User talk:VQuakr/Archives/2020

UIA Flight 752 talk page discussion

You may recall my name from the talk page discussion. Thought I would just drop you a line away from the public glare.

I don't plan to engage in any further discussion on the talk page as it seems to have become massively complicated for what should have been a simple addition of a couple of lines on an relatively minor point. Also, I don't want to have to get into a tedious point by point dismantling of posts that are uncontestably misinterpreting/misrepresenting things I said. Thinking of one in particular, not you.

Just for interest though, if you have time.

The original reason I edited the page was because there appeared to be an attempt by the Iranians to blame the shootdown on some sort of suspicious change of course by the flight. Having seen the Flightradar24 data fairly early on in the whole saga it was obvious the Iranians were just trying to deflect blame. It is not clear where this came from, I don't think it was ever cited, and they have since comprehensively backtracked. It might be that the simplest course of action would be to delete any remaining reference to a threatening change of course. And my correction wouldn't be necessary if the original claim was deleted.

Moving on to the question of a secondary source providing interpretation of the ADS-B data from Flightradar24. Given the way in which the community seems to be so concerned about verifying claims with second sources, I'm a bit surprised that the rcinet.ca article was accepted so easily. I'm not trying to re-open the question or anything, but I've looked at it several times. It's not clear to me which bits are written by the RCI journalist, and which bits are quotes from Professor McKay. The caption on the flight path graphic is certainly ambiguous in it's source. It may have nothing to do with McKay. I still feel that if something that sloppy is going to be acceptable, then the original graphics from the Flightradar24 blog should have been acceptable.

Which brings me to the most interesting point, (to me, at least). I get what WP:SYNTH is trying to do, but having looked at that too, I wonder if there should be some flexibility over exactly what constitutes interpretation. It seems like a hell of a sledgehammer to wield on a simple graphic that a 12 year old could easily understand. Leaving aside people thinking I was referring to one thing when I was actually referring to another, I'm just struggling to understand why the graph becomes acceptable because someone else tells us what is blindingly obvious to all in the first place. Sorry, I'm sounding emotional. Unintended. I'm struggling to find the words. What would the position be if FR24 had added a caption to each chart stating that "this graph shows the flight path was normal"? Would that have been OK, or would we still need someone else to say the same thing?

I could go on, but I have been too long winded already. Apologies.

To summarise, I feel quite strongly that WP may sometimes be a little pedantic in interpreting policies. A little more flexibility would avoid this sort of debate perhaps? You probably feel there is too much flexibility. You don't need to reply if you think I'm out of order. kritikos99 (talk) 15:58, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Kritikos99! Welcome to my talk page. Sorry to hear that you aren't wanting to discuss any more; I thought we were almost wrapped up. Over on Talk:Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, I was attempting to explain the underlying "why" clearly because you asked for help and you said you were not very experienced. My goal was that next time, you would be able to use the feedback and experience so that your first-pass article contribution would be less likely to be reverted. Hopefully that did not come across as pedantic; that wasn't my goal.

The Iranian claim is still relevant to the subject of the article, even if it is transparently false. Even if the IRGC were to explicitly retract the claim, it still is of historical interest that they made the claim in the first place. So it shouldn't be deleted - it just needs to be presented clearly as their claim not a statement of fact and discussed neutrally in the context of the rest of the world's point of view.

As for the specific case, the feeling I got from the FR24 blog post is that the author was going out of their way to not publish any conclusions - they posted the flight information with zero commentary. That's fine, but we can't attribute commentary or analysis to them when none exists. The exception that is allowed to WP:SYNTH is arithmetic; we don't need to attribute conversions between °C to °F or calculating someone's age. Analyzing a flight path, even when the information looks obvious, is not something that we do as editors. McKay may be a professor of political science, but he also works at a military college. If he said something really surprising about the flight path we might find a better source, but when his conclusion seems to follow pretty clearly from the tracking data, the source is quite adequate. I would say if the FR24 blog had commentary that said that the flight path was normal, your contribution would not have been reverted on WP:SYNTH grounds.

If I could convince you to reply on the article talk page one more time, I am curious if you still have feedback on the revised wording I proposed. Thanks! VQuakr (talk) 16:44, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Vandalise Monitoring

Can you keep an eye on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752

user: Ketone16

and IP 92.29.184.218 needs a warning/blocking put in place.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamumar.thegeek (talk • contribs) 20:59, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

@Iamumar.thegeek: it's on my watchlist. Watch the revert count and please use edit summaries. VQuakr (talk) 21:04, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Deliberately using Wikipedia policies in bad faith

Edit warring involves more than one edit, by definition. This is stated in the template, so I think you already know this. Be careful not to use templates carelessly as a way to try to "frighten" other editors off your pet articles. Cambial Yellowing❧ 18:21, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@Cambial Yellowing: nice AGF violation. Your calling something sanction gaming doesn't make it so, and you are going to find it an ineffective means of avoiding scrutiny. My warning you for continuing an edit war in an active-DS, 1RR article was entirely proper and warranted. VQuakr (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@VQuakr: You posit an "AGF violation", shortly after placing an edit war template on my talk page in response to a single edit, without a trace of irony. Recall that "Playing victim: Violating a rule and at the same time claiming that others are in violation of the same or a closely related rule. Also known as hypocrisy" - is yet another clear example of sanction gaming. No-one could accuse you of being inconsistent. If you genuinely thought edit warring was developing, the appropriate action would be to open discussion in talk, not to join in what you considered an edit war. You're right that my calling your game out does not make it sanction gaming: you know perfectly well that your action was inherently a rather crass attempt at gaming the system; my calling you out was merely a formality. Cambial Yellowing❧ 00:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

An edit warring warning is not an accusation of bad faith; your OP here explicitly was. You may want to review WP:STATUSQUO and look in the mirror regarding the accusations of hypocrisy you so casually throw around. VQuakr (talk) 01:08, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

When used appropriately, EW templates are not about AGF. Your obviously inappropriate use of it in this instance, is both an implicit accusation of bad faith and a mischaracterization of another editor's actions to make them seem unreasonable. Nothing in "Reverting", nor any actual policy, supports your actions. Rather than desperately Wikilinking peripheral essays, consider simply adjusting your behaviour in line with the Wikipedia behavioural guidelines. Cambial Yellowing❧ 01:53, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The phrase "desperately Wikilinking" made me smile, so thank you for that. If you aren't worried about boomerangs, feel free to take this to ANI. Meanwhile, I stand by my entirely proper warning to you. VQuakr (talk) 02:02, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The ANI is for chronic, intractable behavioural problems. As far as I know, this is a single (at most dual) incidence of your behaviour violating WP:GAMING. While your continued pretence of that violation being "proper" is problematic; I would only consider your repeated use of it as a "tactic" to be intractable. I'll leave that decision up to you. Cambial Yellowing❧ 02:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

"Jumpgate" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Jumpgate. Since you had some involvement with the Jumpgate redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 06:18, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello VQuakr/Archives,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

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16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

COVID

I'm not sure who added the second chapter, I don't really mind. It was a bit confused. But my source definitively plot covid with the pneumonia cases so that part is not WP:synth anymore. Iluvalar (talk) 02:46, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Tagging

So you know WP:TAGGING isn't policy and it isn't even a guideline. And removal of a tag before any time is given, even to create a talk page note is borderline WP:DISRUPT. Sun Creator^(talk) 19:45, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Sun Creator: so you'll use the talk page then? Super. VQuakr (talk) 19:52, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I note more questionable editing, per WP:TPO, "Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page.". I know it's a stressful time for many, so now would be a good time to practice good civility. Sun Creator^(talk) 20:25, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Sun Creator: that edit didn't change the content or meaning of your post. Combining duplicate talk page sections is normal practice, acceptable under the section you just linked, and clearly it is helpful in this situation to have the same discussion occur in the same section. You'll have a hard time convincing me or anyone else that that was uncivil or that your reversion was warranted. Pretty disruptive, actually, since you broke threading. VQuakr (talk) 21:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
  • an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
  • a rich-text visual editing option, and
  • other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

The Stonemason

A cheeky request, but as you do new page patrolling could I ask for your advice about The Stonemason (book) which I created a couple of weeks ago? As far as I can tell this hasn't been patrolled, but neither does it seem to appear on the list of articles waiting for patrol. Am I missing something? Thanks, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 10:32, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

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The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
• New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello VQuakr/Archives,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
• A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
• Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:

• The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
• More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
• Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
• The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
• Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Hey

I really do appreciate your helpful gesture. The "science" of humor is a special interest of mine, and I value intelligent discussion of what's funny and why (and the effect of context). But I reserve special contempt for self-appointed enforcers, and once that comes into play ... well, I see red. EEng 03:17, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@EEng: no worries. As you said, we all deal with coverage of the worst of the worst humanity has to offer differently. VQuakr (talk) 20:27, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Sally Hemings

Just a quick note. I basically agree with you on the procedural note but I think an RfC is actually for the best. It should produce a clear and definitive statement of consensus. --RaiderAspect (talk) 04:00, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

History of heat pumps

Hello VQakr, Sorry, the reference in my post on Heat Pump History provides a good illustration of the large-scale heat pump:

.

But I agree that it is too close to the company Friotherm. Since I describe the system in my detailed History of Heat Pumps (Page 54, Figure 7-14 in https://www.aramis.admin.ch/Default.aspx?DocumentID=65074&Load=true ), the above reference can be deleted. Besides, Friotherm is the successor company to the former Sulzer-Escher-Wyss. This applies also to other companies in the heat pump business as well.

How do I have to proceed? Can you delete the reference and activate my post again?

Thank you and best regards, Martin Zogg --[[User:Martin Zogg|Martin Zogg]--Martin Zogg (talk) 14:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)] (talk) 13:05, 19 August 2020 (UTC) --Martin Zogg (talk) 15:24, 20 August 2020 (UTC) --Martin Zogg (talk) 15:40, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

• The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
• Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

History merge request

Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you tried to give List of Bible translators a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into List of Bible translations by language. This is known as a "cut-and-paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is legally required for attribution. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.

In most cases, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page (the tab may be hidden in a dropdown menu for you). This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Requests for history merge. Thank you. Veverve (talk) 07:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, @Veverve: it was a merge not a C&P move and it was 11 years ago. Out of curiosity, why do you think the histories need to be merged? VQuakr (talk) 20:26, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

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New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello VQuakr/Archives,

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.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

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

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18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)