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This editor has joined in opposition to the targeting of editors by the correct "Point of View" and "Ideology" crowd so that the majority of us can keep the encyclopedia free for anyone to edit and not let it become the encyclopedia edited only by those who have yet to do something unacceptable to the easily-offended. Don't let the octopus of the easily-offended bring down the entire project!

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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. Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages 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)

Infoboxes II

Hope you don't mind, but I decided to be WP:BOLD and added Infoboxes II to WP:LAME. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

North America 16:11, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

-- Robert of Ramsor (talk) 18:07, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Grace Tsutada

Just a quick heads up that I've toted the piece on Grace Tsutada to Articles for Deletion. Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Grace_Tsutada. Carrite (talk) 15:25, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 15, 2015)

The wheel is one of the most famous and useful inventions in the history of technology Hello, John Carter. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: History of technology Previous selections: Garbage picking • Antagonist Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Nominate an article Review nominations Have your say in future selections Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:14, 6 April 2015 (UTC) • Opt-out instructions

Hello, from a DR/N volunteer

This is a friendly reminder to involved parties that there is a current Dispute Resolution Noticeboard case still awaiting comments and replies. If this dispute has been resolved to the satisfaction of the filing editor and all involved parties, please take a moment to add a note about this at the discussion so that a volunteer may close the case as "Resolved". If the dispute is still ongoing, please add your input. Montanabw 01:22, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Today's articles for improvement

• Hello John Carter:

This week's voting for TAFI's upcoming weekly collaboration has begun at Week 19 of 2015. Thanks for participating!

This week's article for improvement (week 16, 2015)

A saxophone is an example of an aerophone. Hello, John Carter. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Aerophone Previous selections: History of technology • Garbage picking Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Nominate an article Review nominations Have your say in future selections Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 01:25, 13 April 2015 (UTC) • Opt-out instructions

Rockefeller Foundation article.

One thing I have been criticized for is taking down a claim on the Rockefeller Foundation article that RF helped fund Joseph Mengele's work. I find that difficult to believe, and the original source was Edwin Block, author of IBM and the Holocaust. They changed it to a better source, I believe. But I still question the claim. The Rockefeller Foundation is one group many anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists like David Icke have obsessed over, so there's a lot of false information circulating about it. I think the claim should at least be discussed, whether it should be kept in the article. Also, I believe the Rockefeller Foundation is left-wing politically, just like the family is for the most part, and Nazism is traditionally considered to be on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. Glenn Beck has claimed the Rockefeller Foundation has communist art in it, and they did actually hire a Bolshevik named Diego Rivera to paint it, so he may be right. That would seem to be the opposite of Nazism to me. --PaulBustion88 (talk) 22:45, 13 April 2015 (UTC) "The Rockefeller Foundation funded Nazi racial studies even after it was clear that this research was being used to rationalize the demonizing of Jews and other groups. Up until 1939 the Rockefeller Foundation was funding research used to support Nazi racial science studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWIA.) Reports submitted to Rockefeller did not hide what these studies were being used to justify, but Rockefeller continued the funding and refrained from criticizing this research so closely derived from Nazi ideology. The Rockefeller Foundation did not alert "the world to the nature of German science and the racist folly" that German anthropology promulgated and Rockefeller funded for years after the passage of the 1935 Nuremberg racial laws." That was one statement I took out but I reluctantly restored. I think that should be questioned. Here's another one, "Some of its infamous activities include:

• Funding various German eugenics programs, including the laboratory of Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, for whom Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
• Construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's Institute for Brain Research with a $317,000 grant in 1929, with continuing support for the Institute's operations under Ernst Rüdin over the next several years." Rockefeller Foundation--PaulBustion88 (talk) 22:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

1. (Gretchen Schafft, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004)
2. Edwin Black (September 2003). "The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics". History News Network. (Also published at San Francisco Chronicle). According to HNN, this material was drawn from Black's books "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race".

Mediation rejected as VictoriaGrayson and Montanabw have no interest in joining in

Any advice? Looks like mediation is simply rejected. Alas.. Prasangika37 (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

AN

Thanks, John, nice point. :-) But I think your "it would be extremely irrational for you to continue to assert that editors like Bishonen… have looked at the evidence" should probably be "it would be extremely irrational for you to continue to deny" etc? Bishonen | talk 01:19, 16 April 2015 (UTC).

proposed iban, please comment

given your involvement, please see https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Suggested_Limited_Interaction_Ban_between_Users_Alansohn_and_Magnolia677. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:06, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Your advice

Hi there. I responded to your good advice on my talk page, then went about my editing and came across this. How is this harassment or stalking? His last edit was two months ago! He reverted an edit where I removed the geo-coordinates from the geography section of the article. This is stated in WP:USCITIES: "if a coordinate (latitude and longitude) is included in the infobox, if there is any, remove any existing article coordinate from this section." He simply will not let me edit in New Jersey, even when my edit has nothing to do with him and is 100 percent correct. Any help would be appreciated. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: That edit would clearly violate the i-ban, and is probably problematic in and of itself, were it made after the i-ban were enacted. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have happened yet. But I've seen a few editors engage in dubious conduct days or minutes before an I-ban is enacted. If the i-ban were in place at this point, you would have grounds to take him to an admin and request a block. That i-ban should be in place shortly. Let's wait to see what happens after it is formalized. John Carter (talk) 22:32, 17 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)

Some baklava for you!

Thank you so much for the Editor of the Week nomination! It was quite a surprise. Thanks for thinking of me. Liz 19:32, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 17, 2015)

A satellite image demonstrating the Geography of Niger Hello, John Carter. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Geography of Niger Previous selections: Aerophone • History of technology Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Nominate an article Review nominations Have your say in future selections Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC) • Opt-out instructions

Today's articles for improvement

• Hello John Carter:

This week's voting for TAFI's upcoming weekly collaboration has begun at Week 20 of 2015. Thanks for participating!

Would you mind removing my accidental comment from your user page?

Hey John Carter, how are things?

I would appreciate your removing my comment from your user page, as it was meant for your talk page. I was not the first nor the last to make this error: your user page simply looks a lot like a talk page. The only other post you have apparently chosen to keep is this one, and the original poster didn't try to undo that one as I did.

I don't know why you chose to revert me when I tried to remove it myself when you hadn't reverted the others, but I find it disturbing given our less-than-pleasant interaction in the recent past that you choose to keep a reference to me on your user page. It looks like it is what WP:UPNO calls Material that can be viewed as attacking other editors, including the recording of perceived flaws. Specifically it looks like you are trying to keep a record of my making a "stupid mistake" that numerous other editors, including the venerable User:In ictu oculi, have made. You criticized me quite harshly when I first made the mistake, so I can't imagine any other reason you would want to keep a record of said mistake on your user page except to attack me.

I'm sure neither of us want this to elevate again, so I would ask you to kindly remove it yourself at the nearest opportunity.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@Hijiri88:, please refrain from any further comments on my pages. What I mind is your rather tendentious insistence on trying to cast yourself as making no mistakes. And your repeatedly commenting on it very much looks like WP:TE. John Carter (talk) 16:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I've brought this to ANI. The fact that you have allowed other users to undo the same mistake, but are keeping my post and refusing to either let me remove it or remove it yourself is pretty clear proof that you are keeping it there as a "record of my perceived flaws". I also don't much appreciate the above unsubstantiated personal attack that I "insist on trying to cast yourself as making no mistakes". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Your advice again

Hi John. Yesterday I made a few edits to New Jersey. I added a new article, Vanlieu Corners, New Jersey, and added some history to a few articles. I also did some cleanup. As you know, the IBan I agreed to prohibits me from editing an article without an intervening third party edit, so I was cautious not to violate that. The other party spent the day editing hundreds of New Jersey articles in alpha order, leaving his name as the last editor. When a few of my edits interfered, a rant was left on his talk page accusing me of "malicious stalking", "misbehavior", "deliberate DICKishness", being a "jerk", and "deliberately manufacturing conflicts". One of the conditions of the IBan is that "neither party shall mention the other, directly or indirectly, explicitly or by implication, on any page, except once as necessary and with supporting diffs on the WP:ANI board for reporting violations of the IBAN". I don't want to go yet again to ANI, but this is my reputation. Is there anything I can do to stop this abuse? Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:30, 20 April 2015 (UTC)