User talk:Thparkth/Archives/2016/April

Request on 18:19:08, 15 April 2016 for assistance on AfC submission by Hvdc news
Hello Thparkth, thank you for reviewing. Have you read my comment and followed the links to similar projects? What is the diffence to other projects lets say HVDC Borwin 1? How many articles do you need? Do they have to be in English? Most of the newspaper articles are biased, how can they provide a source of objective facts? I do not understand your rules and will discontinue working on wikipedia. Please do rethink your guidelines and despotism. Regards Hvdc news (talk) 18:19, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hvdc news (talk) 18:19, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Pending change
Hi Thparkth, regarding your approval of this pending change, did you verify that the content was accurate prior to accepting it? If so, could you please add the reliable source that you used for verification? The article was protected due to the repeated inclusion of unsourced content, so it's important that edits are not accepted without a corresponding source. Thank you, -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 21:09, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hello. I can't actually find a pending change log entry identifying why the page us under pending changes protection, but in general there is no requirement for reviewers to ensure compliance with WP:VERIFY, and reviewers "do not take responsibility for the accuracy of the edits they approve."
 * In this case I didn't have (and still don't have) any reason to believe the edit was not constructive, so the default action was to approve it.
 * If you find yourself disagreeing with any of this you may wish to re-read WP:REVIEWING.
 * Cheers,
 * Thparkth (talk) 21:35, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe that there was a page move at some point that made obscured the original protection in the log, however as the protecting admin I recall it was protected due to BLP violations and the repeated addition of unsourced content. It's common practice that pending changes that add unsupported material to BLPs are not accepted and I would never add pending changes to a BLP knowing that reviewers would accept such edits, opting for semi-protection. I'll make a note at WP:AN to ensure other admins are aware that the reviewer guidelines makes no requirement for the edits to BLPs to be accurate and will definitely ensure I only use semi-protection on BLPs moving forward.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 21:54, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that explains it. For what it's worth I do always check the pending changes log and see why the protection is in place; if it had said "repeated addition of unsourced bullshit" or whatever, I obviously wouldn't have approved it ;)
 * I think in general if a BLP is considered so sensitive that even routine and neutral/positive information is considered problematic, I would agree that semi-protection is a better solution. As you know, per guideline, pending changes reviewers are really only meant to be protecting the encyclopedia from the most blatantly damaging and unconstructive edits.
 * I do see your name in logs from time to time - please know that the work you do is appreciated.
 * Thparkth (talk) 22:03, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
 * As I suspected, the protection log was wiped when the article was moved (see ). My concern doesn't come from your edit specifically, only that reviewers would be accepting unsourced edits to a BLP that was protected due to the repeated addition of unsourced content from new and unregistered editors. To me that's a huge issue, and I just want to ensure other admins are aware of the leniency of the review guidelines. -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:07, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 16, 2016)

 * MusikBot, I'm starting to get the feeling that some of those so-called-"random" suggestions are actually critical commentaries on my life! Who gave you access to my credit score? Thparkth (talk) 00:57, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Database reports
Hi. I see that you've recently been getting involved with database reports. Thank you, this is great!

I think the current database reports implementation has a number of flaws that I would like to see addressed. Do you have any interest in coding a better version of the reports?

Or, more broadly, do you have any interest in helping me draft a request for comments on mediawiki.org to re-architect the reports to be better? In my opinion, the first step is figuring out which features we currently have, which features we currently might want, and then doing a survey of the existing database reports users to figure out what the hard and soft requirements are for a re-implementation. For example, some people have suggested switching to MediaWiki Special pages, such as Special:Reports/Orphaned talk pages or similar. This approach has advantages (internationalization/localization) and disadvantages (Special pages don't have a page history and Special page updates don't currently trigger any kind of notification, unlike a standard bot edit that appears in feeds).

Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:11, 21 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello,
 * Thanks for the note! I am pretty new to working in this environment so to some extent I'm still finding my way around the codebase I'm working on (Community Tech Bot), which by the way, also involves learning Python the hard way as I go ;). So although there is definitely an awareness at the corner of my mind that the whole system seems pretty creaky, I don't know that it has yet percolated through my consciousness to the point where I could put my thoughts into words in a useful way.
 * Having said all that, I am definitely interested in what you propose, and I would like to help as much as I can - but I wouldn't want you to think that my understanding of the environment and its limitations is more sophisticated than it really is.
 * Thparkth (talk) 02:28, 21 April 2016 (UTC)