User talk:Walkerma

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This is Martin Walker's discussion page. Archives

Archive1 — Archive2 — Archive3 — Archive4 — Archive5 — Archive6 — Archive7 — Archive8 — Archive9 — Archive10 — Archive11 — Archive12 — Archive13 — Archive14 — Archive15 — Archive16 — Archive17 — Archive18 — Archive19 — Archive20

/Archive21 (Jun-Aug 2008). C-Class vote aftermath, , 1.0 (helping, version selection, 0.7 planning, etc), Dispatch, OLPC, Chemistry on Freebase, WP1.0 Bot new version, Hydrochloric acid FAR.

/Archive22 (Sep-Oct 2008). Version 0.7 consultation with WikiProjects, CAS file review.

/Archive23 (Nov 2008-Feb 2009). Article assessment developments, Organofluorine chemistry and PFOA, Version 0.7 odds & ends, IsisDraw, WPChem worklist, some assessments, Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards.

/Archive24 (Mar 2009-Jul 2009) A-Class discussion, core contest awards, the new 1.0 bot and V0.8, assessment consistency, cerium(III) chloride, boron, WP:Chemistry in the Signpost, Wikipedian of the Day.

/Archive25 (Aug 2009-Aug 2010) Wikimania, chemistry article validation/CheMoBot, Version 0.7 and Version 0.8 including indexing, Okawix, Book-Class/Wikibooks.

/Archive26 (Aug 2010-Dec 2012) Pending changes/Flagged revisions, Version 0.8, Chemistry image validation, YuviPanda's GSoC project for WP1.0, menthol elimination, WP1.0 release version tools, Wikimania 2012. Discussion

Talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Theopolisme's talk page.
Message added by Theopolisme at 16:24, 31 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Theopolisme's talk page.
Message added by Theopolisme at 22:21, 3 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations

Hi there, just wanted to point out there are some nominations waiting since 2011, will you take a look at them? :) Cheers, --Lester Foster (talk | talk) 06:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC). These will be done, for Version 0.9; answer on talk. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 07:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

wiki 1.0

I don't see a template for adding my name to the list of editors willing to help. I'd be willing to review, edit, write legal articles. Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. Malke 2010 (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting

You are invited to the 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, on 20 July 2013 in Boston! We will be talking about the future of the chapter, including GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, and where we want to take our chapter in the future! EdwardsBot (talk) 09:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Re:Polymer

Dear Walkerma; first of all, let me apologise for this belated reply to User talk:Vanischenu#Polymer (I failed to notify). Since I did not know IPA, I requested help from the language reference desk (here) and got some helpful answers. They also corrected the IPA (diff); is it okay now? Thanks and regards.···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 19:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Wittig reaction, Schlosser modification

Hello homie, great to see your work in chemistry articles here! Could you perhaps have these images in a high-resolution PNG or in an SVG?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corey_Schlosser_Wittig.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schlosser_Wittig.gif

Although it would perhaps mean drawing them yourself.

But if you're busy with academic stuff, don't worry; I can put them under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/Image_Request.

Hope you have happy days in the university! Cheers.

Georginho (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I have had a lot of marking this weekend, but I'll try to do a higher resolution PNG this week - somewhere I should have the original files. I'm puzzled, though - why aren't the existing resolutions high enough? Surely they're big enough for the articles in which they appear? Please ping me here if I don't get them done by Friday. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Apparently according to the style guide, they want them to be PNG or SVG. I personally don't bother redrawing GIF and JPEG images that are already clear enough. But I do message the creators if it's possible to convert the images in case they have the original files. It's because I think it's quick enough to open the file and save it in PNG.

But like I said, don't worry if you're busy. Wiki isn't a job. You can do it when you have free time. I personally agree that your images are clear enough. I'm just listing images in chemistry articles to convert per the style guide.

Cheers!

Georginho (talk) 18:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Responded on my talk page

Hi, just a quick ping that I got around to responding to your comments on my talk page about the A-class articles. I'm really curious to learn more about the stories around assessment in Wikipedia, so that's partly why I got in touch again. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Talk:Guttman Community College.
Message added 14:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Collaboration with PubChem

Hi Martin, I would appreciate your comments on a potential collaboration with PubChem. Thanks! -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Martin, you may also want to check the ChemID page as they are considering include CAS numbers, it seems. Egonw (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

New England Wikipedia Day @ MIT: Saturday Jan 18

NE Meetup #4: January 18 at MIT Building 5

Dear Fellow Wikimedian, You have been invited to the New England Wikimedians 2014 kick-off party and Wikipedia Day Celebration at Building Five on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus on Saturday, January 18th, from 3-5 PM. Afterwards, we will be holding an informal dinner at a local restaurant. If you are curious to join us, please do so, as we are always looking for people to come and give their opinion! Finally, be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. I hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March

Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March - You are invited!

New England Wikimedians is excited to announce a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that will be taking place at colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts as part of Wikiwomen's History Month from March 1 - March 31. We encourage you to join in an edit-a-thon near you, or to participate remotely if you are unable to attend in person (for the full list of articles, click here). Events are currently planned for the cities/towns of Boston, Northampton, South Hadley, and Cambridge. Further information on dates and locations can be found on our user group page. Questions? Contact Girona7 (talk)

tb

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Dank's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

- Dank (push to talk) 13:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Your edits on the page count graph

Hi Walkerma; Your edits related to this page count graph suggested you might know how it was created. My interest is to prepare some data for a new edit for the "Wikipedia" page on trends in the growth of Pages for each level of quality assessment. Could you let me know if there is an easy way to make this chart print out its results for 2013, 2012, 2011, etc, for end of year. If you could show me how to do 2010, for example, then I should be able to do the rest. I only need the last 7-8 years. Any comment would be an assist! Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics (The graph comes out with double curly brackets placed around the linked Page name.) FelixRosch (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Since the comment above, I have found a Page for "Featured_article_statistics" and one for "Good_article_statistics", yet none for the other rows in the graph table which you help to maintain. You mentioned reminding you if you have any thoughts on getting the history of the data stats for the edit I described to enhance the "Wikipedia" page. FelixRosch (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

You're invited!

NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square

Dear Fellow Wikimedian, New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. We hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk)

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IUPAC definition quote-boxes

Did anything ever come out of this: User talk:Amr94#Adding IUPAC definitions? I just removed a few where they seemed especially off-topic (not really chemistry) or non-universal (not in agreement or over-reliance when multiple organizations are relevant) before seeing this attempt to discuss. DMacks (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons

Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England

As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows: May 21st at Northeastern University's Snell Library, in the Digital Scholarship Commons on the second floor May 22nd at Brown University's Rockefeller Library, in the Digital Scholarship Lab June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time. If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

ETHIOPIA

ETHIOPIA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.156.77.79 (talk) 14:56, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

stop what about copyrights violations p-2-p — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.44.168.98 (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I have now idea what you're talking about - sorry! Walkerma (talk) 02:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Core Contest

Hi Martin, I'm writing a piece on the history of the Core Contest (which is running for a sixth time at the moment) and have written up a draft at User:Casliber/sandbox#Core_Contest_blurb. I was wondering whether the prizemoney ever eventuated for the 2007 running and who ended up providing it. Also, any other discussion at the time about it would be good to point out/flesh out etc. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi - I must confess I can't remember, sorry! I do seem to recall calling (by phone) the person who set up the contest (who I won't name here, you know who) and there being a problem with it with good reason, but they really wanted to provide the money. I have a vague recollection that someone did pay in the end, not sure if it was the original person or not, or whether I'm just imagining it, and it was just a promise that never materialized. Sorry, it's quite a while ago now! I do recall spending a LOT of time doing the judging, looking at many diffs, etc. It's nice that it's continued, thanks for working on it. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 05:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Yep, I know who. Thanks for letting me know. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

RCS & ACS

Thanks for the invitation to speak in Boston; I'm consulting with my RCS colleagues. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Still waiting to hear. I'm assuming, as you invited me, that I don't need to submit a pitch/ abstract? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Submitted; had to fake your email address. No idea yet whether I will be funded to travel, and am on a plane tomorrow, so can't check. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:32, 29 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) 01:44, 21 March 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) 01:58, 19 April 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)

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Walkerma,

I'd like to invite you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

H Padleckas (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality

I'm wondering why we don't have an auto-generated page? Is there something we need to do? Jerod Lycett (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

So far as I can remember, that is never made as a page itself. The two pages which do exist, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality statistics are the ones the bot generates on a regular basis. If you are thinking of a page containing content different from that of either of those pages, though, it might be possible to arrange a bot to create it. John Carter (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, John Carter Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

This Friday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA

You are invited to join the Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA on October 16! (drop-in any time, 6-9pm)--Pharos (talk) 18:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

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)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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) 12:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Personendatan listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Personendatan. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:Personendatan redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. BDD (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

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

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

• Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
• One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
• Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe you can assist

Hi Martin, I seem to recall you helping me out once before regarding a project table issue. At the discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Motorcycling#Project classes we would like to analyse more of the different quality articles. I though one just had to create the additional categories and the bot would pick them up but that does not seem to be the case after I created these: Category:Disambig-Class Motorcycling articles, Category:Template-Class Motorcycling articles and Category:Category-Class Motorcycling articles

So I presume that is not enough but as I don't know enough about how the bot works maybe you can advise, or do it, or point me at someone who can. The 3 I added are the only additional categories I know are regularly used that are not currently analysed but maybe there is a list of them somewhere I can review. Maybe one should also add Redirects and Others. BTW I've reassessed all the template I can find with the proper class rating to see if they appear properly when the changes have been implemented. Thanks in advance. ww2censor (talk) 13:44, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ww2censor: It could just be because the bot is frozen, but I suspect that those categories may be "non-standard" categories that the bot doesn't keep data on. When the bot was set up, it was focused just on keeping tabs on article quality & importance. Since then, WikiProjects have found it useful to extend it into things like redirects, disambiguation pages, etc. Some of these "non-standard" categories were added when we moved to Version 2 of the bot (around 2009, I think), but there has been almost no change since then; for the last few years, we've only had a couple of people maintaining the bot, because the developers are no longer active. There are several WikiProjects interested in seeing the scope extended, as in this recent request.

The good news is that may change. I've talked twice recently on Skype with a group who are interested in getting involved in working on the code some more. Their goal is focused almost entirely on producing offline collections (starting with Version 0.8.1, but I will make the case that the WikiProjects provide the metadata that makes those possible. I suspect it will be easy for these developers to add new categories for the bot to track. If that goes ahead I'll try to contact you. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 16:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks but I'm not sure you are correct that the "bot is frozen" (well not completely frozen) because the 3 projects I have on my watchlist are User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Philately‎, User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Ireland and User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Motorcycling and they are all being updated very regularly. I had seen that post but ignored it as everything I watch appeared to be working fine. I was actually only asking about categories that already exist in other projects, such as the Ireland project and just wanted to separate them out on the Motorcycling project where they are lumped together under NA. I would have thought that, because these categories are not new ones, that it would be rather simple to just add them to an existing project that is working fine. I'm not really asking for something new to be done. ww2censor (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2016 (UTC) 17:38, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Info from WD

Hi, I saw in some discussions your interest for Wikidata in the field of chemicals. Right now no validation mark is planned in WD for validated data. And this is against the general philosophy of WD: WD doesn't say the truth only facts. This is not the task of WD to define what is true or false so even if for some data like identifiers can only be correct or not WD is not planning to develop an in-house validation system. Perhaps the question will become more critical in the future when more WPs will used WD but right now nothing is planned. But this doesn't mean that nothing can be done. Data can be easily extracted from WD using the API or special tool like this one and you can process the data offline and compare them to a validated list. Periodic analysis can generate reports indicating changes or other deviations. We have already a system working daily on that basis: see for example the violation constraints report for the CAS numbers there. Forget about the 1st section but have a look at the 2nd, the 3rd and and the 4th ones: theses sections indicate if a CAS number is not correctly written, if two items (in other words two articles or two compounds) share the same CAS number and if one item contains more than one CAS number.

For your information WD creates each day a dump of the edits since the last dump 24h before. So it possible to analyze only the last edits and to check the interesting ones related to chemicals.

So the only tools required are a validated list of data and a bot. For that we need to create a list of validated data. I was starting to create that list using a process described there but I was unable to progress in that project because I spend time to correct violation constraints reports for a bunch of identifiers. And the coding of my bot is not progressing as fast as I want.

As I know you are spending time to validate identifiers so I can be interested in your data. If you are ready to share your data perhaps we can work in the future to increase the reliability of WD.

If you have more questions about WD or about chemistry in WD you can let me a message or have a look at d:Wikidata:WikiProject_Chemistry (any help is appreciated because there are too few contributors for chemical subjects). Regards Snipre (talk) 01:33, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Snipre:Thanks a lot for getting in contact. I personally think that Wikidata is the future for this kind of thing, and I'd love to help out the project. However, I feel totally lost when I get beyond the project pages, perhaps because I'm a chemist and not a tech person (when I took computer science we used punch cards!). Having said that, I've had a long and deep interest in chemical information and data. Can you help me understand what something like this means, and what the links show? Where do these lists come from? Are they manually generated, or does a bot write them based on it detecting certain things? What am I supposed to do with the list? Can you perhaps help me show how to start working in Wikidata? Is there a low level routine task that could benefit from a chemist's eye? (Note - I'll be too busy to do a lot until the summer, though.)

Regarding the lack of validation, I can accept that if we wait for validated data we'll never progress beyond something like Nupedia! However, to forbid validation seems contrary to the overall goal of the project, which (as the error-flagging shows) is to make the data as accurate as possible. Although I'm a big fan of Wikidata, I would be reluctant to see us replacing the validated data we have currently with non-validated data, and I suspect @Beetstra: would agree. I accept that our validation is not perfect as it should be, but I think it's still a huge improvement on unvalidated data. You should realize that I've had a longstanding interest in this topic! You indicate that validation may come once Wikidata is adopted; however, possibly one reason it's not being adopted (at least in chemistry) is because it can't include any validation!

I'm planning to start checking chemical identifiers in some of the English Wikipedia pages tomorrow, to see if they still reflect the "true facts" or if they've become corrupted at all. If they are still accurate (as I hope), then I want to start analysing and probably fixing any changes flagged by CheMoBot to generate new validated RevIDs. This will (I expect) be a long process which will take over a year; however, I know how much people depend on these data, so I consider it worthwhile. What I would like to do, with your help, is to cross-check the validated identifiers in en:WP against those found in Wikidata, and report any conflicts or ambiguities. Would this be helpful for the Wikidata chemistry project? If not, is there a way that my Wikipedia work could help Wikidata? If so, can you help get me started in Wikidata? Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I will be happy to give you some help to understand some features of WD. But before I just want to say something about your comment: WD doesn't forbid any validation but only doesn't want to provide any specific system inside WD to validate data. The problem is about validation of disputed topics: if you propose a validation tool some persons will use it to force the validation and the spread of the data through WPs. WD wants to avoid that and prefer to have the role of data provider. Users, meaning WPs, are responsible to choose the data their consider as correct using the data source as parameter to define if a data is reliable. The view of WD is more to connect WD to other external databases i norder to offer an easy way to check data reliability not to propose the correct data.

Again WD integrate the wiki philisophy, everyone can contribute, and from this principle consider as impossible to let everyone contributing and at the same time insuring that all data are reliable. So instead of spending time to check all edits WD propose a system where different data can stay together and let the data selection to users according to their parametrs of reliability.

Does it mean that nothing can be done about validation ? No, but instead of using a WD feature to validate WD data you can use external tools which analyse WD data and generate reports indicating conflict between WD data and validated datasets. Users can later analyze more deeply the deviations and when necessary they can change the data in WD.

Just an example: if database D1 says that value VAL = x and database D2 says that value VAL = y this is not the task of WD to say who is wrong. WD will present both values with their references. Further development of WD focus more to link the value x in WD system with its reference in database D1, same for value y with D2, than to offer a way to validate the correct value between x and y.

In some way a data is correct when all the main sources on the topic say the same. And the correctness of a value depends more on the number and on the authority of its sources than on a validation tool. From that the best way to validate a data is to link as many reference sources as possible to a data.

I hope this give you an idea of the system which is a little complicate from a scientific point of view. But even in scientific area truth is a difficult topic: something is true until someone shows it is wrong. So from scientific point of view a validation tool is a bad practise unless you provide all parameters which influence the correctness of a value. Snipre (talk) 22:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon

• The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
• The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Index

Hi Martin, I'm curious as to what programming languages you're looking for to develop the index. I probably won't be able to do much personally, but can ask around on the WP to the Moon project page as this should be a huge boon to that project. Tonystewart14 (talk) 15:44, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@Tonystewart14: I believe it's Python, but we have someone now working on revamping the code so it may be changing. We used to create the index as a "one-off" thing when we produced our collections. User:Kelson and the Kiwix people are now producing daily updates of article metadata at [wp1.kiwix.org], which will be used to produce collections. A group of about 5 of us are actually meeting roughly once a fortnight on Skype, so I'll ask about this at our next meeting; I'm sure the programmers would be happy to get some help, even though our group is mainly focussed on collections for (terrestrial!) schools. BTW, I added a reply to that talk page, on how WP1 might help. Many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 05:29, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! That other reply looks good too. It would be great if you could ask, and I applaud the effort you and the others in your group are making. Tonystewart14 (talk) 11:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Good! I want to get a project page set up for our new work, and then I'll follow up with this further. Walkerma (talk) 11:57, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 9

Newsletter • May / June 2016

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, featuring the first screenshot of our new CollaborationKit software!

Harej (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Fluorous biphasic

I will see you at the ACS convention this afternoon. Perhaps you could write a brief article on Fluorous biphasic at the Edit-a-thon?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Good idea! I think I planned to do that about ten years ago... Not today, though: I'm unprepared for writing that without all my fluorous books around, so I'll probably work on a chemist. I may not get anything written myself, if I end up tied up assisting others all afternoon; we'll see. Either way, I'll be pleased to meet you! Walkerma (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

A page you started (Debbie C. Crans) has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Debbie C. Crans, Walkerma!

Wikipedia editor Blythwood just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

Looks great. I've added a few more categories.

To reply, leave a comment on Blythwood's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.

Nomination for deletion of Template:SDBS

Template:SDBS has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Walkerma. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 10

Issue 10 of the WikiProject X newsletter is here!

This month, we discuss the new CollaborationKit extension. Here's an image as a teaser:

23:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech support for the assessment bot

You asked me some questions about tech support for a bot on my page at User_talk:Bluerasberry#Tech_support_for_the_assessment_bot. I do not have good answers for you, but here is what I can suggest.

1. There is probably not good development support readily available. However, you could start asking around and see what happens. I have no good leads.
2. At meta:Grants:Project/Rapid, if you write out a proposal for ~ USD 1000 and commit to do usage documentation, the Wikimedia Foundation is likely to grant funds for you to seek a developer for the project. There is general awareness that all sorts of things break and need fixing and that there are no volunteers and staff around to do it. However, if you can convince a developer to fix it at market rate, then the WMF will fund it. You can do this in an iterative way - ask for some money, use the offer to solicit a developer, then come back to finalize the payment confirmation. It is not super easy, but the money is there and it definitely is easier than coming up with funding other ways, and it really is fast (~1 week to sort, very direct, not bureaucratic in my opinion)
3. You could seek to developer longer term relationships with a developer overseeing the space. I would not even know where to refer you for this, and even if you found the right person, getting on the official development schedule might mean 3-12 months away in the queue. Community requests are not the norm in any case.
4. Check out meta:Wishlists#Annual_Wikimedia_Foundation_Wishlist_Survey to see other sorts of requests people have made, and see if you can piggyback off something for contacts or development leads. Also, you could post your idea to the 2018 survey in about 9 months when that goes live.

Thoughts? I tried! Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:03, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Project studying article importance

Hi, I think we were last in touch almost four years ago after I asked a question about A-class articles over on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. Looking through my talk page archive I found your responses and first of all have to apologize for not replying just to say thank you. You provided me with some great insight into the quality assessment classes back then and I greatly appreciate that!

I'm currently working on a project exploring automated classification of article importance that you might be interested in. We have a project page on meta describing some of the details. So far I have had a productive collaboration with WikiProject Medicine and provided them with some predictions for reassessment, discussing our approach and progress with them on their assessment talk page. That's where your name came up, so I thought I'd get in touch.

Thanks again for helping me out back in 2013! Hopefully my current project interests you, please do get in touch if you have any questions. Regards, Nettrom (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nettrom: I apologize - I mixed up this project with another similar one looking at a basic autoassessment of article quality, and I never followed up with yours (only the other one)! I just realized they're two completely different projects! I will follow up with you on Wednesday, as I will be extremely busy till then. Thanks for keeping me informed. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 04:31, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

WP 1.0

Hi. I won't be able to help. But good luck, and it was nice to hear from you. Maurreen (talk) 18:24, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello!

I was reading Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Current_needs and was very interested by the problem "Preparation of a reliable index" and I have a general interest in the importance/quality scales. I would like to learn more and potentially help =). I think some improved navigation within Wikipedia would be extremely valuable, because of Wikipedia natural and organic disorganization.

On a side note: I think this page: Lists of unsolved problems, is (or has the potential to be) one of the most important of all time. (In my opinion) it has incredible value, and I will most likely be referring to it for my whole life. I did not even know that Millennium Prize Problems existed until I read about it on Wikipedia. I think it's a great topper to the "Sum of all knowledge", and a great reference to quickly glimpse the edges of human knowledge. As different fields make new discoveries, and information increases in quantity and becomes more cluttered... It is refreshing to see the "TODO" list of humanity.

Also, Hello! --- Popcrate (talk) 11:17, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Popcrate:, thank you for responding on that! I posted that request about eight years ago, and I also put out lots of requests in other places (e.g., to academics, librarians, etc.), and I've never had any response. I have some ideas on how to do this - in fact we used some of those ideas in the topical index in [0.7], but never perfected it. The problem is that I don't have the programming skills to write bots or scripts to solve these kinds of problems, and the person I used to work with (very successfully) left the project in 2011. The 1.0 project is suddenly coming to life again after about "seven lean years", so now is a great time to get involved. If you're interested in working on this I'd love to explain the problems we have, and to hear your ideas; I think you'd find it a very interesting task from an intellectual point of view, and I think it is soluble.

If you're coming to Wikimania in August, I'd love to meet with you. Best of all, if you could join a group of ~20 of us in Potsdam, New York at our hackathon afterwards, we could work on it face-to-face in a room full of experts. However, I'm sure we could still make good progress working at a distance, if you're unable to travel to Canada this summer.

I'll certainly look at that list of unsolved problems, but right now I need to get on with some gardening. Please look at the 0.7 topical index and let me know if you'd like to collaborate on this further; I would be thrilled to get some help on this at last! Walkerma (talk) 19:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Walkerma: I read | offline hackathon, and the I very much liked the "KEYWORDS" (paragraph 2). I have never attended a Wikimania before, since I have only recently began taking a serious interest in contributing to Wikipedia. I would like to know more about the logistics of Wikimania and the hackathon (beyond just showing up =P ?). I probably just need to read more into it...

Fun fact: This is going to happen and be VERY visible from that general location on the globe: Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.

I definitely want to hear more about the project. I definitely am able to program, although I probably won't be the "developer who saves the day" (but hey, who knows!). As far as the organization of pages, assessments, bots, etc... I find the underlying mathematics in designing this to be interesting. I imagine that some fun applications from Network science and Graph theory will be useful, and most likely will be looking like Google's PageRank lol.

Popcrate (talk) 05:56, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Popcrate:I haven't attended Wikimania myself since Washington, DC in 2012, so it may have changed a bit. You have to be a pretty serious Wikipedian (or Wikimedian) to enjoy the specialised topics, but I suspect you'd find plenty; talks range from very technical sessions for computer experts to very general talks on social aspects of Wikipedia in society or how groups interact within WikiNews or things like that. There are also many people working "at the edges" of Wikimedia projects - like our offline releases - which are really interesting to learn about. If you look at last year's programme you'll get the idea. I tend to avoid the hardcore tech talks but find most others interesting. I also love the fact that you sit down for lunch and find you're sitting at a table with people from Pakistan, Venezuela, Germany and the US - but you find you have similar interests and passions. It's really fun to meet people in person that you've met online; even better is when you make friendships that lead to new collaborations. My meeting with User:Kelson at Boston in 2006 led to a deep collaboration that is still active today (I will talk with him again on Saturday), including when he invited me to Paris to give a talk on the 1.0 project. But of course you have to look at the cost (I have no idea where you live); the registration is usually kept cheap but flights & hotels can add up to a lot.

If you do plan to come to Montreal, I'd love to have you also attend our hackathon. I will be working as a facilitator for some of the time, but I would also have plenty of time to sit down with you and thrash out ideas. We could probably get a lot done. User:Kelson will be there all week with the full Kiwix team, and they provide much expertise in this area.

I wasn't aware there was a solar eclipse at that time! I will have gone to Washington for a chemistry conference then, but it looks as if that will be well within the path. I recall seeing one in Boston in the 90s, and it was really special.

Regarding your skills for the indexing project, they sound perfect. My previous collaborator on this was a mathematician, and for this topic I think clear thinking skills are probably the most important. The key part is to find a really good way to solve the indexing problem; once we can do that, I suspect that the programming will be quite straightforward (unless you get into AI or something more advanced). The main problem is exemplified by what I think of as the France/Belgium problem; if you look at the category hierarchy for France, you find that Belgium is listed as below France, so based on that you might think it was part of France! It is in fact because underneath Category:France there is Category:Belgium–France border. In another example, there is a bar in England listed several levels underneath Category:Chemistry, because it is listed a places serving alcohol => alcohol => ethanol => alcohols => organic chemistry. Thus categories generate a very useful network of connections, but not a perfect hierarchy (or a Dewey Decimal system) as one might imagine. I would love to really nail this problem as I think it would make our collections much better. If you'd like to talk further about this on Skype or some other format, please let me know, or tell me how you would like to proceed. Thank you again for your interest! Walkerma (talk) 05:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

For chatrooms and communications, I have been testing Discord (software), which is a pretty nice alternative to skype (and the desktop app is lightweight). I have a skype, and I'm willing to use it. I don't have any specific preference of which program to use, and I just don't know which is best lol.

For indexing: I'm writing up my first thoughts, and I'll show you more details when I finish.

My mentality and approach ATM is with this overall goal in mind:

• Learn the most when using Wikipedia.

And the overall way this could be made easier

• Improve Navigation by identifying the connections between topics.

A few thoughts/topics I will rite more about..

• Build off existing organization tactics
• using words from the intro section of the article to determine relationship to categories and parts
• Ontology and Ontology (information science)
• Artificial intelligence#Knowledge representation

Theres more, I'll save it for the write-up. Popcrate (talk) 04:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Sounds great! I'm familiar with ontologies, as we use them a lot in cheminformatics, and occasionally we use AI as well, but I'm sure I know less than you about these. Let me know when you've got your thoughts together, and I'm happy to try out Discord. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 04:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Is the chemistry project chat meetings still on?

Hi,

I have recently discovered that the chemistry wikipedia project group meet weekly on an online chat, on the page it says to contact you for more information. Does this meeting still occur? Am I welcome to join? Is it still at the time listed on the wiki page? Thanks EvilxFish (talk) 23:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@EvilxFish: - sorry, I've been away with no internet - just got back. No - those meetings ended long ago, I'm afraid! We had weekly meetings for a long time while we were developing our style guide and structure drawing standards. I'll have to update that....! Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) However, we do have discussions on the wikipedia project group's talkpages (Wikipedia talk:Chemicals and Wikipedia talk:Chemistry), and some of us are often on IRC if you'd like to discuss things that way. DMacks (talk) 07:23, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Great thank you both! I will be sure to check into IRC as well then! Are these talk pages the correct places to request reviews for some of the things I have added lately to various articles? EvilxFish (talk) 13:01, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Requests for review (of own work or others we come across) are a common topic at those talkpages. DMacks (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes - be sure to post them on the talk pages (and the article talk pages also). I should have mentioned that in my original reply. Thanks a lot, DMacks! Walkerma (talk) 13:30, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Sunday July 16: New England Wiknic @ Cambridge, MA

Sunday July 16, 1-5pm: New England Wiknic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" at John F. Kennedy Park, near Harvard Square, Cambridge, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck. Sunday July 16 New England Wiknic (also on Facebook) 1–5pm - come by any time! Look for us by the Wikipedia / Wikimedia banner! We hope to see you there! --Phoebe (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

hellow please add index by topic and location and year e s r b for school and univercity and more e s r b and alfabet and more thanks

hellow please add index by topic and location and year e s r b for school and univercity and more e s r b and alfabet and more thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.22.34.53 (talk) 13:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello! That's what we'd like to do, but it's very hard to do! We have some people working on it. What do you mean by e s r b ? Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 13:47, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Mass notification

Hi Martin,

To notify people on a large scale, I believe you'll want to look into the User:MediaWiki message delivery system. What you need to do is a make a request for a mass message delivery at Wikipedia_talk:Mass_message_senders#MassMessage_Delivery_Requests, along with a list of the intended recipients.

There are other options too, like site-wide notices, depending on what exactly you have in mind. Let me know if the MassMessage delivery works for you, or if you need something a bit more tailored to your situation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb:: Thanks a lot! If you want to join us for the hackathon 12-1pm EDT livestream and questions (on #offline). Info on Wed & Thursday talks are available here. Walkerma (talk) 16:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Might not be possible since I've just resumed work (I work August 15 - May 15) and have quite a bit to do before the semester starts. But if I can somehow be involved, I will. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:46, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb::It's a live stream of the talks. We're learning about the PiBox right now. It's called a hackathon, but the main purpose is for everyone to learn what everyone else is doing, so we can work together on offline content and distribution. Thanks for the offer, though, and I hope work goes well this year. Walkerma (talk) 16:50, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Would like your input on this please

Hi, This is something that will affect the quality of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I personally strongly oppose the motion due to it not being accepted in mainstream chemical reporting however I am sure you can decide for yourself. Kind regards EvilxFish (talk) 10:36, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

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!

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MfD nomination of Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria

Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  11:44, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Help create an index

To editor Walkerma: I'd be interested in helping with the preparation of a reliable index, as mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team. I can code and I've indexed before (mostly textbooks/nonfiction). Plus I have a lot of editing experience. Thanks. Pursuedbybaer (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@Pursuedbybaer: - Thank you! That would be great! Good, reliable index creation is (IMHO) the last major hurdle before we call our collection "Wikipedia 1.0", assuming the version selection part works this time (We're going to be using both ORES and WikiTrust). Also, we may have another person interested to work on indexes (or do you prefer indices?!). It's perfect timing, in fact, because we're about to start work on our next collection - the first we've done since 2011 - because we have some new people helping on the tech side (we had lost our main tech person). Do you do Skype or do you prefer IRC, or Zoom, or something else? We will probably hold some meetings in January to discuss the general needs. There may be some synergistic benefits from it, also, in how we select articles.

In the meantime, it would be great if we could talk one on one, so I can lay out the task and likely problems, and you can share your ideas on what we can do. If you prefer to correspond by email, that's OK, but if we can talk in real time (somehow!) that may be more efficient for getting you started. Please also take a look at Kiwix, which is our main collaborator.

So please let me know how you'd like to communicate, and when is best for us to talk further. Thanks! Walkerma (talk) 15:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

@Walkerma: Oh, great! So exciting. I totally agree: a good index is the key to a text. (And I'd go with whatever Wiki prefers, of course ;)

Email, if that's okay. It would be more efficient to talk via phone but—I apologize—I have a bit of a phone phobia. (I totally understand if you want to talk to a person over the phone before working with them on something this important, though. I can do whatever task you think appropriate.)

Just let me know how I can help. I look forward to it! Pursuedbybaer (talk) 14:43, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Pursuedbybaer:Thanks for the kitten! (I share a house with three cats, two of whom are currently hissing and fighting - so I appreciate kittens!). I'll be in contact via email tomorrow, and I'm sure we can manage to discuss things that way. I'd like to bring in Popcrate (see post below this one) - are you OK sharing your email so we can have a three way discussion? If not, please let me know. Thanks again! Walkerma (talk) 05:25, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

@Walkerma:Oh, I'm so glad! Absolutely. Thank you. Sending you my email... Pursuedbybaer (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

On Indexing and Article Assessment

I read your talk message, and I am definitely still interested in this! I actually have refined some of my ideas, and think Statistical classification might be a useful tool.

Relating to Article Assessment:

1. Handpick articles that are good examples of each assessment rating (Featured, Good, A, B, etc.) This would be the Training dataset .
2. Identify specific Features of those articles that would help to classify them.
3. Use the program to classify new articles (or articles that haven't been assessed in awhile).
4. Human can confirm that the program's article classification is correct.

A Few More Thoughts:

• There could be 2 separate article ratings: Machine's rating, and Human's rating. The machine's rating would be more updated, and the human's rating would be more accurate, precise, and/or reliable.
• Could use the program to help identify articles that are in need of re-assessment.

A similar tactic can actually be used to help create an index, or a categorization of articles. It could build upon the already existing category tag system, but it doesn't need to. It could use things like similarity in wiki-links to known topics, wiki-data, intro paragraphs, word counts, etc.

Due to the extremely high volume of Wikipedia articles, a bot could run this kind of program on random articles, sifting them into different groups and making various assessment predictions.

I believe there are currently bots for vandalism checking that are doing this exact type of thing: classification of an edit: (is this vandalism, or not?). In fact, as I look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES .... I realize it might also be doing article quality rating too.

Well anyway, yes, I'm willing to help with this =)

P.S. Perhaps we should collaborate with Wikimedia Scoring Platform team

Popcrate (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

@Popcrate:You sound like you've been talking with Aaron! Yes, we are indeed planning to work with the Scoring Platform team, and I did in fact help him by providing some of his human ratings such as you mention above. I've already exchanged a few emails with Aaron about using ORES in Wikipedia 1.0 projects. I think it would be a great idea to compare the current WikiProject assessment with a machine assessment, and then let the WikiProjects know of any articles with a big disparity. In cases where there are only inactive WikiProjects, it may fall to the Wikipedia 1.0 team to reassess them (we used to do that a lot in the early days!) and we might have to focus just on articles that our system ranks as high importance (i.e., with high external interest). Anyway, you have some great ideas here, and I'd love to get started working with you!

For the shorter term, I finally started work on Wikipedia Version 0.9 today, and I hope we can get a nice general selection releaseed on Kiwix by the spring of 2018. We can produce collections as before (0.8 and 0.7), but I hope to use ORES (and possibly WikiTrust, too) to prevent vandalised versions from creeping in. The other key development - if we can pull it off - would be to include an automatically-generated index of the articles that goes beyond a simple alphabetical listing. I'll email you tomorrow. Are you OK with having a three-way email discussion with User:Pursuedbybaer (see the post above this one)? Also, are you OK with Skype or Zoom or phone discussions? We quite often have Saturday Skype discussions with other people interested in "offline" - we could organise one around this topic if you wish. Anyway, I'll be in contact tomorrow. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 05:41, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you!

Pursuedbybaer (talk) 15:06, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 11

Newsletter • February 2018

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, with plans to renew work with a followup grant proposal to support finalising the deployment of CollaborationKit!

-— Isarra ༆ 21:26, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Offline wiki group!

Dear Martin,

Please join our fledgling offline wiki user group. Or at least suggest items to add to our calendar of events :) Is there a specific timeframe for the next WP 1.0 push when people could come together to help? – SJ + 17:29, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@Sj: Yes, certainly. Things IRL got very busy in March so I went almost AWOL from here. Things should settle down from June 4th. We are ready to do Wikipedia 0.9 and I'd love to have this be a group project. Walkerma (talk) 11:11, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

So glad to hear it. Now the dilemma of the moment: should we call this the offline wiki usergroup, the static content usergroup... ? Warm regards. – SJ + 21:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12

Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0 Index

>> Preparation of a reliable index. If you can write code and you're interested in how to map category trees into a useful index (not as easy as it sounds!) please contact Walkerma.

I am contacting you! I did notice that a lot of the project/TODO description for Wikipedia 1.0 has information that is a bit dated and so I was also wondering in general what the pulse of the project is and what have been the big milestones/hurdles since the hackathon a year ago.

As for a brief bio/resume: I live in San Francisco, CA, USA and work for Google/YouTube. My primary programming language is Javascript/Typescript and I know HTML5/CSS very well. I'm also very proficient in Python, and in a past life I knew Ruby (and at one point I taught myself some Golang). I am proficient in command line tools, especially git workflows, and can generally configure and install anything that runs on OS X or Ubuntu. I have lots of websites/webapps that I've built, many of which are listed here: [1]

Thanks! --audiodude (talk) 05:24, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry I rattled off a list of technical qualifications without: 1) reading other people's posts where they offered to help, and 2) without listing my qualifications to build indexes. I actually don't know too much about indexing, but I have tried to automatically (with scripts) traverse wikipedia category trees before and I'm familiar with some of the technical and semantic challenges around that. --audiodude (talk) 05:36, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

@Audiodude: Thanks a lot! Sorry I was slow to reply - my laptop kept crashing yesterday. I'd love to work with you! We do have a long term need for an index, which got put on hold while we had other problems. If that is your main interest we can certainly work on that. But I wonder if you'd be willing to help with a more immediate need: We are now ready (I think!) to produce another collection, and since it's been quite a while since the last one we don't have active people on en:WP. Would you be able to help me with some of the logistics in putting together the collection? This may involve 3 months or so of intermittent bot requests, simple scripts, contacting WikiProjects, etc. I'm not very proficient at the tech side, and when we did earlier releases I always worked alongside a couple of very good tech people. I'd like to start work on a new collection now, but I'm a little hesitant about plunging into it on my own.

We also have an ongoing problem with the WP 1.0 Bot. This is the bot that many WikiProjects use to collect assessment information on their articles. We don't have anyone in en:WP to maintain the bot, and it periodically starts misbehaving. User:Kelson is familiar with the code (which is in Perl) and he rewrote the code to run on a new server earlier this year, but he is very busy as the head of the Kiwix group that produces offline collections. See here for the most recent headache.

In summary, there is plenty for you to do! Please let me know if you'd like to work on the index, the new release, the bot, or some combination thereof. Many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 04:12, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

@Audiodude and Walkerma: We definitely need to replace the WP 1.0 Bot and online visualisation solution. The current solution is not adapted anymore to the needs and can not be further developed properly. On Kiwix side, it is planned to replace is in 2019, probably Q3/Q4. The first thing we need to do now is gather the requirements. Kelson (talk)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply to my inquiry! Actually, yes, I would be much more interested in working on the Bot or collections than on the index, per se. The bot in particular is an area I think I could help with, because I've worked on automated web scraper type things before (though I'm sure this is not a scraper per se, that it works with the API perhaps?).

I'm ready to get started yesterday, just point me at whatever the highest priority thing is. audiodude (talk) 02:57, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

One more thing, the link to the code for the bot on the page User:WP 1.0 bot/Web/FAQ is a dead link. I was looking there for the code. I've marked it as such. audiodude (talk) 03:01, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@Audiodude and Kelson: I would say that the work on the bot is probably the biggest priority, but it should be coordinated with Kelson who has maintained it in recent years; he's the only active Wikipedian who is really familiar with the code. The code is here, and I updated that old FAQ page (thanks!). If it looks like that work is either done, postponed for now, or just ticking over & under control - meaning you're not tied up with that - I would like to start work on the next collection. Your contributions will be MUCH appreciated! Walkerma (talk) 03:21, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay I've reached out to Kelson on his talk page and sent him an email with my personal email address if it is easier to coordinate there. Can't wait to get my hands dirty. audiodude (talk) 05:00, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@Audiodude: I'm just stopping by to say that it's great to learn that you're interested in picking up this work! I got pinged on a thread related to it, but as I don't have the capacity to take on another bot project at the moment it's wonderful to see the WP 1.0 project get some development resources from elsewhere. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 15:26, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

@Nettrom: Thanks! I spoke to Kelson over video chat this morning, and we're working on getting me access to the git repo where I can start a new branch and also access to the WMF server where the code runs. Thanks for the words of support! audiodude (talk) 01:56, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Great news! Thank you so much for pitching in. I'll be in touch soon about us discussing and agreeing on specs for the new version of the bot. Walkerma (talk) 04:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Greetings, For tomorrow's video conference I will be gone. News to share = yesterday I added here a section asking WPs Perl people for help fixing WP1.0bot. It may be a longshot but there may be a chance at getting the old bot working again. I still believe either another bot or script got into the database files & hosed up the timestamps. Just saying.... When this bot first started, how were the files initialized? JoeHebda (talk) 15:00, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Third generation WP1.0 bot

Greetings Walkerma, From last Thursday jitsi video conference, it was mentioned about adding WP 3.0 bot announcement banner at top of all WP pages. Just wondering timeline for that? A great way to attract interested people. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 14:13, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

- Just wondering if this is still going to happen? Or announce at the Community portal withover 5,000 pagewatchers... JoeHebda (talk) 15:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

As I see it, we have two things to do: (1) Short term: Get a working bot to generate logs and compile assessment data, then (2) Long term: Get a bot with some new features to help the 1.0 project and the WikiProjects. At this point, #1 is the main thing I'm worried about, because the bot is blocked and hundreds of WikiProjects are probably getting frustrated that their data aren't being updated. Once it looks like the immediate problem then yes, I want to open up the discussion on new features, though I had thought we were just doing a regular RfC, not a site-wide banner (which is normally only for the really high profile mission-critical items for Wikipedia). Thoughts? Walkerma (talk) 17:15, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree 100-percent with these priorities. FYI yesterday, I added anew section here asking for help. Hoping to stir some interest from people familiar with Perl programs.

Another useful tool would be an audit type of program that finds WP banner coding errors. Things that send WP1.0bot "off the rails" instead of handling or flagging the error condition(s) while processing. An idea - if the bot finds errors could it add an "Error report" underneath the generated wikitable (maybe in Red). It would be highly visible & make fixing so much easier than now.

Wish I could be of more help...but I know my WP limitations. Listening to streaming Cajun radio now & enjoying great tunes! :-) JoeHebda (talk) 19:12, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

A final thought before I pack-it-in for today - For the bot processing, the Assessment tables run correctly. How easy would it be to de-activate the second part-Quality logs which has the errors? That way people can receive the daily Wikitable updates again. JoeHebda (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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.

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Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:25, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

- Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 14:51, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks guys! It's been a long time! Walkerma (talk) 17:24, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

FYI - email

Hi, Saw msg. about Trav being online with now. The computer I'm on right now does not have email (my other machine)...so uncertain of your msg.... JoeHebda (talk) 18:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Just go to the Jitsi site now. Walkerma (talk) 18:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I am there now & no-one there....is it a diff site now? JoeHebda (talk) 18:54, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

@JoeHebda: - I could see you and hear you, but it seems that you couldn't hear me at all! I've heard nothing from Kelson about the code updates. I did see that "possible workaround" and I mentioned it to Kelson and Audiodude earlier today that they should look at it. Walkerma (talk) 19:21, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I had same issue with Kelson. He could see & hear me but from his end no audio or video being sent....We texted instead.. Kelson thinks he may be able to look at fixing the bot this weekend. JoeHebda (talk) 19:27, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Excellent news! Thank you. Walkerma (talk) 19:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Weekly Thursday vid.conf.meeting

Greetings (Walkerma—Kelson—audiodude) - Because of issues connecting with video & audio today, I went to Jitsi website here and clicked on Start A Call instead of bookmarked shortcut. Then click on Recent to find the kiwix link. Hoping this will result in a better connection. I'm on there now & will stay Online as long as possible. Note: Jitsi did lockup on me today about 12:50 central-time & I had to re-start it. JoeHebda (talk) 20:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi (Walkerma—Kelson—audiodude) - Wondering if meeting today? JoeHebda (talk) 19:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@JoeHebda: - I apologize, I forgot the meeting because we're in finals week and I had another meeting that just got done. But it seems Kelson will help Travis on the new bot starting next week! I'll update you via the wiki. Walkerma (talk) 19:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Chrome browser Extension for Jitsi

Good morning (Walkerma—Kelson—audiodude) - If your browser is Chrome or chrome-based there is an Extension that may be needed. At Chrome-store search for "Jitsi Meetings". OVerview = A simple extension that allows you to schedule Jitsi Meetings and stream your desktop into Jitsi conferences. Jitsi Meet is an OpenSource (Apache) WebRTC JavaScript application that uses Jitsi Videobridge to provide high quality, scalable video conferences. You can try it out yourself at https://meet.jit.si. This extension provides the meet.jit.si site with desktop streaming functionality over Chrome. It was updated on January 19, 2018 and Version is 0.2.8.14. Hope this helps. JoeHebda (talk) 14:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Joe, that's worth checking. I use Firefox, and don't have Chrome, so I'll check that my extension is working properly. I'll be really busy this week with grading finals and lab reports, though. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 13:21, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13

Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:

• Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
• I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
  • If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
• Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 14

Newsletter • June 2019

Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.

There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:

• A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
• We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have the extension documentation and some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!

Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:

• Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
• WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 21:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikiproject Russia is irrelevant and not connected to article

Hi, Walkerma I found some inconsistency for one article. It about Belarusian city Slutsk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slutsk) but it wrongly lays within the scope of wikiproject Russia and have its banner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Slutsk) which is wrong. How to remove it?

I believe it's only there because of the history: "Sluck was part of Russian Empire after Second Partition of Poland in 1793." I notice that the banner includes the qualifier "hist=yes" meaning it's the Russian history task force. It's not saying that this is part of Russia today. This is similar to Talk:Strasbourg which has banners for WP:France and WP:Germany; although it's been French for over 100 years, it's nevertheless part of the history of Germany and Prussia. Walkerma (talk) 22:16, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 15

Newsletter • September 2019

A final update, for now:

The third grant-funded round of WikiProject X has been completed. Unfortunately, while this round has not resulted in a deployed product, I am not planning to resume working on the project for the foreseeable future. Please see the final report for more information.

Regards,

-— Isarra ༆ 19:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

web-bot?

Hi Walkerma,

There was a request for info about the use of: WP1.0 web tool, at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Typography...

I'm not a bot myself, but I do not know how to use a bot at all, when I would share some knowledge, how could a bot help me with that ?

best regards

J.T.W.A.Cornelisse (talk) 10:16, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

@J.T.W.A.Cornelisse:: You don't know how to use a bot (they're a mystery to me as well!}), but you can benefit from its work. The bot is an automated user account that collects data from every article and then displays it in that web page. You can use it to see lists such as this one, to see what your project's articles are "doing". I set up that list to show them ranked by score (which is how we combine importance + quality) and also to display the "external interest data" - page links, language links and no. of page hits which are part of that calculation. I find these lists useful because sometime a project may be unaware that one of their articles is getting a lot of traffic, or has a lot of links to it, yet it's only Start-class. Let me know if you have any more questions. Walkerma (talk) 12:32, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Walkerma, (is this your real name?)

I'm not planning to spent all my time to wikipedia. there's moore in life than that. All those articels... this is too much. But handy to know where something might be to be found.

J.T.W.A.Cornelisse (talk) 16:40, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Adding WikiProject Earthquakes to the index

Hi Walkerma, you recently put a request on the WP Earthquakes talk page regarding the WP1.0 web tool. I tried to fill in the Google form, but found that it assumes that our project is currently indexed, which it is not. Adding the project to the index would seem to have many benefits for the project, so I would like to know how I should go about doing that? Thanks, Mikenorton (talk) 11:42, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

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Unknown message

Ok — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.41.192.30 (talk) 11:18, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Please can you explain your message? Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 13:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Top million substances - will mostly be organic

Hi Martin

I thought I should provide you with a little more information about myself to provide context for my comments on your "top million substances" thread. I am retired but used to work for Syngenta at Jealott's Hill. I spent many, many hours on projects designing the corporate chemical database, right back to the mid-1980s when ICI first started to use MDL's MACCS. I was never anything but a chemist but became familiar with IT folk and db design principles. In the early days, I devised a method so that we could control tautomerism (i.e. multiple possible tautomer drawings all led to one substance ID after registration) and later (in the 2000s) when ICI Ag merged with Novartis Ag we merged two big databases into one and designed a schema for it that is, I still believe, the "correct" way to build a relational database of chemicals. It had facilities to allow a sample to contain many substances, for example, which covers both sample mixtures/impurities and stereochemical mixtures. It also allowed substances to contain other substances, which had the useful consequence that all salts of a given active ingredient such as paraquat di-cation could readily be found.

That's the preamble to say that I know for sure there are over 15 million well-characterised substances containing carbon: we had that many in our db even by 2010. So I'm not surprised that Pubchem today has over 100 million - although they call them "compounds", a word that the IT folk and I never used....

If I can be of any assistance to your current project, let me know. I can be reached by e-mail via my user page because much of what we could discuss together isn't appropriate for publication on WP. Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 12:40, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

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Nomination of Hydrochloric acid (data page) for deletion

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Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 04:30, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Tin(II) chloride (data page) for deletion

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Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 06:25, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Akane Yamaguchi

Hello. Help improvements. Thanks you. Zasjd (talk) 06:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Zasjd: Sorry, I'm not sure there's a lot I can do personally to improve this article, because it's well outside my area of expertise. But I would suggest requesting help at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Badminton, because people there will no doubt have the relevant knowledge. Good luck! Walkerma (talk) 06:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Tin(II) chloride (data page)

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Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations

Are you still looking over these? I just added one. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:56, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR: - sorry, but the release version system is now defunct, because now we have automated systems for selecting articles. We were never able to complete Version 0.9, so 0.8 was the last release done in that way. I should probably go through those pages and find out what pages can now be deleted. However, if you're interested in helping out with creating collections like this for offline use, that project is still active, and we do need people to help from time to time. Let me know if you'd like me to contact you in the event we have something new that needs community help. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 04:39, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

You can notify me, and I will see if I can help out. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:06, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I may be in contact with you over the summer, since the coders have been very active recently in developing new features for the project. Walkerma (talk) 02:58, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Updates needed

Could you update Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Wikipedia 1.0 projects to add some of the projects more recent than 2008?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team?veaction=edit should let you edit the tables in the visual editor, but I can't guarantee that it'll cope well with the colored cells. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'll aim to get that done this summer, as long as things stay quiet enough at work. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 18:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Lots of organic talk about this at Wikimania this year :) Would love to reconnect about it, and think about suitable capstones. There's also a set of ML models inside the WMF for estimating article quality which might help estimate which articles may be due for an update. Sending warm regards from Boston, – SJ + 03:49, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes - by all means. As often happens, I lost my summer in a lot of work-related stuff, though I did at least get a bunch of IUPAC definitions uploaded into Commons. Would you like to talk on Jitsi tomorrow sometime (my only open day)? Please suggest a time. It would be very helpful to get multiple perspectives on this, especially if you've got views of people from Wikimania. Many thanks, Walkerma (talk) 03:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Man, I haven't been to wikimania in years. Any organic tidbits you (plural) would like to share? DMacks (talk) 03:57, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@DMacks - Hey, great to hear from you! I also haven't been to Wikimania since it was in Montreal (quite close to me), in about 2017. I haven't done so much here on WP lately; it's got worse since I became chair of chemistry & physics at our college. You look to be much more active on WP still - thanks for that. Are you still working at the same place, and doing well? Regarding organic _chemistry_ tidbits: One thing I was involved with a year or two back was the expansion of CAS Common Chemistry, which now has almost 500,000 entries, and a lot more information than the old site. Unfortunately it seems to have stayed under the radar for many people, but I think it's a really useful site if you just want a quick CAS No, melting point or similar. Thanks for reaching out. Walkerma (talk) 04:11, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:WP1.0

Good evening Martin. Are you still using this template in any meaningful way? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: - No, I don't believe so. Are you wanting to delete it? We can post a comment on the 1.0 talk page to see if anyone's using it, though that page is not very active these days. Walkerma (talk) 21:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Well deleting is an option if no one is using it. I've just removed some elements like core topics which is marked historical. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

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Wikipedia 0.99

Great unconference topic for Toronto? – SJ + 17:10, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi, SJ. I'm here, in the exec conference room, WikiCred talk. Hope to see you at lunch. Walkerma (talk) 17:12, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

SUNY Wikimedia Project

Hi. Thanks for the notes on etherpad, and for introducing yourself. I've been inspired to initiate a wikiversity project, https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/SUNY_Wikimedia_Project that sees if there is anything we could do SUNY-wide re: Wikimedia. Invite any SUNY Wikipedians you know, and I'll do that same. Hope to see you on that page... Stevesuny (talk) 20:45, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Stevesuny:, thanks for making contact, and for setting up the WikiProject. I don't know many SUNY Wikimedians, but I'll contact the one person I do know has done things in the past! Walkerma (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

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Good article reassessment for Continuous distillation

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IUPAC definitions

Format makes no difference to copyright. The text is either under a free license or not. So either the definition can be used as raw text or the image can be deleted from commons. If IUPAC leadership don't understand this we are going to need to see the exact terms of the release somewhere publicly viable. While I'm aware of IUPAC historic status and Wikipedia does follow them in terms of naming conventions the reality is that the any role on "official authority for chemistry" has increasingly transferred to the likes of the Chemical Abstracts Service and the Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. Defaulting to adding such definitions seems a questionable choice and certainly not something we should be doing beyond plain text.

But first thing I'm going to need to see the exact text of that release.©Geni (talk) 18:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Geni:The release is under a CC-BY-SA license, as indicated on the image itself and in the associated metadata, and also at the main page of the IUPAC Gold Book. As far as I know it's a bog standard CC-BY-SA 4.0. I'm not a legal expert, so when a number of our text-based definitions were deleted by members of the Wikipedia community for plagiarism, we accepted that and developed these images as a way round the problem. I'm also not able to make a legal case to the IUPAC lawyers to convince them otherwise. I very much wish we could revert to text-based definitions again, as we used to do.

I'm surprised to hear that you consider IUPAC to be "historic". You must work in a different area of chemistry than me - though as a synthetic organic chemist I am perhaps a bit of a dinosaur. Of course IUPAC was of historic importance for resolving international naming disputes, etc., but in my world (I'm chair of a university chemistry department) we still consider IUPAC to be the main authority in the field. The InChI and InChIKey have become very important as chemical identifiers, being central to many important databases such as PubChem and ChemSpider. And IUPAC is still the organization that decides element names & symbols, even for the most recent elements. I'm also not aware of CAS or any other organization providing a succinct definition of a concept like Absorption_(chemistry) - but if you know of a more authoritative definition, we can take a look.

In speaking with others, the main concern is actually with the appearance on the page, which also (from your edit summary) seems to have been your main concern at the time. I agree that the current format needs fixing to make it work better in the page with different skins, so I'm certainly open to your suggestions there.Walkerma (talk) 04:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

the copyright stuff I was looking for was the email ticket since I don't have access to that any more. However the release on https://goldbook.iupac.org is good enough. The text is CC-BY-SA 4.0 so we can use it as text. Best bet is adding a note to the talk page (as well as in the edit summery) noting what has been done. I'm not opposed to adding the definitions in many cases however some will require discussion such as why they prefer " Organic light emitting device" for OLED.©Geni (talk) 23:07, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the succinct definitions, I am familiar with sources such as Ullmann and Kirk-Othmer, but these are less authoritative than IUPAC, they're behind a paywall, and they're subject to the same copyright problems as Gold Book. I also noted that the Ullmann article is classed as "Low importance" for Chemistry, whereas IUPAC is one of only 84 articles classed as "Top importance" for Chemistry. Walkerma (talk) 06:05, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Butting in here as a chemist very familiar with IUPAC but also familiar with Wikipedia's manual of style for images. Isn't the real issue that placing .png images full of text results in poor accessibility? There was a recent case of a paid editor being partially blocked for trying to do that sort of thing and refusing to use a text alternative. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Text as a graphic. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's something I've been looking into, and why I've been soliciting opinions from people. Thanks for chiming in - I will definitely get back to you soon with some alternatives to get your thoughts. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 13:44, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@Geni:, :@Michael D. Turnbull: OK, I got approval from the IUPAC people to replace the images as suggested, with something which is (hopefully) less annoying and with better accessibility. As you suggested, Geni, The new CC-BY-SA license on Gold Book makes this possible now. You can see the change in a typical page like Adsorption, comparing the old version with the new version. Do you think this way of presenting IUPAC definitions will work OK? If so, I should be able to clear out all the image files from articles this weekend. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 05:39, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

That's much better. However, I don't think that external links should be included in the definition box. In this particular example there are two links to "interface" which are unnecessary and just make the box more complicated (as well as being against guidance for EL). Mike Turnbull (talk) 08:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull: - I missed seeing the duplication of the link, which was just an error in the script. We debated about how to do defined terms within the boxes, and initially I did internal wikilinks, but it was pointed out to me that the IUPAC definition is based on other IUPAC defined terms (not on Wikipedia defined terms!), so we agreed that the correct ways was to use Gold Book links. But if it's a problem, I'll just remove all the links - it might be best to have a simple, clean definition. If anybody wants to learn more they can click on the Gold Book reference, which includes links for the IUPAC defined terms. Thanks for the feedback! Walkerma (talk) 00:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Despite the guidance to avoid external links within articles, there are already exceptions: for example the template {{EC number}} is sometimes used in running text. Your comment on wanting a clean definition is relevant and if that's simpler to implement then maybe that's how to proceed. If you do decide to have links, then the official IUPAC ones would be best. You could seek other views by posting at WT:CHEMS. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good to know, and very sensible. I think for now, I'll just post them without links - just to replace the image files with text-based ones - and then we'll discuss at WT:CHEMISTRY the best format for longer term. I did get feedback on these at WP:CHEMISTRY when we started posting them, but there have been a lot of changes since then. I appreciate your help, Walkerma (talk) 01:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome. Boring pedant's point: typical recent addition has an unwanted extra space between the final full stop and the reference. My browser is also showing the Kelvin's K and the ^-1 on separate lines. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:40, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull: - Thanks again - good catch with the space. Boring pedantry is what we do here at WP, and I think IUPAC is just the same! I'll fix those spaces when I get time. As for the ^-1, though, I can't reproduce the problem you're seeing. I've looked at it in Firefox and Edge, at different frame sizes, even logged out, and the units are always together. If you can figure it out, please let me know. Many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 00:15, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

It is a width-specific problem. On my Edge browser, the issue doesn't occur when I have a wide window but when I activate both Wikipedia sidebars (i.e. the "Tools" to the right and the contents to the left in our current standard WP:Vector 22) then I see it. If you email me via my userpage I can send you screenshots of what it looks like. However, this may be unnecessary if you can implement the same solution as is used in the infobox of the Boltzmann constant article. That is, use the template {{Val}}. This avoids all the superscripts and subscripts and uses {{val|1.380649|e=-23|u=J.K-1}} which renders as 1.380649×10⁻²³ J⋅K⁻¹. In my browser at any width the template ensures the units are displayed correctly. I don't know how this should be combined with "k = " in terms of non-breaking spaces. I'm also not an expert in templates, so I don't know why the unit has to be J.K and not J K but it's to do with the unit being recognised and there are work-arounds specified in the template documentation. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm hoping that these quote boxes (as found on pages like Boltzmann constant), set as 35% of the page width, will avoid the width problems you encountered. I've been very busy IRL recently, but plan to finish switching all articles over to this format as I get time again. I'll look into the issue of units, as you suggest, using the style used in the Boltzmann constant infobox, and that will render better without any space. I haven't used that Val template before, I confess, but then again I'm a synthetic organic chemist! Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 02:20, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

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