User talk:AmandaNP/Archives/2013/November
BuddhakahikaHi, you were recently involved in a CU here. I think it is possible that they have returned as Tākatnāth Siddha, even though that contributor has only made one edit. I don't think a single-edit contributor can be said to pass the duck test but the reinstatement of Buddhakahika's preferred version of Dalit saints of Hinduism is mightily odd. Given that it takes ages to clean up after this sock once they get going, is it worth running a CU now and nip any problems in the bud(dha)? - Sitush (talk) 11:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
linksHello, I'm sorry if my SPI post did not make sense. The previous socks of Castleking1440 used the same Elance account, to solicit jobs for paid editing. Each sock posted a few unrelated minor edits, then created a spammy article or added promotional material to an article. The article was commissioned on Elance, to that same account. This sock, CoolHalloween, posted a few unrelated minor edits, then added promotional material to an article. In this case, the added material did not even match the sources. In this case, the Elance job was "I would like to have a wikipedia post written for Hunter Industries, including it's segments of FX Luminaire, Hunter Golf, and Hunter Custom Molding. It should be a minimum of 500 words and have a minimum of 5 citations." So what CoolHalloween did was add material about FX Luminaire, Hunter Golf, and Hunter Custom Molding, with several new citations. I have not included a link to the Elance job, although Pharoah of the Wizards did. It's right there on the SPI page. Note that I am not saying "Someone being paid to edit on behalf of a banned user." It's exactly the opposite of that. Someone is paying a blocked user, CastleKing1440. To evade the block, CastleKing1440 is using multiple accounts. I posted this to SPI because of the sockpuppetry, and that is why I requested CU. Please let me know if I can clarify further. Logical Cowboy (talk) 06:08, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Maybe it's just me...I don't have anything to go on, but when I spotted the username Potassium.chloride it dinged in my sleepy brain as being the sort of username the sockfarm of Echigo mole is known for. Thought I'd toss it your way to see if there's any smoke there or if I just need to go to bed... - The Bushranger One ping only 08:22, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 October 2013
The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
While giving a speech on behalf of a gubernatorial candidate, Paul advocated his pro-life position, and compared allowing unrestricted abortions to the film Gattaca. He went on to use strikingly similar language and phraseology in his speech to what the Wikipedia page reads. The Washington Post's article conceded that Wikipedia is a widely used source for trivial information, but mocked the fact that a politician would view it as a reliable source.
In January we raised several potentially troublesome issues for the Wikimedia movement in taking on Wikivoyage, including the apparent inadequacy of the English Wikivoyage sex-tourism policy, hurriedly strengthened against mention of child sex after our inquiries. However, both sex-tourism and illegal-activities policies remain equivocal about how the site should treat entries about sex tourism more generally, and drugs that are classed as illicit in almost every country. Yet the Signpost has found it remarkably easy to locate material in Wikivoyage that violates both the spirit and the letter of the policies.
This year's WikiCup competition has finished, while three articles, five lists, and six pictures, were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Laura Stein, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, has concluded that, based on her comparison of user policy documents (including the Terms of Service) of YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia, Wikipedia offers the highest level of participation power overall.
With Halloween, the Day of the Dead, and other gloomy celebrations this week, we're taking a look at Wikipedia's dead and dying. For some dead WikiProjects, the sole purpose of their life was simply to serve as a warning to others. Some of these projects may still be salvageable, but for most, a revival is unlikely. Here are some projects that never got off the ground and the lessons that can be gleaned from their follies
Stormfront81Can you comment at the unblock request here? I presume this is a sock of similar named socks at Lumberton, Texas, but there was no indication in the block notice or tags on the page. I'm stalled since this is a clearly marked checkuser block. Kuru (talk) 18:39, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Buddhakahika is backYup, Buddhakahika is back - see Messenger of Truthfulness and 199.243.220.218. Hopefully, this is self-evident. I'm wondering whether we might need to salt some of the previously deleted articles. I'm not keen on protecting the remainder because the key ones act as an alarm bell - they give us a warning that they may be up to their old tricks in less obvious places. - Sitush (talk) 00:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
YGM It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Can this article be semi-protected and pending changes simultaneously? --George Ho (talk) 17:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 06 November 2013Recent SPIIn regard to this: "No comment with respect to IP address(es)" at this SPI:[1], I have to ask why no comment about the IPs? Inconclusive or something else? Thanks, -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 22:19, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 13 November 2013
The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
Five articles, two lists, one topic, and nine pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
The supporting staff of the Wikimedia Foundation’s powerful volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) have released their assessments for the third half-yearly round of funding applications. The applications for the newly named annual plan grants were submitted by affiliated entities on 1 October, and comprise a total of more than US$5M in bids.
The Italian-language Wikipedia community has overwhelmingly voted to request the Wikimedia Foundation's assistance in recovering wikipedia.it, a website that has been frequently confused with the Italian Wikipedia.
This week, we followed the intricate storylines of WikiProject Soap Operas.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
A queryI've blocked Progsofts for spam, and in the course of this noticed that WikiDan61 had queried why they seemed to be talking about two different companies in the article. I looked into this, and found that they had used a page created by Muhammadbabarzaman (who is blocked as a Morning277 sock) as a template for starting their new article. The earlier page (Tsebo Outsourcing Group) was deleted in July. The Progsofts one was only created in November. To my mind, this says that they are an M277 sock too as they must have had a copy of the article to hand after it was deleted (and the company that was the subject fits their low notability zone too). What is the position about this currently? Do we just leave it as an SOA block, or should it be labelled as a sock? (I've not put links here to avoid pinging...) Peridon (talk) 14:46, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Note2It would be a fair bet that Rabbit Massacre (talk · contribs) is the same guy as the one you indef'd, Request Denied Forever (talk · contribs). Who the sockmaster is, I have no clue. I also have no recollection of Werieth (talk · contribs), but after a while the trolls all tend to fall under the same bridge. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:42, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
SPIIf you have any specific questions for me that are personal you may email them to me from my account. I'd be happy to answer generic questions at the SPI itself. GraniteSand (talk) 23:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 November 2013
As I said in August, contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement, not to mention the English Wikipedia.
Peter Burke's A Social History of Knowledge: Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia is a broad and wide-ranging look at how knowledge has been created, acquired, organized, disseminated, and sometimes lost in the Western world over the last two and a half centuries, a sequel to his 2000 book covering the prior three centuries, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
Four articles, five lists, and thirty-four pictures were promoted to 'featured status' this week, including an image of a small fraction of the 18,000 taxis that serve Hong Kong.
This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles.
The Wikimedia Foundation has sent a formal cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR—the public relations agency accused of breaking Wikipedia policies and guidelines by creating, editing, and maintaining several thousand articles for paying clients through a sophisticated array of accounts. The Foundation's attorneys, Cooley LLP, have demanded that Wiki-PR's employees abide by the site's Terms of Use and the language of a community ban from the English Wikipedia.
It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
Back in March, when the March 25 Arbitration Report covered the Audit Subcommittee appointment discussion, a statement from the WMF legal division clarified its position that access to deleted revisions required an RFA or RFA-identical process; therefore AUSC committee appointments were not open to non-admins. The WMF legal team has now further clarified its position, saying that running for and winning an election for arbitrator would qualify as the type of rigorous community selection process required for the checkuser and oversight rights held by arbitrators.
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