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Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Victoria Memorial, London, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Winged victory. 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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 Done Ham II (talk)

Thanks

Hi, just saying thank you for your edits on Mix'n'match. May there be many more :-) --Magnus Manske (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Smiley You're welcome! Ham II (talk)

Thanks

Hi, I didn't know you were working on Mix-n-Match, but thanks for that too. I am here to thank you for your edits to Catalogue of paintings in the National Gallery, London. Jane (talk) 10:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jane023:Smiley You're welcome! Thanks for creating the page! Ham II (talk) 13:19, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

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 Done Ham II (talk)

January 2015

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 Done Ham II (talk)

Reference Errors on 24 January

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 Done Ham II (talk)

Thank you for editing this article, but I am puzzled by some of your changes.

  • You moved the stub tag from its correct position at the end, to before the categories. See WP:ORDER.
  • You changed "thumb" to "thumbnail", for both images, although the documentation at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Images#Syntax says to use "thumb". Is there some other guidance which contradicts this?
  • You added a size (200px) to the Lloyd George image, although the page linked above says to avoid stating a size where possible
  • I don't see "upright" discussed on that page at all, except when it comes with a numerical value: what does the plain "upright" parameter do, and where is this documented?

Thanks for any explanations. I'm moving the stub tag back to where it belongs. PamD 23:31, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@PamD: Thanks for your patience. I see that I am wrong about where to place the stub tag; it always looks ugly to me separated from the rest of the wikitext by two lines and as it appears above the categories on the page I have always assumed that that should be the order in the wikitext. Happy to be corrected, and reducing the two-line space to one looks much better to me.
The "upright" parameter for thumbnails is a handy thing to know about. The default thumbnail size is often best suited for images with a landscape format; adding "upright" sets them to a default size for portrait format. I changed "thumbnail" to "thumb" rather than the other way round, mainly because I'm more used to seeing "thumb", but it seems that both work equally well.
The 200px for the Lloyd George pic was a purely aesthetic decision to give more emphasis to that picture than the "upright" parameter would allow. It also looks fine at the default size, though, so I'll change it back to that. Ham II (talk) 08:20, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Re thumb/thumbnail: sorry for getting confused as to which way you'd changed it. But there's a messy situation here, as RefToolbar's "embedded file" button is producing "thumbnail" which seems to be a non-preferred option. See my note at Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar#Adding_embedded_file:_.22thumb.22_or_.22thumbnail.22.3F. PamD 09:31, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

New photos of Westminster statues

I'm currently taking photos of various Westminster statues with the aim of improving on what we have currently. If you keep an eye on my Commons uploads (see [1]) you should see the new pics popping up. Could you please continue adding them to articles, as you've done with a few already? Prioryman (talk) 20:28, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@Prioryman: Couldn't be happier! Would you be interested in filling the few remaining gaps for photos at List of public art in the City of Westminster (mainly in Mayfair; the only statue left is Mary of Nazareth in the churchyard of St James's, Piccadilly)? Ham II (talk) 20:53, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Sure, I'll do what I can, though I can't guarantee it'll be in the immediate future. I've just uploaded another batch of photos which will hopefully be of some use. Prioryman (talk) 12:04, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
By the way, I think you'll like the hook for Template:Did you know nominations/Cádiz Memorial... Prioryman (talk) 19:01, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
@Prioryman: As soon as I saw your edits I thought, this is made for DYK! Ham II (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
I got the Mary of Nazareth for you, along with much else (basically much better-quality photos of various statues, plaques and monuments). Check out my most recent uploads. [2] Prioryman (talk) 23:31, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
@Prioryman: Sterling work as always; thank you!
Just thought I'd let you know that I've greatly expanded Richard Coeur de Lion (statue) and put it up for consideration as a Good Article candidate. I've also uploaded a fresh batch of photos to Commons [3]. There'll be more on the way soon. Prioryman (talk) 09:25, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
@Prioryman: I'll do my best to make time to review it; it might not be till the weekend, though. I think you still need to click the link to start the nomination; see the article talk page. The pics are excellent! Ham II (talk) 18:42, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! The nomination is already listed; clicking the link starts the review, not the nomination. Prioryman (talk) 19:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
@Prioryman: Duhh! Clearly I'm not running at 100% at the moment... Ham II (talk) 19:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

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 Done Ham II (talk)

Precious

architecture and public art
Thank you, art lover with scientific background, for quality articles such as Gothic Revival architecture and Manchester Madonna, for combining an added piece of information with copy-editing, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:02, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

 Thank you very much! Ham II (talk)

Wikidata weekly summary #143

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited T. J. Jackson Lears, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Guggenheim Foundation. 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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 Done Ham II (talk) 15:12, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #144

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)

Dates

Please don't do this. See WP:DAYS. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 10:48, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Mufka: Sorry about that; I wasn't aware of the guideline. It was "12th-13th" that needed fixing, and I see that you've now done that with an –. Thanks! Ham II (talk) 11:28, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #145

Cardiff meetup accessibility question

In case you hadn't spotted it, there is a question at m:Talk:Meetup/Cardiff/4 about accessibility. Thryduulf (talk) 11:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Thanks for notifying me; I'll answer there. Ham II (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Structured Data on Commons update

Greetings,

After a delay in updates to the Structured data on Commons project, I wanted to catch you up with what has been going on over the past three months. In short: The project is on hold, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.

The meeting in Berlin in October provided the engineering teams with a lot to start on. Unfortunately the Structured Data on Commons project was put on hold not too long after this meeting. Development of the actual Structured data system for Commons will not begin until more resources can be allocated to it.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany have been working to improve the Wikidata query process on the back-end. This is designed to be a production-grade replacement of WikidataQuery integrated with search. The full project is described at Mediawiki.org.This will benefit the structured data project greatly since developing a high-level search for Commons is a desired goal of this project.

The Wikidata development team is working on the arbitrary access feature. Currently it's only possible to access items that are connected to the current page. So for example on Vincent van Gogh you can access the statements on Q5582, but you can't access these statements on Category:Vincent van Gogh or Creator:Vincent van Gogh. With arbitrary access enabled on Commons we no longer have this limitation. This opens up the possibility to use Wikidata data on Creator, Institution, Authority control and other templates instead of duplicating the data (what we do now). This will greatly enhance the usefulness of Wikidata for Commons.

To use the full potential of arbitrary access the Commons community needs to reimplement several templates in LUA. In LUA it's possible to use the local fields and fallback to Wikidata if it's not locally available. Help with this conversion is greatly appreciated. The different tasks are tracked in phabricator, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T89594 .

Volunteers are continuing to add data about artworks to Wikidata. Sometimes an institution website is used and sometimes data is being transfered from Commons to Wikidata. Wikidata now has almost 35.000 items about paintings. This is done as part of the WikiProject sum of all paintings. This helps us to learn how to d:Wikidata:WikiProject Visual arts/Item structuremodel and refine metadata about artworks. Experience that will of course be very useful for Commons too.

Additionally, the metadata cleanup drive continues to produce results. The drive, which is intended to identify files missing {{information}} or the like structured data fields and to add such fields when absent, has reduced the number of files missing information by almost 100,000 on Commons. You can help by looking for files with similarly-formatted description pages, and listing them at Commons:Bots/Work requests so that a bot can add the {{information}} template on them.

At the Amsterdam Hackathon in November 2014, a couple of different models were developed about how artwork can be viewed on the web using structured data from Wikidata. You can browse two examples here and here. These examples can give you an idea of the kind of data that file pages have the potential to display on-wiki in the future.

The Structured Data project is a long-term one, and the volunteers and staff will continue working together to provide the structure and support in the back-end toward front-end development. There are still many things to do to help advance the project, and I hope to have more news for you in the near future. Contact me any time with questions, comments, concerns.

-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

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Wikidata weekly summary #146

Wikidata weekly summary #147

Statue of James II, Trafalgar Square has been nominated for Did You Know

Wikidata weekly summary #148

Wikidata weekly summary #149

Consensus on question of public art on "Public Art in London" template talk page

Salutations and greetings. Please check out the questions I have raised about what qualifies as "public art" and whether or not we should include the Statues of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill in the Palace of Westminster. Thanks so much! Fireflyfanboy (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:44, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

A bit of fun

See Template:Did you know nominations/Alien (sculpture)! Prioryman (talk) 22:35, 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. Wikipedia: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)

Wikidata weekly summary #150

Statue of James II, Trafalgar Square has been nominated for Did You Know

DYK for Equestrian statue of the Duke of Cambridge, Whitehall

Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #151

New Gandhi statue

I'm afraid it took a little longer than I anticipated to get the Gandhi statue pic you requested, but here it is. I've added it to the article. I've also got a lot of new public art images to upload, focusing in particular on Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs; I'll work through them over the next few days. Prioryman (talk) 19:17, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

@Prioryman: Your excellent work on public art in London is always appreciated; looking forward to seeing the List of public art in Greenwich grow! I wish I could be taking some of these pictures myself instead of lumping other people with the work but I don't live in London. If you're interested, there's a new statue in Covent Garden; see List of public art in the City of Westminster#Covent Garden, where there's also one other gap. And as you do so much work on this topic anyway, would you be interested in putting your name down at the London public art task force? Cheers, Ham II (talk) 11:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Parliament Square

Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Statue of James II, Trafalgar Square

Coffee // have a cup // beans // 08:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #152

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Wow, congratulations! What an undertaking. You've been so patient and it is wonderful to have an example to use for similar lists. I've been debating if I want to make similar lists for Portland and other U.S. cities. Very, very well done! ---Another Believer (Talk) 20:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

 Thank you very much! Ham II (talk) 07:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations from me too. A barnobolus for your continued efforts. JMiall 18:29, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much also! Ham II (talk) 13:39, 20 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)

Wikidata weekly summary #154

Welsh Horse (Lancers) Yeomanry

Ham II, I note that you have recently renamed Welsh Horse to Welsh Horse (Lancers) Yeomanry. I believe that this is an error. Have you got a reliable, official source that says this was the regiment's title? An Army List for 1914, or more likely, 1915 or 1916 perhaps? I have never seen this title being used anywhere (James, Becke, Frederick, for examples). A search of the London Gazette would suggest that the correct title is Welsh Horse Yeomanry. Hamish59 (talk) 17:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I have been WP:BOLD and moved the page to Welsh Horse Yeomanry. Hamish59 (talk) 17:27, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #155

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Wikidata weekly summary #160

See talk page re: whether or not this statue should have its own article. If you have any sources to help verify notability, any help would be much appreciated. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:03, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #161

Thank you!

For cleaning up the stub articles I create for London sculptures. They always look so much better after you've graced their presence. :) ---Another Believer (Talk) 02:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@Another Believer: Cheers; it was nothing! Ham II (talk) 16:23, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #162

Reference errors on 15 June

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:28, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

  • A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
  • A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
  • New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
  • SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
  • Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.


Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

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Wikidata weekly summary #168

Wikidata weekly summary #169

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Wikidata weekly summary #170

Thanks!

... for incorporating the the 4 recent London sculpture articles I created into the encyclopedia via navboxes, categories, etc. I forget about those things sometimes. None of the stubs I created are great, but I still think a stub is better than nothing at all. I am far, far away from London, but enjoy learning about the city's public art. Much appreciated! ---Another Believer (Talk) 19:05, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

@Another Believer: Thank you for creating them! So glad that you're still enthused about creating articles from this list one year on from Wikimania 2014. I'm hoping to expand some of the WP:PALon stubs this month as part of the Stub contest but can't promise anything. Ham II (talk) 07:46, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again for cleaning up after me! ---Another Believer (Talk) 22:14, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@Another Believer: Smiley You're welcome! Ham II (talk) 08:48, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Not that I want to create more work for you, but I started a few more stubs:

Just three or four more, then there will be Wikipedia articles for (as far as I can recall) all of the sculptures I saw during my London visit! Then I have to move on to Berlin. But don't worry, I will still be keeping an eye on WP:PALon. :) ---Another Believer (Talk) 15:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Another Believer: Thanks again, and congratulations on nearing completion! Berlin sounds exciting; could this be the basis for another taskforce? And it would be great to start generating lists from Wikidata too, one day... Ham II (talk) 17:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
I think task forces are great, even if they are only used by a couple editors for collaboration and as a space for collecting resources, marking off checklists, etc. I am the only one who uses WP:OAP's sculpture page (and its talk page), but it is very helpful. I'd love to see a similar task force for Berlin, but I hesitate to start one unless there are others who would be interested in participating. ---Another Believer (Talk) 17:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
(By the way, your List of public art in the City of Westminster inspired me to start a similar List of public art in Eugene, Oregon. It is very much a start / work in progress, but I hope to keep working on it until it reaches FL status one day.) ---Another Believer (Talk) 17:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Statue of Amy Winehouse has been nominated for Did You Know

Royal Society of Chemistry artworks

Hi,

Could I trouble to have a glance at List of artworks in the collection of the Royal Society of Chemistry, written by a colleague, please? It would be good to have the thoughts of someone who's not as familiar with it as I am. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

If I may be allowed to make a comment here - I'm not entirely convinced about whether this list should be on wikipedia. The items on it don't seem particularly individually notable (although mentioning the existence of the busts in the articles on the various chemists or sculptors might be ok), the references tend to be from the RSC itself or about the artists rather than the artworks, the notability of the topic of the whole list is not established and as far as I'm aware the RSC isn't open to the public - none of which point to much level of interest to the general public. So while this is list obviously contains plenty of good information I'd have said that it belongs on a RSC website rather than here. Are there other similar lists already? JMiall 17:53, 19 August 2015 (UTC) (p.s. strangely I uploaded your photo of Tom Watson earlier)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited List of artworks in the collection of the Royal Society of Chemistry, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page London Transport. 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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New London statues

FYI: [4]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:35, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Statue of Amy Winehouse

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:52, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

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Help us improve wikimeets by filling in the UK Wikimeet survey!

Hello! I'm running a survey to identify the best way to notify Wikimedians about upcoming UK wikimeets (informal, in-person social meetings of Wikimedians), and to see if we can improve UK wikimeets to make them accessible and attractive to more editors and readers. All questions are optional, and it will take about 10 minutes to complete. Please fill it in at:

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Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 19:26, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

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You're invited! Women in Red World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Architecture

You are invited! Join us remotely!

World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Architecture

  • Dates: 15 to 25 October 2015
  • Location: Worldwide/virtual/online event
  • Host/Facilitator: Women in Red (WiR): Did you know that only 15% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you!
  • Sponsor: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in association with Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, Women in Design, and Wikiproject Women Wikipedia Design
  • Event details: This is a virtual edit-a-thon hosted by WiR in parallel with a series of "physical" Guggenheim edit-a-thons. It will allow all those keen to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women in architecture and design to participate. The campaign aims to further the goals of Ada Lovelace Day for STEM, and Art+Feminism for art, in a field that by its nature combines both. As the virtual edit-a-thon stretches over a week and a half, inexperienced participants will be able to draw on the assistance of more experienced editors while creating, translating or improving articles on women who are (or have been) prominent in this field. All levels of Wikipedia editing experience are welcome.
  • RSVP and learn more: →here←--Ipigott (talk) 20:22, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

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Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Jane Wernick, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dungeness. 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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 Done Ham II (talk) 11:17, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Adminship

Hello there. Just came by to ask you if you'd be interested in becoming an administrator? I can nominate you if you'd like. -- œ 09:04, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

@OlEnglish: Thank you very much for this offer; I'm very flattered! I've thought it over and looked over some of the required reading and have decided that I wouldn't be able to commit to adminship on the English Wikipedia, though I would consider it for the Welsh, where the need for new admins might be even greater. I think I would best serve the English edition by continuing with the sort of work I do at the moment. I'm sorry to disappoint. Ham II (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

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WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

You're invited! Women in Red World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Science

You are invited! Join us remotely!

World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Science

  • Dates: 8 to 29 November 2015
  • Location: Worldwide/virtual/online event
  • Host/Facilitator: Women in Red (WiR) in collaboration with Women scientists: Did you know that only 15% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you!
  • Sponsor: New York Academy of Sciences
  • Event details: This is a virtual edit-a-thon hosted by WiR in parallel with a "phyisical" event during the afternoon of Sunday, November 22 in New York City. It will allow all those keen to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women in science to participate. As the virtual edit-a-thon stretches over three weeks, new participants will be able to draw on the assistance of more experienced editors while creating, translating or improving articles on women who are (or have been) prominent in the field. All levels of Wikipedia editing experience are welcome.
  • RSVP and learn more: →here←

--Rosiestep (talk) 01:08, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

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Knife Edge Two Piece

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you! Here it is. Prioryman (talk) 22:38, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

@Prioryman: Thank you! Ham II (talk) 21:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

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Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:17, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

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Thomas Powell

Reverend Thomas Powell (botanist), missionary and botanist, who died in Penzance, Cornwall, England, April 6, 1887, (details from probate notice) is not the same person as Thomas Powell (1809–1887) the writer who moved to New York in about 1849 and died in New Jersey, January 13, 1887.

Sidpickle (talk) 11:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Just an update. Thomas Powell the Missionary was born June 18, 1817 - not 1809. See link to THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY TUTUILA MISSION page 91 [1] also Extracts from The West Briton newspaper, 1887 (Part 2) under deaths [2] and Adelaide Observer column 3 about half way down; Death of Eminent Missionary [3]

Hope this helps

Sidpickle (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

References

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London Borough templates: tube and rail stations discussion open

Hello and a Happy Christmas. Thanks for your recent contributions, improving London's coverage. I would like to invite you to: Category talk:London borough templates.- Adam37 Talk 15:21, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

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