User talk:Northamerica1000/Archive 105

Latest comment: 3 years ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter
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Portal creation and maintenance

Hi NA1000, I see you've tagged Portal:East Germany/New articles as needing updating, quite rightly. I used to maintain most of the Germany portals, but gave up when the bulk of them were destroyed in the mass deletion campaign. Where do we currently stand with portals? Is there a consensus on the way forward? Is it worth spending any time on them these days? Bermicourt (talk) 09:02, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I may start doing a bit then. I've just moved Portal:Harz back to mainspace as a trial and may start moving the German state portals back that were moved to project space. It seems ridiculous to have portals for some states and not others. Bermicourt (talk) 08:03, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
@Bermicourt: I was thinking about merging the Selected article of the month entries into the Selected article section at top left in the East Germany portal, and also about consolidating the monthly images into a scrollable gallery. That way, the articles will show randomly when the page is purged, and can be directly accessed via the list in the Selected article section, and readers can scroll through the images in one sitting. What do you think? North America1000 22:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

File:Lean finely textured beef in its finished form.png listed for discussion

 

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Lean finely textured beef in its finished form.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion 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. Lord Belbury (talk) 10:45, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

East Germany?

Why has Brecht now a portal East Germany, with that historic flag, but not Germany, Theatre, Literature? I try to avoid flags, generally, and East Germany is a very sloppy name if a country is meant. "The only real nation is humanity." How about a portal for that? - I'd remove the other, for him and others. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:59, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1988, MiNr Block 091.jpg
Stamp from the former East Germany depicting Brecht and a scene from his Life of Galileo
  • Hi @Gerda Arendt: Well, Brecht lived in East Germany when it was East Germany from 1949 to 1956, and passed away in East Berlin in 1956. A portal link was added to his article because he is listed as a Selected article in the East Germany portal. East Germany even created a postal stamp in his honor in 1988. Are you stating that links to the Germany, Theatre and Literature portals should be added to the Brecht article? I'm not sure what you're pertaining to above in stating "I'd remove the other". Do you mean remove the flag of East Germany from the portal link? If so, what would you recommend in its place? North America1000 22:34, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
    I don't mention portals in my articles, ever, so may be the wrong person to comment. If he lived in what some call East Germany, he also lived in Germany at the same time, do you understand? Of course the GDR decorated its international reputation with his name. - I find it unfair to have just a place portal, and at a prominent spot, and with a much-hated flag (not by me, but ask people who suffered) but nothing about his literature. So, my first choice would be no portal link. Second, three portal links, at the bottom, such as here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
    @Gerda Arendt: I went ahead and used a portalbar at the end of the article (diff), adding links to relevant portals. North America1000 07:48, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
    @Gerda Arendt: the name has been debated before and the consensus was that, in English, it was way the most common name. I'm aware that Germans only called it the DDR, but we never called it that or GDR; it was always East Germany. And I spent most of my early life defending the West from an invasion from East Germany, so we gave it a lot of attention! It was wonderful the first time my wife and I went to the Eastern Harz and up the Brocken and we have loved touring "East Germany" since. Bermicourt (talk) 08:14, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
    I am aware, just can't help to always translate East Germany to "Ostzone", a deprecated name. As I had relatives there whom I couldnt's see - one not permitted to travel to his parents' golden wedding anniversary (only to their funerals) - it will stay emotional. Northamerica, your solution is fine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:14, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Portal:Harz

Thanks for your edits on P:HZ. Of course, one of the criticisms of portals was that page visits were very low. As I repeatedly pointed out, that was because they were so poorly linked from articles and don't appear in searches. I'm going to rectify both by a) adding links to major Harz articles and b) creating a redirect Harz (portal). Meanwhile I have a question: how do you create a symbol for portals to replace the default jigsaw puzzle piece? Bermicourt (talk) 08:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Harz (portal) redirects to the article. I don't think cross-namespace redirects to portals are banned – Portal: is excluded from CSD R2 – but they would be unusual and might attract criticism. Most of the few other (portal) titles disambiguate article topics, e.g. Spider (portal). Certes (talk) 13:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 
I've found a simple symbol that could make a good Harz logo at least for now: the Dennert Fir (pictured). Bermicourt (talk) 07:54, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Cool, thanks.Bermicourt (talk) 08:51, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

 

  Administrator changes

  AjpolinoLuK3
  Jackmcbarn
  Ad OrientemHarejLidLomnMentoz86Oliver PereiraXJaM
  There'sNoTimeTheresNoTime

  Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

  Technical news

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This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2020)

 
Many species can live at high altitudes. For example, the Himalayan pika lives at altitudes up to 4,200 m (13,800 ft).
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The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Organisms at high altitude

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Notification of request to lift BrownHairedGirl's restrictions

I have made a request at Arbitration Enforcement to lift BrownHairedGirl's restrictions under their previous decision, including the interaction ban with you, at least to the extent that this may come up in her next RfA. I do hope that the matter is far enough behind everyone now that you will not find this objectionable. Cheers! BD2412 T 17:46, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Here is the notice to the correct discussion location:

You are involved in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Portals and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, BD2412 T 18:35, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412: Thanks for the notification. North America1000 16:06, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Motion notice

An arbitration motion involving you has been proposed at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Motion: Portals. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:59, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2020)

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The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Reader Rabbit

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Previous selections: Organisms at high altitude • Trout Mask Replica


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17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Portal:Trains updates

Hey there. While I appreciate the efforts to improve Portal:Trains, I've been a bit surprised by each of your edits. My surprise is more out of not expecting anything to change at all than anything else. Since I created this portal in May 2005, I've basically been the only editor working on keeping it updated. I can't claim to WP:OWN it, but there is a pretty big sunk cost in the edits I've made so far. So, let's chat some more about improving the portal. Slambo (Speak) 17:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  • Hi Slambo: I did notice that you are listed as a maintainer. The edits I performed were minor (and marked as such), consisting of adding a General images section, adding italics to two headers for consistent layout (so all the header titles are in italic, rather than most of them), and rewriting a few links to be more specific regarding the subpages they link to. If you're against these edits, feel free to revert and we can discuss further, or we can just discuss further anyway. Some initial ideas to improve the portal include:
  • Using Template:Transclude random excerpt for the Selected article section, which provides current, up-to-date information that is verbatim to article content. A consensus approving the usage of transclusion templates in portals was formed at this Village Pump discussion. The use of transclusions prevents portals from presenting outdated information, such as occurs when subpages are not updated as articles change or evolve.
  • Possibly using transclusion for the Intro section, using Template:Transclude lead excerpt
  • Moving the "Candidates" links to redirect to a section on the main portal page. It does not appear that the Candidates pages are being used very much. If candidates were to be on the talk page, it increases the likelihood of people seeing them, and potentially contributing to them.
  • Also, you've done great work keeping the DYKs up to date (e.g. Portal:Trains/Did you know/Main page, 2020)
North America1000 17:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
One of the main guiding principles that I've followed is to provide enough detail in the portal that a reader would want to click through to the related article, but not provide so much information that it would be hard to find information on the portal itself. I'm a bit hesitant on using the automated lead section and selected article transclusions because there is almost always more detail in the article that is not necessary on the portal. It's pretty rare that the selected article excerpt isn't edited down a little for brevity and clarity. For this week's selected article, for example, I removed a few sentences that weren't necessary for the feature, and also suppressed the inline footnote references. For the portal main entry, there is much more detail in the article's lead section that is not necessary on the portal. The other main reason for copying and editing down the text for both sections is for portal stability.
The other main reason for not using the transclusion on the portal lead section is that the Trains portal should really be called the Rail transport portal. When I created the portal, it was meant to be a showcase of articles within the scope of WikiProject Trains, so the name was consistent with the project. However, both the WikiProject and the portal scopes include everything to do with rail transportation. Moving the project and portal to reflect this would not be a trivial matter, so there has been no progress on that front.
The question of how to handle footnotes on a portal is another can of worms. The news section links directly to the external pages that support the news items, but I don't like that as much as the full footnotes that are on the related article pages. However, I also don't think having a footnotes section on the portal would be appropriate stylistically, as I don't see footnotes on any other portal, including the main page.
The random image widget is neat (and I don't think its addition, like the changes that moved a couple boxes around, is a minor update), but I think it's a little too big, overshadowing the weekly selected image. I've thought that the selected image should be bigger, but I don't think it should be so big as to overwhelm the visual clarity of the portal as a whole.
I'm not sure that moving the candidates would encourage participation. But, I am sure that the process could be improved a bit; I just don't know how best to change it.
Slambo (Speak) 11:07, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
@Slambo: Thanks for the input. It would be possible to change the portal's name to Rail Transport by mass moving all of the portal's subpages, and then of course renaming the main portal page itself. However, the links leading to it would still state "Train portal", which of course could be redirected. It's clear that you have the portal well under control. I viewed the addition of the general images as minor because it's so simple to do, it takes seconds, after which images are transcluded from the listed articles. The time taken lies in deciding which articles to use, to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic. Upon checking out matters, I noticed at Template:Trains portal/FI that the default image size for Featured images is 300px. So, I have changed the image size in the General images section to also display at 300px (diff). As I have stated above, if you don't like the the new images section, go ahead and revert it. Personally, I feel it's an improvement, but no big deal. North America1000 13:02, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2020)

 
Institutions and organizations of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization
Hello, Northamerica1000.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Organization

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Previous selections: Reader Rabbit • Organisms at high altitude


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16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2020)

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The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Cultural exchange

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Previous selections: Organization • Reader Rabbit


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Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  Arbitration

  Miscellaneous


15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2020)

 
An example of Chinese folklore is The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a Chinese folk tale. Pictured is a depiction in the tale of the reunion of the couple of The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd on the bridge of magpies. The artwork displayed is in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing.
Hello, Northamerica1000.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Chinese folklore

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Previous selections: Cultural exchange • Organization


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15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 November 2020

This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2020)

 
An illustration of the Pre-Columbian abacus, the Nepohualtzintzin, one of the many pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans.
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The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans

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Previous selections: Chinese folklore • Cultural exchange


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17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

 

  Administrator changes

  AndrwscAnetodeGoldenRingJzGLinguistAtLargeNehrams2020

  Interface administrator changes

  Izno

  Guideline and policy news

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  Arbitration


Nomination for deletion of Template:AFI/Collaborations of the day (no border)

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17:44, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 49, 2020)

 
in 2013 Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was celebrated for being the artist in Latin music with the most records sold in history.
Hello, Northamerica1000. The article for improvement of the week is:

Latin music (genre)

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Previous selections: Industry • List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans


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Happy Adminship Anniversary!

This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2020)

 
In macroeconomics, an industry is a branch of an economy that produces a closely related set of raw materials, goods, or services. Pictured is a cement factory in Malmö, Sweden, which is a part of the manufacturing industry.
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The following is WikiProject Articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Industry

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Previous selections: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans • Chinese folklore


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16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2020 Newsletter
 

 

Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2020.

                 Current and upcoming events

Election time: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before Auld Lang Syne. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

December Blitz: This will run from 13 to 19 December, and will target all Requests. Sign up now.

Drive and Blitz reports

September Drive: 67 fewer articles had copy-edit templates by this month's close. Of the 27 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and 124 articles were claimed for the drive.

October Blitz: this ran from 18 to 24 October, and focused on articles tagged for copy-edit in July and August 2020, and all Requests. Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors copy-edited at least one article. 21 articles were claimed for the blitz.

November Drive: Of the 18 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and together claimed 134 articles. At the close of the drive, 67 fewer articles were in the backlog and we had dealt with 39 requests.

Other news

Progress report: As of 09:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 663 requests (18 from 2019) since 1 January and there were 52 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 494 (see monthly progress graph above).

Annual Report for 2020: this roundup of the year's activity at the Guild is planned for publication in late January or early February.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Seasonal tidings and cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

 

Hello Northamerica1000,

 

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 DannyS712 bot III (talk) 67,552 Patrol Page Curation
2 Rosguill (talk) 63,821 Patrol Page Curation
3 John B123 (talk) 21,697 Patrol Page Curation
4 Onel5969 (talk) 19,879 Patrol Page Curation
5 JTtheOG (talk) 12,901 Patrol Page Curation
6 Mcampany (talk) 9,103 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 6,401 Patrol Page Curation
8 Mccapra (talk) 4,918 Patrol Page Curation
9 Hughesdarren (talk) 4,520 Patrol Page Curation
10 Utopes (talk) 3,958 Patrol Page Curation
 
 
Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

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18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)