User talk:GeneralNotability/Archives/2019/December

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019). Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Beeblebrox
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Deskana

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Evad37

Guideline and policy news
 * An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
 * Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news
 * Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration
 * Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous
 * The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-49
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The  magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns   (empty string). When you read a page it returns   (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Kwame Kilpatrick
Hi. First occasion to use a Talk page before so I hope I am doing this correctly. Source for my edits on [|Kwame Kilpatrick] is the inmate locator at so the edits were correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C48:607F:E4FA:F11A:FDA6:979E:E28C (talk) 05:52, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-50
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:37, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Alina Mnatsakanian
Hi Creffett, Thanks for reviewing my page "Alina Mnatsakanian". I'm new to Wikipedia, but in my article I inserted references and the tone of the article is quite neutral, I think. I edited based on previous remarks to change the tone and to have more references. Do you have any suggestions to improve my page? Thanks, Alina — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alina Mnatsakanian (talk • contribs) 08:39, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , all I did was tag the article as being autobiographical (considering that you are the largest contributor to the article). I'm not making any judgment with regards to sourcing or tone. creffett (talk) 22:57, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the message
Thank you for the welcome message on my talk page. Could I ask you you to offer a third opinion on the matter another editor has raised on my talk page? I think that "19th century" seems idiomatic English, but this other editor has changed it to "19 century", arguing that we don't use "-th" in dates. Thank you for your time. --Chelmsford Correction (talk) 23:12, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , done. creffett (talk) 23:17, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Need to recover my post, since I do not have the back up
Hi,

pls provide me the content of my page that you delete, I do not have a backup. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VinHabbu (talk • contribs) 02:39, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , you'll need to talk to - they did the actual deletion, I only tagged it for attention. creffett (talk) 03:23, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Here you go: -  F ASTILY   04:03, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-51
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again.
 * Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem.

Changes later this week
 * You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  00:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

War in Afghanistan
Hi Creffett,

I recently edited the war in Afghanistan page in regards to the war crimes committed by NATO as one which was supposedly commited by Sgt Alexander Blackman has no longer been considered a war crime as he was released from prison and all charges against him were dropped03:18, 19 December 2019 (UTC)03:18, 19 December 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.30.85.249 (talk)
 * You removed a paragraph of sourced information with the explanation "fixed typo." If there is new information about the case, then you should add it and cite a reliable source, but you should not be deleting sourced information without a good reason (and using a misleading edit summary will make people think that you're vandalizing). creffpublic  a creffett franchise (talk to the boss) 14:12, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLXIV, December 2019
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here. If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:48, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

CSD criteria
I saw your comment on RHaworth's Arbcom case request. I've been thinking for a while about opening a RFC about the CSD criteria and how they are being applied. It sounds like you might think that's a more productive route than having Arbcom tackle it in the context of a case about RHaworth.

One thing I thought might be a good idea would be to pick several examples of articles that are borderline and bring them to the RFC for discussion, however I wouldn't want to step on anyone's toes by, in essence, accusing them of making too many mistakes. In your statement you say you "subscribe to a "looser" interpretation of G11 and can be a bit trigger-happy with that tag". I'm wondering if you would like to collaborate on such an RFC. Perhaps I could review your speedy work (both those you delete and those you decline) and you could review mine (again, both those I delete and those I decline) and look for instances where we would have come to opposite conclusions and use them as test cases for an RFC?

If we want to do this, it would probably be a good idea to wait until Arbcom does whatever they're going to do with RHaworth. Also, I'll be pretty busy until the end of January, so I probably won't have much time to devote to it until early February. At any rate, give it some thought and let me know. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 21:11, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , thanks for the message! I'd definitely be interested in collaborating on an RfC; whether or not it agrees with what I currently do, it at least would standardize things. I'm not an admin, though, so you'd just be reviewing what I tag, not what I delete :).
 * I mentioned it in one of my follow-up ArbCom statements, but to restate: when I talk about interpreting loosely, I'm thinking about intent. Things like "XYZCorp Marketing" creating a draft for non-notable XYZCorp, or "MC creffalot" creating a draft about himself and linking to his SoundCloud or YouTube channel. Even if they're not saying that XYZCorp is the best manufacturer or MC creffalot is an amazing singer, I feel that the intent is to promote/increase visibility. I've been suitably chastised for it on the ArbCom case page, but the fact that admins are deleting those pages after I tag them suggests that it's not just my misinterpretation.
 * Since you've mentioned three different criteria, here are my thoughts on each:
 * G4: Not one I use much; I suspect that part of the problem is that we non-admins can't see the old version of the page, so it's hard to be sure whether or not the new page is substantially similar. Might be useful to have a less aggressive way to request that an admin review a delete page.
 * A7: This is one that I have trouble with, I'm probably batting less than .500 with this. I think part of the problem is that notability is clearly and thoroughly defined throughout the encyclopedia, but "credible claim of significance," while clearly defined, is not so frequently encountered (heck, WP:CCS is an essay, not a vetted guideline, and I just discovered WP:CCSI as I was writing this), the way it interacts with existing notability guidelines isn't super clear, and CCS isn't used anywhere else on the wiki besides CSD A7/A9/A11. For example, I tagged an article about the mayor of a small town as A7 the other day and it was declined; being the mayor of a small town doesn't seem especially significant to me (and doesn't meet WP:NPOL), but apparently someone disagreed. If nothing else, perhaps it's time to expand WP:CCS and elevate it from essay to policy.
 * G11: Mentioned above, I think the root issue is how we interpret "promotional."
 * I'm in no rush and I agree that we should wait until the RHaworth case is done, so just let me know whenever you want to discuss this further. Cheers! creffett (talk) 01:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * G11: Mentioned above, I think the root issue is how we interpret "promotional."
 * I'm in no rush and I agree that we should wait until the RHaworth case is done, so just let me know whenever you want to discuss this further. Cheers! creffett (talk) 01:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm in no rush and I agree that we should wait until the RHaworth case is done, so just let me know whenever you want to discuss this further. Cheers! creffett (talk) 01:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Driveby comment from the arbitration request... I'm possibly the admin who declined your mayor -- I'm not sure Gorakhpur counts as a "small town" though; it's a city with a population of 673,446 (2011). A7-passing claims are explicitly set at a standard significantly lower than our notability guidelines.


 * I disagree with you on your G11 examples. Intent and COI are irrelevant; either the text is eye-searingly promotional or it isn't. The type of articles you note would probably go as A7 in a lot of cases, though. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:04, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , oh, hi. Hmm, I really thought it was a small town, I must have been thinking of something else...Anyway, part of the reason I lean so heavily on G11 is because I'm spotting a lot of these in draftspace, where A7 isn't permitted. As for intent and COI, I understand what you're saying and I mentioned in the ArbCom discussion that I'll stop tagging those. creffett (talk) 02:24, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi there -- I'm not a fan of using G11 in draftspace -- except on the type of writing that makes your eyes bleed -- as the whole point of the draft/Articles for Creation pricess is to allow this type of writing to be reviewed and improved, even though in practice that rarely happens. Anyhow, nice to meet you after actioning a fair number of your speedy tags over the years. Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 02:38, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

New uw-template needed
Hi Creffett, after stumbling upon your user page, I thought, yes there is a template I've been looking for but could never find, which is for inserting unsourced content in between a sourced fact and its reference. Vandals sometimes do this with the intention of making it look as if the added content is also cited, but more often I suspect that it is done unwittingly, thinking it is the best spot to include their original research. I would like to see a uw-template to this effect, unless I am missing something and it already exists somewhere. It could read something like this: "Hello, I'm Jimbo Wales. I noticed that you added content in an article, Article, in such a way that it looks like it comes from a reliable source when in reality it does not. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you." StonyBrook (talk) 09:22, 20 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi! Acknowledging that I've seen this, probably won't get a chance to work on it for the next couple of days, but I agree that it's useful and am definitely up for making it. creffett (talk) 03:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter December 2019


This year's Reviewer of the Year is. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
 * Reviewer of the Year

Special commendation again goes to who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to and  who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by.
 * Redirect autopatrol

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
 * Source Guide Discussion

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag. Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * This month's refresher course

Tech News: 2019-52
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.

Recent changes
 * All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes
 * You can use  in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  20:04, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays text.png Hello Creffett: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers,  D Big X ray ᗙ Happy Holidays!  18:25, 24 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message
 * , thank you! Happy holidays to you and yours! creffett (talk) 23:29, 24 December 2019 (UTC)