not violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

Right now while the event is rapidly developing and you clearly lack consensus for this is not the time to be taking hasty actions like this. By the way I subscribe to the philosophy of do template the regulars. Jasper Deng (talk) 08:03, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, you were explicitly reverted the first time so, combined with your previous history of violations of this policy, yes this edit warring warning is justified.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Do not post any further on my talk page, or you risk a block for edit warring there, and do not attempt to use tu quoque arguments to sidestep your blatant policy violation here. That said, as long as you also don't do other edit warring and respect the consensus that is to be formed, I won't sweat it more.--Jasper Deng (talk) 08:21, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 April newsletter
We are approaching the end of the 2024 WikiCup's second round, with a little over two weeks remaining. Currently, contestants must score at least 105 points to progress to the third round.

Our current top scorers are as follows:


 * with 642 points, mostly from 11 GAs about radio and television;
 * with 530 points, mostly from two FAs (Well he would, wouldn't he? and Cora Agnes Benneson) and three GAs;
 * with 523 points, mostly from 11 GAs about coinage and history;
 * with 497 points, mostly from a FA about the 2020 season of the soccer club Seattle Sounders FC and two GAs;
 * with 410 points, mostly from a FA about the drink Capri-Sun and three GAs;
 * with 330 points, mostly from a FA about the English botanist Anna Blackburne and a GA.

Competitors may submit work for the second round until the end of 28 April, and the third round starts 1 May. Remember that only competitors with the top 32 scores will make it through to the third round. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, and you hope to get it promoted before the end of the round, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. Please remember to continue to offer reviews at GAN, FAC and all the other pages that require them to prevent any backlogs. As a reminder, competitors are strictly prohibited from gaming Wikipedia policies or processes to receive more points.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please read WikiCup/Scoring. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (,, and ) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 September newsletter
The fourth round of the competition has finished, with anyone scoring less than 673 points being eliminated. It was a high scoring round with all but one of the contestants who progressed to the final having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were


 * Epicgenius, with 2173 points topping the scores, gained mainly from a featured article, 38 good articles and 9 DYKs. He was followed by
 * Sammi Brie, with 1575 points, gained mainly from a featured article, 28 good articles and 50 good article reviews. Close behind was
 * Thebiguglyalien, with 1535 points mainly gained from a featured article, 15 good articles, 26 good article reviews and lots of bonus points.

Between them during round 4, contestants achieved 12 featured articles, 3 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 126 good articles, 46 DYK entries, 14 ITN entries, 67 featured article candidate reviews and 147 good article reviews. Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them and within 24 hours of the end of the final. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

I will be standing down as a judge after the end of the contest. I think the Cup encourages productive editors to improve their contributions to Wikipedia and I hope that someone else will step up to take over the running of the Cup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:04, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Calamophyton
Hi there Abductive.

I just wanted to confirm that you have accepted my partial reversion of your edit at the Calamophyton page. Normally I wouldn't bother, but because the article is headed to the main page in a day or two via the DYK project, it's important that any content disputes be resolved before it gets there.

Also, I should apologize for my overreaction to your edits - that was caused by anxiety over the pending DYK appearance.

With regard to the overquote tag, I still do not believe that is justified but haven't decided how to handle that yet - the options are to paraphrase Cr. Berry's quote, or ask for further opinions at WT:DYK. As an alternative, you are more than welcome to paraphrase Dr. Berry's comments yourself if you see fit. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 14:33, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Candy Mountain editing question regarding date formats
I noted you changed the date format in numerous references. Doesn't the global "Use xxx dates" control date format for entire article regardless of the explicit format in the citations, thus rendering your changes redundant? Just asking.Fb2002 (talk) 19:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. Those are instructions to editors and as far as I know do nothing to the display. See Template:Use dmy dates. Abductive  (reasoning) 19:05, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Citation templates automagically format dates according to . See Template:Use_dmy_dates/doc 76.14.122.5 (talk) 17:03, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 May newsletter
The second round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 April. This round was particularly competitive: each of the 32 contestants who advanced to Round 3 scored at least 141 points. This is the highest number of points required to advance to Round 3 since 2014.

The following scorers in Round 2 all scored more than 500 points:
 * with 707 points, mostly from 45 good article nomination reviews and 12 good articless about radio and television;
 * with 600 points, mostly from 12 good articles and 12 did you know nominations about coinage and history;
 * with 552 points, mostly from a featured article about the 2020 Seattle Sounders FC season, three featured lists, and two good articles;
 * with 548 points, mostly from a featured article about the snooker player John Pulman, two featured lists, and one good article;
 * with 530 points, mostly from two featured articles (Well he would, wouldn't he? and Cora Agnes Benneson) and three good articles.

The full scores for Round 2 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 18 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 186 good articles, 76 in the news credits and at least 200 did you know credits. They have conducted 165 featured article reviews, as well as 399 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 21 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 April but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed during Round 3, which starts on 1 May at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. 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 WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (,, and ) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:37, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:01, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Woe, thanks again! Abductive  (reasoning) 06:04, 4 May 2024 (UTC)