User talk:StefenTower
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"True democracy" listed at Redirects for discussion
[edit]The redirect True democracy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 23 § True democracy until a consensus is reached. Jruderman (talk) 13:41, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi! Please advise if new edits ([1]) align with WP:MOS. Thanks. 208.87.239.201 (talk) 21:09, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-35
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
- Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [2]
Bugs status
- Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
- Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
- Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.
Learn more
- If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
- Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:30, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
John Asher Page
[edit]Hi Stefen, I think the John Asher page is ready for you to review. It is located at User:Annointed777/John Asher (horse racing). Pictures still need to be added, I don't know how to add them, I think I can get them for us. A good friend of mine, daughter is married to Joe Talamo. He is a trainer himself in California. I know he will help if we need it, but I wanted to speak to you first.
I don't know how to change "Racing Awards" to just Awards and I can't get "Kentucky Broadcasters Association" to link, it keeps showing red, but Wikipedia has a page so I must be doing something wrong.
I rally enjoyed learning about Asher so much. I hope I did this justice. It definitely needs the "Stefen Tower" magic! It made me sad that such a wonderful person did not already have a Wikipedia Page. I am so glad you assigned me this project. I consider this "your page" - I would not have known about him if it were not for you. I am looking forward to your feedback, Once you feel that this page is final, I look forward to my next assignment! Your friend (Annointed777 (talk) 23:32, 31 August 2024 (UTC)) {ping|StefenTower}
- Annointed777 I did a quick review. It's a good start but not quite ready for release. There's a number of technical issues that wouldn't take long to remedy, but the biggest issue that I see is the hagiographic writing -- that is, we aren't supposed to write a love letter or marketing brochure, but instead a drier description like you would normally see in an encyclopedia. See WP:TONE. After you address the tone, I will (if you like) do a run-through and fix any remaining technical issues that I see. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 19:22, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Stephen,
- I would love you to do a run-through on it. I write songs and screenplays, so it might take me awhile to change my writing style. I did tone it way down. I am hoping that when we get this is a state that is good enough to be published, that you will publish it. I would love it to stand next to your other great articles. John Asher deserves that. I would like to be your assistant on here until I get really qualified, if that's okay with you. I think I can get the "guts" of the article correct with sources, but it seems like I get attached to the subjects, I'm working on. I actually spent the last couple days on making it what I thought was neutral. I read your articles and really like them, especially the one article on Muhammad Ali, it's amazing. Maybe I should purposely work on someone I don't like and then it will be neutral. LOL!
- Off the subject, and I don't even know if this is appropriate or against Wikipedia rules, I hope not, but I would love to hire you part time to work on a project that I am working on. It's absolutely amazing, but I am having trouble with the very things that you are excellent with. My email is [email protected] - It's the most exciting project, Grammy Award winning producers and mixers are involved, a big director is already attached, the largest video game company in the U.S. has committed to work on it. Please email me if you have any interest and I will explain it in more detail!
- Back to Asher! I don't know anything about photos. I can ask Ron Ellis to call Churchill, he will defiantly help us. I love the picture of Asher in his office. I don't want to do anything incorrect. Photos will defiantly make it come alive. I view this page as your so I will take your direction if that is okay with you.
- {{ping|StefenTower} (Annointed777 (talk) 20:20, 1 September 2024 (UTC))
- Annointed777 Re: first paragraph, it's quite all right to work on bios of people you admire, as I admire Ali, but we do have to put on our "encyclopedic writing" cap when we do the work. It's mainly about getting to the point, avoiding passion, discarding our biases (as much as we can), and reflecting reliable sources. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't write in a way that highlights special aspects of a subject, although we're supposed to go by what reliable sources report about those aspects. If the overall description of the subject is in WP:BALANCE and we're using an encyclopedic tone, we're good. All that said, I think it would be best if you can take a stab at addressing the tone so you can get practice there. Note that we have no WP:DEADLINE. When the article is ready, I can help you move it to the article space -- and you will still receive the credit for having originally created it. As it should be.
- Re: second paragraph, I don't think I will have the availability anytime soon (I'm quite far behind on my own projects! :) ), but I may think about it some more. Thank you for considering me at any rate.
- Re: third paragraph, I poked around for some images. There were none on Wikimedia Commons, and several on Flickr, but the ones on Flickr were all encumbered by strict copyright. The bottom line is we need a photo where the photo-taker is basically willing to give it away - that is, they give away some or all of their rights to the image. And it would be easier in a legal sense if any photos were taken of Asher while he was doing something in a public-facing manner (i.e., nothing private). Note that we can certainly publish the article without an image.
- Last, there's no need to ping me on my own user talk page. I get notifications automatically. Cheers! Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 00:06, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Stefen,
- I like how you identified the paragraphs. I'll do the same. Since you are my mentor and I hope I'l be your assistant! Also I don't care about the credit, I'd like you to get it. I would't have done this page if it wasn't;t for your you and it would never get published if it wasn't for you. I know after I dome best you will add the magic to it. So I vote that you publish it.
- Paragraph 1 -
- I really appreciate your patience. You really have a great way of explaining and being kind about it. It's defiantly a gift and one I so appreciate! I will take your advice and take a stab at it!
- Paragraph 2 -
- My project is going to be gong on for long time. It's actually a new Company. I am creating a virtual singer to be a pop - I like to think that this will be her influence. She is also neuro-divergent, Autism is so misunderstood and they are my favorite people. I have some traits, but I'm mostly ADHD. I like you and you are ever interested the door is always open. If there is anything I can do to help you with your project, please let me know. I mostly have contacts in the music business and some in TV and film but mostly music. If your project has anything to do with music. I am defiantly the girl who can give you contacts! I would love to hear about your project. I saw that you were working on a YouTube Show. I subscribed to your channel. If I can help you in any way,
- 3. I will call people and drive them crazy until we get the photos. I will keep you posted and let you know when I have a new version of John Asher for you to see and I will also work on the Pics! Thank you for everything! You are the best!!! and thank you for telling me not to ping people on their own page. It totally shows what a newbie I am! LOL!!! (Annointed777 (talk) 04:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC))
Hi Stefen, Hope you are doing well, sorry for the delay, I was buried with work. I think I have toned down the John Asher page. I am hoping it is ready for your magic to be added. I'm sure it will still need a pass from you. I am trying to study your pages to get a better sense of the writing style. When the page is approved I will work on getting the picture in case someone who is deciding to give right to the picture wants to read it. I tried putting in categories at the bottom but somehow I duplicated the page, so I cancelled it. Let me know what you think!(Annointed777 (talk) 16:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC))
Tech News: 2024-36
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
- Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__
to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [3] - Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [4]
- Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [5]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 September 2024
[edit]- News and notes: WikiCup enters final round, MCDC wraps up activities, 17-year-old hoax article unmasked
- In the media: AI is not playing games anymore. Is Wikipedia ready?
- News from the WMF: Meet the 12 candidates running in the WMF Board of Trustees election
- Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024
- Serendipity: What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year
- Traffic report: After the gold rush
Let editors edit, ffs
[edit]Sometimes I get the notion there are some editors here who just want to let the air out of other editors' tires, for kicks. If someone is doing loads of genuine, good-faith work, don't get in their way! Imperfections can be addressed in due course. This site is bleeding too many editors, and the last thing we should do is discourage work. Editors should ask themselves whether they are fairly interpreting policies/guidelines or becoming so wound up and appearing as pesky hall monitors, insisting that every 'i' is crossed and 't' is dotted. Note that this isn't a call just to other editors, but also to myself. We need to check ourselves more here.
That all said, anyone intentionally breaking guidelines/policies or otherwise dropping messy, unorganized, unsourced, etc. content into articles deserves the wet trout treatment. ;) Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
- Stefen, if it wasn't for you and another another patient person on Wikipedia, I would not have continued here. It is very intimidating when you first get on Wikipedia. I was having panic attacks every time I pressed publish. I hope this post helps others become a mentor like you are. I appreciate you so much! I think I am your number one fan, but I am sure I am only one of many who feel this way! Thank you Stefen for your support. It would be great if there was a promotion to get more editors on. I would love to help with that.(Annointed777 (talk) 00:06, 13 September 2024 (UTC))
Tech News: 2024-37
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [6][7]
- Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions
entity:getSitelink()
andmw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid)
will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [8]
Project updates
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [9]
- Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new
MOS
namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning withMOS:
(usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language codemos
). [10]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 64
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 64, July – August 2024
- The Hindu Group joins The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimania presentation
- New user script for easily searching The Wikipedia Library
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Board Elections
[edit]Hi Stefen, It's Annointed777 - I just received a 2nd notice regarding the board elections. I have read about the candidates but I do not know enough to determine who the best ones are to vote for, what are the top priorities. If you have a chance would you mind emailing me at [email protected] with who you think would be the best choices and I will pay extra attention to them? Thank you Stefen. (Annointed777 (talk) 02:31, 13 September 2024 (UTC))
- Sorry, I don't pay attention to this aspect of Wikipedia as I'm too busy with other things. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 18:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
User:Velma Larkin has falsely accusing me of vandalism
[edit]Hi there, a user named User:Velma Larkin has falsely accusing me of vandalism and User:Velma Larkin must be indefinitely blocked. I hope you understand. Thanks. 2001:569:74E3:4000:D86:8CFC:FC26:86AC (talk) 05:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
- That user has been reported to WP:AIV. I expect they will be blocked soon. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 05:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! I didn't know to look here. 166.194.200.16 (talk) 05:51, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Help! There is a persecutor run amok on Wikipedia
[edit]You warned user:Velma Larkin about an improper warning of an IP editor, well, I am getting the same treatment.
Please help me with a dispute with user:Velma Larkin, because they are acting like a corrupt enforcement officer of Wikipedia by falsely accusing me of vandalism. Please investigate their reverts and their patrolling of IP edits.
I stand by my recent edit of USS San Francisco (SSN-711) as a model of IP editing for the good of the planet. Doesn't everyone live a good IP edit around here? You should! 166.194.200.16 (talk) 05:50, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
- I restored your edit, and then another editor came along and partly changed it back, then changed their mind. It should be all right now. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 05:55, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-38
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
- Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
- The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [11]
- References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [12]
- It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [13]
- Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes
mw-message-box
need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newercdx-message
group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [14]
Technical project updates
- Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [15]
Tech in depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Fun
[edit]Always fun to encounter a "not an improvement" change, fix it (completing one aspect to be an actual but minor improvement and reverting another aspect), be personally attacked by that non-improving editor in a subsequent edit, then after calling the "not an improvement" change to that editor's attention, they remove the discussion and slough it off as "not serious", like they're entitled to go around making "not an improvement" changes and attacking fellow editors. This editor literally just changed dates in maintenance templates from a few months ago to this month and finds that actually disruptive edit is useful somehow. Egad. Hopefully this isn't the kind of editor Wikipedia is cultivating in 2024. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
New message from Shearonink
[edit]You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Wounded Knee Massacre § Massacre? Mass Shooting? - what to state in the lead section. Shearonink (talk) 20:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)