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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 November 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:06, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

BBC 12-hour Editathon - large influx of new pages & drafts expected

AfC Reviewers are asked to be especially on the look out 08:00-20:00 UTC (that's local London time - check your USA and AUS times) on Thursday 8 December for new pages. The BBC together with Wikimedia UK is holding a large 12-hour editathon. Many new articles and drafts are expected. See BBC 100 Women 2016: How to join our edit-a-thon. Follow also on #100womenwiki, and please, don't bite the newbies :) (user:Kudpung for NPR. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:BAG

Just curious, are you still active in the WP:BAG? --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

In general yes, at the moment no since I've been busy with real-life work. — Earwig talk 21:14, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 December 2016

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Merry, merry!

From the icy Canajian north; to you and yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 20:54, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Question

Your copyvio bot is great, but it doesn't recognize quotes. Is there anything you can do about that? JerrySa1 (talk) 20:04, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@JerrySa1: You mean ignore quoted text? It's a difficult problem, though I am aware of it. Sometimes you want to include quotes in the result because they can still be subject to copyright, and a large enough body of quotes is usually a bad sign in an article. My recommendation is to always manually review the result and ignore small amounts of quotes if they don't influence your decision. — Earwig talk 22:10, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Good, just wanted to make sure you were aware. JerrySa1 (talk) 01:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Copyvio Detector bug

Hello! First, thanks for creating this excellent tool, Copyvio Detector!

I think there is a small bug in the tool though. It concerns Estonian Wikipedia. Setting Site value to 'et (eesti)' and choosing some random article in Estonian Wikipedia, let's say Eesti, this error message appears: "The given page doesn't seem to exist: Eesti". Looking closely, the weblink in the message is https://tet.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eesti. Meaning that somewhere in the code 'et.wikipedia.org' has become 'tet.wikipedia.org'. In short: the tool does not work with etwiki. Could you please look into this? Thanks! Cumbril (talk) 14:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

@Cumbril: Thanks for letting me know about this. A strange issue! I've fixed it. — Earwig talk 19:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year The Earwig!

Happy New Year!
Hello The Earwig:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve the encyclopedia for Wikipedia's readers, and have a happy and enjoyable New Year! Cheers, JustBerry (talk) 00:35, 1 January 2017 (UTC)



Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:The Earwig}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.
Thank you. — Earwig talk 02:53, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Could your bot tag some articles for me?

Magic invocation
env/bin/earwigbot -t wikiproject_tagger earwigbot --update --banner "WikiProject Medicine" --category "Unknown-importance medicine articles" --only-with "WikiProject Biography" --append "importance=low,society=yes" --autoassess "stub,start" --summary "Updating banner for [[WP:WPMED|WPMED]] biography per [[Special:Permalink/760128925#Could your bot tag some articles for me.3F|request]]" --nocreate

{{WPMED}} is on ~2,200 pages without an |importance= parameter at the moment. Could your bot (a) figure out if the subject is a person (living or dead) and (b) if so, set |importance=low and |society=yes in the WikiProject banner? The list of articles is at Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles.

I don't need it to catch every single instance; if it could just reduce the size of the list, that would be helpful. Also, if it's easy/code already exists, then I'd be happy to have these biographies inherit |class=Stub and |class=Start assessments. Please {{ping}} me and let me know if you think this is feasible. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Working on it... — Earwig talk 07:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Okay, I ran it. Edits are here, and the category dropped to 1,691 items. Not a huge change, but it's something. If you ever want me to run this in the future, link me here so I remember the magic invocation (above). — Earwig talk 12:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you! That's 500 items that I don't have to manually tag, which is really a huge difference for me. Thank you so much! (Also, just for your peace of mind, I read the entire list and double-checked any titles that looked even remotely questionable [e.g., "Iona Heath", to make sure that it wasn't supposed to be "Iona health"]. It all looked great.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
Thank you for the js tweak related to the purge dialog! — xaosflux Talk 14:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 January 2017

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Administrators' newsletter - February 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

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.

Arbitration

Obituaries

  • JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

BAG News

BAG News February 2017

Greetings Bot Approvals Group member!

  • 2017 has been busy, with 37 closed BRFA's so far this year.
  • If you have not already, you may want to consider adding Wikipedia:BAG/Status to your watchlist, it is a bot generated list of all in progress requests.
  • There are multiple discussions ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy regarding updates to portions of the bot policy. Please be sure to follow for any policy changes upcoming.

Thank you! 17:52, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 6 February 2017

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The Signpost: 27 February 2017

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Problem with EarwigBot related to openly licensed text which is labelled as open license within .pdfs rather than web pages

Hi Ben

I'm not sure quite how to explain this issue, so please bear with me. Myself and Graeme Bartlett have been discussing a problem I have been having with content from openly licensed publications being deleted as copyright violations. The text in the article Life sciences in the United States is taken from a CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed publication UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (linked to in the sources section at the bottom of the article).

The publication is clearly labelled CC-BY-SA 3.0 but when text from the publication got copied to the UNESCO website the open license notification is being lost because of incorrect license statement on the UNESCO website, this is a known problem and something I'm working on fixing at the moment. EarwigBot is only picking up the website text telling the operator its a copyright violation, it is not scanning the .pdf text which is correctly labelled. I'm not really sure what to do about this. I think this is going to be the case for many organisations and publishers who make their openly licensed text available as a .pdf rather than a web page. This mean if they or someone else then copied the open license text from the .pdf onto a web page and incorrectly labelled it as not openly licensed then EarwigBot will flag it as a copyright violation.

Can you think of a way around this? I guess a permanent and clean solution would be if EarwigBot had the capacity to scan inside .pdf files but I have no idea how realistic this is. I guess as a temporary solution for UNESCO I could request that unesco.org be added to the the exclusion list until the website notification is fixed? But this doesn't fix the problem for other cases. One other option might be an extra notification on the tool if the page uses the template that is used to credit open license sources.

Thanks very much

--John Cummings (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi John,
I suppose there are a few sides to this. From a purely technical standpoint, EarwigBot can already look inside PDFs, but not every PDF is parsable (some are formatted in ways that make them hard for software to read). More generally, though, it will pick the closest match it can find, so even if it finds a PDF with the same content that happens to have a copyleft notice, it may still display the website as the potential violation source if it seems to be a closer match.
But ultimately, EarwigBot's job here is just to point out potential sources of violation, with the assumption that a human will come in and manually verify everything (checking for freely licensed content, reverse-copying, etc.). It doesn't tag or delete anything on its own. So while we can definitely work to improve the detection of freely licensed content, I don't think this is a fatal flaw in the software per se. Noticing when something originates from a freely licensed source is a difficult problem that must be done by a human in the general case. If people are deleting content without properly verifying that it is in violation, that's on them.
You bring up a good point at the end: "One other option might be an extra notification on the tool if the page uses the template that is used to credit open license sources." I think this would help in situations like this one. I will make a note to implement this.
Thanks. — Earwig talk 21:25, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi Ben, thanks very much for your thoughtful reply, do you have any links about the way .pdfs can be formatted to allow parsing? Please let me know if I can help with implementing this additional notification, I'm not a programmer but happy to do research, legwork, write instructions etc. There seem to have been a couple different approaches over the years to signify if content is from an open license source, the two main ones I know about are Template:CC-notice and Template:Free-content attribution which was previously called Template:Open-source attribution, I will ask to see if there are any others.
Do you know of any instructions used by editors using your tool that I could add an extra sentence or two to make it clearer people should check to see is there are any open licenses used before tagging the page for speedy deletion?
Thanks again
--John Cummings (talk) 09:03, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
I added some code to show the attribution notification. The list of templates is here; we can expand it in the future as necessary. Beyond that, I'm not sure if there's much else we should update. — Earwig talk 06:20, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Greetings!

The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

Arbcom

Magioladitis ARBCOM case has closed. The remedies of the case include:

  • Community encouraged to review common fixes
  • Community encouraged to review policy on cosmetic edits
  • Developers encouraged to improve AWB interface
  • Bot approvals group encouraged to carefully review BRFA scope
  • Reminders/Restrictions specific to Magioladitis
BRFAs

We currently have 27 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

There are multiple ongoing discussions surrounding bot-related matters. In particular:

New things

Several new things are around:

Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by:Headbomb 11:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

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WikiProject tagging requests

Hi The Earwig,

What information do you need to initiate WikiProject tagging for {{WP Women's sport}} and some of its taskforces? Thank you. Hmlarson (talk) 03:53, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Hmlarson: Not much, just some categories or a list of pages to tag (if categories, also tell me whether you want to recursively tag subcategories), what specific task forces and how to tell where those task forces apply, and some indication that there is consensus to do this. — Earwig talk 04:57, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
Here is the list:
Is it possible to also tag the category talk pages? Let me know if a list similar to the above for those would be helpful OR if you need the above list in a different format. The consensus discussion is available at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's sport#Bot request to tag women athlete articles with the Project tag. The Template: WikiProject Women's sport has been updated as well. Thank you! Hmlarson (talk) 16:58, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: Looks good, I am starting this now. Yes, we can do category talk pages as well in the same format. Let me know; should I just use the same list? Also, I'm not able to add needs-photo or needs-infobox, but I will do autoassessment for common classes. — Earwig talk 19:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks Earwig. You rock. I'm not sure if this list will be useful or not, but just in case:
I noticed something strange; you have WNBA above but it goes to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Basketball Association/WNBA task force, which is a task force within another WikiProject and has its own template. I don't think it makes sense to tag an article with both {{WikiProject National Basketball Association|WNBA-task-force=yes}} and {{WikiProject Women's sport|wnba=yes}}, so I'm skipping that one for now. Never mind, I noticed this was true for many of the task forces. It still seems a little strange to be but I'm fine with it. — Earwig talk 20:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, there's some crossover. That may change in the future - but the template links could be updated accordingly. Thank you! Hmlarson (talk) 20:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Please stop doing this. For all talk namespaces except Talk: itself, the class is detected automatically. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, I fixed it. Sorry about that! — Earwig talk 17:19, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Basketball mistagging

I noticed that the bot has been tagging some articles e.g.Dale E. Hamilton which have nothing to do with women's sports. I think it is tagging non-pertinent college basketball items.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:05, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Another more clear cut example Category talk:Southwest Baptist Bearcats men's basketball players. Please look into this when you get an opportunity, thanks.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:08, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Why is EarwigBot tagging Matthew Rogers (basketball) with {{WikiProject Women's sport}} at the talk page? Rogers has nothing to do with women's sport. DaHuzyBru (talk) 15:04, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
There are many men's basketball articles being tagged in this way - please look at the bot's direction and adjust accordingly. Rikster2 (talk) 18:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that indeed looks wrong. I'm looking into it. — Earwig talk 18:32, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Okay, so the problem is we have Women's basketball → Women's basketball by country → Women's basketball in the United States → College women's basketball in the United States → College women's basketball by conference in the United States → Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association basketball → Central Oklahoma Bronchos men's basketball etc. The edge from conferences to MIAA seems wrong as it is non-inclusive. I will fix that link and revert any related edits. The four pages linked above all fall into that category, so if any of you (UCO2009bluejay DaHuzyBru Rikster2) have examples due to another reason please let me know. — Earwig talk 18:43, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
I think that does explain the pages I have seen - all men's players/coaches from schools in that conference. Thank you for investigating and fixing. Rikster2 (talk) 18:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Should be all set now. — Earwig talk 19:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
For the record, I also noticed an issue with Filipino college basketball-related articles being misidentified as women's due to paths like College women's basketball competitions in the Philippines → UAAP Basketball Championship → University Athletic Association of the Philippines basketball players which is mostly men. I am reverting most of the tagging for College women's basketball competitions in the Philippines. — Earwig talk 20:19, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
This is done. — Earwig talk 21:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
I noticed some issues in tennis, e.g. ITF Women's Circuit → Burnie International → 2009 McDonald's Burnie International – Men's Doubles. I am fixing this now. — Earwig talk 21:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Done. — Earwig talk 21:55, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Results

Hi Hmlarson, I am done with this now. A number of problems conspired to make this a much bigger headache than expected. I did not finish tagging Category:Women's tennis (but it should be almost done) and I did not run tagging on Category:Women's sports because it is too large and I am afraid to run into more problems like above. The lesson here is that category trees are much more complicated than anyone can expect and going through subcategories without limit leads to problems. I know this, so I should have been more careful when agreeing to run the task as described, so it is partially my fault. I have spot-checked the bot's edits to the best of my ability and there should be no more glaring mistaggings, but I can't be completely sure.

Here are the results, counting both new banners added and existing banners updated.

Task force Talk: Category talk: Template talk: File talk: total
boxing 387 92† 2 0 481
football 6,783 2,964† 531 59 10,337
cricket 1,303 374† 79 0 1,756
cycling 3,349 323† 122 25 3,819
field hockey 1,365 139† 3 0 1,507
figure skating 1,968 117† 0 0 2,145
golf‡ 1,606 227† 1 0 1,834
gymnastics 2,304 252 10 0 2,566
ice hockey 1,657 482 67 2 2,208
martial arts 3,410 660 0 4 4,074
mma 233 38 0 0 271
softball 46 7 1 0 54
swimming 1,148 48 0 0 1,196
tennis 5,672 338 13 6 6,029
volleyball 2,828 129 0 0 2,957
wnba + basketball 1,263 228† 216 17 1,724
basketball (no wnba) 4,339 2,557† 430 5 7,331
total 39,661 8,975 1,475 118 50,289
  • †: per the issue Redrose64 identified above, some category counts are overestimated due to unnecessary edits; spot-checking indicates the error is fairly small
  • ‡: for golf, there is a slight underestimate due to a logging error

Thanks! — Earwig talk 21:55, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much The Earwig! Hmlarson (talk) 22:10, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Additional errors

Dear talk page guests, please report any additional mistaggings here so I can look. — Earwig talk 21:57, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Sunday May 21: Metropolitan Museum of Art Edit-a-thon + global online challenge

Sunday May 21, 10:30 am - 4:30pm: Metropolitan Museum of Art Edit-a-thon

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Edit-a-thon: Met Open Access Initiative is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first edit-a-thon, being hosted on Sunday May 21, 2017 in Thomas J. Watson Library at The Met Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The Met is excited to make available over 375,000 images of public domain artworks for contribution to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons from the museum’s collection spanning 5,000 years of art. The event is an opportunity for Wikimedia communities to engage The Met's diverse collection onsite and remotely. The event is a key marker too of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's first Wikimedian-in-Residence program, with resident Richard Knipel (User:Pharos), along with Wikimedia NYC. We invite you to help enhance Wikimedia communities and platforms with open access images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The event requires pre-registration. To register, 1) please sign-up with Eventbrite via The Met's website and 2) add your Wikipedia username to the #Participants on the wikimeetup page. Please check-in with museum staff when you arrive at the Thomas J. Watson Library within the museum.

We also welcome remote participation for the global Met Open Access Artworks Challenge (15 May - 30 June, 2017), you can sign up there at Met Open Access Artworks Challenge/Participants. --Pharos (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

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May 24: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

Wednesday May 24, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Babycastles gallery by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.

Topics this month include the TED wikiproject, the Met wikiproject, and encouraging free video on Wikimedia Commons!

We will include a look at the organization and planning for our chapter, and expanding volunteer roles for both regular Wikipedia editors and new participants.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

We welcome the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from all educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.

After the main meeting, pizza/chicken/vegetables and refreshments and video games in the gallery!

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles gallery, 137 West 14th Street

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 19:31, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

  • P.S. bonus event this weekend:

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Wikipedia:Bot_requests#CCI_bot

You might be interested in this discussion or able to help out. Please have a look. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:37, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I will reply there. — Earwig talk 17:55, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 June 2017

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The Signpost: 23 June 2017

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Sunday July 9: WikNYC Picnic @ Governors Island

Sunday July 9, 1-6pm: WikNYC Picnic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" on New York City's green and historic Governors Island, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck.

1–6pm - come by any time! Our reserved picnicking area is Grill #5 by Nolan Park in the northern part of Governors Island.
Look for us by the Wikipedia / Wikimedia NYC banner!

We hope to see you there! --Pharos (talk) 11:04, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

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

July 19: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

Wednesday July 19, 7pm: WikiWednesday Salon and Skill-Share NYC

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-9pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop at Babycastles gallery by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.

We will include a look at the organization and planning for our chapter, and expanding volunteer roles for both regular Wikipedia editors and new participants.

We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming edit-a-thons, museum and library projects, education initiatives, and other outreach activities.

We welcome the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from all educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.

After the main meeting, pizza/chicken/vegetables and refreshments and video games in the gallery!

7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles gallery, 145 West 14th Street
(note the new address, a couple of doors down from the former Babycastles location)

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 02:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

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

The Signpost: 15 July 2017

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Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Greetings!

Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

BAG

BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are now members of the BAG (see RfBAG/BU Rob13 and RfBAG/Cyberpower678 3). BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are both administrators; the former operates BU RoBOT which does a plethora of tasks, while the latter operates Cyberbot I (which replaces old bots), Cyberbot II (which does many different things), and InternetArchiveBot which combats link rot. Welcome to the BAG!

BRFAs

We currently have 12 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions
New things
Upcoming
Wikimania

Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know!

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

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RfA

Thanks for supporting my run for administrator. I am honored and grateful. ) Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:03, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Support for Women in Red

Hi there! Given the excellent work you have done for the WiR metrics, I was wondering whether you could help Dr. Blofeld with the development of a bot to assist with his Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest which is scheduled to begin in October. One of the priorities is monitor the length of new or improved articles (minimum 1.5 kb readable prose) but also to check whether they are sufficiently referenced. If you are unable to take this on yourself, perhaps you could recommend someone else. I think a contest along these lines would provide a considerable boost for the coverage of women's biographies on Wikipedia - so it is really worthwhile helping it along.--Ipigott (talk) 10:46, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Ipigott. Yes it would just be needed to check article length and tat there's no unsourced paragraphs.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:00, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Metrics

Hi The Earwig, I know that you have been developing the metrics tool for Women in Red. I belong to the wikiproject in Spanish, and I would like so much if you can help us with our metrics. We want to have the same as Women in Red but with the articles that we are creating in Spanish. Do you think that you could do it or help us? I would appreciate it very much because I have been doing our metrics by hand and I am tired of doing that! I want the same that you have in Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Metrics but in Spanish. Thank you very much. --Jalu (talk) 19:06, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 5 August 2017

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Username change

Sir could you help me do the name in the name change place they seem to be answering people in the queue behind me but not responding to my request. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lakhuria (talk • contribs) 10:39, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Sit tight, I can't do anything. No one has completed a request below yours, anyway. — Earwig talk 17:35, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 September 2017

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Article talk project tagging request

Hi Earwig - I'd like to make a new WP tagging request per the discussion here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women#Adding women athletes to article alerts for WP:Women. Can you tag all article talk pages that are currently tagged with {{WikiProject Women's sport}} with {{WikiProject Women}} if it does not already have the tag? Hmlarson (talk) 06:12, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi The Earwig - wanted to check in on this request. Any thoughts? Hmlarson (talk) 05:48, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi @Hmlarson:, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I've been a bit swamped lately and this fell off my radar. I can start this tomorrow. — Earwig talk 19:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
This is running now. — Earwig talk 07:00, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Magical command invocation
earwigbot -t wikiproject_tagger . --banner "WikiProject Women" --category "WikiProject Women's sport articles" --only-with "WikiProject Women's sport" --summary "Tagging women's sport-related page for [[WP:WOMEN|WikiProject Women]] per [[Special:Permalink/799357362#Adding women athletes to article alerts for WP:Women|request]]." --autoassess "fa,fl,ga,start,stub,c,category,redirect,dab" --nocreate --recursive --tag-categories

Thanks - much appreciated, The Earwig. Hmlarson (talk) 23:50, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmlarson has given you a tall pint! Pints promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a tall pint, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Merry drinking!†

. Please Stop This Bot and remove the new additions. Per past discussions, we do not add the "WikiProject Women" tag to articles that already have the more specific "WikiProject Women's sport" tag. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:55, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Okay, Fyunck, I have stopped it for now. Hmlarson, could you please weigh in? — Earwig talk 01:58, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Replied at the initial discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women#Adding women athletes to article alerts for WP:Women Thanks for the ping, The Earwig. Hmlarson (talk) 02:06, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, and sure I'll weigh in. "WikiProject Women's sport" is more specific and does the job well. There is no reason to add the less precise "WikiProject Women" to all these hundreds of articles. Just because it is not showing up on article alerts for "WikiProject Women" is not a good reason. Either have the editors that care also check the WikiProject Women's sport" article alerts, or figure out some way to forward those alerts to "WikiProject Women." Fyunck(click) (talk) 02:07, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Could you also please remove the additions you made since it was against prior consensus. Not your fault but it concerns thousands upon thousands of articles so it's too time consuming for me to fix them all by hand (especially all the tennis articles). Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:06, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
The discussion is still ongoing. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women#Adding women athletes to article alerts for WP:Women Hmlarson (talk) 22:47, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
They should not have been added at all, plus no one is advocating adding them in the discussion. We don't put the cart before the horse, so they need to be removed unless somehow a bunch more editors chime in. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:45, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't have much free time until the weekend, at earliest—at that point I will take another look and we can decide how to act. My feeling at this point is that our problem is better solved by adjusting the category structure and article alerts than mass-tagging; as a result, there's unfortunately a good chance I will need to do a mass-rollback to undo the bot edits.
I think there are some takeaways: we need to clarify the scope of WPWomen with respect to the related Women's sub-projects and decide how these sorts of hierarchical relationships should be represented in banner tags. From my personal experience, I know there are many other projects with this sort of confusion; WPInsects exists as a "sub-project" of WPArthropods, and the latter considers some articles to be under its "scope" that are tagged with only the former's banner. It's far from perfect, and I think in an ideal system, we could express these relationships in the banners without having to clutter talk pages. Just because there are other projects that cover a more specific area doesn't mean the general project should be unable to "advertise" themselves (the more proper term for the purpose banners serve is escaping me). For example, one could consider that some projects are much less active than their more general parent projects. — Earwig talk 05:39, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
Actually I would agree that there are always exceptions. With some massively renowned people we might want more than one tag, and we would look at that case by case. But usually the more specific tag is all that's needed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:49, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
Just checking in on the state of corrections. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: Do you think it would be appropriate to revert the additions now? — Earwig talk 01:39, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't see why it's necessary based on the discussion. Any article can be tagged with multiple projects - but if you want to spend the time working on it, feel free. Thanks for your previous work.Hmlarson (talk) 15:13, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
I see it very necessary based on the discussion... it should not be there if already tagged as per previous discussions that Hmlarson either ignored or forgot about. Why hasn't it been taken back already? It took a lot of work to get it correct the last time this type of thing was done, and it's becoming obvious I'm going to have to start doing this by hand. Please pu it back to the previous state. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
At the very least, put the tennis related article back the way they were and remove all those new new WPWomen banners from talk pages with "WikiProject Tennis" and "WikiProject Women's sport" banners. They were corrected by this same earwigbot the last time we went through this. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:57, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

(←) I mean, I am planning on doing it, I was just making sure that everyone was on the same page before I go ahead and revert a bunch of edits, since it is a substantial action. I want to fix this; your assertion that I won't is frankly a little upsetting. I realize I have been slow to make progress on this, but I truly have had very little free time, and I feel that the urgency of this is much lower than it would be for something that was actually negatively impacting users instead of merely providing duplicate information in some article talk pages. Honestly. — Earwig talk 06:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Okay, Fyunck(click), the bot is undoing the edits now. Should take about half a day, I estimate? If something goes wrong, edit this page and wait a couple minutes. — Earwig talk 08:55, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
I apologize if it came across that way... my last comments were pointed more at Hmlarson, who was in the conversation the last time this happened and should have realized. Then she said it wasn't really necessary when you asked her about doing the reversion now. That made me a bit unhappy with the situation. Plus the possible prospect of me having to revert... what... 1000s and 1000s of tennis related articles wasn't exactly what I wanted to be doing. And i couldn't just roll them back... I had to undo. That's because the last time many of these tennis talk pages were edited was by this same earwigbot when we all asked you to add "WikiProject Women's sport" to these same articles. If I rolled-back it would also rollback those additions we wanted. So anyway, you just got caught in my unhappiness wave. Sorry about that. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:44, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
No hard feelings. The fact we can't just rollback the edits was frustrating for me as well when I started the revert task. There are some articles that have been changed in the mean time that I will have to manually look at. — Earwig talk 14:56, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
And like you said... it obviously takes awhile. It's done thousands but hasn't gotten to the tennis articles yet. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:21, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 October 2017

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

TfD closures

Hi, Earwig. I just wanted to stop by and thank you for helping out with closures of pending TfD discussions. In an ideal world, we would have a pool of 5 to 10 administrators who closed TfDs on a regular basis so that we could spread the burden around. If you have any admin buddies who might be interested in closing 5 to 10 TfDs per week, please let me know, and I will be glad to help recruit them to the cause. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that, glad to help. Sadly, most of my admin friends are no longer active. I think a more useful version of User:Doug/closetfd.js would be very nice to have, since I find myself doing the same sort of work repeatedly in simpler cases (checking/removing navbox transclusions, deleting talkpages/redirects/subpages, etc) – and I was surprised when I started that Twinkle has no template-delinking function like it has for page links. Perhaps such a tool would encourage more admins to help out? I would work on it myself, but lack of time is an issue. — Earwig talk 04:36, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Hey, Earwig, I suggest you mention your issues to administrator User:Opabinia regalis (another recent recruit to TfD closings), and to template editor User:Alakzi. Alakzi is one of our star coders, and no doubt will have some insights into how the "Doug" TfD closing script might be improved. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:46, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Last I heard, Alakzi would "look into" it, which was about a week ago. Well, we'll see. I'm willing to give it a shot in a month or so if nothing happens in the meantime. — Earwig talk 04:59, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, his services are popular now. I liked it better when I had him mostly to myself, but I'm told that template editor envy is not flattering on me. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Ha, I'll look into cloning ;)
Agreed, all Doug's script does is stop you from making a typo adding the templates. Automating the tedium would be useful. I've been vaguely thinking of adapting the closeafd.js script, but haven't had the right combination of time and motivation (and it'd have to be a rare combination to make me think 'yes, javascript sounds like fun today'), so I'd be quite pleased if someone else did it! Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
I, too, happen to be quite averse to JavaScript, so if somebody else were to take the initiative... Alakzi (talk) 08:05, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Oy, I guess I'll start working on that, then. @Alakzi and Opabinia regalis: can we come up with a concrete list of improvements? — Earwig talk 08:16, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Offer to choose between "keep", "delete", "merge", and "do not merge"; automatically mark as a NAC for non-admins; remove {{Tfd}} and Tfm from the template when kept or not merged, else replace with {{Being deleted}}, enclosed in <noinclude>...</noinclude>; and tag with {{Tfd end}} on the talk page. Alakzi (talk) 08:25, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Right. Would a mass-orphan or substitution function (invoked separately) be a good idea or too risky? It would only handle clear cases. Also, the option to move to the holding cell would be useful. Hmm, I have an idea how this could work. — Earwig talk 08:40, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
OK, but what would make a clear case? The HC option is a good idea. Alakzi (talk) 09:03, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to strictly define it yet – will see when I get to that point, since the other stuff will come first. Also, a relisting option would be simple and useful. That should be enough to start working on it. — Earwig talk 17:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for taking this on, Earwig :) In addition to Alakzi's list, checking for redirects and subpages would be useful. Oh, when the page reloaded after my edit I saw you already said that above. Never mind me, I need more coffee. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Just an update – progress has been slow but steady due to various real-life things. The main interface and much of the functionality is complete. I hope to finish the first version before next week. — Earwig talk 07:43, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Another update: alas, I'm not able to get back to working on the script yet, given the start of classes and a few other RL things. Tentatively suggesting a workable version by the middle of next week. — Earwig talk 00:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Another bump. Some good progress, but a general lack of time to work on it. Will continue to keep people posted. — Earwig talk 02:29, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 November 2017

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ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, The Earwig. 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.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Earwig's Copyvio Detector

I use your copyvio detector quite a lot to check for copyright issues. This morning I checked an article Enchanted Storybook Castle and it came back clear, with a 0% likelihood of violation. However, being suspicious, I checked a phrase with Google and found it was a straight copy/paste from this site. I managed to find a history of the Disney wiki and it was written in 2012, while the Wikipedia page was written in November 2017. Any comments? I nominated the latter for deletion under G12 so it may be gone before you see this. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:59, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, Cwmhiraeth. It looks like the Wikia page was ignored because it's in the excluded URLs list, because Wikia is freely licensed (CC-BY-SA). Therefore, it wouldn't be a violation—if the authors were credited correctly. This example is a good argument in support of having the copyvio detector report freely licensed material that people commonly plagiarize from, so I've taken Wikia off the list for now. — Earwig talk 01:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2017

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Seasons' Greetings

...to you and yours, from the Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:09, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Sunday January 14: Wikipedia Day NYC Celebration and Mini-Conference

Sunday January 14: Wikipedia Day NYC 2018

You are invited to join us at Ace Hotel for Wikipedia Day NYC 2018, a Wikipedia celebration and mini-conference as part of the project's global 16th birthday festivities. In addition to the party, the event will be a participatory unconference, with keynotes, plenary panels, lightning talks, and of course open space sessions.

And there will be cake.

We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.

10:00am - 6:30 pm at Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street in Manhattan

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 18:41, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

^^ Maybe we'll see you this year? :) — MusikAnimal talk 15:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I'll actually be in the city this time, so I guess I don't have an excuse... :P — Earwig talk 18:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

This Sunday! Wikipedia Day NYC Celebration and Mini-Conference (updated speakers + schedule)

Sunday January 14: Wikipedia Day NYC 2018

Part of Wikipedia's global 17th birthday celebration, Wikipedia Day NYC 2018 at Ace Hotel will include a mini-conference of scheduled panels as well as unconference style talks and discussions proposed by attendees on the day of the event. We are very excited to announce speakers such as Jason Scott (Internet Archive), Jackie Koerner (Visiting Scholar, Wiki Ed), and Andrew Lih (Wikimedia DC), as well as a fantastic line-up of panels that highlight projects and issues of relevance to the Wikimedia NYC community.

See Wikipedia Day NYC 2018 speakers + schedule

And there will be cake.

We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.

10:00am - 6:30 pm at Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street in Manhattan

We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Megs (talk) 02:22, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 January 2018

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¡Una cabra para ti!

¡Aquí te va una cabra retozona!

StormBringer (talk) 15:02, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 5 February 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Page Protection from vandalism

Protect my user page please SankeySara (talk) 17:51, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

SankeySara, I don't see much history of vandalism on your user page. — Earwig talk 22:05, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Page protect from Vandalism

A film page Salute 2019 film has no vandalism till yet as not released. Can it get protection from Vandalism SankeySara (talk) 05:25, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

No, see above. We don't protect things preemptively. — Earwig talk 05:37, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
BAG
BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things
Upcoming

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

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