User talk:Simon Adler

Help for patrolling
Hi, I'm Jai98. I need help for reviewing the pages I created recently. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

Happy New Year!
 Dear, HAPPY NEW YEAR Hoping 2015 will be a great year for you! Thank you for your contributions! From a fellow editor, --FWiW Bzuk (talk)

This message promotes WikiLove. Originally created by Nahnah4 (see "invisible note").

Request for assistance
Hello Irondome,

I'm new to Wikipedia editing so I hope I'm doing this the correct way. I feel like I'm being harassed/attacked by two people with respect to an article where I am trying to make what I consider to be a small addition (a one or two-paragraph sub-heading). The individuals involved don't seem to be interested in reaching consensus; they seem to be interested in shutting me down. They also repeatedly threaten to 'take action' against me for edit warring, whereas I believe that their constant and wholesale reversion of (literally) anything that I write is in itself an edit war.

You have many kudos for diplomacy and whereas I am certainly capable of being diplomatic (and in fact worked as a 'diplomat' in my nation's embassy for a time), I am considerably less so when I feel I'm being threatened. I would be happy to discuss the situation with those involved, but it appears that they have no interest in doing so and that their goal is to 'win'. I've also realized that they know very little about the subject in question - they recite 'facts' as to why their view should prevail, however their 'facts' are wrong. I feel very much put upon and the issue has become rather upsetting.

I do feel that the persons involved have some sort of connections and emotional, or possibly political, involvement with the subject as their reactions (to me) seem entirely out of proportion to issue involved. However I don't like being bullied, which is why I'm not willing to just walk away and say 'never mind'.

Anyway, I hope that you can help me get this straightened out. If you don't have time right now I understand, please try to let me know if that's the case. The reason I'm asking you rather than someone else is that your offer to volunteer was one of most recent (I believe third-newest) so I believe that you are more likely to be available than someone who wrote several years ago, you seem multi-faceted, and you don't appear to have any overt political or philosophical biases (even though I don't feel the instant matter is or should be controversial, the very strong dislike I feel coming from the other parties makes me believe that there's some underlying reason other than disliking the two brief paragraphs I added to the article).

The situation as brief as I can make it: The matter involves a Wikipedia article named "Newton Public Schools". It is about a school district in Newton, Massachusetts, U.S. The schools that comprise the district are state-supported (called 'public schools' in the U.S.; I believe however that term has a different meaning in the U.K).

Most of the article is standard and innocuous; however there is a section at the end called "Controversies" which is the source of the problem. There were three sub-headings to the "Controversies" section; I have been trying to add a fourth; I also made minor changes in one or two of the other sub-headings so that they accurate.

The headings are:

1. Textbook controversy - the issue as to whether supplemental material used by high school students in history courses is inaccurate, biased, or anti-Israel has been an ongoing controversy in the community for several years. It has been the subject of newspaper articles and a "Call for Action" by Jewish, community, and education groups and has been the subject of media reports in several U.S. states and in Israel. (I think there were three or four sentences in this section). Also, in an unusual move, the district removed a widely used supplemental text and also removed items from a list of recommended sources.

2. Superintendent Plagiarism - the district's superintendent was found to have plagiarized a speech he gave during a high school graduation ceremony and was fined. In another district where this happened, the superintendent was forced to resign. (I believe there were two sentences).

3. Violation of State Open Meeting Laws - in connection with the plagiarism, the state Attorney General (government prosecutor) found that the school district and Chair of the School Committee violated state law on eight separate occasions. (I think three sentences).

all of the above, plus the events in the fourth section below occurred within a few months of each other.

4. Last year, the state Department of Education found that the district and Chair of the School Committee had engaged in illegal retaliation against a student whose parent had been involved in the textbook issue. As far as can be ascertained, this is the first time in state history that a standing administrator has been found to have violated education law (in this case, student confidentiality law). A federal investigation is ongoing.

I have just realized that the other editors have deleted a post I made in the 'Talk' section of the article and also deleted the last six months of History for the article. This is beyond outrageous.

This is the last couple of posts (including mine) from the Talk section:

This thread was shot in black and white.
The scene. A Stalag somewhere in Germany


 * AC Chalky "I can't feel me feet" White: 'ere, anyone seen Weaver today? 'E owes me a jar of marmite.


 * AC "Plunger" O'Cockney: Ain't you 'eard?


 * C.W: 'eard wot?


 * P.O'C: e' ruffled a few fevvers with that sadistic bastard jerry Von Irondome. E's in the cooler wiv sum bloody awful song e's got ter listen to.


 * All: They bleedin' wont crack ol Weaver!


 * Squadron leader Wilko: This damned war..


 * Wilko, Ginger!!

Brewery name convention
I'm contacting you as an active contributor on brewery articles and/or member of WikiProject Beer. There is some discussion going on as to how we should name our brewery articles. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Beer and Talk:Greene_King_Brewery. If you are interested, please comment. SilkTork (talk)

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda
 Martinevans123 (Santa's Hard Brexit Grotto) ... sends you ... ... warmest seasonal wishes for ...... Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Merry Christmas Baby... and hoping that you have a good New Year !!

Nadolig Llawen
 Martinevans123 (Santa's Oven-Ready Brexit Centre) ... sends you ... ... warmest seasonal wishes for ...Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Hoping that Christmas may bless you with peace, love and a Cuban groove... and wishing that you may find a little traditional fun ...

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022
Hello , Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to ), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also. Software news: and  have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved. Suggestions:
 * There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
 * Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
 * Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
 * This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog: Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!


 * Reminders
 * Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
 * If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
 * Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
 * If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
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New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023
Hello , The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day. won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!
 * Backlog
 * 2022 Awards

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from  to  '''

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as and  have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.


 * Reminders
 * Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
 * There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
 * Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
 * If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
 * To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023
Hello , Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by  and  with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of, and also some patches from , has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders
 * Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
 * There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and on IRC.
 * Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
 * To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.