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Welcome!

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Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!

WikiCup 2018 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Courcelles (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 147 GAs, 111 GARs, 9 DYKs, 4 FLs and 1 ITN. Our finalists were as follows:

1. Courcelles (submissions)
2. Kosack (submissions)
3. Kees08 (submissions)
4. SounderBruce (submissions)
5. Cas Liber (submissions)
6. Nova Crystallis (submissions)
7. Iazyges (submissions)
8. Ceranthor (submissions)

All those who reached the final win awards, and awards will also be going to the following participants:

• Cas Liber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for three featured articles in round 2.
• Courcelles (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 92 good articles in round 3.
• Kosack (submissions) wins the FL prize, for five featured lists overall.
• Cartoon network freak (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 30 articles in good topics overall.
• Usernameunique (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 24 did you know articles in round 3.
• Zanhe (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 17 in the news articles overall.
• Aoba47 (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 43 good article reviews in round 1.

Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2019 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email) and Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email).

WikiCup 2019 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2. With 56 contestants qualifying, each group in Round 2 contains seven contestants, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for Round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• L293D, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with ten good articles on submarines for a total of 357 points.
• Adam Cuerden, a WikiCup veteran, came next with 274 points, mostly from eight featured pictures, restorations of artwork.
• MPJ-DK, a wrestling enthusiast, was in third place with 263 points, garnered from a featured list, five good articles, two DYKs and four GARs.
• Usernameunique came next at 243, with a featured article and a good article, both on ancient helmets.
• Squeamish Ossifrage was in joint fifth place with 224 points, mostly garnered from bringing the 1937 Fox vault fire to featured article status.
• Ed! was also on 224, with an amazing number of good article reviews (56 actually).

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews on 143 good articles, one hundred more than the number of good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Well done all!

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk).

GA idea

I have an idea I would like to run past you to see if you like. I have a large list of potential GANs that I keep a running tally on. If any of these that do NOT have a date on them look interesting to you, just do some copy editing on the article and submit GAN. Then BOTH of us will get credit - you as the nominator and me as the original creator of the article. What do you think? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Here is additional on the above proposal. All these articles I created as previous Did You Know articles, so I a very familiar with them. When the GA review comes up I can answer the more difficult issues the reviewer brings up, as I know the material. You as the nominator could reply to minor issues, like grammer. I produced 31 Good Articles during this past October GAN drive. I now have over 100 Good Articles and plan on making another 100 Good Articles in 2021. If you are interested in collecting several green icons for your user page, nominate several of these above I am proposing - since I plan on turning these into Good Articles. I don't know your schedule, so don't know how busy you may be or if you would have some time to devote to this proposal. I am retired, so have all the time in the world for making Did You Know articles and Good Articles with my computers.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:53, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

If any of the articles in my large list of potential GANs that don't have a date on them look interesting to you just do some copy editing on the article and submit GAN. I will respond to the issues brought up by the reviewer. I'm sure I can handle 90% of them. Both of us will get credit for the GA. What do you think? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• Here is my latest upgraded article I just submitted GAN. To me this is at Good Article standards. There should be just minor issues to take care of to get it promoted. Time will tell.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 16:32, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Doug Coldwell, thanks for stopping by and making your kind offer. My thoughts, however, were about GA nominations where there are two (or more) editors who did the work on the article, rather than the DYK-style of having a separate credit for the nominator and editor(s). I would like the green icons but I want them for the articles I have worked substantially on. When the GA review for my nomination of hexamethylbenzene came up, for example, I stated that I saw the credit as belonging to me and to another editor. In that case, the reviewer (Double sharp) was kind enough to post to DMacks' user talk (now archived) advising of the GA promotion. To me, this "officially" recognises that DMacks and I can both claim the GA credit. To me, there should be an official process built in to GA nominations to grant credit to multiple editors.

Of course, I could just list the articles on my user page and link to the history to substantiate my contribution. We could put together a list of the articles that we both substantially contributed to and link to that (assuming you agreed). But, I really think that it should be built in to the GA process to list multiple contributing editors, and probably (like DYK) a separate nominator credit for cases where the nominator has not substantially edited the article. I am sure that some will view this as trivial and it is true that the important issue is the contribution of strong content to the encyclopaedia for our readers. I do believe that contributors being acknowledged is desirable and helps build the Wikipedian coconmmunity.

Doug, please note that I am not blaming you for the system or for not having posted a note similar to the one I did for the hexamethylbenzene GA nomination. You did a lot of work on the articles and are totally deserving of the GA credits. It was an interesting collaboration for us both (I hope), I just think (as I commented at the GA review) that the system could and should recognise cases where building an article to GA is predominantly the work of a group of editors working together (or even in series). The GA reviewer did mention my contribution and thanked me for my comment... Right cite, do you have any thoughts? I see that Moxy has since commented on the GA review and might have thoughts.

I welcome whatever thoughts that you (or anyone else) might have. EdChem (talk) 21:15, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

It so happens that in the Did You Know process that several editors can get credit when the article officially becomes a Did You Know. See Template:NewDYKnomination/guide and the contributors section, where it notes |author2=, |author3=, etc - so, until the GA process has such a structure officially, then I am suggesting that we could each get a GA credit for collaborating on an article IF you did copy editing to one of my articles that I created I am suggesting in my list of potential Good Articles (with no date). If you have 30% or more authorship (by copy editing) I would consider it fair. Then you nominate it GAN, so you can get credit as the nominator. I would be glad to handle most of the issues brought up by the GA reviewer, since I have more time on my hands since I am retired. Is that workable for you until the GA process gets officially changed to allow several credits like the Did You Know process is now? I plan on making 100 Good Articles in 2021. I made 100 Good Articles in 2020.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I just did an upgrade to Frederick Morrell Zeder, an article I originally created in 2012. It's not that far from a Good Article. IF you will do some copy editing to make improvements to the article and nominate it GAN then we both can get a GA credit. I will be glad to handle the issues brought up by the GA reviewer, as I am very familiar with the article. It will become a Good Article without to much trouble. Does this sound like an interesting proposition?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Here is my thoughts on the present way the GA credits are given to editors. From my experience of making over 500 Did You Know articles I think it is correct the way it is now. Here is why. The creator of the article should get a credit, because without the article then there would be no credits for anyone. They usually have the most amount of authorship - 80% of the time. The nominator should get a credit since they had the ambition to nominate the article for GAN. This is usually because they usually have the second largest authorship into it and therefore an interest in the article subject (80% of the remaining 20% or about 16% of the time). Editors of authorship of #3, #4, and #5 have little to no interest in the subject written about in the article. They just did small edits (e.g. grammar, spelling, fixes). They are about 4% of the total amount of authorship (combined) to the article. They should not get a GA credit like the nominator and creator since they have basically no interest in the subject of the article. So therefore the GA credit process requires no changes and is correct the way it is. In the case of DYK articles the editors of #2, #3, and #4 authorship are creators of the article when it was originally constructed for that intent (time restriction in play of 7 days).--Doug Coldwell (talk)

I just did an upgrade to Robert Grace, an article I originally created in 2017. It's not that far from a Good Article. IF you will do some copy editing and make improvements to the article and nominate it GAN then we both can get a GA credit. I will be glad to handle the issues brought up by the GA reviewer, as I am very familiar with the article. It will become a Good Article without to much trouble. Does this sound like an interesting proposition?-Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:52, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Robert Grace is a prime example of what I am talking about. Editors #3, #4, and #5 added up for total authorship is 4% of the article. The #2 editor has no interest in being the nominator since he only has 2.9% of the total authorship. I have 91.5% of the authorship of the article. If you want to be the GA nominator you should have an interest in the article of over 3% and perhaps of something near 20% authorship. Does that seem fair to you? Otherwise I will just nominate it myself and have the only GA credit issued when it gets promoted to a Good Article. Keep in mind that I have a good idea what a Good Article looks like since I got 31 Good Articles during the month of October and now have over 100 Good Articles (represented by green icons on top of my User Page). I say that Robert Grace is not very far from being a Good Article. Are you interested in collecting GA green icons for your User Page? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Let me point out that there is NOT a separate "nominator credit" and "creator credit" in the Did You Know process. The DYK nominator is usually the creator of the article. At the time the creator nominates the article for DYK s/he also lists author #2 and author #3 (rarely) at that time (immediately) as co-creators. All the editors know ahead of time they are ALL going to be participating in creating the article (since there is a seven day time limit). This then creates about an even distribution of authorship of the article by natural default (as my 14 year DYK experience has shown of 500 DYKs). You can see that in the case of potential Good Articles that the creator has much more interest and authorship in the article, than the nominator. However the nominator gets the same GA credit as the creator (mainly because they solved the issues of the reviewer). Generally speaking editor #3, #4, and #5 added up together is 4% or less authorship. It would not be fair to the creator and nominator for any of these last three editors to get the same credit as the creator and nominator - since they did not really participate in the creation of the article in becoming a Good Article. They made little edits (or minor) as any other drive-by editor would do, that has no interest in the subject (material) of the article.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:07, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello EdChem,

Year in review

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

Reviewer of the Year

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

NPP Technical Achievement Award

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

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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Regarding alternative PTs

Hey EdChem,

I wanted to ask you something. In your career as a chemist, have you often seen any tables that really differ much from the standard one like those mentioned at Periodic table#Tables with different structures or Alternative periodic tables?

The reason I ask is that I have some worry of whether it's due weight to mention them at length if they are not much used. My impression of chemistry texts is that the three common forms are (a) the standard 18 column format, (b) the previously standard 8 column format of Mendeleev , and (c) the standard 32 column format (as an explanation of how the f block fits into the 18 column format). Those are the three that were present in the 1990 Red Book, and of these (b) and (c) were cut out of the 2005 one. Anything else seems to be of surpassing rarity. Other alternatives have been mentioned in Eric Scerri's secondary-source text The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance (well, it's secondary when he covers other people's formulated alternative PTs), but it seems to me that the really weird alternative forms have since about WWII mostly been an almost fringe-y sideline, with few serious chemists using anything such, and with the only questions really acknowledged in textbooks and the literature by many chemists being the period 1 (where to put H – standard Greenwood & Earnshaw exceptionally worries about He also, but most think that one is obvious) and group 3 questions. Janet's LSPT maybe lives on some sort of limbo where it is often mentioned as an alternative but not much used; the rest, so far as I can see, have barely even that in the standard literature. Is that correct? And if that's the case, then is our current coverage of this at periodic table OK, or should most of it be moved to the specific article alternative periodic tables? Double sharp (talk) 14:25, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Double sharp:

• Have I seen other tables? Yes. But seen them being used? Not significantly that I can recall. I think they have utility in education to get students to stop and reflect. So-called discrepant event teaching can be very effective - grab and hold attention by showing something unexpected or that challenges their expectations / beliefs. Giving them a strange-looking PT could be a great way to discuss the nature of science, to explore the distinction between models and reality, etc. However, the familiar PT is here to stay and our article on it needs to focus on what it is, not on alternatives or history, which belong primarily in other articles.
• On DUE for the main periodic table article, discussing the alternatives at length is not appropriate as they aren't the topic.
• I've not looked at the main article for this for a while (the last week has been very hectic) but I won't be surprised if there is material better suited to other articles.
• I can't speak for the literature as a whole, but the obvious core content of our article is what is covered in standard textbooks, probably of HSC / first year university level. WP's audience is not primarily people whose idea of finding out about the PT is Cotton & Wilkinson.  :)

EdChem (talk) 02:53, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Use of sources at WP:ELEM

Your input would be appreciated at WT:ELEM § Informal poll 2. Thank you. YBG (talk) 21:28, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

 Done EdChem (talk) 02:35, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Two more threads

My apologies for giving you two more threads as requests for your comments, but I think we likely need them at:

• WT:ELEM#A direct comment about the above B-Al-Sc thread and
• WT:ELEM#Notification of intention to revert

I confess I am getting somewhat frustrated, which is why I am trying to limit my responses so that it doesn't bleed through. The former since you replied there; and the latter since it has to do with what we discussed. Double sharp (talk) 12:25, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Your ANI comments

EdChem, I feel your comments at WP:ANI misrepresent what actually happened. Could you please correct your comments as you see fit?

1. “It is my impression that Sandbh has been a significant factor in YBG and now Double sharp stepping away from WT:ELEM, which is a problem.”

As noted on my talk page, YBG has temporarily left the project in the past. He'll be back. Double sharp has left the project in the past. He continued to contribute. He returned to the project. He has now left the project. Based on previous experience, he'll continue to contribute, and he'll return to the project. Project membership counts; contributions count more.

2. “I do not think the suggestion that only Double sharp was commenting is accurate.”

I wrote, “Some discussion ensued over the following days, including some items to consider in going forward. The only person to comment on these items was User:Double sharp. No other person commented on these items.

3. “Sandbh’s announcement of his intention to revert drew objections / requests not to revert from Double sharp, DePiep, and YBG.”

Objections which I paid heed to.

4. “R8R suggested that Sandbh and Double sharp step back, an idea which Double sharp was willing to try but to which Sandbh objected.”

Not so, I made no such objection. Rather, I observed that the normal practice was for the editor concerned to edit the article in their sandbox and to then seek comments, before going live. The editor who did object was DePiep.

5. “I also think it is worth considering how much input one can expect around Christmas Day.”

Over 200 posts were made to WP:ELEM during the period 19 to 24 December.

6. “I think that the discussions at WT:ELEM (which are difficult to follow being in multiple places and with very large reorganisations having been made by Sandbh and discussed at his user talk page) show that there are issues where all contributors except Sandbh have a generally consistent view.”

DePiep has often commented about how hard it is to follow the discussions at WP:ELEM. He has previously engaged in housekeeping of kind I undertook. YBG was the only one to object, per se. Does that mean he has a generally inconsistent view? In my case, which views “plural” are you referring to?

7. “A discussion about OR on the project talk page had very consistent views from all editors except Sandbh, who chose not to comment.”

Not so, I commented on this discussion in the discussion section.

8. “In this talk page section, Sandbh would also not accept that a statistical analysis he carried out was an example of OR, despite the wording here that “Summarizations based on statistical methods, however, are original research by synthesis, as they involve the reinterpretation of data, and decisions about which statistical methods and significance levels are appropriate”.

The analysis concerned was confined to the talk page where, in any event, OR does not apply.

9. “The use of old sources that are not appropriate except for history, primary literature, and OR are not helping.”

I use old sources where appropriate, especially in history. WP:OR provides for the use of primary sources. What uses of OR in the article space are you referring to?

Sandbh (talk) 09:21, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Replied in this post at ANI. ANI discussions belong at ANI, so I would prefer any further comments be made there. EdChem (talk) 02:05, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Request for help

Dear EdChem, I obviously need help if, in my best endeavours, I'm facing the prospect of a topic ban. Not help in a mental sense; help in how to meet WP expectations sense. I'm obviously missing something.

Is my goose cooked?

Appreciate any help or support either of you could provide.

thank you, --- Sandbh (talk) 09:39, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: I've asked DePiep for help, too.

I won't be online until tomorrow morning my time; about 10 to 12 hours time.

Hi Sandbh,

Clearly quite a bit has happened since I was last at WP. My initial thoughts on reading your request (which I have made into a separate sub-section, FYI) were two-fold: (1) recognising that a topic ban is likely and that you need help is a positive step, and (2) that it is quite likely to be too late. When I read the subsequent posts from others at ANI, my view on the latter strengthened. I think the chances of the topic ban being avoided are now very small. I know what is needed but I doubt it would have any effect at this point.

The reason that I am of that view is that your posts to the ANI thread have been making this outcome more and more likely. When you started the thread, I said that DePiep did not warrant any sanctions but you persisted in comments that read to me (and to others) as blaming DePiep. I invited you several times to reflect and to back away from that position, and though your table response did acknowledge DePiep's right to edit / revert (which was good), you did not take the opportunities to comment in a concrete way on your own contributions to the conflict. Your contributions at ANI made the same points repeatedly (which has also been happening at WT:ELEM) and which reads like IDHT to others' comments. The table post, for example, was in response to comments from DePiep and from me that indicated your response did not address what was asked. You rearranged your response into a table to made the connections clearer between your response and my summary, but did not alter the content – in educational terms, I felt that your response was like when a student says "I don't understand X" and the teacher gives an explanation and is then told "I still don't understand" so the teacher gives the same explanation but louder, as the problem is the student was having hearing difficulties. I accept that these were not your intent (and this is a few examples that came to mind), but this is how they came across to me.

One of the ANI posters commented "too little, too late", and I can understand why. Even though your recent post recognising a need for help and your "last post" are steps in the right direction, they don't actually show what the editors at ANI seek. You are not a naughty child and ANI is not your parents, and by that I mean that it is not contrition that is sought. You write that you've "acknowledged my problematic conduct," but what is sought is not "I'm sorry, I did the wrong thing" but "I recognise that X was a problem because of Y and I will do Z to avoid that recurring." The ANI editors want to see that you understand what is problematic and why. That you reached out to me and (importantly, IMO) to DePiep is a good sign, but it is not enough. No one is looking for you to grovel or beg to be allowed to edit in the ELEM area. No one wants you to be humiliated. We want you to be able to contribute your considerable base of knowledge, but it needs to happen in a way consistent with how WP operates.

What I've written here may well be difficult for you to accept. If this ANI experience does lead you to an epiphany on how to work collaboratively in ELEM, then it will have been beneficial (in the long term). Though you may not have realised, the proposal for a 6 month topic ban is generous in that is time limited. It could easily have been an indefinite topic ban that could be appealed after 6 months. I posted at ANI that I was conflicted about the ban because the situation was getting worse. You brought the issue to a head with your ANI post and the fact you thought when you posted it, and as it developed, that editors looking at your own contributions would not be problematic shows a significant problem in your evaluation of the situation. Even following your realisation that you need help and that your approach does have problems, I am not convinced that time away from the topic is not the best thing for you.

However, I am willing to try to help. I am willing to post at ANI asking that the ban not be implemented for a day or two for us to talk about how I (or DePiep and I) can help if you are interested and he is willing. Be aware, if we try to help and it falls apart, and if after the ban expires problems recur in the ELEM area, the likelihood of a permanent topic ban would be significant. EdChem (talk) 01:56, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you EdChem. I accept your advice. This was not hard for me to do. There are evidently some shortcomings in my approach to matters at WP:ELEM (and, indeed, WP:ANI). And both up you and DePiep have a deeper appreciation of the situation. I’m ready to learn and change my conduct accordingly. I have no concerns about things falling apart since that would be self-defeating behaviour on my part, and I have no intention of doing that. Could you please go ahead and post to ANI as you suggested. Sandbh (talk) 09:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)