Archive 39: December 2014 through July 2019, more or less. Please do not edit this page -- use my
regular talk page instead, as I will not see your message here.
Because the text is not in compliance with cc-by-sa. Look at the disclaimer at the bottom of the page
[1] -- it would have to be marked as 'authored by Eben Moglen' in order to be licensed under cc-by-sa -- else it is 'All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors' which does not comply with our
copyright policy. The disclaimer on the bottom of the page needs to be updated if you want to copy-paste without the 'Eben Moglen' attribution. Thanks,
Antandrus (talk)16:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)reply
As you can clearly see, this was written by a contributing author, me, not by Eben Moglen. It's not my website so I can't control the disclaimer but the work is my own, therefore I have every right to post it on the wikipedia page. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Jaa2204 (
talk •
contribs)
16:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)reply
I do believe you are right. Formic acid and all. It's a fun word. From Desert Solitaire: "Don't actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires. Compared to ants the hairy scorpion is a beast of charm, dignity and tenderness." 01:35, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Happy Holidays
May you have very Happy Holidays, Antandrus...
and a New Year filled with peace, joy, and beautiful music!
Please join us at an event this coming Tuesday: the third Wik-Ed Women editing session will take place on January 20 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. This series of informal get-togethers is designed to encourage Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome!) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists. Please
RSVP here if you plan to attend.
Thanks! It was an awesome trip. Did some performing, saw some cool things, took over a thousand pictures, got away from work. My girlfriend was there for work, I was visiting her. And hey, congratulations on the decade.
Antandrus (talk)02:02, 19 January 2015 (UTC)reply
Not yet -- I was just starting to look at them this weekend for possible use on Wikipedia. Trying to find things without illustrations is increasingly difficult -- heck, a lot of the articles have gigantic galleries already.
Antandrus (talk)03:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)reply
CITEVAR redux
Sigh! I do wish the College of Editors would assemble and decide on a uniform citation standard for all Wikipedia articles. In the meantime, thank you for your edit and comment at
Symphony. The identical situation has arisen at
Aquarius (opera), with perhaps even less justification.—
Jerome Kohl (
talk)
05:18, 27 January 2015 (UTC)reply
You're welcome ... I think the problem is with the tag itself, the generic {{Citations}} tag:
Ha ha ha ha!!! I didn't notice that until you fixed it. I remember an argument some years ago in which a stubborn editor insisted that the key of Beethoven's Fifth needed a citation, since "C Minor" was not in the title.
Antandrus (talk)21:23, 27 January 2015 (UTC)reply
Laugh if you must, but it was an awkward sentence to tag (my fault). The intention was not to demand proof that the symphony includes a chorus, but that there was no precedent for choirs in pieces titled "symphony". This was in conjunction with a "contradiction" tag, since the article had earlier discussed the sinfonie of such late-16th and early 17th-century composers as Gabrieli and Schütz. The problem has now been resolved by an edit from Michael Cuthbert, who probably has little idea of the edit history of the Symphony article, which has been long and at times bitter. Indeed, I am waiting with bated breath for one particular editor to discover that the sentence he fought tooth and claw to retain in the lede has just been blithely snatched away (not a moment too soon as far as I am concerned, but opinions will differ).—
Jerome Kohl (
talk)
21:54, 27 January 2015 (UTC)reply
Apologies, Jerome -- though we sometimes differ on the amount of citation we find necessary, you certainly have good reasons for all of them, and indeed the part about calling using a chorus unprecedented needed a context to have it make sense. As far as the other edits, people can revert; I tend not to get in fights about such things. --
Michael Scott Cuthbert(talk)07:38, 28 January 2015 (UTC)reply
The LA Wikipedia community has three events in mid-February -- please consider attending!
First, we have a Valentine's Day edit-a-thon appropriately named Redondo Loves Wikipedia, which will take place at the Redondo Beach Public Library from 10am to 1pm on Saturday, February 14. Join library staff, the Redondo Beach Historical Society, and others to help improve Wikipedia's coverage of Redondo Beach!
Second, we have a Wik-Ed Women editing session on Tuesday, February 17 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. This series of informal get-togethers is designed to encourage Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome!) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists.
Third, we have an Unforgetting LA event put on by East of Borneo in collaboration with the
Getty Research Institute. Come help improve Wikipedia's coverage of LA design and architecture, and have an awesome free day at the museum -- parking will be validated for edit-a-thon participants! If you'd like to use particular books from GRI's great collection, be sure to email before 2/13 (instructions at event page).
And be sure to check out our
main meetup page, because we already have three SoCal events scheduled for early March!
I edited the page Antonio Vivaldi by correcting typos and adding to intro of the page. What I added was to the statement "Composed many instrumental concertos for violin and a variety of other instruments" I added "Composed over Five hundred instrumental concertos" You then messaged me saying that you removed my edits and saying that they appeared to be vandalism. Why do you consider this as vandalism? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Antonio Bononcini (
talk •
contribs)
19:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)reply
I corrected typos and my comments as "Greatest Italian baroque composer" are opinions as are all the comments on his music, the page says "one of the greatest baroque composers"you didn't flag whoever that was for adding opinions. Neither did you flag the person who wrote "he is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers" thats an opinion as well what is wrong with adding such opinions? I just added facts and corrected typos for example the page said "employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740" to which I added "employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740 a total of forty years". Is that vandalism? Did I put in incorrect dates? No. Did I delete previous work? No. Did I add any incorrect statements? No. Did I delete anything? No. The words I added were just descriptions like "He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos" I added "He is known mainly for composing over five hundred instrumental concertos" which is more descriptive and is a fact and I believe this was better than the original. I would not consider anything I added as vandalism. What are YOU doing? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Antonio Bononcini (
talk •
contribs)
23:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)reply
Stop being obtuse. Why did you deliberately add mistakes with the edit summary of "I added capitalization and punctuation mistakes". Answer my question.
Antandrus (talk)23:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)reply
WHAT spelling mistakes did I add? If I wrote "I added capitalization and punctuation misteaks." It was an accident but I did not add any spelling misteaks to the page so WHY did you send me a warning about vandalization. Or was it just because I gave an incorrect description of my edits? That hardly constitutes vandalization. If I wanted to vandalize I would have done it by now, or don't you think so. I have vandalized nothing you have no basis for deleting my edits and I use my previous rebuttles as my arguments. Also capitalizing the word "Greatest" as I did was not a spelling error as in this instance it was used as a title, so it's not a spelling error. I added no spelling or punctuation mistakes, so what did I vandalize? Did delete dates? No. Add incorrect dates? No. Did I erase anything? No. What did I do which constitiutes vandalizm. The most I did if anything that would be debatable is incorrectly describe my edits but other than that I ask again, what did I vandalize? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Antonio Bononcini (
talk •
contribs)
07:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)reply
There are lots of differences of opinion and/or misunderstandings at Wikipedia. I replaced the message with a welcome in the hope that there will no longer be a need to discuss the past. You might check that other message on your talk page about
WP:SIGN. Also, please make sure your edit summaries match the edits.
Johnuniq (
talk)
08:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)reply
You're welcome! I was watching over it as it unfolded (in case you needed any administrative help -- but you didn't need any). I'm quite nearby, and just tickled that there was a Wiki-event in Santa Barbara. Congratulations on all the great work, and thank you for organizing it! Hey, did it look like any of them were interested in continuing? That's the big issue, if we're going to make progress on closing the gender gap. I'd love it if some were enthused enough to want to write and edit more. All the best --
Antandrus (talk)01:17, 10 March 2015 (UTC)reply
The LA Wikipedia community has two events in this second half of March -- please consider attending!
First, there is a memorial edit-a-thon in honor of the prolific LA Wikipedian
Adrianne Wadewitz, which is being held downtown on March 18 (tomorrow!) from noon to 8pm as a part of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies' annual conference. Please drop by to contribute your own work or teach other users how to write for Wikipedia.
Second, there will be an event at the Redondo Beach Public Library (following up on last month's session), in collaboration with the Redondo Beach Historical Society. Please join us from 10am to noon on Saturday, March 28 at the main branch of the Redondo Beach Public Library!
Join our Facebook group
here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from
this list.
Tim Page -- grateful for your efforts toward balance
Thanks so much for your seriousness. I thought that my full letter to Wikipedia might be helpful.
My name is Tim Page and I am the author or editor of more than 20 books. I worked at the New York Times, Newsday and finally the Washington Post, where I won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1997. I am currently a full professor in two departments at the University of Southern California.
And yet, due to the repeated intrusions of two demonstrably hostile editors of my page, one would think that all I've done in a career that stretches back almost 50 years, is beat up on all young prodigies and sass back to the late Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry.
I would suggest that these two editors -- SSilvers and especially SchroCat -- have determined to give undue weight to two minor events in my career, with the specific intent of distorting my career
In the first instance, SSilvers (who is the editor of all the pages devoted to the prodigy Jackie Evancho) has been trying to turn me into a kiddie-stomper for a single article I wrote about Ms. Evancho in December 2011. OK, it was a negative article but I think a fair reader would glean that it was mostly about the music business and the way it eats its young -- a warning against premature exposure. Others may differ, of course, but to turn this one article (buttressed with a short paragraph in a 2000-word reflection on the highs and lows of a career in music criticism) into some kind of personal creed is preposterous. If somebody were to write a 3000 word piece on my work, it might have a place, but I've written hundreds of very positive reviews of young artists and to make this the centerpiece of my career is a clear case of original research -- and shoddy research at that.
I'm always uncomfortable touching up my Wikipedia page but I've done it on a couple of occasions, beginning when somebody suggested I wrote a book called "Descent into Madness: My Struggle with Homosexuality" back in October of 2008. (The fact is that I am a straight man, divorced twice, with three children and to refer to my Asperger Syndrome as "madness" is clearly slander.) And so, in 2012, I felt I needed to defend my work and add the names of some of the artists I had nurtured when they were very young: I included Hilary Hahn, Evgeny Kissin, and Midori (all teenaged when I first reviewed them -- indeed, I wrote the very first major profile of the last of these). There was some back and forth editorial discussion but we finally came out with what seemed a fair piece -- hardly fawning but with no errors of distortions of fact.
As such, it came as a surprise when I visited the page a month or two back and found that SSilvers had restored the material about Evancho, including my distinctly grotesque image of her onstage persona that I chose deliberately to make a point about what Evancho's handlers were doing to a talented child. At the same time, all the other prodigies I had supported were removed from the piece, leaving the impression that my dearest wish was to stomp all over child stars. Add to this the fact that SSilvers had called me a "thoughtless, nasty man" in talk pages on Wikipedia. As a journalist, I would recuse myself from writing about anybody I disliked so much, and to simply stick this in as the longest paragraph of my biography was clearly malicious.
I did my best to correct matters and though I'd found an ally in SchroCat who removed the corrections and wrote a frosty note, but DID explain the Wiki policy on sourcing. He said he neither knew nor cared who had written the Evancho restoration (this is beginning to sound like Tudor politics!) and said he had no time to make the corrections himself, but seemed a decent enough person. So I learned how to put the references into the piece, spending most of an afternoon on this and not doing a terribly good job on it but hoping that we had finally managed a fair appraisal.
He took out almost all of the corrections (some of the newspapers are no longer allowing early work to be presented without cost) and then added a long paragraph about an unfortunate blow-up I had with the late Marion Barry in 2007. Talk about undue weight! Barry was a controversial man with many supporters and just as many detractors -- I had been bullied by his staff when I asked them to take my address off their mailing list, and I overreacted, after which I apologized. Bingo -- end of story, until SchroCat decided to bring it up seven years later. If you wanted to mention everybody who has ever written negatively about Marion Barry, you'd have to expand your bandwidth -- and now this is the longest paragraph in my biography! Moreover, my leave of absence with the Post had been set up LONG before this took place.
Look -- I love Wikipedia. It's one of the great joys of on-line life. I go to it at least two or three times a day. But this sort of attack really isn't cricket. I'm not going to compare it to the Siegenthaler affair -- there is at least some truth in what these editors have chosen to glorify. But it's a little like a bio of Roman Polanski that talks mostly about his long-ago rape allegation and ignores the fact that he made "Chinatown."
I'm embarrassed to have to complain, but the world now takes Wikipedia very seriously and I'd rather have nothing at all than this sort of nastiness, which is absolutely unrepresentative of my person and my work. I'm a tough guy to write about -- one needs to be conversant in film ("a Day With Timmy Page"), music (my work in criticism, radio and record production), literature (I restored the novelist Dawn Powell to public attention), autism (I wrote about my struggles with Asperger Syndrome in "Parallel Play") and education to get a glimpse of my activity. I don't know if you have anybody who can do that -- maybe you should just remove me from the library. But I hope you will take this seriously, as I feel mangled by a huge and powerful organization that I mostly love and respect.
Sincerely,
Tim Page
Thanks so much for your decency. I never would have even posted except that what these people wrote was so charged with UNDUE WEIGHT and ORIGINAL RESEARCH. SchroCat said that he'd never had anything to do with SSilvers, not realizing that this sort of material carries a history. Poor guy -- I wish him well, but will not continue to tolerate his UNDUE emphasis on my blowup at Barry without a long examination of my prose and aesthetics. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
64.134.70.79 (
talk)
03:31, 22 March 2015 (UTC)reply
Resurrection of Southern California Task Force
After moving from Los Angeles County to Kern County to San Luis Obispo County, I am finally realizing that there is life in California outside of L.A. and San Francisco, where I lived and grew up. Oh, I have also lived in San Diego, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Yolo and Sacramento counties, and I earned my undergraduate degree in Riverside County. I am trying to breathe life into the Southern California Task Force, and I hope you will join me. Could you visit our list of participants
at the other end of this link and update your description of what you are interested in doing for us, assuming that you still want to be in the mix, that is.
In recompense, I will buy you a drink during the Wikipedia Week I am planning for Morro Bay on the Central Coast in July. Yours sincerely,
BeenAroundAWhile (
talk)
18:07, 3 May 2015 (UTC)reply
Hi Antandrus. May I first of all thank you for all your useful creations and contributions to music biographies on Wikipedia. I see that you have also been one of the more active editors on
Sibelius. You may have noticed that 2015 is the 150th anniversary of his birth with concerts and celebrations centred around 8 December. While I understand you are not too keen in participating directly in upgrades to GA or FA, I think you might be interested in improving the general quality of the article, not only by adding content but in this particular case by improving referencing and sourcing. I think it would be great if Wikipedia could contribute to the composer's international recognition in December. If you are interested, I could perhaps call on your assistance in addressing more specific issues.--
Ipigott (
talk)
14:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Hi Ipigott. Yes actually I would be interested -- I took a quick look at your copyedit this morning and liked what I saw; I think the article could be headed toward GA/FA with a little push from some people familiar with the topic. (As an aside I wrote those comments about GA/FA many years ago; I need to revise my userspace, as some of my opinions have changed.) We have some time, as December is a ways off, but I like the idea of getting the article up to standard by the 150th year milestone. By the way thank you for your edits to
Solvang, California -- a town quite close to where I live. It's a curious place. Let me know if you never need a photograph of something there. All the best --
Antandrus (talk)22:55, 3 June 2015 (UTC)reply
That's really good news! I thought it might be a good idea to work on Sibelius now that I have gained experience in trying to bring the article on
Carl Nielsen, his Danish counterpart, up to standard. In my opinion, the Sibelius article needs far better sourcing (at the moment it seems to rely mainly on one published biography), better coverage of his music and musical style, and more information on the concerts and events to be held for his anniversary. I read Swedish (but not Finnish) and can no doubt help with some of the sources in that language. Maybe we should address these and any other problems on the article's talk page (I'll add something) and initially go for GA over the next few weeks.
Smerus and
Tim riley have been extremely helpful on the Nielsen article and may like to help out here too. Last but not least, I hope the highly experienced
Dr. Blofeld will offer general advice and assistance as we go forward. As for Solvang, I visited the place a few years ago with my Danish wife and developed the article with the assistance of a local historian. I know California quite well as for many years I had professional relationships with a small firm in La Jolla.--
Ipigott (
talk)
09:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)reply
@
Dr. Blofeld: Glad to hear you're interested. Nielsen's been static for the past two or three days so we can just as well start preparing for Sibelius which still has a long, long way to go. But we should probably continue on the talk page.--
Ipigott (
talk)
13:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Now that Nielsen has been promoted to FA, I'll be looking in more detail at Sibelius over the next few days. If you have any suggestions on how the article could be improved, Antandrus, it might be useful to let me know, maybe on the Jean Sibelius talk page.--
Ipigott (
talk)
16:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Dana Fork
Greetings Antandrus,
I spotted your name in association with a picture titled 'DanaFork.jpg'. I found it in the Sierra Nevada page. I assume you took the photo but don't really know. If so and with your approval, I'd like to use that photo on my Facebook page to temporarily entertain and amaze my friends in the bread and circus crowd. By what means would you prefer to receive credit?
Greetings -- go right ahead! If you'd like to give credit, say "Wikipedia user Antandrus, from Wikimedia Commons" or something. I took the picture myself when I was there in July 2008. Hiking was wonderful that year. :)
Antandrus (talk)21:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)reply
The Wiknic is a part of the nationwide
Great American Wiknic. We'll be grilling, getting to know each other better, and building the L.A. Wikipedia community! The event is tentatively planned for
Pan-Pacific Park (
map) and will be held on Saturday, July 11, 2014 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please
RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible!
It appears you are following someone around and reverting them without explanation. If you have a problem with their edits, please use the article talk page, or at a bare minimum, explain in the edit summary. To any other eyes, what you are doing is disruptive.
Antandrus (talk)02:51, 22 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Thanks
Thank you for your assistance but this dude has thousands of shadow clones. You may block one IP but he will create 50 more. Is a range block possible?
AcidSnow (
talk)
03:03, 22 June 2015 (UTC)reply
While you were posting, I was writing you a message. :) To 2001:590, would you please just explain what the heck you are trying to do, and why you are not engaging on talk pages?
Antandrus (talk)03:05, 22 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Dear
User:Antandrus, I need some help.
I am an editor at Wikipedia. I create articles and also like to edit other articles. However, I want to develop my skills further because I feel there are a lot of things I am unable to understand but for that I require the guidance of someone who is experienced in Wikipedia. Is there any way I can email you?
Hi Pixarh, welcome! Yes of course. My email link on the left works. :) Let me know if I can help. In general, if you are new, I recommend against starting by writing an article from scratch -- best to edit existing articles for a while (I say this because I looked at your talk page and noticed you tried to write a new article on a topic for which we already had one). All the best --
Antandrus (talk)23:16, 30 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Thank you ! :) But I am unable to see the link to email you. Neither at the left nor anywhere on this page.:(
Yes I have had this one issue and I plan to move on rather than defending. There is so much to learn here at Wikipedia and I am very eager and excited about it.
Pixarh (
talk)
19:54, 1 July 2015 (UTC)reply
Hi again -- the link is under 'tools' (haven't verified that under all 'preferences' settings). Feel free to write about it here though -- my page is, as of today, on
322 watchlists, so a lot of other experienced editors will likely see your note and may be inclined to give you unbiased advice as well. But you can email me if you like.
Antandrus (talk)15:56, 2 July 2015 (UTC)reply
Wikinic rescheduled
5th Annual Wiknic rescheduled to Saturday, July 25, 2015, ~9:30am-4pm
Due to a conflict with the
Redondo Loves Wikipedia edit-a-thon, the fifth annual Los Angeles Wiknic has been rescheduled. As before, the location will be at
Pan-Pacific Park (
map) and will be held on Saturday, July 25, 2015 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please
RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible!
Hi Antandrus. I keep meaning to invite you for a flight or something, so before I forget again here it is. :)
We recently flew along the coast from Pescadero to Oceano, and I've been whittling away at posting on our blog about it. When I got to Esalen in that process it seemed a good idea to offer a few pix to what had been a wall of text. Nudged by an angry citations note that had been plastered beneath a neutral one at the top, I also did some editing and added more citations. Now in the
Talk for the page there's a suggestion (or is it a demand?) to eliminate the Criticism section I naively added. I'm a bit stumped on how to integrate the criticisms so they flow into the article, and wonder if you might have any suggestions.
I notice that there have been some local and regional Wiki events, and am a bit bummed to have missed them. Is there a way to permanently Watch this page or some other way of getting advance notification on events in SB?
Jw4nvc (
talk)
02:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)reply
Thank you Voceditenore, and hi John! Yes, I took a quick look at the article and what it is most obviously missing is a "cultural influence and legacy" section, where criticisms would go. Wikipedia has been getting rid of "criticism" sections for the reasons given in the template -- five or eight years ago they were common, and you can still find a lot of them, but it's usually smoother to weave that all in to the overall fabric. With Esalen it's screamingly obvious this material needs to be covered, so thank you for adding it! I did laugh out loud at the 1990 graffiti. And by all means let's go flying soon. :)
Antandrus (talk)14:06, 28 July 2015 (UTC)reply
Thanks
Voceditenore and
Antandrus for the pointers. I got busy with other stuff for a few days, and glad to now have a few minutes for followup. I guess in terms of SoCA Category, I'm much more interested in any gathering here in the SB area but maybe there are none. I'll email about going flying. For the Esalen article, maybe I'll try changing Criticism to Cultural... and see what happens.
Hi,
Antandrus. I noticed in your user signature, "[[User:Antandrus|Antandrus ]]" appears. Is that space intentional over "[[User:Antandrus|Antandrus]]"? It makes a undesirable difference that shows up in browsers that do text wrapping in the text-editing area.
Jason Quinn (
talk)
06:58, 21 September 2015 (UTC)reply
Hm, never noticed. I doubt I've changed it in the last ten years. I think, but am not certain, that at one time the software added the extra space, and I probably just copied it into preferences. I changed it to see how it renders:
Antandrus(talk)14:27, 21 September 2015 (UTC)reply
On the precise description of Poe and Others
I've seen no persuasive reasons (or any at all) why my corrections to the Poe article should have been reverted to something imprecise. As I’ve stated previously, the terms “writer” and “author” are each ambiguous. They are general terms, nonspecific, and hence imprecise. Note: the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) definition of writer:
1.a. A person who can write; one who practises or performs writing; occasionally, one who writes in a specified manner
and the OED’s definition of author is even broader:
1. The person who originates or gives existence to anything
It’s easy to see that “writer” is more a specific description than “author,” since an “author” could be the originator of a law or an even idea, while a “writer originates something in writing.
Now, we call a “writer” or “author” who writes poems a poet, as we do Poe. We call a “writer” or “author” who writes literary criticism a critic, as we do Poe. We call a “writer” or “author” who writes plays a playwright. We call a “writer” or “author” who writes essays an essayist. We call a “writer” or “author” who writes novels a novelist. Likewise, it only make sense that, for the sake of precision, we call a “writer” or “author” who writes short stories a short story writer.
Further, the short stories Poe wrote are often referred to as tales; and tales, like fables and parables are each a different type, or subset, if you will, of short story.
That may well be true, but Wikipedia works on a
WP:CONSENSUS model, and when you revert multiple editors, insisting that you are right and they all are wrong, that is called "edit warring". Place make your case on the article talk page; I'm agnostic on the content issue (as I must be, since I am intervening as an administrator). Since I notice you also commented on the user talk page of another editor, I'll also mention that it's much better to keep content discussion on the article talk page to prevent fragmentation, and make it easier for third parties to follow the thread. Thanks,
Antandrus(talk)03:23, 14 October 2015 (UTC)reply
Hello, thank you for reaching out to me and helping me. I am going to continue to flesh out this page. I have many references and am conducting the piece this spring. I was shocked there wasn't an article here already. My goal is to really flesh it out, however, I have never created a page on wikipedia. Please go ahead and help if you have the time! :)
CanYouHandelThat (
talk)
04:02, 4 November 2015 (UTC)CanYouHandelThatreply
Hi
Meters -- thanks. I am so sick of that guy. He's been in jail twice this year, most recently for "harassment by electronic means" -- seems like he wants to go back there. Here, on Wikipedia, we just remove his rubbish, and block his accounts and ranges. I blocked his T-Mobile IP ranges here yesterday mid-day. Periodically I run a script that finds all his spam on the various Wikimedia projects, and then I delete what I find. Cheers, and thanks for helping me keep track. (Oh, a "Simple" account is one he registered there.)
Antandrus(talk)21:04, 5 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Bloody persistent... and a new trick this time. Should I just continue to quietly blank his stuff or pass the new accounts on to you (or someone else if you prefer)?
Meters (
talk)
23:38, 5 December 2015 (UTC)reply
If you spot new ones feel free to let me know -- I'll block them for you. He's persistent, but also about as smart as a bucket of cat litter, so keeping track of him isn't hard. If you want you can just list them on
your page, maybe with a date for each, since I have it watchlisted. :)
Antandrus(talk)02:12, 6 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Sure, if you are watching my spammer page I'll just keep listing any new ones that are not yet blocked there. I have to agree with your assessment of this guy.
Meters (
talk)
05:05, 6 December 2015 (UTC)reply
User page Lay-out
Hello Atandrus,
I have a question. Would it be okay with you if I used the lay-out of your user page? I really like the way you organized it. Kind regards, a new member
FrozenPistachio (
talk)
12:25, 7 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Hi there -- fine with me -- it was originally designed by an editor who has left the project. She designed a lot of user pages for people. Welcome to Wikipedia. :)
Antandrus(talk)15:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Sorry was going to revert back to the old pages. I wasn't seeing the changes on the webpage. Just started today. I wasn't aware of the Sandbox option. Thank you
Though I do think the "The future will partly be shaped by the need for vision, leadership, and community support of local news and journalism. The future will be shaped by what citizens and consumers choose. The decline of well paid journalism and reliable news sources could level off if enough citizens choose to support it. Newspapers have a very important role to play, by holding governments to account, trying to stop corruption, and being an important contribution to democratic free speech. The future is not inevitable or predetermined." should be rewritten.
It seems to be partially an opinion (though valid) but not cited...
OK -- please use an
WP:EDITSUMMARY next time -- that way the people patrolling pages will know what you're doing is in good faith. Section blanking is one of the commonest kinds of vandalism, and you can see it any time you click on "recent changes". Thanks --
Antandrus(talk)23:39, 20 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Buon Natale
May you have very Happy Holidays, Antandrus,
and a New Year filled with peace, joy, and beautiful music!
Thank you! Happy Christmas, solstice, etc. to you as well. May we all be free of the plagues of Muzak carols and parking lot dings. For myself, I'm actually hoping to do some writing, if I actually can take a break from "work".
Antandrus(talk)21:23, 23 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Hi Antandrus, I edited an article on the Dunning-Kruger effect since one of the assertions ascribed to a study is actually not in the original article. This is what is currently on the page - Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence, they may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others, and they may incorrectly suppose that their competence in a particular field extends to other fields in which they are less competent.[1]
However, I reviewed the original article and they do not collect data on or discuss competence extending to other fields. The edit I made was to remove "and they may incorrectly suppose that their competence in a particular field extends to other fields in which they are less competent". This is the first time I am editing a page so I did not know where to leave a comment to justify why I made the edit. But this edit makes the summary accurate.
Hi Anu -- yes, I see your edit was in good faith; no worries. It's a good idea always to use an
WP:EDITSUMMARY, particularly when removing content, because otherwise we have no idea what your intent was. (Random content removal is one of the two or three commonest types of vandalism on Wikipedia -- with no edit summary, patrollers are likely to revert all such edits.) Click on the
WP:EDITSUMMARY link to learn where to leave the reason for your edit, and please continue to edit. :) All the best,
Antandrus(talk)00:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)reply
Fast reflexes developed batting away bloodthirsty beasts in the wilds of Burbank. A happy new year to you and your team of distinguished attendants!
Antandrus(talk)22:24, 30 December 2015 (UTC)reply
It's not completely obvious to me - you might want to ask someone familiar with that kind of music; I can't tell if that's vandalism or not. The edit I looked at was sourced. When I look at the
sockpuppet case referenced on that user's talk page and match IPs, this one is Telecom Italia and the others are in the UK. So I'm not sufficiently sure.
User:Bbb23, you've dealt with this one -- does this look familiar to you?
Antandrus(talk)16:41, 4 January 2016 (UTC)reply
I already responded to another IP about this on my Talk page. I assume it's the same person. You can see my response there. I'm curious who the person behind the IPs reporting this is.--
Bbb23 (
talk)
18:04, 4 January 2016 (UTC)reply
Hey, I happened to stroll by for the first time in years and I saw the last edit summary you used on your talk page and it brought up happy memories of vandal and troll hunting. Awesome to see you are still kicking ass on here after all these years friend. I raise a glass to you.
KnowledgeOfSelf |
talk22:41, 26 January 2016 (UTC)reply
Hey, greetings, and welcome back, even if only for a moment! Yeah, I go from inactive to active - recently I've been back to almost, but not quite, pre-2011 levels. Trying to do some writing again, and a little bit of adminning as needed. Feel free to pick up a flamethrower/AR-15 errr, mop, and join in the fun!
All the best,
Antandrus(talk)22:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)reply
Yes, thanks.
I've been doing this for almost twelve years. Sometimes I leave a warning, sometimes not. It depends on my estimation of whether or not a warning would be useful. In the case of a newly registered account (like that one), I probably should have. If it's nasty vandalism, sometimes I block the troublemaker right away. With IP editors who are schoolkids, I often don't bother; we probably don't want them editing anyway. There are times I can tell it is a new user experimenting who has potential, and in those cases I leave a personalized one rather than a template. Cheers,
Antandrus(talk)00:55, 15 February 2016 (UTC)reply
No problem. Yeah I was surprised because your other edits are not vandalism. Good editors rarely become vandals but we see people go the other way all the time, i.e. start by vandalizing/messing around but then begin contributing usefully as they find out how satisfying it can be.
Antandrus(talk)16:17, 17 February 2016 (UTC)reply
Eco adjust
Was the adjustment to the quote because it looks better that way or was the previous attribution incorrect?
The previous attribution was correct, -- for some reason the wording just bothered me. (Its position within the essay didn't seem to enhance the force of the quote.) Yes, I love that quote! Stumbled on it quite by accident, when I picked up a copy of Serendipities way back whenever that was, 2005 or so. The whole collection is quite good. He was an inspiring writer. Miss Italo Calvino too ...
Antandrus(talk)02:35, 25 February 2016 (UTC)reply
No worries -- I also blocked the other malefactor you tagged at AIV (I don't keep an eye on AIV; Bach was on my watchlist, then I checked to see if you had been having trouble with other vandals). Thanks for your help!
Antandrus(talk)18:06, 26 February 2016 (UTC)reply
Gioachino Rossini
Hey there, Antandrus.
I noticed you reversed the infobox I put on Gioachino Rossini's page in October.
Greetings -- yes,
this edit. There is a general consensus at the
Composers Wikiproject not to add infoboxes without first getting consensus at the talk page. The reasons have been discussed at length in the archives (for example, the infobox pulls out tiny bits from the biography and makes them seem overly significant just by their position in an eye-catching place at the top of the article). That said, there is a minimalist infobox going around (see the example at
Giuseppe Verdi) that might be getting a consensus by default. The "infobox debate" has been long and bloody, has seriously harmed relationships between editors in this subject area, and any sort of compromise that might put it to an end has my blessing. My own policy is only to remove the overly detailed kind, or those that present misleading information, and then never more than once or against consensus.
Antandrus(talk)15:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)reply
My bad.
So, no one should add an infobox to the Gioachino Rossini page?
If so, I won't do it again.
I didn't see the note to not put an infobox there when I edited it.
It seems as if infoboxes shouldn't even be on Wikipedia in the first place if it damages relationships.
Also, I don't really understand some of the message. No insults intended.
What do you mean, "remove the overly detailed kind?"
You didn't do anything wrong -- our policies are byzantine, our consensus conventions buried in talk page archives, our arguments a tangle of links and acronyms and references to arguments even more obscure, and lost in the dark backward and abysm of time. In my opinion (and this is mine alone) the detailed "infobox person" doesn't work so well in composer articles, but the "minimalist" infobox seems ok. I no longer remove them, preferring to follow a consensus that seems to be emerging, and being by nature a person who would rather build than burn, be it a bridge or a relationship. There are bigger issues here, including the very survival of Wikipedia, since the infighting in the community is one of its greatest threats. Peace,
Antandrus(talk)02:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Peace, more peace. I added a minimalist infobox (aka PDbox, identibox) to
Pierre Boulez (where I found no "first seek consensus"-note) and was reverted, but entertain a
good relationship to the reverter. I thought we needed none of the discussion on the Boulez talk (may he rest in peace) and on WT:COMPOSERS, but what if it makes some people feel good? - My model is the short infobox for Beethoven, installed after community consensus on the talk. - Antandrus, I understand it's your anniversary? Stay wise and full of music, lalala laaa ;) --
Gerda Arendt (
talk)
16:50, 4 April 2016 (UTC)reply
Wik-Ed Women Session #5
Wik-Ed Women Session #5
Dear fellow Wikipedian,
I would like to personally invite you to the March edition of the
Wik-Ed Women meetup, which will take place on March 15, from 6-10 in the evening. It will occur at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, 2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90021 (downtown LA --
map). The building has a pink top with old signage for American Accessories, Inc. dba Princess Accessories (
Photos [PDF]). There is on-site parking in the back, which also has an entrance. If you cannot attend in person, you are more than willing to work remotely, as we appreciate all help that you can provide. Finally,
here is a link to the Facebook event, in case you want to invite friends, as we are always looking for new editors to help expand coverage of women on Wikipedia!
I do believe that half of the CERN teams' work is currently devoted to discovering new chemical elements just so we don't run out of new ones to put on barnstars to award Antandrus. --
Michael Scott Cuthbert(talk)13:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)reply
And then two seconds after posting this, I got my "Extended Confirmed User" rights. Must be a trickle-down effect from posting messages so close to neutronium superstars. --
Michael Scott Cuthbert(talk)13:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)reply
Hello, Antandrus/Archive39, I want a quest. Maybe you can describe a user groups, except admins, and bureucrats? Thank you.--...
Lhealt(talk)12:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)Koroshamireply
You said Zarlino was 5 yo. Point taken.
However the reference I quoted is in Zarlino's Dimostrationi harmoniche"
How can that be explained?
The full paragraph I lifted reads:
In fatto ha uete ragione à dire, che la Diatessaron sia consonanza: & hanno il torto tutti quelli prattici, che la pongono nel numero delle Dissonanze: ma sono da escusare in questo: che non sanno quel, che si facciano. Adri. Questi ch’hno questa opinione sono in errore. Et mi recordo, che innzi di noi quei buoni Antichi Giosquino, il suo Maestro Gio. Ocheg: Gascogne, & il mio precettore Gio. Motone, in molti luoghi delle loro compositioni l’hanno posta nella parte graue: senza aggiungerle altro in teruallo.
Holuigue (
talk)
21:03, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Yes indeed -- that's the trouble with using a primary source and interpreting it literally. What he probably means is Mouton's wisdom is passed down to him through
Adrien Willaert, Zarlino's teacher and founder of the Venetian school, who did study directly with Mouton. Hence Mouton is his "precettore" even though the link was not direct. (Just as those other named composers had been dead for a long time when he wrote this).
Antandrus(talk)21:15, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Mouton was a canon in St Quentin
I thought I was only correcting a misprint.
Admittedly, the tomb stone has disappeared, but it is a document that appears quite credible and coherent.
The date of his death is accepted by everybody, and it comes from there.
I am puzzled
Holuigue (
talk)
21:11, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
I rewrote the end to indicate that according to the engraving on his headstone, he had become a canon at St Quentin, etc. Perhaps that captures the minimal uncertainty. Thanks,
Antandrus(talk)21:24, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Mouton in Grenoble
Did I jump the gun in suggesting he was poached ?
I don't think so because his departure caused quite a stir
26.10.1502 Deinde anno quo supra et die veneris XXVI octobris domini... capitulum tenentes dederunt, assignaverunt domino Claudio de Aula presbitero habituato ipsius ecclesie libram presbiteralem vaccantem nunc per recessum absque licencia capituli Johannis Houlievugues dit Mouton magistri cantus..
[1]
Then later, queen Anne went out of her way to smooth things over, and the following text suggests that it took some pressure:
22.4.1509 Deinde die dominica XXII aprilis millesimo quingentesimo nono circa horam primi pulsus vesperorum congregati in capitulo venerabiles domini Hugo Farcilly ... ipsi predicti domini tam nominibus suis quam ceterorum dominorum prepositi et canonicorum absencium ad votum et requisitionem serenissime et christianissime domine nostre domine Anne regine Francie que tunc ibidem in domo thesaurarie contigue dicte ecclesie presens personaliter intererat hospitata; que vive vocis oraculo apud capitulum ipsum intercesserat ut contemplacione ipsius ipsum capitulum vellet creare in dicta ecclesia in canonicum et fratrem veneraabilem virum dominum Johannem Motones dit Houlvigues presbiterum et cantarem cappelle ipsius domine regine cum expectatione prime future vaccature prebende, se ultro hoc faciendo offerendo paratam obsequi et recognituram acceptabile placitum tempore adveniente quo ipsa posset pro bono universalivel particulari dicte ecclesie prout jam per litteras suas missivas et pro eodem Motonis et requisierat et pollicita erat. Qui quidem domini canonici habita matura deliberatione volentes complacere predicte domine ut tenentur et de jure suadentur et etiam habito respectu ad personagium pro quo fiebat requesta et peticio qui vir dignus et laudabilis est ac ecclesie ipsi necessarius ipsum in canonicum et fratrem ipsius ecclesie quathenus de jure potuerint et debuerint creaverunt et nominaverunt ad expectationemprime future vaccature prebende ut potuerunt, salvis prius juribus dicte ecclesie et suis quibus propter hoc in nullo intendunt derrogare; recepto ab eodem domino Petrus Motonis juramento solempni in similibus per canonicos prestari solito juxta forman juramenti contentam in missali novo dicte ecclesie quod quidem juramentum ipse sponte corporaliter genibus flexis cum ambabus manibus sponte prestitit. Acta fuerunt hec infra dictum capitulum dictis die anno et hora presentibus ibidem venerabilibus dominis Petro Motonis organiste predicte domine regine, Gaspardo Pillaudi Pedro Gerbati prebiteris dicte ecclesie, magistro Ludovico Argensonis notario, Petro Salvani mercatore dicte civitatis Gratianopolitane, Johanne Voisin de Blays familiari predicte regine testibus astantibus requisitis et rogatis hoc salvo et retento per dictum capitulum quod a cetero per quamcumque requisitionem seu requestam faciendam non intendunt ulterius creacionem de aliquo faecere in canonicum sed fecerunt et faciunt editum et statutum quod de cetero non possint nec valeant aliquem alium nec creare nec facere. Tandem dato et tradito habitu canonicali eidem domino Motonis dominus Farcilly cantor tanquam antiquior canonicus de madato totius capituli eumdem dominum Motonis cum habitu canonicali eumdem intra chorum ecclesie introducit et eumdem in sede canonicali ultimo et novissimo canonico debita a parte sedis domini prepositi assignavit et eum in eadem sedere et stare cum habitu canonicali fecit sedem ipsam in ipso choro assignando cum expectatione ut supra prime vaccature nullum aliud jus propter hoc assignando nisi quod de jure sibi debetur etc ... In presentia predictorum testium et plurium aliorum. De quibus ipse dominus Motonis acta sibi fieri petiit et dictum capitulum concessit per me subsignatum secretarium capituli. Bernardi
[2]
Apologies. Thanks for the change
I must admit that my Italian is nil, like my latin!
I did hesitate to translate precettore by teacher or mentor.
However, this quote is worth referring to, with proper wrapping, given Mouton's reputation as a teacher, and the indisputed, towering reputation of Zarlino.
Holuigue (
talk)
23:55, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Hi again -- feel free to work any of that in, I'll edit as necessary. Regarding the poaching, that's also interesting and possible. Can you find a contemporary source? We're supposed to use
secondary sources only, although there are exceptions. I can look at this in more detail later. Also I need to move this to the article talk page for other people who are interested.
Antandrus(talk)23:58, 7 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Ha ha, I love that piece! Did you know that most professional performances now script it? i.e. they don't mess up enough, so they have to plan the moment they lose place. I don't know what Fred thinks of this. (Did I tell you I studied with him? Large institution, long ago and far away.)
Antandrus(talk)01:04, 8 May 2016 (UTC)reply
Mouton born in Wirwignes ?
The association of Mouton with the village of Hautwignes is spurious and totally unfounded.
I found this in the family archives:
1473 in Nordausques(near St Omer) Philippe de Bersecques is lord of Welles (Nordausques) and Hollinghes. He is captain of the castle of Eperlecques
Hollinghes, fief of the parish of Nordausques, figures in a 1452 map
Sorry, no reference for the information !
The name Holuigue is frequent in the area and there is no convincing argument to attach it to a specific village. Andrew Kirkman (Birmingham University) has explored the well preserved archives of the Collegiale in St Omer. I noted (excuse my french !)
_____________________________
Andrew Kirkman, en recherchant les archives de la Collégiale de St-Omer (largement préservées à la Bibliothèque de Saint-Omer, sur une période de 400 ans. Sur la période de 1460 à 1490, il ne manque que deux ans et demi de comptes de la fabrique), a trouvé la mention suivante, datée du 25 Aout 1494:
“Item le xxve d’aoust a maistre Jehan Mouton du cant lequel a escript au livre deschant deux messes pour sa paine”
Les comptes de la fabrique pour l’année suivante mentionnent un travail de copiiste substantiel entrepris par Mouton. Son nom est qualifié de “de Holluighe”, donc son identification est sans ambiguité:
“Item audit maistre Jehan de Holluighe pour une main de pappier Carte Realle pour escripre aucunes messes au grant livre de discant au coeur: iiii s” “Item audit maistre Jehan pour avoir Regle ledit pappier et escript trois messes nouvelles: xvi s” “Item audit maistre Jehan pour avoir escript encoures audit livre trois autres messe: xv s” Sur la page suivante du même compte, Mouton est payé pour la rédaction d’un manuscrit complet: “ Item a maistre Jehan de holluighes pour une main de pappier le avoir Regle/ et compose ung livre de Magnificat sur tous les tons Te Deum et autres chose en discant mis au coeur de ladit eglise duquel par lordonnance de messires G.Decault. R.De monte et R poilly commis a viseter ledit livre par Capitle paye xxviii s”
Il apparait donc que Mouton, durant ces deux années d’activité de copiiste, chantait aussi aux services religieux. Un document des Actes du Chapitre, daté de Septembre 1495, lui accorde le paiement de ce qui parait être une ‘distribution’, tout en spécifiant que ce paiement est une continuation de paiements faits l’année précédente. En outre il apparait que Mouton était employé comme ‘remplaçant’, car le document spécifie qu’il sera payé jusqu’au retour de Michael Le Gay, vicaire, qui bénéficie d’un congé de plusieurs mois: “Eadem die [18.9.95] domini continuando gratiam anno preterito factam petro sommelart thenoriste magistro Johanni mouton et petro [sommelart, crossed out, followed by blank] concesserunt eisdem gratiam eandem videlicet petro xij d. ..Johanni xij.d. .. et petro ix d. usque ad omnium sanctorum et alijs videlicet thenoriste et mouton per totum annum aut dicto mouton usque ad adventum d.[omini] michaelis le gay vicarii” Les archives de la collégiale nous fournissent aussi des renseignements sur d’autres personnages, qu’il nous faut bien considérer comme des parents ‘potentiels’ de notre musicien:
?.1463 ‘franciscus de holluigues’est nommé vicaire
9. 1.1464 ‘franciscus de holluigues’ est nommé chapelain à l’autel de ‘beate marie de ? capella’
1. 5.1465 ‘franciscus de holluigues’ bénéficie d’une prébende rendue libre par ‘Nicolai de aula’
4. 4.1475 ‘Jacobo Moton’est nommé chapelain de ‘beate marie’
I am quite new to being a Wiki user (I literally registered just a few hours ago), so everything is pretty much confusing at the moment. I am sure I will be able to wrap my head around it once I actually start writing/editing (I learn by doing) but I thought I could write an About me page, or User page as it is called here.
And so I did. I wrote and wrote, and I am somewhat satisfied with what I've done so far. Now, the thing is, I cannot find anywhere the information on- who exactly can see my user page?
I spent some time reading about it. From what I understand, my User page is public, but no one other then myself will edit it (unless I breach terms and conditions). But then I read that User page is not the same as Article page (and by the way, I am not interested in having my own Article page, nor would I be interesting enough for it :-) ). Anyways, I keep reading about these people being abused, insulted, followed on facebook, twitter etc, which made me wonder what are the chances of something like that happening to me? I admit I am probably being a bit paranoid here, I am nowhere near important enough on Wiki for someone to stalk me, nor have I given any personal information that could lead to it.
I guess what I am trying to say/ask is, how smart is it for me to put a real picture of myself? Is there a way to change my User name? And the last one is the one I already asked, who can see my user page?
Also, oddly enough, I can't be able to find a page with sort of a list of users or something like that. I found you on page that shows and example of Article looking User page. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough or as we like to say in Serbian "it won't call me". :-)
Thank you in advance for any help/information you can give me.
Hello! You are getting this form message because I have noticed that you have been actively editing pages about wildfires in California. I am trying to recruit some people who might be interested in starting a new wildfire project that focuses on large and notable wildfires. Is this something you would have any interest in being part of? Obviously there is no firm commitment that needs to be made. At the moment, I'm just trying to get a dozen or so people to say they're interested. Please let me know if you have any interest. I have created a
project proposal that I would love to hear your opinion of. Thanks!!! --
Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing)
19:39, 31 July 2016 (UTC)reply
WikiProject Wildfire
Hello! I have recently started a new
WikiProject and am trying to recruit new members. The project,
WikiProject Wildfire, focuses on articles that relate to wildfires. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. From updating templates, to classifying and improving articles. Any level of commitment is welcome! If you care to just add some input on the founding of the new project, awesome. If you would like to take an active role in editing articles, that is awesome as well! Knowledge of wildfires is NOT a prerequisite for joining the project. In fact, it would be great to have some members of the project who are NOT fire-buffs. That way we make sure that articles aren't just written by and for people in the fire community. If this is something you have any interest in, I would love to have you join the project! Please feel free to
join the discussion or leave me a message on my talk page. (Note that you are receiving this message from me because I saw you made multiple edits on a wildfire related page, specifically
Sherpa Fire. Not just spamming you at random.) Hope you have a great day!
Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing)
22:13, 2 August 2016 (UTC)reply
Thanks! Sure, I can probably contribute -- I'm not hugely active these days, but that comes and goes. It seems like I live in a place that is always on fire. Thank you for getting the project going.
Antandrus(talk)00:57, 3 August 2016 (UTC)reply
Thank you! Your point was my point. Not everyone knows what an "orchestral suite" yet it's in the lead - with no explanation in the article. But, inexplicably, some folks have called the simple link fix either "overlinking" or claimed it somehow changed the meaning(?!). Go figure...
X4n6 (
talk)
22:55, 10 September 2016 (UTC)reply
Extended confirmed protection
Hello, Antandrus. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.
Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned
"extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following
this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.
In July and August 2016,
a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:
Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
Please review
the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you. This message was sent to the administrators'
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Hello!
I was just reading some articles on the Wiki, and I happened upon the wiki:OWB link.. I clicked on it, unsure of what I was going to find, but boy was I glad I clicked on that link..
What you've typed is not only useful for editing on Wikipedia, but I will use it in real life as well.. If it's alright, I'd like to print that out and keep it with me..
Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
Hello,
Please note that
TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your
preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the
developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the
thread on the administrators' noticeboard.
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)reply
A new user right for New Page Patrollers
Hi Antandrus.
A new user group,
New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at
PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.
It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available
here but very often a friendly custom message works best.
Hello, Antandrus. 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.
Hello, Antandrus. 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.
I just happily stumbled upon your essays. The one with the title
OWB was particularly useful. It would have been even more helpful to me years ago. But perhaps it is not too late to become a bit wiser. Thanks.
Caballero/Historiador ⎌16:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)reply
Thank you, and merry Christmas to you and yours as well. May it be a fine year of editing with interesting articles to write, consensus easy to attain, nothing but good faith, and not a monomaniac in sight. :)
Antandrus(talk)18:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)reply
I am new to the editing on Wikipedia.
I was just working on Stravinsky, Tchaikovskys, and Repin's articles, and still so confused with this process.
All of my sources are reliable and I was translating them myself into English. I was trying to be as precise as possible, which looks as it is incorrect?
I almost feel I'm going to give this up as it takes too much of my time anyway to argue with others over obvious things...
Thank you
Slavuta33 (
talk)
19:53, 3 January 2017 (UTC)reply
It's not the source that is the problem -- it is that you copied and pasted from it (this source was in English). Here are the two versions. To write here, you need to paraphrase, not copy directly from copyright sources. Please read
WP:COPYRIGHT for an overview of our policy.
Here is the text from Encyclopedia of the Ukraine, which you cited: "Among these are the operas Mazepa (based on Aleksandr Pushkin's poem), Little Shoes, and Night before Christmas (or Vakula the Smith, based on Nikolai Gogol's story); symphonies no. 2 (Little Russian), no. 4, and no. 7 (finished and edited by S. Bogatyrev); the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra no. 1 in B-flat Minor; the 1812 Overture, the opening of which is based on the first mode of the Kyivan chant; the transcription for piano solo of A. Dargomyzhsky's orchestral fantasy Kozachok; and songs to Russian translations of Taras Shevchenko, such as ‘Sadok vyshnevyi’ (Cherry Orchard)."
Here is what you added: "Among these are the operas Mazepa (based on
Aleksandr Pushkin's poem), Little Shoes, and Night before Christmas (or Vakula the Smith, based on
Nikolai Gogol's story); symphonies No. 2 (
Little Russian), No. 4, and No. 7 (finished and edited by
Semyon Bogatyrev); the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in B-flat Minor; the 1812 Overture, the opening of which is based on the first mode of the
Kievan chant; the transcription for piano solo of
Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky's orchestral fantasy Kozachok; and songs to Russian translations of
Taras Shevchenko, such as ‘Sadok Vyshnevyi’ (Cherry Orchard)."
We can get in a lot of trouble if we don't catch stuff like this. That's why I brought it up. Have you done any more of this, or is this the only case? With the sources in Russian and Ukrainian, when you translate, do you paraphrase or just translate literally? That's also an issue. Thanks,
Antandrus(talk)20:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC)reply
You've undone some recent edits to this article, offering as explanation: "references are there, and the phrasing is paraphrased from them". I disagree with both conclusions:
1. The function of a
Template:Refimprove tag is that it "indicates that the article needs additional inline citations." Although other references are listed at the bottom of the Guerrero article, it has only one inline citation, so the template seems justified.
2. The phrases which had been removed were
speculative, rather than
verifiable. They were extrapolations not otherwise supported by the article. For example, the phrase "He must have been an astonishing prodigy, for at the age of 17 he was already appointed maestro de capilla..." precludes the possibility of other reasons for such an appointment, such as family favor, bribery, etc. Because we don't know the actual reason(s), paring the sentence down to known facts is the more encyclopedic approach.
Likewise, "His ransom must have been paid, for he was able to return to Spain..." precludes other reasons Guerrero may have been able to return: maybe he escaped? maybe he was rescued? maybe the pirates lost interest? Even if the source material engages in this type of speculation, Wiki should stick to the verifiable facts.
Hi. I wrote the article, and was careful to paraphrase from the sources. I recognize that Wikipedia's style has changed since then (that was about 12 years ago, and we didn't have a footnoting mechanism then). Everything in the article is from the sources I listed below, so the "unreferenced" tag is simply incorrect. Regarding the style, go ahead and change it if you want, but it will be a reduction in accuracy and a departure from the sources. I can look at them again to verify when I have time.
Antandrus(talk)14:35, 11 January 2017 (UTC)reply
I restored your phrasing. I will look at the sources again later -- I think there may be some new information since then on some of the details (e.g. the matter of his ransom being paid) that I can run down.
Antandrus(talk)15:07, 11 January 2017 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the response, and the restored edits. If those further sources are found and cited, my style objections will be moot. Regarding the tag--it wasn't an "
unreferenced" tag, but a "
refimprove" tag; the former is for articles with no references, the latter for articles with too few inline references. Although your references are indeed present at the bottom, they weren't given inline citations within the article. --
2600:1008:B00A:1E1B:5980:1AD4:B2A9:E1B9 (
talk)
16:07, 11 January 2017 (UTC)reply
Following
an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.
Technical news
When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (
T34950)
Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an
RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (
T156448)
The Foundation has
announced a new
community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.
JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
Please join us at our Wikipedia Day celebration at the
Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, February 18, 2017 from 11 am to 5 pm! This event will feature lectures, panel discussions, lightning talks, open space discussions and collaboration, and--most importantly--cake! Please RSVP on the event page if you're thinking of joining us.
A
recent RfC has redefined how articles on schools are
evaluated at AfD. Specifically, secondary schools are not presumed to be notable simply because they exist.
Cookie blocks should be deployed to the English Wikipedia soon. This will extend the current
autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user after they switch accounts under a new IP.
A
bot will now automatically place a protection template on protected pages when admins forget to do so.
Hi, I've got some esoteric questions about free music.
I run a recording studio as part of my job, and have taken to recording my own versions of compositions. Since I only do this as a personal exercise, I don't mind releasing them with the appropriate free licence. The most obvious example is a rock band arrangement of
Maurice Ravel's Boléro (using
Hammond organ,
Rhodes piano, electric guitars, bass and drums), which I believe has recently entered the public domain. I have sent this around to a couple of Wikipedians via email and they liked it.
Where should I upload the music and how should I categorise it. Would it be suitable to link it into Boléro's article? I'm not sure it would, as it's not a well-known arrangement of any significance or discussed in any sources.
A tricker example is a cover of
Pink Floyd's "
Astronomy Domine", which is part of an exercise of having free covers of well-known songs, in a similar manner to open-source clones of
Microsoft Office. While the recording is all my own work, playing all the instruments, the composition is not - does a song that is still generating songwriter royalties prevent any recording from being freely uploaded?
Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:21, 1 March 2017 (UTC)reply
Hi Ritchie -- usual disclaimer, I am not a copyright lawyer etc etc -- but my understanding is the second example cannot be freely uploaded, but the first could. Not sure where to upload, as this is something I've avoided myself, even though like you I have a recording studio (I'm a composer). There's probably a wikiproject where you could ask. (Talkpage stalkers please feel free to weigh in.) It would be great to have more copyleft music whenever there is a way, of course.
Antandrus(talk)14:38, 1 March 2017 (UTC)reply
There is a project -
Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Free music taskforce - and you appear to be the most active editor of those listed on the project's front page, which is why I came here. The talk page has had little discussion in the last ten years. I guess not too many Wikipedians tinker around in their own recording studio in their spare time, which explains the general lack of interest. I do sell music commercially as well - these are just side projects I do for fun.
Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:58, 1 March 2017 (UTC)reply
Wow! I added my name nine years ago -- had completely forgotten about that ... I think I had the idea I was going to record something -- can't remember what it was now. Probably studio-produced versions of Renaissance music that was otherwise impossible to find. Now virtually everything is on YouTube (in unfree and cheaty ways) so is it still worthwhile? ... Maybe.
Antandrus(talk)16:12, 1 March 2017 (UTC)reply
Hello, Antandrus. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Hi Antandrus! We've got a persistent problem with
this editor. He was indef blocked here for adding hoax text and articles, generally consisting of garbled Google translations, "supported" by spurious references. He is now globally locked for doing this across multiple Wikis. Background
here,
here, and most recently
here. The problem is that in addition to creating
multiple (now blocked) sock accounts, he attempts editing almost every day as a hopping IP—almost invariably Telecom Italia based in or around Milan, but sometimes uses
WIND. Typical example:
[6] and note the additional cross-wiki socking on the same day:
[7]
Would it be possible to semi-protect two articles which he assaults on an almost a daily basis—
Fernando Carcupino and
Carlo Biotti? As you can see from the edit histories, the IPs are all the same person and the only IPs to attempt editing these articles.
Justlettersandnumbers and I are basically the only editors here keeping a watch on him with occasional help from an admin on Italian Wikipedia,
AttoRenato. Reverting his multiple socking edits is getting extremely tedious. I must have at least 30 of his favourite target articles on my watchlist and it's growing. Best,
Voceditenore (
talk)
08:13, 27 March 2017 (UTC)reply
You're a brick! I'll definitely let you know when he shows up again at his other pet articles, and believe me, he will . They tend to be anything related to members of the interrelated Natoli, Polli, and Biotti families; anything related to towns to which these families are connected (or to which the editor believes they are connected), i.e.
Sperlinga,
Lierna,
Riposto, and
Nanteuil-le-Haudouin; relatively obscure Italian artists, some of whose works the family members appear to own; and anything related to
Oktagon, an Italian-based martial arts tournament in which (the now deleted)
Paolo Biotti is one of the investors. Best,
Voceditenore (
talk)
15:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)reply
Following a discussion on the backlog of
unpatrolled files,
consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on
Phabricator.
The
BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following
an RfC.
An
RfC has closed with consensus to allow
proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is
ongoing.
After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant
IP block exemption,
consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.
Technical news
After a
recent RfC, moved pages will soon be
featured in a queue similar to
Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current
autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.
Please don't do that. I've drafted many articles in that space, as I have in my others, and you moved the complete history. I moved it back and deleted the redirect. Thanks,
Antandrus(talk)14:11, 2 April 2017 (UTC)reply
What a pity. Political cluelessness *guarantees* continued beach fouling and raw hydrocarbons -> ozone violations around SB/Goleta into the next century. Not to mention putting 110 workers on the street. Gah. --
Pete Tillman (
talk)
22:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)reply
I know. They tried to find a way. If the oil patch were a slightly more collegial environment, Exxon might have helped the little guy, since they both need the pipeline, but they didn't. And the political obstacles were .... what they are. Try to explain to people where I live that the platform actually reduces pollution and they look at you like you have two heads. Seep field? Tar? Pressure? Huh? -- Good thing no one drives cars around here. (eye roll)
Antandrus(talk)22:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)reply
An RfC has clarified that
user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included
clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the
harassment policy.
There is a new
tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict
other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
Following
an RfC, the
editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an
archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.
Hi,
I was just browsing Wikipedia, reading, and learning when I stumbled upon your article "Observations on Wikipedia behavior". I made me laugh and cry and then it made me think about all the virtues and vices shown by humanity as a whole. Wikipedia with all its ups and downs is really what we humans as a species really are. There is so much wisdom in this essay that one can't possibly mention them in a few sentences without neglecting one of them or another. Thanks again, since I'm sure you are indifferent to praise.
Alireza1357 (
talk)
09:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)reply
"Troublesome editors waste far more of the community's time than vandals. One who sometimes makes good edits, but endlessly bickers, threatens, insults, whines, and is eventually banned, will have taken hundreds of hours from other users who would have better spent that time building the encyclopedia. ..."
Too true! Cheers, --
Pete Tillman (
talk)
20:53, 6 May 2017 (UTC)reply
The Holocaust
Hi! Thank you for dealing with the revision deletion at
The Holocaust. Unless there's something I've missed, I think the revisions from 780298405 to 780357957 should also be hidden – the compromised content added with revision 779320159 is still visible in them. Many thanks,
Justlettersandnumbers (
talk)
10:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)reply
Antadrus, thank you for taking the time to point out where I erred. I will appreciate your help in implementing my editions.
My editions to "North Africa" in article on "Holocaust." ==
I am really sorry, but I don't know how to enter discussion.
Thank you for putting an eye to this important article.
My goal is to improve the article, in a peaceful and respectful manner. I completely agree: that I have to use copyrighted publications as a source of information, under fair use, and that I have to copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. … The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. … Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously.
According to the above statements, Wikipedia should allow me to add to the “Holocaust” Wikipedia article, because I am using the same books/authors/sources mentioned by other editors, and thus, my additions meet Wikipedia’s requirements of neutrality.
Wikipedia's editors and administration shouldn't pick and choose what to quote from same authors. I have no doubt in my mind, that Wikipedia administrators and editors don’t want to discriminate.
And my editions, based on Longerich, Bauer, Yahil, and Gilbert, clearly show that Wikipedia should not have a section called "North Africa" which Yad Vashem, a partisan group, does.
Longerich, Bauer, Yahil, and Gilbert, very clearly and unambiguously, narrate
1) the history of the fate of the Jews in Vichy North Africa and Italian Libya, as an integral part of the Holocaust in France (comprised of the Metropole and its overseas territories - see Poznanski, Bauer, Longerich), and Italy respectively (the number of victims there should be added to the number of the victims in “France” and “Italy”), and
2) as an integral part of the Final Solution and the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe/European Jews.
So, administration of wikipedia should allow me to use content by Longerich, Bauer, Yahil, and Gilbert to present the Holocaust of the Jews of France and Italy and the Holocaust in Europe/of European Jews, as inclusive of the persecution of the Jews living in Europe's overseas territories, because
a) The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe/European Jews took place in the political context of imperial Europe, as presented by Bauer, Yahil and Longerich;
b) all serious scholars now agree that the Holocaust was not a geographical continental event/genocide, like described by Yad Vashem, sometimes, but a political process and project: it was the state-sponsored - by state laws and policies- persecution of the Jews and other undesirables, and evolved according to geo-political borders, and not continental borders - as very clearly presented in Yahil, Bauer, Longerich, and Gilbert.
Moreover, during the Holocaust period, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya didn't exist as independent political entities, but were governed by European nations, in the context of the new imperialism.
Some more comments
1. Henia (Hanna in Polish) and Rachelle (my granma's name) are the same person (I opened a new account with my laptop, because I didn't remember my password - I will now use only one account.
2. My purpose is not to plagiarize, but make sure that if wikipedia editors cite authors or let other editors cite authors such as Bauer, Yahil, Gilbert, Longerich and others, those editors should allow other quotations by same authors from same books by me, and not delete them - of course, I will be more than happy to comply with wikipedia policies and guidelines.
Please, ask the editors to specify, in details, the copyrights violations - I don't have the books of Yahil, Longerich, and Bauer with me, as I just moved to CA. I have put valid references to my editions. I have only quoted one or two short sentences, that was allowed by wikipedia (I did read the Wikipedia chapter on citations". I did read in 'wikipedia citations' that one sentence can be quoted.
3. Why are some editors allowed to support their definition of Holocaust by mentioning only the name of the authors, but not the book, and not the page, like in:
The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστος holókaustos: hólos, "whole" and kaustós, "burnt"),[2] also referred to as the Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "the catastrophe"), was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis.[3][b] 3: Snyder 2010, pp. 389, 413, chpt. Numbers and Terms
b: • • Further examples of this usage can be found in:
Bauer 2002, (2002). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
{{cite pages}}
Cesarani 2004, Dawidowicz 1981, Evans 2002, Gilbert 1986, Hilberg 1996, Longerich 2012, Phayer 2000, Zuccotti 1999.
Bauer's definition: “Let us be clear: … Shoah, Churban, Judeocide, whatever we call it, is the name we give to the attempted planned total physical annihilation of the Jewish people, and its partial perpetration with the murder of most of the Jews of Europe.”
Rethinking the Holocuast, Bauer states: : “The Holocaust is an extreme example of the context of despair. It was motivated by a murderous ideology.” A racist ideological war, and Nazism or National Socialism was the ideology behind the Holocaust. Therefore, the racist national domestic, and international goals of the main perpetrator, Nazi Germany led by Hitler, and the characteristics of Nazism determined the definition of the Holocaust and its victims.”
Again,
1) I am asking that the editor who mentioned "Bauer 2002, (2002). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cesarani 2004, Dawidowicz 1981, Evans 2002, Gilbert 1986, Hilberg 1996, Longerich 2012, Phayer 2000, Zuccotti 1999" cite the name of the books and the page; and
2) that Wikipedia allows me to present a content based on Yahil, Gilbert, Bauer and Longerich, to show that the persecution of the Jews in Vichy North Africa and Italian Libya is an integral part of the Holocaust in France and Italy respectively, and an integral part of the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe/European Jews, as clearly supported by Yahil, Bauer, Longerich and Gilbert.
You are cordially invited to the
6th Los Angeles Wiknic, a part of the nationwide
Great American Wiknic. We'll be grilling, getting to know each other better, and building the L.A. Wikipedia community! The event is planned for Pan-Pacific Park and will be held on Saturday, July 15, 2017 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible!
An
RfC proposing an off-wiki
LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the
Community health initiative's successful
grant proposal.
Some
clarifications have been made to the
community banning and
unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at
WP:AN or
WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully
appealed the sanction to the community.
Vklotz -- because it does not belong there, certainly not in that way.
Welcome to Wikipedia; but please, there are a few essential things for you to read. Start with our
WP:NPOV policy. As you are attempting to edit the
violin article, the lede would make the extraordinary claim that the Klotz family was the greatest of violin makers, and this extraordinary claim -- at the top of the article -- would appear alongside names like Stradivari.
I am well aware of Mittenwald violins and their significance -- I own one myself. However beware of your own bias, since your username suggests you are editing with a
conflict of interest, something that may make it quite impossible to edit with a completely neutral point of view. And by the way, you need to make this argument on the
article talk page, where it is appropriate to discuss article content.
I am an administrator on Wikipedia, and as such, it is my job to see that other editors adhere to NPOV. Thank you, and once again welcome to the project.
Antandrus(talk)19:34, 18 June 2017 (UTC)reply
Ha ha ha!! I don't remember that at all, but 'tis most likely that I did it, indeed. One must make this fun somehow, this adminny thing, and yea, thou also seest that it was Good, and a thing of great Mirth.
Antandrus(talk)18:34, 24 June 2017 (UTC)reply
Fuzzy search will soon be added to
Special:Undelete, allowing administrators to search for deleted page titles with results similar to the search query. You can test this by adding ?fuzzy=1 to the URL, as with
Special:Undelete?fuzzy=1. Currently the search only finds pages that exactly match the search term.
A newly revamped
database report can help identify users who may be eligible to be autopatrolled.
A potentially compromised account from 2001–2002 attempted to
request resysop. Please practice appropriate
account security by using a unique password for Wikipedia, and consider enabling
two-factor authentication. Currently around 17% of admins have enabled 2FA, up from 16% in February 2017.
Did you know: On 29 June 2017, there were 1,261 administrators on the English Wikipedia – the exact number of administrators as there were ten years ago
on 29 June 2007. Since that time, the English Wikipedia has grown from 1.85 million articles to over 5.43 million.
Hello Antandrus! Follow the Wikimedia LGBT user group on Twitter at @wikilgbt for news, photos, and other topics of interest to LGBT Wikipedans and allies. Use #wikiLGBT to share any Wiki Loves Pride stuff that you would like to share (whether this month or any day of the year) or to alert folks to things that the LGBT Wikipedan community should know.
RachelWex (
talk)
For more information about Wiki Loves Pride, → click here ←.
RachelWex 03:09, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Newb Thanks
Hello! I have only recently joined as a contributor here. As I have been setting up my user and talk pages I was looking through the
user page hall of fame and found your page. I was inspired by parts of it, and particularly by your talk page. I have already used some of what I've learned from viewing the source of your pages, and suspect I will continue to do so as I build my own pages. I hope you don't mind.
Also, I wanted to thank you for being so active on Wikipedia! I have used it for a long time, and it is only at its current quality because of the dedication of editors like you. Thank you! Cheers!
AnuraSKtalk02:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)reply
Hey, greetings! -- More or less ok. I haven't been editing much, though I check my watchlist pretty regularly. Busy, doing lots and lots of other stuff. Good to see you around too.
Antandrus(talk)16:06, 30 July 2017 (UTC)reply
I'm pretty busy in real life too. I edit in short bursts nowadays, mostly just music articles. I decided to remove almost all the pages infested by ultra-nationalists and other crazies off my watchlist and feel much better. Cheers. --
Folantin (
talk)
18:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)reply
I don't remember if I told you, but I visited London a couple years ago -- Sophocles, Shakespeare, and then Verdi at the Royal Opera -- spent some time at the Royal Academy of Music doing a little research -- walked into St Paul's where the organist was playing Messiaen and I thought -- my god I need to live in this city.
Antandrus(talk)21:08, 30 July 2017 (UTC)reply
You're welcome. What a blast from the past! It's a while since I've seen this kind of thing, as I've mostly been away. Makes me laugh out loud to see that childish persistence. I presume that is the troll on the transgender discrimination article? (tracing it back a bit).
Antandrus(talk)01:15, 31 July 2017 (UTC)reply
LoginNotify should
soon be deployed to the English Wikipedia. This will notify users when there are suspicious login attempts on their account.
The new version of
XTools is nearing an official release. This suite of tools includes
administrator statistics, an improved
edit counter, among other tools that may benefit administrators. You can report issues on
Phabricator and provide general feedback at
mw:Talk:XTools.
I'd like to invite you to join the
Investment WikiProject. There are a lot of Investment related articles on Wikipedia that could use a little attention, and I hope this project can help organize an effort to improve them. So please, take a look and if you like what you see, help get this project off the ground and a few Investment pages into the front ranks of Wikipedia articles. Thanks!
Following an
RfC,
WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is a
bot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted through
articles for creation.
Technical news
You will now
get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device that has logged into your account before, you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can also
set in your preferences to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address, which may be encouraged for admins and accounts with sensitive permissions.
Syntax highlighting is now available as a beta feature (
more info). This may assist administrators and template editors when dealing with intricate syntax of high-risk templates and system messages.
Applications for
CheckUser and
Oversight are
being accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.
You have been invited to a meetup and edit-a-thon at the
LA84 Foundation in Jefferson Park (near DTLA) on Thursday, September 7, 2017 from 5:45 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.! This event aims to improve coverage of female Olympians and Paralympians (some of whom will be attending!). There will be a deejay and food/drinks, and kids are welcome.
Oh yes. Brings back memories of vivid argumentation, often over beer, among graduate students, who were (to put it mildly) somewhat divided over the merits of Cardew's ideas -- and music -- and to a lesser degree Stockhausen. My instinct is yes, absolutely, if some good sources are around. @
Jerome Kohl: what do you think?
Antandrus(talk)04:45, 3 September 2017 (UTC)reply
Well, are we talking about the article/radio script, or the collection of essays that appropriated the article title? Either way, I suppose the subject is important enough for Cardew's reputation as a critic/polemicist to warrant an article of its own. It will be especially important to include a "reception" section for such an article, since both the radio talk and the collection of essays provoked a great deal of response both positive and negative (as Antandrus has already mentioned). Tony Harris's recent book The Legacy of Cornelius Cardew (Routledge, 2016) will be very useful in tracing some of the controversy surrounding not just this title but Cardew's place in music history. Certainly don't overlook Adrian Jack's 1975 interview with Cardew, which Harris mentions but, I think, underrates.—
Jerome Kohl (
talk)
06:12, 3 September 2017 (UTC)reply
Antandrus and @
Jerome:, thanks very much to both of you for your feedback. The Harris book is the one I'm reading now. I might also try to get Tilbury's book through interlibrary loan (our library doesn't have it) although the idea of plowing through all 1000+ pages certainly gives me pause.
Any leads on where I could find the complete Adrian Jack interview? I've been looking for it but have found only quoted bits here and there.
I'll start the article within the next week or so. I seldom have large blocks of time to devote to article writing and so will build it up slowly. And I just got one of
these for my birthday, so I've got something else to do with my spare time.
Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (
talk)
02:20, 12 September 2017 (UTC)reply
The Adrian Jack interview was published in Music and Musicians vol. 23 (May 1975): 30–34. If I recall correctly, Jack followed up this interview with a review of Cardew's then-recently published anthology in the next issue of Music and Musicians.—
Jerome Kohl (
talk)
05:00, 12 September 2017 (UTC)reply
Thank you for that -- I didn't know the answer.
And your new toy does look like some fun, Boris -- remember when I bought myself a theremin a few years ago? No regrets at all. I've gotten to be pretty good at it. :)
Antandrus(talk)13:23, 12 September 2017 (UTC)reply
It actually is! You're one hundred percent dependent on your ear, since you're just basically waving your hands at it. There are various techniques for moving quickly without having to move your entire hand for each note. I would guess it would come easier for a string player than, say, someone coming from a keyboard background. It's fun to put on some chirpy Baroque concerto grosso and add an obbligato theremin part. I'm sure the neighbors love me. :)
Antandrus(talk)02:29, 19 September 2017 (UTC)reply
Invitation to Admin confidence survey
Hello,
Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.
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Eligible editors will be invited to submit candidate statements for the
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The Wikipedia community has recently learned that
Allen3 (William Allen Peckham)
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Mr. A: I am new and want to tear my hair out. Putting together a page for a person is the most difficult anger provoking assignment I have ever had. The person has material not on-line from the mid-Eighties. It is not on the internet (articles from magazines and such). I attempted to post a view of the articles as photos and they were removed by a girl in Russia. This is in the sandbox version which I thought was a type of playground. This spooked me out of my seat! I watched these items disappear before my eyes. Everything about Wikipedia so far has been non-user friendly. I don't know if this is intentional. Replies to other users seem to be snarky and smug. While originally excited by this assignment I now have a bad taste in my mouth. The magazines are out of business. Tried the journal citation and there are quite a few boxes as you are probably aware. When/if the sandbox version is done can I upload it to Wikipedia where I assume tech vultures will pick it apart until it is bones. LOL/
Please advise
Lost In Space — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Amityville73 (
talk •
contribs)
08:26, 12 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Hi
User:Amityville73 -- welcome. Yeah, I know, it's not easy getting started. Rather than jumping in and writing a new article from scratch sometimes it is better to make a few edits and improvements here and there, and learn the citation style (see
WP:CITE for a good how-to guide). Important note -- you don't need to cite only online sources. Books, magazines, dead tree sources are fine, if they are
reliable (blogs, IMDB, wikis, things with user-generated content are never "reliable" under our policy). Looking quickly at your edit history -- I would suggest continuing working in your sandbox rather than in the draft space, especially if you don't intend to finish right away. Things in the draft space get nominated for deletion if they sit unattended for too long. It looks like you've made a good start but you need to format the citations properly (read the link above, and look at the wiki markup for any article that has them). Another important note -- it looks like you are writing about a living person, so please read
WP:BLP. Wikipedia's guidelines on biographies of living people are very stringent; you have to source absolutely everything to a reliable source. Biographies of living people are one of the hardest things to do here and it looks like you've picked that as your first task.
Antandrus(talk)17:51, 12 November 2017 (UTC)reply
It seems to me there's a mistranslation. It reads "Rule #6 It is forbidden to repeat the same melodic turn above a cantus firmus of equally long notes, unless cantus firmus has a repetition in itself."
I'm not able to entirely decipher the original Latin, nor am I able to find alternative interpretations of the Latin online -- just copy pastings of the Wikipedia piece.
The only other translation I've found is within the English version of Knud Jeppesen's book "Counterpoint: Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century ". On page 12 he writes "Sixth rule: Redicta, that is, repetition of of the same melodic idiom, is not permitted over a cantus firmus in notes of equal value, and least of all if the cantus firmus itself contains such a repetition. This applies likewise to written compositions, although one uses such idioms occassionally in order to imitate the sound of bells or of horns."
Jeppesen seems to interpret Tinctorus to mean that you especially ought not to repeat an idiom if the cantus firmus also contains a repetition. The Wikipedia article claims the opposite. It also omits the rest of the writings about imitating bells, which is present in the original Latin.
No, it looks like those were added in 2008 with
this edit. I have the Jeppesen book. Multiple copies, actually, because I used it when I taught counterpoint. However, I do have an English translation of the Tinctoris rules -- this by Gustave Reese (p 144 of his Music in the Renaissance): "The same melodic note-group should not be repeated in improvisation (i.e., there should be no redicta), especially if the cantus firmus has such repetition. However, in written music redictae are permissible in imitations of bells, trumpets, etc."
Antandrus(talk)22:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Still looking in vain for a definition of redicta in Reese. And I believe you have identified a problem -- the translation in the article is wrong. I don't know where that editor got those from.
Antandrus(talk)22:17, 12 November 2017 (UTC)reply
...specifically, "Any editor who says they want a 'fair investigation/hearing/evaluation' of their complaint at a noticeboard probably defines 'fair' as 'completely agreeing with me'." -
The BushrangerOne ping only22:40, 26 November 2017 (UTC)reply
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Hello, Antandrus. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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Antandrus - thank you for your vigilance in lots of areas. Recently, you reverted, wholesale, several additions to the
Italian Renaissance page. While I agree with you that there are problems in the additions, I have two questions about how your chose to respond to those. (1) Given the incorporation of academic sourcing for these additions, might a more judiciious/surgical edit have been appropriate? and (2) By treating the addition as a single entity, rather than as disparate sections, it seems to be "throwing the baby out with the bath water". Is there a way to engage with editoris - particularly new editors, in the case of these additions - in a way that opens dialgue and increases learning & awareness. I would contend that your wholesale revert shortchanged these editors and shortchanged the article.
DOstendorff (
talk) 19:56, 4 December 2017 (UTC) NOTE: By shortchange, I mean to indicate that there were perhaps opportunities for these new editors to be guided along and information that might have been helpful incorporated into the present article.
DOstendorff (
talk)
19:58, 4 December 2017 (UTC)reply
1) No. I went through every sentence, then -- and again just now. I really didn't see anything worth saving. Notice, please, also that the addition duplicates the section above it, which already covers music in the Italian Renaissance. It appears that this was a classroom assignment written by someone with no understanding of the topic, who chained together various statements found in books without knowing the bigger context. To edit an encyclopedia you need to understand the topic. You have to get the big picture and then drill down to the details once you can competently describe the broadest outline.
2) I saw no baby, only bathwater. Is there anything in the addition you thought to be worthwhile? I have a doctorate in music, and the 16th century is one of my specialties. It was painful to read this. It's a while since I've seen a more archetypal example of
WP:RANDY. If there are specific parts of this you think should be included, please feel free to open a discussion on the article talk page.
I could go through it a sentence at a time and explain what is wrong with it, but I have to admit being resentful at being an unpaid teaching assistant for a professor's classroom assignment. This isn't the first time this has happened. I remember spending the better part of my Christmas-New Year's break in 2007 or 2008 removing garbage added to articles on Renaissance composers, left there to rot by a professor at Union University, who went on to complain how he was treated -- in an academic conference -- but he did not care a whit about the accuracy of the information added by his students, its context, or whether it belonged in an encyclopedia at all.
Opus, do you remember this one?
Thanks for the reply
User:Antandrus. I agree with you that, in large part, the writing and the blending with the wider article are terrible. By way of an example where I think helpful information might be helpfully gleaned to strengthen the original article might be in the discussion of instruments. For example, the suggested addition built on the simple reference of the violin's present in the Italian Renaissance and provided reference support for it. In addition, it offered information on the lira, not currently present in the article. Your own background certainly gives you expertise in this area, but I think there are some helpful additions, though not many, and the information on instruments - with support references - might be one area to improve the current article.
DOstendorff (
talk)
22:04, 4 December 2017 (UTC)reply
Auguri
May you have very Happy Holidays, Antandrus ...
and a New Year filled with peace, joy, and beautiful music!
A
request for comment is in progress to determine whether the
administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at
WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.
Could you please protect the article about
Nusrat Badr? The last 45 edit are all vandalisms by IPs and mobile IPs. Also, if you have a tool to undo 45 vandalisms at the same time, it would help. Thank you. L293D (
✉)
19:26, 1 February 2018 (UTC)reply
Well, they're not vandalism, they appear to be
WP:COMPETENCE issues. It's either the same person or a cluster of people who are fans and who make similar edits, from the region around Mumbai. The edit history of this article is typical for minor popular culture figures and topics on the Indian subcontinent -- lots and lots of anonymous edits that only marginally improve the article (or not). Not sure how much page protection would help, honestly. I avoid this topic area because it is a bit like the
Augean Stables. But I'll do it if you really want.
Antandrus(talk)22:31, 2 February 2018 (UTC)reply
An RfC
has closed with a consensus that candidates at
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Technical news
A
tagwill now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by
automatic edit summaries.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee
has enacted a change to the
discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a
standardizededitnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.
Hi,
I saw your name on the Wikiproject Middle Ages, indicating an interest in music. Would you mind assessing an article I worked on? I spent time on the
Citole article.
Jacqke (
talk)
21:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)reply
Community ban discussions
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A change to the administrator inactivity policy
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A change to the banning policy
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Technical news
CheckUsers
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The edit filter has
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Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.
Please join us from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm on Saturday, March 31st for Wikipedia Day LA 2018 at the
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Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity
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Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are
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There will soon be a
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Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee
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Miscellaneous
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The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the
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The opening line is prolix and horrid. If you won't let me edit it, come up with something better. Also, 'Passion Oratorio' is used in several other articles, not to mention the Encyclopedia Brittanica. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
67.50.77.46 (
talk)
22:07, 23 April 2018 (UTC)reply
Please state your concerns on the
article talk page, which is where we work out details of wording in articles. If you want a different term, "oratorio Passion" is in common usage, c.f. the article in the New Grove. "Passion oratorio" is a separate form, of a more operatic character, a freely written text, and usually with a poetic title, not a "[Name of Gospel] Passion" title. Not sure if this is all written up on Wikipedia yet or not (it should be).
Antandrus(talk)23:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)reply
A
proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.
Technical news
AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an
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When blocking anonymous users, a
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The block notice shown on mobile will soon
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There will soon be a
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Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.
Following a
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IP-based
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The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build
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It is
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Arbitration
A
recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e.
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An
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Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an
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IP-based
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Miscellaneous
Currently around 20% of admins have enabled
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Hey, greetings! Happy 4th of July and all that. Good to see you around! I don't do a heck of a lot these days besides a few admin things, scrape crud off my watchlist, and be cheerfully curmudgeonly. :)
Antandrus(talk)00:25, 5 July 2018 (UTC)reply
The edit summary is supposed to explain why you performed an edit. Your summary of the revert of my edit, "nah", is not a summary, but an extremely simple rebuttal. Please explain to me here why you believe that the claim you made does not require a citation. You are essentially attacking a portion of the population and refusing to provide evidence for your attack. Yes, it's just an essay. But I will not stand idly by when I see a baseless attack on Wikipedia, no matter where it is. Again, please explain why you do not believe the claim requires a citation.
Making the unsupported claim that most Wikipedia vandals are male adolescents is a baseless attack that is on Wikipedia. Unless you are stalking every single editor you observe vandalising our website to determine their gender, how can you possibly know? You are just assuming.
DesertPipeline (
talk)
21:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
No, I am observing. And I am right. :) You are free to have a different opinion.
After you have reverted 50,000 edits by bored high school boys, and blocked five thousand of them, I'll listen to you if you have a different idea.
Antandrus(talk)21:08, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
Pompous proclamations should be reserved for content issues relating to articles. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion about a user-space essay, but any user may rollback (no edit summary) any unwanted edit in their user space. The remedy is to write your own essay or take the page to
WP:MFD.
Johnuniq (
talk)
23:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
One baseless claim in an otherwise fine essay is no reason to attempt to have it deleted. I just want Antandrus to understand that debasing a subset of people with an assumption is not very acceptable content for Wikipedia, wherever it may be.
DesertPipeline (
talk)
23:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
I’m a little bit baffled as to why you are so bothered about this. There’s nothing controversial about the demographics of vandalism. Vandalism arises from a combination of immaturity and the destructive impulse — and peaks in adolescence, with testosterone driving it. Vandalism of websites is not all that different from vandalism of other public or private property — spray painting of buildings, highway overpasses, breakage, tire-slashings — these are done by kids, specifically male kids, around and right after puberty, acting out, wanting attention, wanting respect, struggling for identity on the verge of adulthood. Vandalism on websites falls off after adulthood the same way vandalism of highway bridges does — once you’re grown up the desire to do these things falls away. Have a look at our article on
vandalism, and I’m sure there’s a fair amount of research available online. Really, it’s not old ladies doing it.
Antandrus(talk)23:25, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
You never know. Anyone can do anything for any reason, because in reality people are people: their specific labelling which indicates things like age and gender are not exactly relevant when it comes to what they may do, and it is foolish to assume otherwise. It turns people into categories with specific traits, and that isn't what people are.
DesertPipeline (
talk)
23:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)reply
<outdent>@DesertPipeline: please stop badgering Antrandus. From some thousands of vandalism reverts, interactions with their authors, and as a former adolescent boy, I can assure you that nearly all of our puerile vandals are adolescent boys. Antrandus's observations aren't an encyclopedia article requiring citations, and twelve years of experience on my part supports his observations, up to and including interactions with law enforcement agencies on several occasions. Acroterion(talk)00:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
All I know is that I'm an old man that wishes he was an adolescent boy so I could go forth and do some Wikipedia vandalism...its simply no fun at all trying to be serious here...this old man stuff is boring!--
MONGO (
talk)
00:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
My dignified mature self still remembers the smutty 13 year old that I was, and all of my equally obnoxious friends. Girls had different ways of acting out. Acroterion(talk)00:56, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
True that! I was very definitely the terrible terrible 14-year-old. Had there been a Wikipedia then, my terrors may have been less noisy and destructive.
You remember that scene in
Catcher in the Rye where Holden Caulfield sees the obscene graffiti in the school stairwell, and wants to catch the vile old pervert who breaks in to do it? And cannot believe they're done by the students? .... yeah.
Antandrus(talk)01:07, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
Oh yeah? My friends were surely more obnoxious than yours and I was more obnoxious than my friends. Being obnoxious was an honor and I was proud of it!--
MONGO (
talk)
01:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
For the 8 year old MONGO I have one word: poopie For the 12 year old MONGO I say boobie. Giggle, snort (what are you boys laughing about back there, pay attention!) Acroterion(talk)01:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
Ha ha ha! ... That's a fun research job. More fun than what I'm doing today. But I can see lots of nice bew.... oops never mind. From my office window.
Antandrus(talk)13:48, 17 July 2018 (UTC)reply
We used to shoplift dirty books back in the 70's. Out of
W.H.Smith. One of us would pick up a copy of
New Musical Express (back in the day in was the size and layout of a broadsheet newspaper) and I would pick up a copy of Experience (a dirty tome), and put it in the middle page of the N.M.E. thus hiding it. A third comrade would keep watch. Then we would take the N.M.E to the checkout. I remember it cost 50p. It never failed. However we never vandalised anything that I can remember. I am 137.
Irondome (
talk)
22:08, 20 July 2018 (UTC)reply
After
a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "
interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like
MediaWiki:Common.js and
MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by
bureaucrats.
Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
Following a
request for comment, the
WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to
Wikinews should only be made as per the
external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
The WMF
Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the
second set of wireframes for the
Special:Block redesign that will introduce
partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
Following
a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made
interface administrators while
discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide
CSS and
JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.
Technical news
Because of
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Some
abuse filter variables
have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables
on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
Abuse filters
can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of
Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the
Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
There is an open
request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
Technical news
Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the
Test Wikipedia and the
Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to
measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
Because of
a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.
Following a
request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are
being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Hello Sir, I have created one draft about biography.Since this is my very first article I would like senior admin to review it and suggest if any modification/update is required. Appreciate if you can review and provide your valuable guidance on this draft -Nimbus 5000/Nimbus 5000/Sajid Shahid
Partial blocks is now available for testing on the
Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the
local talk page or on
Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
A
user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
The
2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for
admins and stewards that may be of interest.
Arbitration
Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the
2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
The Arbitration Committee's email address
has changed to arbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Hello, Antandrus. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 2 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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.
Hello, Antandrus. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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.
A
request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the
Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
A
request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This
change has been implemented globally. See also
this ongoing village pump discussion (
permalink).
To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on
a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
Thank you
Voceditenore, and happiest of Christmases to you as well, from the foggy California coast. I think it's a good day to listen to Rimsky's Christmas Eve. :) It's kind of a giant family event for me this year.
Antandrus(talk)15:07, 24 December 2018 (UTC)reply
Austral season's greetings
Austral season's greetings
Tuck into this! We've made about three of these in the last few days for various festivities. Supermarkets are stuffed with cheap berries. Season's greetings!
Cas Liber (
talk·contribs)
22:33, 24 December 2018 (UTC)reply
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no
file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at
Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (
discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (
discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the
Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are
now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new
password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors,
et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available
on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators
may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A
request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the
RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled
two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider
doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate
account security by ensuring your password is
secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Hey, hi Gerda, and thanks for the memory! Appreciate that! (yes, I'm still here, doing other stuff these days, but still around... keep on keeping on. :) )
Antandrus(talk)02:12, 6 January 2019 (UTC)reply
Thank you, and don't trust my memory, but my predecessors have good archives. You were Bibliomaniac's first, DYK? Keeping on, today present on the German and the English main page for Epiphany, -
happy 2019! --
Gerda Arendt (
talk)
08:40, 6 January 2019 (UTC)reply
Yes -- I believe it. He was one of the best Wikipedia friends I ever had. Hoped to meet him someday. Lovely DYK by the way. He had an astonishing array of interests -- he persuaded me to write the article on
Nikolai Obukhov (embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of him before, how could I have missed it? A guy who wrote music in his own blood? Every composer should know that story).
Antandrus(talk)14:28, 13 January 2019 (UTC)reply
In my opinion -- it's all on the reliability of the sources. So I guess I'd be grouped with the inclusionists, most broadly. If we are intending to be the 'sum total of all human knowledge' -- if it's known by humans, and documented in a reliable source, include it. :)
Antandrus(talk)20:54, 19 January 2019 (UTC)reply
I came across two excellent maps that provide much greater detail regarding LA City Oil Field. I have no clue as to how to add these to the Wiki page and was hoping that you could help. My interest in this is twofold - I grew up at 376 S. Westmoreland, 90020 & I'm interested in possible soil contamination & exposure. I'd be happy to forward you the photos
Thanks,
Chris
cbyrne2018@gmail.com — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Plumbstar (
talk •
contribs)
02:26, 23 January 2019 (UTC)reply
Yes -- obviously there are issues with potential exposure around there and soil contamination. After a lot of time the threat diminishes because the volatiles go away, ... but still. Are the maps old -- are they public domain? If they are, you can upload them to Commons. If they're copyright we may not be able to use them. When I made the GIS maps for that article I used only public domain/copyleft sources. They aren't from the Munger Map Book, are they?
Antandrus(talk)03:37, 23 January 2019 (UTC)reply
Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent
request for comment has amended the
blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
A
request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
Technical news
A
discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of
Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (
permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at
WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
A new
IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be
identified.
Please join the LA User Group,
Wikimedians of Los Angeles, for an afternoon of panels, presentations and conversations on the subject of sources, and cake (locally sourced), in celebration of Wikipedia's 18th birthday.
Sunday, March 3: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (DTLA), Noon–5p. Focus: Women+Comedy.
Saturday, March 9: Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College (Monterey Park), Noon–4p. Focus: Latinx+Non-Binary Artists.
Sunday, March 10: Hammer Museum (Westwood), Noon–5p. Focus: Women+Film+Media
Sunday, March 17: LACMA (Miracle Mile), Noon–5p. Focus: Women+Design+Craft
Sunday, March 31: California African American Museum (Exposition Park/USC), 1–4p. Focus: Women of CAAM.
These Los Angeles events are co-hosted by online magazine
East of Borneo and include step-by-step Wikipedia instruction for beginners. Bring your laptop or tablet computer and any reference materials you'd like to work from or share. People of all gender expressions and identities are encouraged to attend.
Following discussions at
the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and
Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the
restoration of adminship policy was
reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
Technical news
A
new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee announced
two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g.,
WP:COIN or
WP:SPI).
paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive
paid editing.
checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
See your talk page. What you did is called a "copy and paste page move". By the way, a change that big should get consensus first -- if you really think Arnold Schoenberg belongs at Arnold Schönberg, bring it up on the talk page (which, by the way, would have to move along with the main page).
Antandrus(talk)21:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Bembo-- Sorry About That
I thank you for correcting me. I seem to have read the article too quickly. After several years of looking I was finally able to obtain a copy of Volume 12 of the first Italian edition.
Nicodemus (
talk)
16:18, 19 March 2019 (UTC)reply
Hey, thank you MONGO ... in that time I've seen the transformation from a frontier to a bureaucracy; I'm sure you've seen it too. Interesting group psychology experiment we have here. Remember when you first started editing, and no one had ever heard of a "Wikipedia"? "What? wow, what's that? that sounds crazy."
Antandrus(talk)15:54, 4 April 2019 (UTC)reply
Its not recognizable anymore but there have been many great changes. I'm overdue for a new featured article. A few of my old ones could use updates but its hard to revisit old places sometimes. I'm glad youre still around doing good as always.--
MONGO (
talk)
03:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)reply
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see
meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.
Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable
two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate
account security by ensuring your password is
secure and unique to Wikimedia.
As a reminder, according to
WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a
proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.
Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were
desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh
Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account.
What do I need to do?
Only to follow the instructions in this message.
Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites).
Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable).
Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers.
How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)?
Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.
Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are
required to "have strong passwords and
follow appropriate personal security practices." We have
updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular,
two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.
We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.
XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well:
Steward Stats and
Patroller Stats.
Arbitration
In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee
passed a motion amending the
procedures for return of permissions (
diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
Following a
formal ratification process, the
arbitration policy has been amended (
diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more.
Semi-protecting an article talk page due to rants by unregistered editors is a seemingly draconian action that occasionally needs to be done, and not every administrator is willing to semi-protect a talk page.
Robert McClenon (
talk)
13:12, 22 May 2019 (UTC)reply
Hey, thank you! Yes, I didn't see any other way, and it looked like others were avoiding the thread. Too many IPs and ranges for a block to work, and because they had a single monomaniacal focus, it seemed like the least damaging course.
Antandrus(talk)13:48, 22 May 2019 (UTC)reply
The CSD feature of
Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your
Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.
Miscellaneous
The
previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was
approved and has taken place.
He's not ok. Has been out of jail for a bit (he spent almost three years there for harassment, stalking, threats, etc.) and looks like he's at it again.
Antandrus(talk)13:52, 28 June 2019 (UTC)reply
How do I get the label of Wikiscum???? I am sincerely jealous! All these years and no one yet has assigned that label to me...drats.--
MONGO (
talk)
14:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)reply
It's special, I tell you -- almost as good as those monthly checks we get from the CIA. Yesterday on another project he told me he was going to "HAUNT ME DOWN TILL THE COWS COME HOME" -- which gave my happy hour a bit more levity than usual. (On my drive home I had seen the cows coming. No really. I pass lots of cows.)
Antandrus(talk)14:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)reply
My job involves a lot of risk assessment. How credible to do find their threats? Is this going on via email or anything like that?--
MONGO (
talk)
14:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)reply
It has, but not for a while - his MO is to write hate pages about us on various websites, and leave incoherent rubbish on Wikipedia and its other-language brethren. He gets in trouble pretty often though; I've found six mugshots online. I know who he is, where he lives, and so forth, and keep track. Kidding aside, it's really tiresome. 13 years of this. He'll be back in jail before long. Last time was for threatening public officials.
Antandrus(talk)14:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)reply
In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the
mitigation activity completed.
The scope of
CSD criterion G8 has
been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
The scope of
CSD criterion G14 has
been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
The Wikimedia Foundation's
Community health initiative plans to design and build a
new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
Miscellaneous
In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF)
changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in
significant community discussion, a
request for arbitration (
permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an
open letter to the WMF Board.