User talk:Sadads/Archive Feb-May 2015

Museum hacks and museum edits
 Hello there!

Upcoming events:


 * February 6–8: The third annual ArtBytes Hackathon at the Walters Art Museum! This year Wikimedia DC is partnering with the Walters for a hack-a-thon at the intersection of art and technology, and I would like to see Wikimedia well represented.
 * February 11: The monthly WikiSalon, same place as usual. RSVP on Meetup or just show up!
 * February 15: Wiki Loves Small Museums in Ocean City. Mary Mark Ockerbloom, with support from Wikimedia DC, will be leading a workshop at the Small Museum Association Conference on how they can contribute to Wikipedia. Tons of representatives from GLAM institutions will be present, and we are looking for volunteers. If you would like to help out, check out "Information for Volunteers".

I am also pleased to announce events for Wikimedia DC Black History Month with Howard University and NPR. Details on those events soon.

If you have any questions or have any requests, please email me at james.hare@undefinedwikimediadc.org.

See you there! – James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 03:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Elsevier Access
I was granted access to Elsevier a while ago, yet still have not received any account information after submitting the google form. I was going to ask Chris Troutman, but on a discussion on his page he said to go to you. What should I do? IJReid discuss 15:36, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hey I have your information in the Google Spreadsheet, Chris sent a batch just recently which should be activated soon (if not so already) and am sending an email to Elseveir to check on activation status for the last batch. We try to send information in batches to partners, and sometimes processing on their end takes a little while. I will let you know what develops, Sadads (talk) 17:28, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. IJReid  discuss 00:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You were in the batch of new accounts activated today/yesterday: you should be able to sign in. Sadads (talk) 15:56, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia DC celebrates Black History Month, and more!
 Hello again!

Not even a week ago I sent out a message talking about upcoming events in DC. Guess what? There are more events coming up in February.

First, as a reminder, there is a WikiSalon on February 11 (RSVP here or just show up) and Wiki Loves Small Museums at the Small Museum Association Conference on February 15 (more information here).

Now, I am very pleased to announce:


 * Tuesday, February 17 from 10 AM to 3 PM there will be #WikiTurgy at the University of Maryland. Join fellow theatre enthusiasts for a “mass act of public dramaturgy!”
 * Thursday, February 19 from 10 AM to 4 PM we are hosting the Howard University Black History Edit-a-Thon. We are working in partnership with the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of African-American and African diasporic history.
 * Tuesday, February 24 from 6 PM to 8 PM we have the Black History Month “First Edit” at NPR. Help improve Wikipedia and help others make their first edit to Wikipedia!
 * Finally, our monthly dinner meetup is on Saturday, February 28.

There is going to be a lot going on, and I hope you can come to some of the events!

If you have any questions or need any special accommodations, please let me know.

Regards,

James Hare

(To unsubscribe, remove your username here.) 18:20, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1
Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

'''Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.'''

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:
 * "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
 * "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
 * "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The Great Gatsby
Extend PC time? --George Ho (talk) 19:35, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Elsevier ScienceDirect results mostly out, but more to come
hi, sorry to bother you, but myself and a number of other wikimed editors have been on a "Pending" list for some time, I was wondering if there is anything new?, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:51, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Your Joyce edits
Hello Sadads; Its not that I have any difficulty with redlinks, though the ones I removed were taken out because of the length of time they were unaddressed and that the priority of quite of few issues in the article are elsewhere. If you want to add the cites for the redlinks then that is all ok. If not, then they tend to distract potential editors from more important edits needed in the article.

Same for Henry James which contained odd language in the lead section which was not covered in the main body of the article. Just what value is to be placed in the wording "possibly unreliable narrators" which you have restored in the lead section. "Possibly, maybe, perhaps"... in the lead section? If you could glance at this again. Cheers. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 17:09, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi through all my outreach experience, I have never seen large long articles, with problems motivate new users that were persistant enough to stick around (they tend to feel either overwhelmed by the feeling of "whether or not I should make that edit" or lost in the scale of the topic, when researching); on the other hand, most frequently new users write new articles, especially if there is an indication that no-one else has taken the energy to do so (i.e. a redlink). Read Red link for that policy: the nutshell clearly states "Do not remove red links unless you are certain that Wikipedia should not have an article on that subject." From my perspective, the scholars that were linked seem like clear candidates for articles, even if they might be stubby, because they are prominent Joyce scholars.
 * Moreover, length of time unaddressed is not a justification, remember WP:WIP. I have seen plenty of items sit untouched for as many as 3-4 years, to be filled in by brand new users. Most articles, only have one serious editor, in my experience, every 2-4 years anyway. I appreciate your desire for the page to feel more "neat", but that seems counter productive because it discourages new users to recognize the incompleteness of Wikipedia. I hope you have a great day and happy editing! Sadads (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * As for the Henry James edit: you removed a key critical concept, "unreliable narrator", from a lead section, while changing the meaning to "intricately crafted moral narratives". James is a model of early unreliable narration, and as far as I am aware of the scholarship, he is one of the trendsetters in American modern fiction for that move. I see nothing in the article that justifies moral narratives: two small quotes, but that is a very odd emphasis on the moral, when his novels also breach a number of other thematic moves. Sadads (talk) 17:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for getting back on this. As your comments are strongly felt, the only concern which I can express is that in the James article the material on 'unreliable narrator' does not receive adequate (glancing at best) attention in the main article which is normally required before it can be summarized and included in the lead section. I inserted the comment on 'moral narrative' because it is generally recognized in several essays by different authors in the Chelsea House anthology dealing with James. Cheers. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 17:46, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi sorry if that came off rather hard on the links, its just one of those pet peeves (something that grows out of being on the outreach end of the community, where I have some perspective on how micro-actions like removing redlinks compound other difficulties in recruiting new contributors).
 * As for the James concern: I agree neither of those stylistic features are well covered; it would be great to have someone go through the article and write a couple paragraphs on both themes and the unreliable narration. I am not well read in American fiction from that period, and don't usually have patience with the scholarship or the fiction :P I tried reading The Ambassadors, and its been sitting on my bedside table getting dust since about 9 months ago. I see it more in reference to James when reading about British works that follow soon after. If you have the anthology: it would be great to summarize a paragraph or two on the Moral realism/moral novel issue. If you need sources, I have access to an academic library, so can get you anything you want (we have very good interlibrary loan). Just send me a link here, or an email.
 * That sentence we are talking about, however, is focused on stylistic traits: so unless you can make a case for this being a "genre" thing, rather than a theme of "morals", it should probably be in a second sentence. Most readers, and English majors, seriously muddle themes, style and other literary traits: its probably best not to unintentionally associate them in the same sentence, just as a humanist communications issue. Hope that helps, Sadads (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * In answer to your kind comment, I do not currently have one of the James anthologies on my shelf. There are three excellent anthologies of essays collected about James that I recall. These are The Cambridge Companion to Henry James (Cambridge Companions to Literature) Paperback, May 28, 1998 edited by Jonathan Freedman; the second one comes in two volumes edited by James's biographer Leon Edel from Prentice Hall; and the third one on Henry James is from Chelsea House edited by Harold Bloom. Any one of these anthologies contain a sufficient number of essays by different scholars to offer an adequate composite of scholarly opinion rather than just one selectively chosen opinion as in the current version of the article. If any one of these exists in your library then you might be able to significantly move the article on James forward. Cheers. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 02:20, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi sorry if that wasn't clear, writing quickly: I was recommending you do the summarizing :P I have a lot of other focuses right now (two jobs, and am trying to get back into Wikipedia editing with Draft:Nautical fiction), and don't have much interest in reading that scholarship or the books for that matter :{ That being said, we are all busy and Wikipedia is a WP:WIP; there are so many times when I find work here, and think "I could write that if....": its why I went into community outreach:  I realized that I couldn't possibly effect the change and impact I would like, without more people with similar skills and access to resources as me. Please let me know if I can provide feedback/resource support on that article, or any other project you work on. Happy editing! Sadads (talk) 02:29, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CVII, February 2015
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) 22:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Newspapers.com
Have the subscriptions ended? My access seems to have been removed for some reason. Connormah (talk) 17:32, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the great question: I recently handed off coordination and support for the donation to who can look into it. It would help if we had a little more information:Did this problem start happening recently? Have you been able to get access previously? Are you still able to log in, but not able to access the paywalled parts? Thanks for the further bits of information and we can followup on this! Sadads (talk) 04:23, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Just started the day I posted the above message. Could access up to the day before - my account seems to have been relegated to a "free account". Connormah (talk) 03:36, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm following up with our contact person at Newspapers.com and hope to have a solution for you soon. HazelAB (talk) 20:40, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Infobox Woes
I am a new Wikipedian, working with the Oklahoma State Library, and I was wondering if you could help me out with a page I am working on currently. In my sandbox, I am constructing a page on Betty Boyd (Oklahoma Legislator) and I am having some difficulty making the "infobox." Is there a template that I can use? I have attempted to copy and paste other infobox templates from other pages to see if I could work with it that way, but the information does not show up correctly when I press preview. Let me know if this is something with which you would be willing to help me. Amcdougal (talk) 15:06, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Amcdougal: great question. I would suggest using Template:Infobox State Senator or Template:Infobox state representative. The documentation for both is at Template:Infobox_officeholder. I hope that helps, let me know if you run into difficulty: you may be using an infobox that doesn't handle all the information you want it to. Cheers, Sadads (talk) 15:53, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Sadads Thank you for your help! That template worked well. I apologize, but I have one more quick question/problem regarding the infobox. Her birth/death date are only showing the year on the infobox even though I have the month and date filled in in my editing section. Do you know why that might be happening? Thank you again for all of your help. Amcdougal (talk) 16:30, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Pipes (" | "), in templates, act as code dividing variables. The software was reading the numbers subsequent the year as separate unlabeled variables, thus not knowing where to output them. See the change I just made Sadads (talk) 16:50, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hopefully just one more question! I have submitted a draft for review and want to use my sandbox to start working on another page. How do I move the Betty Boyd draft out of my sandbox while it is waiting for review? Thank you for all of your help! Amcdougal (talk) 15:00, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * One more thing I forgot to mention about Betty Boyd's draft. It is saying that a Betty Boyd page already exists, and this is true, but the one I have drafted is about the Oklahoma Legislator, not the film actress or Colorado Legislator. How do I verify that I have made a different one?
 * Looks like someone WP:Moved the page to a draft, and left a redirect in the sandbox. You can also create additional sandboxes. To differentiate between different articles with the same title, we use our policy at Disambiguation.
 * Thanks for leaving questions here on my talk page, but you will get feedback and responses from a few more editors if you add comments at Education_Program_talk:The_Wikipedia_Library/Library_interns_(Fall_2014) and more than likely, one of them will review the article and move it live. A cursory glance, and it looks like you have done an excellent job! I have a busy couple weeks coming up, and don't want to leave your thoughts/comments waiting. Also, thank you for doing so much great work! Sadads (talk) 15:15, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2015
Hi Sadads! I have also proposed a proposal here, I'm not sure if it will be accepted or not but I want members of our Women Writers Project and those who are interested to sign up as my proposal is also indirectly related to picking up more Womens from developing countries. My proposal's main aim is "provide free of data charges access to Wikipedia" which will increase the traffic and ultimately more Womens. I would be glad if you and other members could sign up. Thanks!  Jim Car  ter  07:27, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Editing for Women's History in March
 Hello,

I am very excited to announce this month’s events, focused on Women’s History Month:


 * Sunday, March 8: Women in the Arts 2015 Edit-a-thon – 10 AM to 4 PM
 * Women in the Arts and ArtAndFeminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Free coffee and lunch served!
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup
 * Wednesday, March 11: March WikiSalon – 7 PM to 9 PM
 * An evening gathering with free-flowing conversation and free pizza.
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup (or just show up!)
 * Friday, March 13: NIH Women's History Month Edit-a-Thon – 9 AM to 4 PM
 * In honor of Women’s History Month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is organizing and hosting an edit-a-thon to improve coverage of women in science in Wikipedia. Free coffee and lunch served!
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup
 * Saturday, March 21: Women in STEM Edit-a-Thon at DCPL – 12 PM
 * Celebrate Women's History Month by building, editing, and expanding articles about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields during DC Public Library's first full-day edit-a-thon.
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup
 * Friday, March 27: She Blinded Me with Science, Part III – 10 AM to 4 PM
 * Smithsonian Institution Archives Groundbreaking Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Free lunch courtesy of Wikimedia DC!
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup
 * Saturday, March 28: March Dinner Meetup – 6 PM
 * Dinner and drinks with your fellow Wikipedians!
 * More information • RSVP on Meetup

Hope you can make it to an event! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please let me know.

Thanks,

James Hare

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, remove your name from this list. 02:25, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 4
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nautical fiction, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Edward Howard. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Books and Bytes - Issue 10
 The Wikipedia Library Books & Bytes

Issue 10, January-February 2015 by, ,

 Read the full newsletter MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * New donations - ProjectMUSE, Dynamed, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and Women Writers Online
 * New TWL coordinator, conference news, and a new guide and template for archivists
 * TWL moves into the new Community Engagement department at the WMF, quarterly review

Featuring your work on Wikipedia's front page: DYKs
Thank you for your recent articles, including Nautical fiction, which I read with interest. When you create an extensive and well referenced article, you may want to have it featured on Wikipedia's main page in the Did You Know section. Articles included there will be read by thousands of our viewers. To do so, add your article to the list at T:TDYK. Let me know if you need help, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hey : that was on my list of ToDos, and I want to make sure User:Rwood128 and User:Mad Hatter get credit in helping get the article to DYK (they have been doing a lot of great work helping support the research and development of the article). I was having trouble deciding on a good public-facing hook: I find all of it interesting, and have had several previous DYK noms where I have gotten comments for not having "compelling enough hooks". Do you have a suggestions? Cheers, Sadads (talk)
 * I'd mention Moby Dick for sure. Maybe ...that books from Moby Dick to Hornblower series are examples of nautical fiction? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am glad I could help. I would like to make better historical period drama main article, corresponding to the relevant genres. The Mad Hatter (talk)
 * I would love to help you with that article: lets do it in a sandbox or draft space, so we can get it forward as a DYK and we can take our time developing the materials! Also, might want to include since they has been so helpful in working on nautical and historical fiction (still some lingering work to do on Nautical fiction as well: I imagine I would be best able to work on historical period drama beginning of next month. Sadads (talk) 17:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * , of course, of course, don't push yourself up :). I presume we can make it as a summer or spring break homework, so to say. I have lot of work on musical stuff here, as you can see bands like Hinder and even Starsailor need lot of tinkering :). Nonetheless, I suggest to move on hpd in the next couple of months. were awesome contributors and collaborators!
 * Kindest regards guys, it's been pleasure working with you: The Mad Hatter (talk)

Agricultural supply store ≠ or = agricultural supply????
Dear Sadads, I see you have added some links - linking agricultural supply to agricultural supply store. I have reverted this on George Grantham (economic historian) and agricultural economics. But I think there are others. Could I ask you to have another think about this. Agricultural supply can mean the output of the agricultural sector whereas as the supply store, I think, sells inputs for the sector. So they are, I think, substantially different. What do you think? I think that someone needs to go through and check all these links and revert those where it is not appropriate. Also it seems a bit odd where it does mean inputs for it to go to an input store rather than just a page on agricultural inputs. Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 07:59, 5 March 2015 (UTC))
 * Thanks for bringing this up: I changed the page because it was an orphan for a topic we don't have as a concept, and I couldn't find anywhere in the mainstream agriculture pages. I know nothing about the rhetorical usage of "agricultural supply" as input vs. output. I am only familiar with the concept of it in the store sense, and some brief Google searches confirmed it last night (admittedly, I typically do orphaned article work towards the end of editing while I am tired, so my use of find link my have been a wee bit overzealous). My hope was to provoke an expert in agriculture to pay more attention to the glaring gap on Wikipedia in the common idea/topic, someone knows more and could provide better nuanced definition of the article. I am totally game for an article on "Agricultural inputs" with a section on "agricultural input retail" per your reasoning. It seems to be a more nuanced, and sound approach to such an article, Sadads (talk) 16:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Dear Sadads, I have removed some more of the links you added which I feel were inappropriate .... best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 23:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC))

Merger discussion for Janet Jackson
An article that you have been involved in editing, Janet Jackson, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. wia (talk) 23:10, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Geonotice
Hi Alex. Could you take a look at the note about the KC geonotice over at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-geonotice-core.js? gobonobo + c 05:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the review
Hi Sadads, thanks for the review over at Template:Did you know nominations/Carreidas 160. But it looks like you got interrupted while typing...? I had to check the history to find you as there was no signature. I have seen you around Wikipedia. :-) Cheers and good luck on your own DYK. Prhartcom (talk) 04:41, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't believe I didn't sign or finish the comment :P The last couple weeks, I have been editing Wikipedia as a retreat from other work, so it gets me when I am tired.... not that I am making problematic mistakes, just small errors. That and I had been on a bit of a Wiki-break until late last year. Thanks so much for the encouragement! Keep up the great TinTin work: you all working on that topic are doing an excellent job! Glad that it got in the DYK hopper quickly :) Sadads (talk) 15:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 11
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited A. S. Byatt, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Game. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Nautical fiction
Many thanks for the recognition -- hope my comments aren't too abrasive, especially as it's so good to see some real editing in progress. Rwood128 (talk) 17:31, 12 March 2015 (UTC).
 * We are setting up some real nuance in that lead, that helps direct readers in their first look at the article, understand the genre and the complexities sitting under the surface: next job, doing a really good pass at the style, themes, and generic overlap concepts (such as adaptation). This is turning into a monstrous project, but I am glad its a handful of us working on it, and shaping the boundaries, Sadads (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Surprised to see you on the Natural landscape page, but the involvement of other editors is much needed. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Rwood128 (talk) 17:57, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Another thought: We are actually doing a really good job at using the Wikipedia environment to produce quality Wikipedia content, using collaboration, feedback loops and gradual increases in quality. Keep up the questions/comments/feedback, because as I have noticed both here and in my other writing, my intention is not always clear in what I write, and revision is a necessary long and grueling process. Sadads (talk) 17:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, as for the Natural landscape, I was contribution-stalking to see what else you are up to; I am interested in eco-criticism so concepts like natural landscape, really appeal to me (though I am by no means an expert in the field, I just see lots of potential). I read it and wanted to make sure the formatting wasn't poor: Nautical fiction is going to be enough for me as a main project for another couple months I would think (with occasional articles to fill in all those red-links that I am discovering!) Sadads (talk) 18:03, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes I'm guilty of stalking too. In fact I must have discovered the Core Contest from your contributions page. This encouraged me to edit Middlemarch, which I had thought about working on before. I prefer editing where there other eyes and minds that can help me clarify my thoughts. I've had a frustrating time on Natural landscape with an editor (the original creator of the article) who seems unable to clearly articulate his ideas and then accuses me of various things, including edit warring. Fortunately another voice has recently joined the debate. I was also pleased when you made your edit there. I too am not anything like an expert in the field, but I enjoy working outside of literature, even if at times I feel insecure.

Yes, 'Nautical fiction' is a big job, but there is potential for a really good, substantial article here. I'll try and check your recent additions, though Wikipedia has become a full-time job the last week or so, including reading Nathaniel Tkacz's, book "Wikipedia and the Politics of Openess''. Rwood128 (talk) 12:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Glad that you are finding your support for the other projects! It definitely helps to have a couple voices around whenever you are trying to work through a topic, especially when you are relatively new to it. Core Contest is really good for that (apparantly they are doing some really good work on English Language as well). Part of the reason that I chose Nautical fiction to work on: I know enough about it, to know what not to cover and not to go down rabbit holes, but am learning a lot as I go and I figured it would draw in the interest of several other people; also its limited enough that we can actually survey the most complete scholarship, without embarking on a full dissertation.
 * I would advise not making Wikipedia a full time job, unless you have too or are actually getting paid. During my undergrad, I got way too deep into the community, and experienced some really serious burnout which led to a year-long WikiBreak. I understands Tkacz's book is good; I am reading Wikipedia U by Thomas Leitch, which approaches Wikipedia from the the education and cultural studies issues I am interested in, so definitely would advise if you are interested in Education and its relationship to the open web. Looking forward to seeing you around in the coming weeks :) Hopefully I can read more than one chapter ever other night of the other scholarship on Nautical fiction, so that we can do deep work on the themes/style/setting issues, Sadads (talk) 14:47, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Sadads, this may not be sufficiently scholarly, but an interesting reference as I hunt for reviews of O'Brian novels. It is written by Paul Kennedy in the New York Times back in 1998, and has a couple of sentences early on about putting the series, and the particular book that provoked the review, in the naval fiction genre, and how it improves on or differs from the genre. The article is at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/18/reviews/981018.11kennedt.html Your article is coming along really well, and scholarly as you wanted it. Useful, too. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:25, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Engineer Combat Battalion page
Thank you for the acknowledgement at the Engineer Combat Battalion page. Yours, Wikiuser100 (talk) 15:53, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course! Glad to see someone are highlighting those units! I created and/or improved the unit pages 4-5 years ago, when I was an intern at the Army Center for Military History, trying to make sure that all of the various PD source materials they had were integrated into the larger context about the units. Keep up the great work! Even work on Military History has some pretty significant gaps ! Happy editing, Sadads (talk) 22:24, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Glad to hear of your earlier contributions. Little by little the record is being built. Yours, Wikiuser100 (talk) 21:42, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK for The Peppered Moth
&mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 00:01, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Onyi Ononye
Can you ask one of the administrators to delete and Remove Kiro'o Tales thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by OnyiOnonye (talk • contribs) 19:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what you are asking. The space Kiro'o Tales redirects to Kiro'o Games which appears to be a reasonable article. Please see WP:Deletion for more information about the processes you can use to indicate a suitable reason for deletion, Sadads (talk) 15:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Latin Kings of Alba Longa
I've never merged a page before and I think it would be appropriate to merge the pages Latinus Silvius, Alba Silvius, Atys (King of Alba Longa), Agrippa (mythology),and Procas into the Latin kings of Alba Longa page. My reasoning is that there's nothing said on these pages that isn't either already covered, or easy to cover - by the Latin kings of Alba Longa page. Also I'm not sure how to merge a page exactly and where I should look to find out more on how to do so. Your help will be appreciated. PsychoticSpartan123 (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Start with WP:Merging. That may well leave you with more questions - if so, post another helpme. JohnCD (talk) 23:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * See the above guide for help: if you find you need more help we can respond here or elsewhere just point to where you have those questions! Thanks for the helpme request Sadads (talk) 00:41, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

File:Sweeney Knighted.jpg listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Sweeney Knighted.jpg, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. B (talk) 13:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2
For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...


 * Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
 * WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Series and serial
Sadads, I know that you are very busy, but I would appreciate it if you could take a look at this, posted by me on the Novel Project page and the link to Great Expectations Talk page there. I am having a rather upsetting encounter with a stonewalling editor, and don't want to be drawn into edit warring. Thanks. Rwood128 (talk) 10:17, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Precious
  novels

Thank you, Alex, veteran dragon of making massive, bold edits, partner for outreach and inviting to peruse the work of your admired fellow humanities researcher: thank you for quality articles such as The Peppered Moth and The Great Lover, for good article reviews and author navboxes, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (20 February 2011)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:04, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why Thank You! That was a very pleasant way to start the day! I am trying to keep up the good work! Also: thank you for doing your little part to reward veteran editors: generating goodwill and positivity is as much as hard a public service as content creation :) Sadads (talk) 14:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The above edit was supposed to be from my volunteer account, Sadads (talk) 14:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

GA
I did your latest request on Jaws (novel) as well, see if it can pass the review now. igordebraga ≠ 00:35, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CVIII, March 2015
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) 09:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

links on disambiguation pages
Hi, when adding links using the find links tool, please be aware that entries on disambiguation pages should NOT have such additional links as for example here or here. See MOS:DABENTRY for details on the guidance. older ≠ wiser 11:26, 27 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the dab linking policy attention. I have been doing this kind of work for years and was blissfully unaware of the MOS policy: I will make an effort to correct that in my workflow. Sadads (talk) 13:04, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 29
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Jerusalem the Golden, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Liberationist and The Millstone. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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A new reference tool
Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Upcoming attractions in DC
 Hello!

Here are some upcoming DC meetups in April and May:


 * Tuesday, April 14: National Archives Hackathon on Wikipedia Space with American University – 2:30-5pm
 * See the latest work on the Wikipedia Space exhibit in the new NARA Innovation Hub and brainstorm on new ideas for a public exhibit about Wikipedia
 * Friday, April 17: Women in Tech Edit-a-thon with Tech LadyMafia – 5-9pm
 * Team up with Tech LadyMafia to improve Wikipedia content on women in the history of technology.
 * Saturday, April 25: April Dinner Meetup – 6 PM
 * Dinner and drinks with your fellow Wikipedians!
 * Friday, May 1: International Labour Day Edit-a-Thon – 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM
 * An edit-a-thon at the University of Maryland

Hope to see you at these events! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please let me know.

Cheers,

James Hare To remove yourself from this mailing list, remove your name from this list. 22:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Talkback
Sundayclose (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Peer review/The Good Terrorist/archive1
From the Peer review volunteers list on British literature, you are invited to comment on this peer review which has been in the backlog since March. Good day, Joel. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:41, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3
Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:
 * A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
 * An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Automated edits
Please be careful and double-check the results when making tool-assisted edits. Your edit here broke the formatting of a previous link. -- intgr [talk] 11:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update! Sorry for the mistake (I usually catch those), I have fixed the link to reflect the need for both concepts! Sadads (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library for Wikipedia ES
As we talked about on GLAM wiki Conference, I'm exploring the possibility of developing Wikipedia Library-ES. We may contact... Tramullas (talk) 19:34, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update! Definitely excited to find out about your interest; I learned, when I got back, that is supporting a conversation amongst group of other interested Spanish Wikipedians, and can rope you into the conversations! Sadads (talk) 20:19, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CIX, April 2015
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) 06:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 29
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited A Charm of Lullabies, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Robert Greene. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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"Editing "Grupo Vidanta"
"Hi Sadads, Thank you for your reminder about the COI tag. I have just carried out further editing to comply with NPOV. I hope this meets your expectations. Therefore I am removing again the COI tag. Thank you. Estacion.72 (talk) 23:39, 1 May 2015 (UTC) "

deOrphaning script
Hello everyone! I was just working on responding to a couple bug reports for a script that I worked up as part of a request from this project, and I noticed that only a couple people (who weren't even on this mailing list) are actually using the script. A little history on the script: In March of 2014, came to my user talk page and said he needed some help in acquiring a script for a backlog drive that he was working on that could keep track of and score deOrphanings for a scored backlog drive. I took that request to the project's talk page (BackLog Drive "DO" (De-Orphaning) script proposal) and there was near unanimous support for this. I thought about the proposal and decided the best way to do it was to build a new script (which is still no where near as comprehensive as 's OrphanTabs) and build into it a mechanism that will make BLD scoring easy.

What I'm wondering at this point is, since there appears to be only two people using the script, should I continue to develop this script with a goal of using it for scoring BLDs or just debug the existing script and leave it at that. Thanks for any replies or comments.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.
 * This message was sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of —  14:06, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 11
 The Wikipedia Library Books & Bytes

Issue 11, March-April 2015 by, , ,

 Read the full newsletter MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:31, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * New donations - MIT Press Journals, Sage Stats, Hein Online and more
 * New TWL coordinators, conference news, and new reference projects
 * Spotlight: Two metadata librarians talk about how library professionals can work with Wikipedia

Nomination for deletion of Template:Science commemorative events
Template:Science commemorative events has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Rob Sinden (talk) 13:16, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 6
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Weedflower, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page PEN USA. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ* Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Wikipedia email re Newspapers.com signup
HazelAB (talk) 12:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC)