User talk:Stesmo

Stevie Ray Vaughan edit revert

Hi there -

Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! It's appreciated.

In regards to my commit, I went in to fix a formatting error, but I have the Chrome 'Cloud to Butt' extension installed (normally humorous) and it unintentionally changed the instance of cloud in the text box. I'll have to watch out for that in the future. Thanks for catching that! :)

Sam Cawthorn

Hey there,

Not sure if this is a wiki issue, but the link on the Sam Cawthorn page for bemotivated.com.au points to someone's online Nike shop. I think everything else is fine, otherwise. Thanks for all your great work. 220.244.174.112 (talk) 11:14, 3 February 2015 (UTC)Darrell220.244.174.112 (talk) 11:14, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, 220.244.174.112. Thanks for letting me know about the bemotivated site. It looks like most of the links in the external links section were dead or unnecessary, as well. Thanks again, Stesmo (talk) 18:00, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Liliane Bettencourt

Can you please look at what you're reverting to? It's the same site, just an older page. If the site is not a WP:RS the entire sentence should be removed. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:30, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, NeilN. I did look at what I was reverting. I reverted a ton of spam this morning from that user and reviewed each before doing so. While the link may be useful as a reference, it is an external link, which shouldn't be placed in the body of an article. This page was different than a lot of the spam, in that it actually replaced existing text and wasn't just slapped in the lead paragraph without consideration of appropriateness. I've reverted my 2nd revert and converted the external link to a reference. Sound good? Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Your last edit summary got cut off and I wasn't looking as carefully as I should have been so I missed the ref suggestion. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:43, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Drastic Edit to Edexcel article

Your recent edit to the Pearson Edexcel article removed lots of valuable information. I'm quite tempted to revert it as the page used to be an in-depth article on the exam board but now consists of a couple of paragraphs. Why did you make these changes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnxsmith (talk • contribs) 21:12, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Johnxsmith. Thanks for stopping by my talk page. The edits you're referring to are these, correct? The short answer is: the overwhelming majority of page didn't meet Wikipedia's Core Content Policies.

The long answer: The first edit removed external links in the body of the article, which runs afoul of WP:EL. The second edit's edit summary is: Removed unsourced promotional content. Removed duplicate info. Tightened language. Requested reliable sources (not from Pearson, Edexcel or press releases) to keep claims in article. I feel that I explained my edits well in that summary. I removed the promotional content (see Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion), the promotional external links (WP:EL), the unsourced claims WP:Verifiability, and various tightening (removing duplicate info, padding, etc.). And, I requested reliable, third-party published source (not from Pearson, Edexcel or press releases) for the remaining claims. If those Citation Needed requests go unanswered, they'll be removed, as well.

There is exactly one reference in that article that doesn't point to Edexcel.com (points to a Maltese domain, which may still be under Edexcel's control/input). That reference isn't a reliable, third-party published source. In fact, due to the lack of reliable sources in the current article, I'm not even sure the subject of this article meets WP:Notability standards, either.

Please feel free to add back Edexcel content as long as it isn't promotional, doesn't contain external links in the body of the article, aren't trivial and are reliable sourced (not from Edexcel, related company or press release). This article could use some help, especially in showing it's Notable enough to be on Wikipedia. Thanks again for stopping by. Stesmo (talk) 22:23, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay, many thanks for your feedback. :)

Johnxsmith (talk) 09:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Beepi article

Hello. Thanks for reviewing the Beepi article. I am a tech journalist and have become very fascinated by this company's innovations. It's one of those hyper-growth companies that went from nowhere to $200 million valuation in less than a year. So I spent some time giving them a reworked page with much more information.

Anyway, perhaps I went too far in explaining the background of the company. That said, the key innovation being reported by the tech and business press is how the marketplace works and why it is different than online classified listings. So I restored that language, but in a more neutral tone. I left references and a longer explanation on the Talk page for the article.

I also restored the reference to the company accepting BitCoin to pay for cars. That's not a frivilous detail. Many stories about this decision have appeared in the tech press because it is perhaps the largest consumer transaction now possible with the digital currency. I included references and more discussion on the Talk page of the article.

New stories are appearing about this company very frequently. I have just noticed a story in Wired magazine that I have yet to cite. Indications are that it will become an important company.

Thanks BC1278 (talk) 20:18, 12 February 2015 (UTC)BC1278

Hi, BC1278. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page.

Thanks for restoring some of the services information to Beepi. I was just typing out in the Talk page about how my edit removed too much and didn't include enough about the products/services when I saw you added back some of that. I've tightened the language up some more and made sure Bitcoin info was included. While I don't believe most folks outside of the bitcoin world would find it that interesting or notable, it is an interesting detail for now. At some point, if Bitcoin continues to be accepted by businesses (up to ~50,000 via Bitpay) it may be as trivial as saying "Beepi accepts credit cards".

Do note that Wikipedia is more about what has already happened than about how awesome a company might be in the future. I look forward to the reliable sources that will talk about how many cars they've sold, how profitable they are/aren't, about when they've gone public, etc.

As to the 'marketplace'. Are you talking about the peer-to-peer marketplace? If so, that info seems more like a separate article and doesn't have a place in Beepi other than in the See Also or a "Beepi is a peer-to-peer marketplace" sentence.

I'd like to mention something to you about editing Wikipedia. If you're going to use the same reference more than once, please use Ref Name= as seen in Help:Citations_quick_reference. You can define the name for the first use (<ref Name="blah">example.com</ref>) and then just use <ref name="blah" /> for the other footnotes. This will keep the references section from filling up with dozens of the same link, as it did in Beepi. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 20:38, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Beepi change

Thanks for your additional edits. I made one change, which I explained on the Beepi Talk page also. I changed the word "middleman" to "peer-to-peer marketplace" because it is much more technically accurate. Middleman suggests an entity that possibly takes possession of the goods, as some middlemen do. Beep is a marketplace because it provides the venue or platform for the sale, via its software, but is never an actual party to the sale. This is a really important economic, legal and practical difference.

As per your suggestion, I may go back and find info on their current sales, growth etc. I think I read it somewhere but will have to go back and find it.

Thanks for the style note. I was wondering how to do that. BC1278 (talk) 20:54, 12 February 2015 (UTC)BC1278

Hey, BC1278... Yes, but the reader may know what a middleman is, but "peer-to-peer marketplace" seems more like marketing talk / buzzword. What does that mean? How does a Wikipedia reader figure out what that means? It's not notable enough to be a Wikipedia article...

Middle man, in the sense of Intermediary, does have a known meaning here. I'm open to another word, like intermediary , but "peer-to-peer marketplace" doesn't seem like an accessible phrase that defines what Beepi does. Beepi definitely is an intermediary, though, as it "is a third party that offers intermediation services between two trading parties. The intermediary acts as a conduit for goods or services offered by a supplier to a consumer. Typically the intermediary offers some added value to the transaction that may not be possible by direct trading." Stesmo (talk) 21:18, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Peer to Peer Marketplace in Beepi

Hi. I've changed it to just marketplace for the time being. A marketplace is means there is a large volume of good and services available for sale in one place, often without a range of intermediaries between the buyer and seller. An intermediary or middleman means there are layers between the buyer and the seller, when in fact the specific business model of Beepi and similar companies like Uber Technologies, Airbnb, LendingTree, and many other newcomers is disintermediation. In other words, to quote from the Disintermediation entry "the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain, or "cutting out the middlemen". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate (such as a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent), companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet. One important factor is a drop in the cost of servicing customers directly.""

Peer-to-peer is actually a technical term from computer science that is now being widely applied to a whole series of hugely disruptive new business models that furthers disintermediation by cutting out even more layers. Peer-to-peer renting exploded because of Airbnb. As Peer-to-peer renting explains "Peer-to-peer renting services and Platforms are usually online marketplaces connecting individuals and enabling rental transactions between them. Peer-to-peer marketplaces are an evolution from the traditional Business-to-business marketplaces (also referred as B2B), and Business-to-consumer marketplaces (also referred as B2C)."

We also have huge new marketplaces in Peer-to-peer lending, Peer to peer investing, peer-to-peer banking, [[ and Peer-to-peer carsharing in the form of Uber. Tech entrepreneurs have been going market to market (hotels, taxis, car sales, banking) and figuring out how to apply Disintermediation. In aggregate, some refer to all the explosions of peer-to-peer activity as the sharing economy.

So I hope you'll see I've chosen my words carefully to represent a specific and highly notable kind of economic and technology activity. BC1278 (talk) 15:53, 13 February 2015 (UTC)BC1278

Thanks, BC1278. I understand both the terms peer-to-peer and marketplace, as well as the general trend of "disruption". My point is that 1) it's a marketing term / buzzword and 2) readers may not know what it is. And, notice what your "marketplaces" list of articles in the third paragraph is lacking... "peer-to-peer marketplace".

Specifically, Beepi is an intermediary and not a marketplace. It's not replacing some distribution channel, as used cars don't really have one. The model it's trying to shove its way into is between the posting of cars on craigslist (requiring no distribution channel and no third party being involved in the transaction other than for posting the ad) and used-car dealerships (where the original car owner has sold the car to a third party (dealership) and the third party is now trying to clear its inventory and sell it, perhaps having to offer guarantees and warranties). Beepi does not just accept an ad, it also guarantees the quality of the goods (inspection), arranges for delivery, accepts payment, offers a guarantee of sale, etc. In fact, if the car doesn't sell, Beepi buys the car that's for sale and is now the used-car dealer trying to clear its inventory. Yay for disruption?

Unlike any of the examples used (car-sharing and lending/investing/banking), the used-car selling already had a peer-to-peer element for decades via classifieds/Craigslist, local physical bulletin boards, online bulletin boards / forums / message boards and even a sign in the window of the car. For that market, Beepi is actually introducing layers between the buyer and the seller. Layers I'm sure folks are willing to pay for, but it's not removing them.

I understand it's very exciting and cool, especially if you're in Silicon Valley and/or have a piece of that pie, but Wikipedia doesn't really do exciting. And, the risk being run here of trying to breathlessly brand this with a marketing buzzword is that it makes it harder for the non-techie/non-Silicon Valley readers to understand what the subject is. If there isn't an article there for a reader who isn't sure what a peer-to-peer marketplace is, then a less cool term or phrase should be used so people interested in learning about Beepi can learn about Beepi. Stesmo (talk) 17:59, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

@Stesmo: A Marketplace is simply, to quote Wikipedia, "A place where buying and selling occurs." Beepi is a marketplace, in both standard language and formal economic terms. Except in unusual circumstances, it does not take possession of the cars. It provides a place where buyers and sellers can exchange goods for capital and provides them with services to assure that the transaction is transparent and honest, just like a stockmarket. As the Market maker, it sets the rules for the transaction and attempts to make it as smooth or friction-less as possible. Just like the New York Stock Exchange, in unusual circumstances, where there isn't a match between a buyer and seller, it will step in on one side of a transaction as a Market maker to assure market liquidity.

Here is a partial list of news publications that have described Beepi as a "market" or "marketplace":

-the Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/articles/beepi-raises-60-million-to-sell-used-cars-to-smartphone-generation-1412738102/ -Wired http://www.wired.com/2015/02/beepi/ -MIT Technology Review Spanish Edition http://www.technologyreview.es/tr35argentinayuruguay/profile.aspx?trid=1524 -Techcrunch http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/06/beepi-60m/ -Re/code (created by WSJ senior business reporters Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberger) http://recode.net/2014/04/15/beepi-could-be-the-car-buying-site-weve-been-waiting-for/

That should suffice. Wikipedia favors the evidence provided by independent, verifiable sources WP:Verifiability All these sources refer to Beepi as a marketplace or market. I can find no source that refer to it as an intermediary - and I looked carefully. So in the end, my analysis and yours are less important than what the verifiable sources say.

When I get a chance, I will write an entry for peer-to-peer marketplaces or redirect that entry to Social peer-to-peer processes because as the peer-to-peer renting listing states, all these other new categories are forms of peer-to-peer marketplaces. Rent-a-room and share-a-ride were and are also both popular electronic and physical bulletin board entries, (just like buy a car), and yet Airbnb and Uber are considered among the most significant disintermediaries of the last decade because they removed middlemen from the housing and taxi industries, respectively. As with Beepi, these services provide a platform for buyers and sellers to conduct a transaction - they do not actually buy or sell the good and service, themselves (except rarely, to make the market.) Beepi is disintermediating used car dealers (actually, it's a complex eco-system of wholesalers and retailers, but I don't have the citations at hand, so I won't try to document that here. Suffice to say there are several mark ups, resulting in cars being sold substantially more expensively than peer-to-peer.)

Its model is identical to all these other disintermediation plays in the peer-to-peer economy. FYI, as you raised it, I'm in New York, not Silicon Valley. I've been writing about economics and markets for 25 years, although I am not claiming my expertise matters. I'm just citing the sources. BC1278 (talk) 00:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC)BC1278

Congratulations

		The Silver STiki Barnstar of Merit
		Congratulations, Stesmo! You're receiving this barnstar of merit because you recently crossed the 10,000 classification threshold using STiki. We thank you both for your contributions to Wikipedia at-large and your use of the tool. We hope you continue your ascent up the leaderboard and stay in touch at the talk page. Thank you and keep up the good work! West.andrew.g (developer) and Widr (talk) 05:43, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about the improper link

Hi, Stesmo, I had fixed a bad external link for Cape Gazette on another page and thought this was the same situation. It won't happen again. If I can persuade our management into creating a valid Wikipedia page for our newspaper, may I use that internal link in List of Delaware Newspapers? Thanks, Teresa :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teresar WV (talk • contribs) 18:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Welcome, Teresar WV! Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. I have good news and bad news. Good news: You absolutely can use the internal link (aka Wikilink) to the article about your newspaper in that list and elsewhere in Wikipedia where ever the paper is referenced. The bad news: You and your paper shouldn't be doing much other than simple edits (like linking to an existing article) if your edit concerns your newspaper. Please take a look at the Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. All is not lost, though... You can still request an article be written about your paper... See I think my organization deserves an article on Wikipedia but none exists. What can I do?. Please don't take this as a "don't edit Wikipedia", though. Please continue to edit, just with caution around areas you may have WP:COI. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

John Kunich

Please advise what sources are considered not reliable. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aew2145 (talk • contribs) 22:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Aew2145, thanks for stopping by my Talk page. You can check out the Biographies of Living People sources WP:BLPSOURCES and at WP:SOURCE. A rule of thumb is: except for really basic information (where someone is born, company headquarters, etc.), sources should be reliable, third-party and published. A press release, blog post, author bio, etc. aren't going to work for most claims. If there's a problem with finding reliable, secondary sources, Kunich may not be a "Notable" enough subject for a Wikipedia article.

"A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." Notability_(people)

Thanks for stopping by... Stesmo (talk) 23:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Marian Anderson Edits

Hi. This IP is the Free Library Of Philadelphia. There is little I can do to control edits. I'm sorry if someone was messing with one of your pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.224.98 (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, 38.98.224.98. Thanks for letting me know. It happens... If it gets pretty bad, an administrator might place a temporary editing block for folks on the IP for those who aren't using an account if it gets out of hand. Stesmo (talk) 20:13, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi

I have edit the link because it is broken and it is relevant to the content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushj2005 (talk • contribs) 21:04, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit request for Sophie Hunter page

Hunter has notable family members and should be included in her infobox. Please do help me in adding the family parameter. :) You can just copy-paste the one I made. Just replace the parentheses with brackets for linking. All references are in the family section of her page already. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

|family= ((Michael Gow (British Army officer)|Michael James Gow GCB))(maternal grandfather)
((J. E. B. Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone)) (maternal great-great-grandfather)
((Timothy Carlton)) (father-in-law)
((Wanda Ventham)) (mother-in-law)

58.140.17.253 (talk) 01:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, 58.140.17.253. I see someone else took care of this for you. Stesmo (talk) 22:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit to monster.com

Hi, Stesmo, the reason I deleted those entries from monster.com page was because I noticed that of the 1560+ words in that page, 960+, or approximately 62%, was negative. Some sentences are also repeated. Is "trafficated" even a word? Yet it is mentioned twice. On the whole, that page is sloppy.

The page is also outdated. May the following sentence be added after "in January 2013, ranks Monster.com third behind Indeed.com and a close second to Careerbuilder.com": "As of February 2015, the most popular job websites are Indeed, Monster.com and Glassdoor."

I have a lot of respect for Wikipedia and would not want to think that it is in the pay of some competitors of Monster, out to launch a smear campaign on the poor company. Does Wikipedia have a policy against malicious attack on entities? Lizzydarcy2008 (talk) 01:28, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Lizzydarcy2008. Do you work for Monster.com, an affiliated company, a PR/Promotional company or are otherwise affiliated with Monster.com? Your edits and comments here give the impression that you have a conflict of interest and that you should not be making edits in respect to Monster.com on Wikipedia except in the Talk pages. Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion.

If you are not affiliated with Monster.com... Wikipedia strives for a neutral point of view, but that doesn't mean that positive or negative claims, if backed with reliable sources, can't be included. While I agree that article needs work, removing anything that isn't glowing about the company is not the way to go about it. The issue I had was with the PR whitewashing and not fixing grammatical errors or updating stats. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 22:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Hi Stesmo, Thanks for the pointer about external links. I did check whether the entry I inserted had an internal link, but it didn't. So I wasn't sure if I should leave it without any links or go ahead and add the external link. Thanks for correcting my mistake. I'll keep this in mind the next time.--Naray81 (talk) 15:41, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Naray81. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. In general, if there isn't a Wikipedia article about a subject, it shouldn't be added to a list. If you think that something really should be in that list, there isn't an article on it *and* the subject is WP:Notable, then you may want to create an article (or make a request for the article to be written). Then, you can add a link to that article on that list. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 22:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Links to non-English Wikipedia entries

Some of the companies listed in Fabrice Grinda have Wikipedia entries in other languages. French, Portuguese, etc. These include very notable (and large) companies in Brazil, France, etc. that warrant a Wikipedia entry only in their home market. But I think they pass the notability requirement for inclusion on a list of investments. Is there a way [[]] to link to entries on foreign language versions of Wikipedia? Am I correct that if they are notable in a foreign language version of Wikipedia they should be included? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BC1278 (talk • contribs) 20:28, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey, BC1278. Yes, use [[:lang:Article]] or [[:lang:Article|Other Text]] , an example for pointing to the Spanish Mont Blanc article: es:Mont Blanc or Mont Blanc. Oh, and to sign your talk comments, use four tildes (~~~~), like this: Stesmo (talk) 20:37, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Why Did You Remove the Links form That article

Hey i just check the article "Amit Agarwal" now and find out that you have removed many links. I think that those links are necessary .please add those again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sagar Basak (talk • contribs) 02:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Sagar Basak. I removed those links because they did not meet WP:EL. Please read through that link for more information. Also, please read Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion and WP:SPAMLINKS for more information on why you should not be adding links to your own websites as you did in WhatsApp. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 02:22, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your edits to Byron Udell and Accuquote that no-one else could be bothered to do. —George8211 / T 18:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Resume Edit

Hi Stesmo,

I edited the resume page today and don't understand why you removed the citation. Please explain.

Chefnewman (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Chefnewman. It was less of a reliable, third-party published source and more like Spam. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Stesmo (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Navigation box to nowhere

As I have stated, red links are good. It you believe that some of those are not notable, then they can be removed with that comment. Or, redirects can be crated to another article that talks about them. However there is not justification for simply deleting a red link because it is a red link! Vegaswikian (talk) 17:57, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Vegaswikian. Thanks for stopping by. You'll notice that I hadn't removed the redlinks from the Pinnacle article for this reason. From that very guideline you linked to:

"Red links generally are not included in either See also sections or in navigational boxes, nor linked to through templates such as {{Main}} or {{Further}}, since these navigation aids are intended to help readers find existing articles. An exception is red links in navboxes where the red-linked articles are part of a series or a whole set, e.g. a navbox listing successive elections, referenda, presidents, sports league seasons, and the like."

As a casinos belonging to one company don't meet the "successive" criteria above, I'm sure you can agree now that the navbox redlinks should be removed while retaining the redlinks in the Pinnacle article to help folks understand those articles need to be created (if they meet WP:NOTABLE). Thanks for stopping by my Talk page and continuing the discussion. Stesmo (talk) 19:07, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Your own quote supports the inclusion of the redlinks. This navbox is an example of a "whole set", comparable to a list of presidents. Red links are obviously problematic in a navbox with an ill-defined set of topics such as {{philosophy topics}}, but they are perfectly sensible for a navbox that circumscribes a finite set of notable topics (and all the Pinnacle properties, with the possible exception of the Horseshu, are indeed notable). Toohool (talk) 06:37, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Toohool. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. The quote absolutely does not show that 8 redlinks for casinos belonging to Pinnacle should be included. It clearly references successive sets. You'd not want to have a navbox of all pingpong championships in the 1960s and leave out a redlink'd 1961, as an example. Adding redlinks for 8 casinos out of 24 for Pinnacle doesn't fit the criteria. Mayhaps if they were named Pinnacle First, Pinnacle Second, Pinnacle Third, etc. and the 2nd one was a redlink...

Now, if these casinos are notable, I'm sure someone will create pages for them any day now and *then* they can be added to the navbox and the navbox template added to those articles. And at that point we can all be happy with that navbox template. But, until then that navbox should not include 8 redlinks. Stesmo (talk) 06:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

You are reading the word "successive" as applying to the whole list of "elections, referenda, presidents, sports league seasons", where I believe it only applies to "elections". Otherwise, the words "or a whole set" have no meaning in this sentence. I don't think your view is unreasonable, but you have made your change, it has been reverted by 3 different editors, and you should not keep re-applying it without gaining some consensus. You may want to brush up on WP:BRD. And if you have doubts about the notability of these casinos, you can say so, and I can explain in great detail how I know that they are all notable. Toohool (talk) 07:21, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Toohool. This isn't a matter of "well, I think that the contributions of General Smith should be emphasized more than those of General Jones in the article". This is a matter "this doesn't meet Wikipedia guidelines". Removing redlinks from a navbox is more mild, than bold in this case. On the matter of their notability, if the casinos have notability, an article will be written about them. I have zero problem with articles being written about these casinos if they meet WP:NOTABILITY or not written about them. I really don't have a dog in this fight... I am neither against or for Pinnacle or their properties. I have no idea if the casinos are notable or not. However, a template whose sole purpose is to guide readers to articles (in this case about Pinnacle's properties) should link to actual articles and not redlinks. That's where I'm coming from on this. It would work out perfectly if someone wrote up 8 great articles and added those no-longer-redlinks back to the Pinnacle navbox. Everyone wins, including the readers. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Stesmo (talk) 07:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

You have your interpretation of the guideline and others have a different interpretation. If you want to make your changes, get consensus. Toohool (talk) 08:06, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Fullpower Technologies

Do we need to do anything about the large number of SPAs on this article? —George8211 / T 18:52, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey, George8211. They appear to be sockpuppets of a PR firm / in-house marketing of Fullpower. I've been thinking about submitting them to SPI for their edits on Philippe Kahn, Fullpower Technologies and Manufacture Modules Technologies (MMT). I just need to get up the energy to grab all the diffs and submit. Current SPA is at least improving the article by removing press releases cites and replacing with published articles.Stesmo (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Diffs: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], and Noahjohn's nine (as of now) edits: [21].

Just to overload you, here's a diff of Philippe Kahn, and also Noahjohn's contribs. —George8211 / T 19:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

FYI, in the history of the Fullpower Technologies article, everything from Noahjohn's edit (at 19:11 UTC today, removing 1 byte) upwards hasn't been included in my list. —George8211 / T 19:29, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, George8211. I've opened a SPI at http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/NoahJohn.

Folding editor

I see that you removed the link (on 23 Feb 20015 at 18:02) which I re-added (it had been there for a couple of years already), pointing potential Winf32 users to my download site. There is no other download site for winf32. Your rationale for this was that "Reverting promotional external link masquerading as a cite". If this were so then wouldn't any url to any possible free download site fall into this category, like emacs (if it's that free) or whatever? I have nothing else to promote here than winf32, it's free, there's no hidden expensenses after downloading, and in my blog I take no AD-words or any ads from it. I have zero income from it and so it will be. Finally I have no wish to promote my own blog in the Wikipedia context. On the contrary:

• If you can suggest a site where winf32 could be placed that you could accept on behalf ow Wikipedia, please tell me and I would copy them over.

If not, Wikipedia users are left with the odd search engines to try to find the download site.

But there was no "masquarding" going on here. If you still say that there is a masquerading in the strictest sense, then I'd say it wasn't meant to.

I apologise if the url has caused any trouble to Wikipedia's users or principles. Please advice! Øyvind Teig (talk) 14:37, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Aclassifier. The reference wasn't to a reliable, third-party published source in an attempt to allow for verification of claims or statements. Which puts it more in the External Links category and less in the citation/reference category. In addition, it appears to be promoting a product (even if that product is free). Other companies may have met the WP:Notability guidelines and have a Wikipedia article and a link to their website. I'd also remove any of those company's links that point to their download site or blog instead of their regular, official website unless it was used as a valid citation.

I'd like to assure you that I am sure you have placed that link in an attempt to do the right thing, but I don't think Wikipedia is the place for promoting Winf32. I wish you good luck on finding the right place to promote your product. Stesmo (talk) 18:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Stesmo. I remember I was uncertain when I first put the url there and might have commented on my doubts (but I can't find when I did that the first time, it might have been in the Code folding page). As long as my intentention isn't doubted I am fine too! (The "masquerading" word kicked me on my leg! Maybe another reason text would have saved us this thread). I do agree that Wikipedia isn't the place to promote anything, really.Øyvind Teig (talk) 11:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Why did you remove my LAMAR HS LCT post?

Why did you do that? Your argument is invalid if you read the original post. I will make it neutral, but what you told me is total BS. why didn't you take down the post currently up that DOWNtalks it?

Decaffe6996 (talk) 23:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)decaffe6996 3-4-15

Hello, Decaffe6996. I removed your edit because it was promotional. I wasn't editing that page, I was reviewing edits made recently. While your edit was promotional, you are absolutely right that the paragraph there has unsourced content that should be removed. I recommend you remove the contentious content that doesn't have a reliable, third-party published source and enter an Edit Summary stating why you are removing that content. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 00:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Eleanor Clitheroe

Hi,

Thanks for correcting my mistakes - it was from my ipad, and the editing was not going well.

I was trying to change that Eleanor "is" the Executive Director to "was" the Executive Director. She left that position in 2013.

The organization is trying to contact all sites that have her listed as ED to clean up that information, so that they are current and correct.

Mrscplus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrscplus (talk • contribs) 16:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

No problem, Mrscplus. I reverted your edit not for changing "is" to "was", but because you seemed to have accidentally removed part of other text, breaking a link to a Wikipedia article. Stesmo (talk) 18:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You removed scholarly sources?

Hey Stesmo,

I am quite confused about why you thought the content you removed was promotional. It was informative.

I did my due diligence to look up scholarly sources and less well-known sources when editing information on subjects with which I'm familiar and I'm assuming that Wikipedia appreciates reliable but informative content. That is all I was attempting to provide. My purpose was to bring reliable and informative content to Wikipedia, though I do appreciate that you mediate rubbish content off Wiki.

Thanks and I'm curious how in the future I can write posts where they won't be considered promotional, since that is not my goal.

All the best, kgadams93 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgadams93 (talk • contribs) 20:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Kgadams93. Which edit? I reverted edits that contained promotional links / references for a beekeeping site from a couple articles and the promotional paragraph about content writing that seemed to be to promote the refspam in the center of that paragraph. None of the edits were reverted for your use of "Crane, E. E. (2013). The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting. Routledge, 341." references or the like. For information on using reliable, third-party published references, you can refer to WP:SOURCES. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Stesmo (talk) 21:00, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo,

I read the WP:SOURCES link and it states "Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest." None of my sources should have been considered questionable sources, therefore, since the content on the sites is accurate and reliable. In the future, I am not allowed to reference to less well-known sources? I don't think the book "Crane, E. E. (2013). The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting. Routledge, 341" is very popular if that's the case... Thanks for the clarification :)

All the best, kgadams93 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgadams93 (talk • contribs) 13:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

March 2015

Please refrain from making constructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Alsatian cuisine. Your recent edit appears to constitute Self-righteousness and has been reverted. Thank you. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:13, March 10, 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahrecht (talk • contribs)

Thanks but you jumped the gun

Thanks for your concern regarding my post on the JOBS Act. Finding a reference for the source is fairly trivial and calling my edits vandalism is somewhat insulting. Obviously, you are just doing what you think is good work. However, I have a username and will add the reference later. If you want to add it, be my guest, but please don't subtract from human knowledge. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.96.128.11 (talk) 22:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, 184.96.128.11. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Add your edit back with your source from your IP or your account, either is fine. If you can't be bothered with sourcing it, then it shouldn't be added. No one has called your edits vandalism, just unsourced. Stesmo (talk) 02:09, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Added. I would greatly appreciate it if you didn't hurt the site with your behavior in the future. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.96.128.11 (talk) 15:54, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

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Five Branches University

Dear Stesmo,

Thank you for your recent activity on the Five Branches University page.

I am an independent researcher who hoped to update the page. As I updated the page, I ensured to the best of my ability that I maintained a neutral tone. Furthermore, when I updated the page, I tried my best to base all content on facts derived from news articles. Only when I wrote descriptions of the programs did I reference the University's website. Previously, the page lacked description of the University's programs and background. Recently, I noticed that you reverted the changes I made on the page. From your page, I understand that you have a dedication to accuracy and Wikipedia's standards. Therefore, I be so appreciative if you could please let me know the specific reasons why you reversed the changes (perhaps the specific sections/words/implications) and kindly advise on how I can improve the page.

Thank you again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amethyst.sapphire (talk • contribs) 20:36, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for stopping by my talk page, Amethyst.sapphire. Also, thank you for using third-party, published sources for part of the article. When I reverted the changes, the things that stood out and made me revert the edits were 1) the copy-pasted content from the school's website (which was enough to revert the changes) and 2) unsourced promotional claims like "widely recognized as one of the leading..." If the article had not included the copy-pasted content, I would have just removed the promotional line here or there or included a Citation Needed request in the text. I probably would not have reverted the edits.

For the first issue, please use your own words in the future. Also, do remember that this is an encyclopedia and isn't an advertisement or the school's website: we don't need to include trivial information about the classes or school.

For the second item, such promotional claims (like "widely recognized", first in the nation, etc.), these appear to be promotional, especially as they lack reliable, third-party published sources. If the school is "widely recognized", there should be an abundance of third-party coverage for this as fits the concept of widely recognized :) (though you wouldn't need to include all of them, of course).

Removal or sourcing for the promotional claims and the removal or reduction of the Degree Programs to non-trivial content in your own words (not copy-pasted from their site) and that would be a great improvement for the article.

As a technical point, I saw you were including the same reference three times (not a problem), but were listing the reference in full each time. You can define the first use with a name and then use the name for subsequent usage, like this: 1st time: <ref name="Grows100">http://www.example.com</ref> 2nd time: <ref name="Grows100" /> . If you're using the Visual Editor, enter the first reference as usual and then click Cite | Reuse and select the citation from that list. Stesmo (talk) 05:47, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Southern Dewberry blackberry mishap.

Thank you for catching my mistake. I meant to create a new page for Rubus trivialis, not to rewrite the page for Rubus argutus. I'm still new to editing things. I want to become better at it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sshannon7 (talk • contribs) 16:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Sshannon7. Not a problem. Good luck on your journey to become a better Wikipedia editor... I'm still working on that goal myself. Stesmo (talk) 16:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Scarlet Monahan

starting to write up artist, scarlet Monahan. she is well known artist, globally exhibited and known for her cutting satire against the British gov and support of the disabled poor and vulnerable through satirical imagery. please advise I have info about her, exhibitions, publications etc. many believe her to be a true surrealist and the artist of modern society. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iconicartlover (talk • contribs) 14:18, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Iconicartlover. The good news is that since she is a well known artist, it will be easy to find reliable, third-party sources to use as citations for the article! If she fits Wikipedia's definition of "notable", particularly the Wikipedia:Artist's criteria, you're ready to go. I haven't created an article before, but Wikipedia:Your first article seems to be a good place to start. After you've created the article, then add a link to her page at Satirists / artists articles as appropriate. Good luck! Stesmo (talk) 16:23, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Stesmo, I will check out that link its a big help and add all back links to the page, and satire page. Iconicartlover (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

question on list of Pharma companies

Stemo I see you removed the link to the free database biodirecta with more than 2700 Pharma companies. Why do you think that it is not useful for that to be in the list of Pharma companies page? I am aware of hundreds of students and professors who are in need of such database for free to know what companies are in their countries. Shall I distill content from biodirecta into Wikipedia to make it acceptable for you? I hope this message reaches you. I am still learning how to post and comment. But I am willing to learn. Just let me know how we can make people benefit from this free source of Pharma companies list... Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fgmartinelli (talk • contribs)

Hi, Fgmartinelli. First, that is a list of Pharma companies that meet Wikipedia's notability standards (which means most of them have a Wikipedia article) and isn't a linkfarm to other websites that have lists of Pharma companies. Secondly, if you wish to promote your site or "make people benefit from this free source of Pharma companies" this is not the place for it. Here are a couple links on Wikipedia's policies: External Links, plain and simple conflict of interest guide and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Stesmo (talk) 23:59, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Dear Stesmo.sorry for the late reply but I was not notified of your reply. Thanks for your time anyway. I think I understand better what you mean now. Would it be interesting to report on what medicine or disease most of the companies work? We can provide for example X companies research disease a, y companies research disease b and provide link to the related disease page on Wikipedi, having biodirecta only as reference. I still think it would be a big loss of information for people who visit a page called list of Pharma companies not be allowed to know about the existence of other online lists outside Wikipedia. That is what most of the reader expect: or get a list inside wiki or get part of list (notable as you say) and reference to offline source to complement that. It would be a missed service by Wikipedia to make it look like such list do not exist. Because that is what most of students and professors in the sector look for when the actually visit this Wikipedia page... Do you see my point? Can you suggest me a way in which such useful (and free) reference could be provided? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fgmartinelli (talk • contribs) 07:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Fgmartinelli. I'd recommend you read through External Links, plain and simple conflict of interest guide and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. I don't believe Wikipedia will be the best place for you to promote your website. Stesmo (talk) 16:26, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

WebmasterMiller

Hi! Why adding link 'DJ Java Decompiler new download site' - (wich is a link to a commercial project) - is NOT spam, while online tool is spam? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WebmasterMiller (talk • contribs) 19:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, WebmasterMiller. That is some serious boldness. I remove a bunch of spammy links (including yours and the one you refer to), which you then put back and then ask me why one of the links you put back is allowed. I removed the "new download site" link as well as yours because they don't meet WP:EL. Stesmo (talk) 19:56, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Horological Smartwatch

You removed paragraph about Horological Smartwatch. Instead of removing, if you feel it is not neutral, please rewrite:

2015, Frederique Constant introduces the Horological Smartwatch, characterised by the fact that it is based around a dial rather than a screen. Powered by MotionX of Fullpower Technologies, the watches connect to an app on Android or iOS phone, allowing to track activity, measure sleep cycles, and get reminders to be more active if sitting too long. Activity and sleep quality can be seen on a secondary analog dial on the watch face itself.

Please check relevance Horological Smartwatch, there have been numerous articles written about this new product category.

Please reinstate on relevant pages. Thank you, Pcstas (talk) 21:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Pcstas. The edits you refer to are the edits added by the Swiss IP User 212.43.136.16 with very obvious COI. This will look familiar to other edits like the ones here http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Manufacture_Modules_Technologies_(MMT)&diff=prev&oldid=652800711 as well as the other or any of the other edits involving MMT / FullPower (see http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Noahjohn/Archive. I've become far more informed as to Fullpower/MMT/MotionX and the Horological Smartwatch than I had really wanted to be thanks to these PR accounts and edits. Rest assured, they'll be back in a couple days to add another paragraph about MotionX and FullPower to each of these articles (and probably a couple more articles). Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 21:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow... I just read your page and realized that you are the founder of Frédérique Constant and owners of Alpina. I had no idea. Then, while I've got your attention: Please tell your PR folks to stop it. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 21:21, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Stesmo, we do not have PR folks writing to Wikipedia pages. I wrote about the Horological Smartwatch, and frankly don't you think there is enough notoriety on this new product category I have been working on for two years? If 15+ TV stations found it interesting to interview me in Basel, don't you think that a short entry on Wikipedia is appropriate? If you are reasonable, please reinstate on Frederique Constant, Peter Stas and MMT. Re-write if you feel necessary, I am always looking for best solution. Pcstas (talk) 07:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, you should be aware that original text has been published on reputable sources like Bloomberg, Forbes, etc etc. Please do not question the notoriety nor that we want to inform Wikipedia readers on a new product category and what it means. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pcstas (talk • contribs) 07:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Pcstas. I'm sure that when you added this to articles about yourself and your comapny, you just forgot to log in with your account. I'd recommend making any further edits from your account and not from an IP so other editors are not thinking you're actively sock puppeting. Again, I'm sure it was an oversight. Also, please review Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion before editing articles about your companies or yourself. I'd recommend posting your paragraph to the Talk pages of the Frédérique Constant article asking for an uninvolved editor to add it. I don't feel that paragraph needs to be added to MMT (duplicate info) or your personal article (it was created by your companies, not Peter Stas, correct?).

I have made no claims to the notability or lack of notability of the information. My issue was the information was cut-and-pasted between articles, without much regard to existing material, much as previous PR/COI editors have done previously on MMT/Fullpower. An edit to an article doesn't need to meet WP:Notable to be added to existing, appropriate articles (see WP:NNC). On the positive, your paragraph is nicely sourced and not over-the-top in promotional language. If it hadn't been cut-and-pasted into MMT (where most of the information already existed, including the reference), it might have gone unnoticed. Good luck with your new watch. Stesmo (talk) 17:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, I did not login initially. After 10 days at Baselworld, tired and I did not make updates on Wikipedia for some time, needed to find back password also. When I write something on Wikipedia, I always try to avoid COI as much as possible and take only prior published texts. You can see from my IP (same for pcstas) that I have nothing to do with this 'Sock Pupating' you refer to, I don't even know what it is. So, where from here now? You already wrote that paragraph was nicely sourced. I would like to ask that you UNDO it on Frédérique Constant and Peter Stas. Yes, I initiated the project, created with R&D team prototypes, and found Fullpower as partner for firmware, apps and cloud. Thank you, Pcstas (talk) 20:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Pcstas. I'd recommend posting your paragraph to the Talk pages of the Frédérique Constant article asking for an uninvolved editor to add it, as per WP:BFAQ#EDIT. After reviewing Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion, of course. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 20:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Stesmo, you have removed, why don't you undo your removal? We have discussed and you agreed it was decently written. 212.43.136.16 (talk) 08:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I save you the trouble and have undone my entry on Frederique_Constant. Please do not remove again. Thank you, Pcstas (talk) 08:57, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Skrill - External Links

Hi! Care to elaborate why do you believe that WP:EL applies to iTunes and Google Play app links you have removed from EL of Skrill? Those are official apps and, in my opinion, those links offer a lot of value to visitors. The same as such links do for PayPal and IMDB. Enivid (talk) 20:36, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Enivid. The links do not advance the encyclopedic understanding of Skrill (WP:ELYES #3). Add in WP:ELPOINTS ELPoints #3 and the spirit of #4 (The official website (already linked) directs you to the download sites). Thanks for stopping by my Talk page, Enivid. Stesmo (talk) 21:18, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I've also removed the app download links from PayPal and IMDB, Enivid. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 21:22, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, sounds fair. Thanks for explaining! Enivid (talk) 07:51, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Why did you remove notable article about ShixxNOTE program which is on Wikipedia for more than 5 years

Yesterday you removed almost everything in article about ShixxNOTE program. Can you please put it back. You are third person who tried to delete article about great ShixxNOTE program which is sticky notes program and LAN messenger in one. Why did you do that ? I proove that article is notable, second article is there for more than 6 years. 2 times I have troubles like this one with other Wikipedia admins and I always proove that article is not PR. Not just me, also other Wikipedia admins agreed that article should be there. I am an author of ShixxNOTE program and I put article on Wikipedia which is now crippled by you. I saw your reasons but did you try program did you see how it works ?! It is not about program it is about messaging with desktop sticky notes program. So be polite and put text back or I will write to several Wiki admins who are I think admins more than you and know what is notable and what is PR.

Kind regards,

Ozren Sirola ShixxNOTE program author Sirola (talk) 08:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Sirola. WP:Notability applies to if the article should be on Wikipedia. As I did not nominate this article for deletion, it has no bearing here. You're referring to [this edit], where I left the edit summary of "Removed trivial and promotional content. Removed unsourced content. Add unsourced, encyclopedic claims back only if written without puffery and with reliable, third-party published sources (not from shixxnote, PR, etc.))". On a second edit, I added the edit summary "Previous edit also removed external links in body of article and pruned EL section to meet WP:EL".

So, let's start with the uncontroversial edits: I removed external links from the body of the article and pruned links from the EL section. Links in the body of the article are not permitted and most of the links in the EL section didn't meet WP:EL. Additionally, I removed the known problems/solution section, as Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal. WP:HOWTO also is the reason for the removal of a good chunk of the Features section. "Program takes note-taking to a new level by adding powerful sharing capabilities to the process and allows you to turn...", as an example, was removed because it is WP:Puffery or promotional language. After removing the external links, the promotional/puffery and the HowTo, that left a paragraph in Features that was essentially a duplicate of the Lead paragraph.

Please review Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. Stesmo (talk) 16:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Quick question for Stesmo

Hey Stesmo, Thanks for the clean-ups and message on the Alex Skolnick page. I have a question - can you tell me what is the best way to link Skolnick's official book website and new album website which are ELs within the main body? Isn't it necessary to show that some information is from there? That's why I thought they should be placed as references. Let me know. Also, I had to update the addition of his latest album, which you reverted back, so I'll have to go ahead once more and at least re-add that. i.e. add his 2014 release of Planetary Coalition after the 2012 Dark Roots under discography.

Thanks. Adam Zimberg (talk) 02:13, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

P.S...Just thought about it when I read your msg. again after sending you the above msg. True - his official page does have the ELs to his book and new project, so it's not necessary here perhaps - however for authenticity - is it still needed to add them as references? Don't know.

Thanks in advance. - Adam Zimberg (talk) 02:11, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

P.P.S. But then again, on reviewing Wikipedia's external links guidelines in detail, it states: "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject,[4] one should generally avoid providing external links ...." So since those links are to the Geek to Guitar Hero book's Official page and Planetary Coalition's Official page, shouldn't they be included? The links were there for a long time without any issues earlier. He seems to have separate official pages for the projects - his site, his bands, his book and his world music project.Adam Zimberg (talk) 02:44, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo, I'm very sorry my "quick question" is becoming a long winded one now! I think since his main official website already has a link to the book and world music project, there is no need for other ELs as you'd said in your msg, even though I noticed that many musicians pages have their separate websites under the External Links heading placed at the very bottom. Anyway, don't think it's necessary, and I can't afford to spend more time on this. Had just wanted to be thorough and not leave out any refs etc. So thanks for cleaning up - I'm keeping it the way you have in your last edit since you know best - except for the addition to the updated discography. I'm off to sleep now and just wanted it resolved. I'm happy with the way it is. Thanks again. Cheers, Adam.Adam Zimberg (talk) 05:23, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

your "cleanup" on NSF: an elephant in the porcelain shop?

what you surely thought was great clean up was about the laziest edit I ve ever seen: You didnt add a SINGLE ref. Instead, you threw away all inline NSF links which are illegit fair enough, but you COULD have transformed them into refs. I suggest you re-add them as refs, to undo the damage. Please, never do that again.--Wuerzele (talk) 23:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Wuerzele. Thanks for including a link to the edit! Most weren't added as cites because they weren't references for anything (you know, backing up a claim made in the sentence). If I converted most of those to refs, that would be hiding an external link inside of a footnote, and there's no reason for that. And, sadly for your argument here, I actually *did* convert a single external link into a cite, where it was appropriate. [[WP:LINKFARM|Wikipedia is not a link farm}} and WP:EL are great places to learn about External links in articles. Additionally, please review Wikipedia:Civility. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Stesmo, it was a very lazy edit. this is not uncivil. clearly you are not interested in discussion. --Wuerzele (talk) 19:20, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Notable (?) hospitality networks

I had added to the list of HospEx a total of 16 networks. After that i saw that the title had been changed to "Notable hospitality networks", some notable networks had been deleted (because they had external links) and the rest was kept. I re-added the deleted networks, without the external link. Again some networks got deleted because they are not "notable". The weirdest part, is that the network of cyclists (60.000 members) got deleted and the network of esperanto speakers (1450 members) was kept in the list. 1) How is "notable" defined? 2) Why only "notable" networks can be added? it's easy to have a list of all available networks, they're only 16... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.132.232.209 (talk) 22:35, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, 91.132.232.209. Notability, in this case, is actually Wikipedia:Notability. Which sometimes makes absolutely no sense, such as in the case you mention above. Most of the time, if you're adding an entry to a list on Wikipedia, it should have a link to an existing Wikipedia article about that list entry. If it is truly Wikipedia notable and and an article has not been written about the subject yet, it must have footnotes/citations of reliable, third-party published sources showing the subject meets Wikipedia Notability standards (in this case for (organizations and companies)). Though, an existing Wikipedia article makes the Notability argument a bit more loudly. Once these networks have articles, please add them back. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 16:23, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Removal of Symbid content

Hi Stesmo,

It came to my attention that you removed all my changes from the Symbid article. I made these changes in an attempt to update the content and lessen the promotional bias of the article as it currently stands.

I appreciate your reasons for doing so, however I believe it was an improvement from the current articles which is not factual and is written in the style of an advertisement.

Did you have a problem with the number of links, or the content in general?

Thanks. Louisjpe (talk) 09:54, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Louisjpe. Before I answer, I have a question as well: Are you affiliated in any way with Symbid or a PR company performing work on the article? If so, you should review Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest before editing entries where you might have a Conflict of Interest (COI).

The primary red flags for your edits were the overwhelming number of external links in the body of the article and Trademark symbols. A link in the infobox for the stock symbol and an official link are usually more than enough for an article about a company (see WP:EL for more info). Additionally, MOS:TMRULES will have more info on Trademark symbols. This is all before reading the text, where there are some blatantly promotional content like: "As one of the first platforms of its kind, during 2012 Symbid quickly established itself as one of the leading platforms in the rapidly expanding European equity crowdfunding industry" with a source that only mentions Symbid in passing with: "And in the Netherlands, crowdfunding is ramping up with Symbid." These, along with the removal of the Advert tag while making it more blatantly promotional, are the reasons I [reverted your edit]. I see you've made very similar edits and will be reverting your latest edit. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 16:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo. Thanks for your links regarding COI. I am an infrequent user of Symbid but that is the extent of my current affiliation - does this qualify as COI? I couldn't find an answer in the articles. Thanks for your input. To be honest I had copied most information from online sources to save time, which is probably why my edits were blatantly promotional. I have since removed many of the adjectives and have reworded sentences in a neutral manner. Also, thanks for your input regarding Trademark symbols, I have edited the article accordingly. Likewise the Advert tag. As for the links, as a new(ish) user of Wikipedia I am definitely too eager to link. I have edited the article so that there is only one link to the company website in the infobox. Thanks for you help so far and let me know if I can improve my edits further. Louisjpe (talk) 16:27, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Louisjpe. Thanks for responding. That would explain why it sounds like you're working for them if you copied their promotional content. Being a customer of Symbid would not run afoul of COI issues. As a new editor, you should also use your own words (to avoid WP:COPYVIO, with reliable, third-party sources as citations to allow for other editors and readers to verify the info. Good luck! Stesmo (talk) 16:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Texas A&M University School of Law

Please refrain from making constructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Texas A&M University School of Law. Your edits appear to constitute Self-righteousness and have been reverted. 70.128.117.172 (talk) 17:03, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

How was that edit trivial promotional content?

The edit I added about PrestaShop wasn't really trivial or promotional content. It marks a company changing their focus, which the page being about a company is pretty important. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aritali (talk • contribs) 05:04, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Aritali. Do you have a reliable, third-party published sources (not from the company or a press release) for this changing of their focus? Your paragraph seemed more like a product announcement. Oh, and if you don't mind my asking, are you involved with PrestaShop as an employee or paid to promote them? Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 19:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

PayPoint page

Hi Stesmo,

Thanks for helping me out with the PayPoint Wiki page - perhaps could you advise me as to which elements of the page edit were unacceptable and which were okay. I didnt believe that the article was coming from a promotional tact but then I am new on here.

If you could offer me advise ahead of my having another attempt, I would be most appreciative.

Thanks, James — Preceding unsigned comment added by James dawson (talk • contribs) 17:05, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, James dawson. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. The edit that you're refering to is here. The left side are areas changed/removed and the right side are your edits. When I reverted your edits, I said "Reverting promotional edits without sources that replaced sourced content and categories."

The very first sentence in the lead paragraph is promotional. Additionally, nothing you added included any footnotes/citations/sources, much less reliable, third-party published sources for verification of what you're writing. And, it replaced existing, sourced content and categories. Additionally, making claims like "companyX is an international leader" is an extraordinary claim and needs extraordinary, unassailable sources to back it up (press releases, blog posts, etc. just won't cut it).

You may want to review Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion (and the Plain and simple conflict of interest guide in case you're employed by PayPoint or paid to promote them). I'd also recommend Wikipedia:Your first article, as it seems to have some really good advice. Good luck, Stesmo (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Talking Tom & Friends

Hi, I don't understand why you've reverted most of the changes as all of them were correctons of factual inaccuracies. I provided relevant links to external websites (mostly media outlets) for the changes.

---

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Miharejc (talk • contribs) 17:20, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Miharejc. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. If you don't mind my asking, are you involved with Outfit7 or their affiliates as an employee or are you paid to promote them or the Talking Tom & Friends properties? I reverted your edits as they seemed promotional in nature. You're right that not all of the information you added was promotional and you did provide third-party sources. I would recommend you take a look at those and add just those back. Additionally, you may note that your edit also duplicated Angela's "stylish kitty" line in your edit. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 17:38, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

---

Hi, I have reviewed the Wikipedia policies you've suggested. I have a relation to Outfit7, but would not like to disclose any more detail than this. I see there might be a potential conflict of interest in play here. What would you suggest would be the best way to handle this?

Thanks. Miharejc (talk) 13:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Miharejc/ScubaBled. Thanks for replying. I would recommend you review Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest before editing entries where you might have a Conflict of Interest (COI). Thanks for being honest and good luck. Stesmo (talk) 16:55, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Oord Updates

The links to the Facebook pages were not being used as evidence to support the fact that he has been dismissed from Northwest Nazarene University. Rather, those sentences with links were simply a statement of fact. The pages in Facebook are as real as the author's own website or other sites that are linked.

Also, in your last revision some days, you wanted a source: I provided one (the Idaho Press Tribune story). But now you've dismissed it because Oord is only mentioned "in passing." He IS mentioned, however, and it's in a legitimate source! How do suggest that the link that story appear on the Wikipedia page?

So, rather than allowing Wikipedia to be a current source of information with two links to real pages, and by eliminating the reference to the IPT story, the page is stagnant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apodeski (talk • contribs) 21:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Apodeski. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Most of my issues were with edits made by other editors. The newspaper ref is good and appreciated. Things that appear in the cited newspaper article should be able to appear in the Wikipedia article. I don't believe all of the edits were yours, though, and neither the "Due to conflicting, secular views and teachings in 2015, he was let go" nor the "these declines were largely brought about by..." claims were in the article you referenced. While your commentary paragraph exhorting scholarship is not appropriate for an encyclopedic article, it was obviously done with the best intentions. Most of my issues with lacking/poor citations were with other editors.

My issues with your edits were links to the facebook pages (which aren't necessary and aren't reliable, third-party published sources) and the commentary. I reverted back to a last-known-good edit to allow for a fresh start. Please feel free to add back your paragraph with the newspaper cite (but, without the facebook/google docs cites) and that he is no longer faculty at NNU. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 22:22, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:EL and Fraternity chapter lists...

Since you evidently have a tool allowing for EL stripping relatively quickly, you may want to work your way through the remainder of Category:Lists of chapters of United States student societies by society. Thank You. Naraht (talk) 13:30, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I actually don't have a tool for stripping ELs quickly, Naraht. :D Stesmo (talk) 16:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, you at least have experience. :) Naraht (talk) 16:44, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:

Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:

After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead. (T90734)

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users at the English Wikipedia, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon. (T90666)

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
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• File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF)

19:45, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Username Change Confusion

In November I received a request that I change my username from CityofVanWA. I already created a new account with the username JilayneJ some time ago. Does that cover it? Thank you. JilayneJ (talk) 21:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Sure, JilayneJ. As long as it doesn't represent the name of a company, group, organization, etc. Since your username implied you may be with the City of Vancouver, WA, please take a look at Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest before editing entries where you might have a Conflict of Interest (COI). Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 21:52, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Confused

Hello!

I thought it was not needed but thanks for helping me revert back if that is the case.

Actually can I also ask how does the Orphan problem come about in articles, I read up on Orphans and to my knowledge, doesn't this article have some links from other articles already? Scissors Paper Stone (talk) 04:39, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Scissors Paper Stone. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. You removed three tags... Conflict of Interest ( COI), refImprove for not enough references and Orphan (no links back to that page). You didn't comment on how these were fixed when you removed them and added trademark symbols (which aren't to be included in Wikipedia articles (see MOS:TMRULES)). While the issues may have been fixed (for example, there is one article linking back to the Red Dot Payments article now), without discussing it on the article's Talk page or in the Edit summary it appears suspect. Orphan and RefImprove may be easier to show resolution on than the COI tag. Please feel free to make your same edits (without the trademark symbols). Except this time with an explanation on how these maintenance tags no longer apply in Talk or the Edit Summary. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 16:34, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo. Thank you for explaining it to me in detail! I understand better now! While it seems I have a lot more to learn on Wikipedia's guidelines, at least I now know a bit more. Thanks for your help! :) Scissors Paper Stone (talk) 01:52, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The Welding Institute

Hi Stesmo

Many thanks for your message. I am associated with The Welding Institute, however, I am in the process of neutralising promotional text which I myself added in 2012. I am a professional editor and would be most grateful if you would once again compare the two versions to see the work I have attempted to carry out to bring this page back in line with Wiki rules. Is this possible please?

Best regards Catherine — Preceding unsigned comment added by Catherinecondie (talk • contribs) 08:07, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Catherinecondie. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Please take a look at Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest before editing entries where you might have a Conflict of Interest (COI).

To address [the changes made]: Your edits now and then made claims that were not verifiable via third-party, reliable published sources. So, Citations Needed tags were added to request these. Your current edit removed some of the claims and all of those CNs while keeping in claims like "Friction stir welding was invented by TWI in 1991" remain. In fact, there are zero sources for any of the information in your recent edit; reliable or unreliable. No newspaper articles about TWI, nothing. Add to that, you've added a external link in the body of the article. In summation, your edits had improvements (removed some of the unsourced claims), but added other issues (external link, unsourced claims, COI). Stesmo (talk) 01:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi there

OK thank you, I am clearer now about the need for citations. I have newspaper/magazine articles, third party sources, which I can reference. I wasn't sure once I had edited and the text had changed whether I should remove or keep the citations needed tags - but I am clear now. I will in the next few days do my best to meet your points above, resolve any issues and resubmit.

Best regards Catherine — Preceding unsigned comment added by Catherinecondie (talk • contribs) 08:13, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

About Zello "see also"

Hello, Stesmo

Zello community mannager asked to remove that part because it has nothing with Them and it even is not equal type of aplication. So, i deleted it. As You made it back again, as it was, please explain what can i say to Zello C.M. Thank You! Kviki~hrwiki — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kviki~hrwiki (talk • contribs) 01:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Kviki~hrwiki. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. You can let the Zello CM know they don't get to decide what is in the Zello Wikipedia article. :) If you don't mind my asking, are you employed by Zello or otherwise compensated by them to promote them and/or edit Wikipedia? If so, please take a look at Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my organization? and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest before editing entries where you might have a Conflict of Interest (COI).

To the statement that the See Also entries aren't an equal type of app or anything to do with Zello... As it says in WP:ALSO "The links in the "See also" section might be only indirectly related to the topic of the article because one purpose of "See also" links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics." I'd note that the Freecast article links to Zello in its See Also section... Stesmo (talk) 01:31, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi again, Stesmo. You asked about my status with Zello, well, i am just an ordinary user, but i use it since the "Loudtalks Lite" times almost 8 years ago. As no one in my family dont speak English, i gave myself an effort to translate those app to Croatian language. Only way to get it in my phone was to do it again "on line" sentence by sentence. So why not? if they gave me (or all of us, users) the app like these free of charge, i will return it to them by translating it on line and let all other user to have it too (not only my family). I asked them about my way of thinking, and they agreed. As people there were talking, they asked about other OSes. So, i made translation for all 10 projects. As time passed by , i made Serbian translations too. If i help You, and You help to some one else, sometime, someone, will help me or someone mine. I think it is worthwhile. A lot of other people agreed with it, so people are helping each other...In the flood, last year, it worked perfectly when nothing else was not. So, if we want to say other about it, what is bad in that? There are a lot of people around the world who think so, and i am sure that no one got any money for translations or editing wiki page about Zello. There are small group of people who live of these company, but they were not jealously guarded their intellectual property on its own, they shared it with everyone who need. i think it is the only way to survive in these days. Dont You agree? Did You got any money for Your Wiki works :) . As an old HAM use to say, 73, --Kviki~hrwiki (talk) 01:16, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Kviki~hrwiki. Thanks for stopping by again. I don't actually get paid in any way for my wikipedia work, either. I do avoid editing articles about my employer, regardless. Though if you look around Wikipedia you'll find quite a few people who do get paid to promote their company or other companies. Sounds like your translating is a lot like editing wikipedia... No financial reward, but rewarding nonetheless. Good luck, Stesmo (talk) 01:25, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It was nice to talk with You, i wish You Have a nice day... You are always welcome to our channel "9A" or so.. 73, Kviki~hrwiki (talk) 01:33, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

List Of Virtual Schools

Hello Stesmo, It was really a big mistake. I wanted to give link to the wiki page but unknowingly I gave it to a external page. I genuinely apologize from my side and assure you than in future it won't happen again. I will work under the guidelines of wiki. Thanks for informing me. I really appreciate the effort form your side on article List of virtual schools.

Sculpture parks

Hi Setsmo,

I recognise that I didn't take the necessary notice here we were placing the links. We are working on a wikipedia site for the sculpture park and another for the artist. Until then I believe the internal links will remain red! Or do you have any sugestions? jjdeavJjdeav (talk) 07:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Jjdeav. The edit you're referring to is here. Redlinks are sometimes allowed, but you should take a look at the stand-alone lists page to see the requirements are for that page. Regardless if redlinks are appropriate, an external link is not. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 16:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Explanation Regarding My Article

Hello Stesmo. I appreciate your concern. But there is no such thing thing I have a personal connection with Forest Trail Academy. I am new to Wikipedia and I have shown many concerns about other articles also. The fact is that I like educational site. So I thought of writing an article for an Educational site. Might be I have committed some mistakes or not followed the guidelines but I assure you that in future it will not repeated again. I am really disappointed with my efforts. Give me some time and I will make that article perfect in terms of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashleyfta (talk • contribs) 05:31, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Ashleyfta. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. I'm sure you can understand how someone whose name includes the initials FTA (Forest Trail Academy) and created a page about FTA might be assumed to be associated with FTA. As to the mistakes; I make a ton of them everyday. It's pretty easy to do so on Wikipedia, with all the policies, guidelines and the Manuals of Style. I'm also still striving to improve as well. Good luck, Stesmo (talk) 16:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

BuzzFeed Edits

Hi Stesmo,

For a class I am taking an assignment was to edit a wikipedia page you are interested and write about the changes you see over time. I made edits to BuzzFeed including further descriptions on the tabs and where jobs are. I was wondering why you deleted my edits. This is for a class and I would really appreciate you telling me what information was trivial/promotional. Do you think there is a way that I could edit my inputs and put them back on the page? Honest feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Best, Laneydeck — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laneydeck (talk • contribs) 19:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Laneydeck. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. This is the edit you're referring to. The edits about the jobs seemed as if they were trying to promote hiring at Buzzfeed. The Content section edits included essentially what are definitions for News, Animals, etc. I felt they weren't really essential to the article. These seemed to me as if they were written by a Buzzfeed / public relations employee trying to promote Buzzfeed. Glad to hear it wasn't.

You absolutely can continue editing this article and any other here. In fact, you don't even have to agree with my edits and can take it to the Talk page for Buzzfeed to see what others think and possibly end up (eventually) gaining WP:CONSENSUS that they should be added back exactly as you originally typed them. You can tweak what you've already added to make it seem less promotional, with reliable, third-party published sources (not Buzzfeed, press releases, blogs, etc.). Or, you can find another way to add to the Buzzfeed article that adds to the encyclopedic knowledge of the company, complete with reliable, third-party published sources. Good luck! Stesmo (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks (TED speakers)

Just saying thanks for your work to clean up List of TED speakers! — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:37, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Rhododendrites. I appreciate that! Stesmo (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

ELN discussion of use of external links for Webby award lists

In case you haven't noticed yet, I started a discussion about the links at Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#Links_in_Webby_award_lists. --Ronz (talk) 22:41, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Ronz. Stesmo (talk) 23:46, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Coliving edit

Hello!

Thanks for your note earlier on Coliving. I was really just trying to rephrase the first paragraph which was already there, but was vaguely written. I will pay more attention next time. ;) UnluckyClover77 (talk) 20:36, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 4 May

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Tanda (association)

Hi Stesmo, this is Danny. I am new to editing on wikipedia, but I am wondering why was my changes to the tanda (association) page reverted? All various culture names of the system are well documents and claiming Hui as the Asian name for Tanda is inaccurate. Please refer to here (http://articles.latimes.com/1988-10-30/local/me-891_1_loan-club) and let me know if I can get my edits to the page back. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dannybin (talk • contribs) 21:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Dannybin. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. As per the edit summary for that edit, it was because you added an external link (a non-Wikipedia link) in the body of the article. This runs afoul of WP:EL. Feel free to add back the language info, but without the spam link to monkapp that you added there and on two other articles. Stesmo (talk) 21:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Got it! Thank you very much clarifying! I will do that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dannybin (talk • contribs) 21:45, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the citations in the article.

Hello Stesmo, I have done the citations in text in the Forest Trail Academy before but it is being edited and removed. That was the reason of putting the text without the citations but with the wiki page links. Can you please suggest me how to proceed further or can i include the text with citations again. Thank You.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashleyfta (talk • contribs) 04:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Ashleyfta. Thanks for stopping by again. I've added a Welcome message to your Talk page that has some links that can give some great info on editing Wikipedia.

One of the issues I'm currently having with the FTA article is the Original Research / lack of Verifiability. Wikipedia has three core content policies and No Original Research and Verifiability are two (the third being Neutral Point of View WP:NPOV). The information you add, unless they are really minor (what city the headquarters is in, date of incorporation, etc.), should be backed up with reliable, third-party published sources (not from the company/person/organization, blogs, press releases, etc.) to allow for verification by readers and editors. In the case of the FTA article, there aren't *any* which makes it appear like FTA might not be Wikipedia Notable enough for an article on Wikipedia and may need to be deleted. Granted, there were references that I removed in previous edits, like the accreditation refs which were just links to the homepages of the accrediting companies/orgs.

The FTA article really, really, really needs some cite/footnote love right now with citations from reliable, third-party published sources that are about FTA (and not just passing mentions). If I were you (and I'm not) I'd concentrate on finding those third-party published, reliable articles/books/coverage for the details already included before adding more text. Stesmo (talk) 21:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

RE: Grooveshark Clone

Hello, thank you for contacting me after you removed the image from the page. I added the image so it could be displayed next to the section it's talking about. If anything it's helping the article. Please expand on how you think having it would be a bad idea. Thanks, Anarchyte (talk) 02:28, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

With regards to spam links by Argo-e

Dear Stesmo,

Posting spam messages was never within our intentions. Geoengineer.org is an information center for geotechnical engineers and its website content is freely accessible by everyone. In case you have any suggestions on how to add unique content to wikipedia pages and contribute to the free online dissemination of related information, please let us know. That way we can avoid similar misconceptions in the future.

Kind regards, Argo-e (talk) 12:15, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Argo-e. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. You've added links to GeoEngineer.org to over a dozen articles, which seems like an intentional thing to do. In fact, it appears to be an editor doing promotion for that website, aka WP:SPAM. If you'd like to add content to Wikipedia, find reliable, third-party published sources that you're not affiliated with as sources for your content. Perhaps finding sources that aren't from geoengineer.org... If you're affiliated with GeoEngineer, please read up on Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion and WP:COI. Stesmo (talk) 17:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Ediekeel

sorry hope you removed, guess i am not understanding, so i have read guidelines, ty so much I am still noit understanding apparently I am just tired, anyway, if you see anything else I wasn't suppose to do can you remove it too and let me know what I am doing wrong if there is more smh Ediekeel (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)edie

Hi, Ediekeel. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Essentially there are very few places or reasons to add a link to a website unless you're using it as a reference. I've removed the external links already. I've added a Welcome message to your Talk page that includes links to more info on editing Wikipedia, including the Wikipedia Adventure. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 18:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

list of copyright collection societies

Hi Stesmo. I rolled-back your edit, and was posting on the talk page to the list article when I got your note. Let's keep discussion there. --Lquilter (talk) 23:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding a Wikipedia article

Hello Stesmo,

I have found that you have recently made changes on Forest Trail Academy and didn't mention any reason. May I know what was the issue in the article. Whatever the changes I had done recently is under the guidelines of Wikipedia. What's wrong with my article? At least, you could mention the reason. If you still think that Forest Trail Academy is not perfect then I request you to create a article for me. I think you are senior editor in Wikipedia team so why don't you help me creating a perfect article?

-- User:Ashleyfta 2015-05-19T00:24:37‎

Hi, Ashleyfta. The edit you're referring to is this one. I've included an edit summary with the edit that states: "(Removed WP:PUFFERY. Removed basic explanations about what things are (accreditation, online school, etc.); link to wikipedia article suffices there. Consolidated Courses.)". There is no reason to go on at length about what accreditation is, as there is a Wikipedia article on the topic. Provide a wikilink for the readers that aren't aware of what it is. If this was a stand-alone article written for another website, this may be a good article. However, since this is on Wikipedia, we don't have to write paragraphs explaining what common terms mean when we have Wikipedia articles that will do a more detailed job just a wikilink away. This article is about FTA and needs to focus on FTA. It felt as if the content being added was done to puff up the size of the article without adding much substance specifically about FTA. I think the problem here is that there isn't much to be said about FTA that would be backed up by reliable, third-party published sources. Which means perhaps FTA doesn't meet the Wikipedia notaiblity standards. I'm not sure there is an perfect article and I don't know if FTA has enough material to work with to add much more than has already been added. Stesmo (talk) 17:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

external links on copyright articles

Hi Stesmo -- So I went through some of the external links sections that you've been pruning from the copyright society articles. Many of the links appear to actually be press coverage of the entity. A lot of editors don't really understand the difference between "external links" and "references" sections, and just plop references and related reading into "external links" when it would be more properly incorporated into the text and/or referenced. It seems to me that it would be more helpful to go article by article and actually do the substantive work involved in incorporating the "external links" rather than simply removing them wholesale.

Wholesale removal of EL is completely proper when they are spam. But I'm not convinced that's what we're dealing with here. --Lquilter (talk) 11:11, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Lquilter. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. You're right. A lot of editors don't understand WP:EL vs. References. And, none of those links were useful references to reliable, third-party published sources. They are solely links to the official websites of those orgs. And, bulk removal of ALL external links is totally proper and necessary when they are spotted in the body of the website, with the exceptions granted in WP:EL. Wikipedia is not a link farm or a directory of external links. And, there is no need to incorporate dozens of external links going to the official websites of various copyright societies. That would be fixed by a) creating articles for them and adding their official website links there or b) creating an off-site collection of links at DMOZ or another similar site and linking to that in the EL section of the stand-alone list. There is nothing in WP:EL, the EL noticeboards or elsewhere. that would see the copyright society page as staying with all of those external links.

Because of your statements here, I felt perhaps I had made a mistake in removing an external link that was actually a reference to a newspaper, magazine, book, etc. (which also would help shows notability to be included as a list entry) and not just links to the official website. I've double-checked each entry and removed them again as not a single one was to a reliable, third-party published source. Thanks for stopping by... Stesmo (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Stesmo, if you read my note carefully, you would see that I was talking not about the List of copyright collective organizations but about the individual pages for the copyright societies from which you also removed many links in the "external links" section. This was a separate issue, and because we are still in the middle of discussion on List of copyright collection societies, you are now edit-warring on that page, which is not helpful. I'm going to revert those edits again, because you are not just deleting the links, you are deleting the actual organizations themselves. The criteria you need to familiarize yourself with is available at WP:LISTS for that page, but I am not going to discuss that page with you here, because it is a single page and the discussion should be maintained in one place at that page.

Instead, the issue I am raising with you here is your removal of links from the links section of numerous individual entries about copyright collection societies. For instance, this edit on Phonographic Performance Limited; it appears to be a reference that could / should have been incorporated into the text and into the references section. This is the sort of edit that you're making rather quickly that I'm concerned about. --Lquilter (talk) 11:55, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Lquilter Thanks for clarifying what you're referring to. Regarding the external link could have been used as a reference... For what? The editor who added it couldn't be bothered to use it as a reference nor apply it as a footnote to show what claims it is being used as a reference for. Which could mean that it actually wasn't used as a reference for the article, rather just placed there because it is about the same subject. Oh, and for edits to hang your hat on... That's a press release. It's not even a good reference.Stesmo (talk) 17:21, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

So I'm going through all the EL edits you've recently on a wide variety of articles, and finding many problematic edits. Here's one example: diff for Ad Council. You removed:

• an internal link -- fine if redundant;
• three official organs of the entity (twitter & facebook & youtube). These are grey areas. They are official links, but redundant and linked from the main website, so permissible but not mandatory to remove under WP:EL.
  • Twitter seems completely unnecessary; I would take the link out.
  • Facebook -- I would probably remove here, but for many smaller organizations their facebook page is their de facto primary website these days. Depressing but true.
  • The YouTube channel is also linked from the main front page, but may be worth highlighting in external links because it provides a readily accessible connection to the most notable campaigns from the Ad Council. Judgment call. But I don't see you exercising judgment so much as mass removal.
• 2 archives links, which are exactly the kind of external links to archives & libraries that Wikipedia is presently encouraging. These should not have been removed. One of them is to the University of Illinois which is where the Ad Council's archives are kept. What could possibly be more appropriate for research?
  • Advertising Council archives
  • Guide to collections containing information on the Advertising Council at the Eisenhower Presidential Library
• A link to AEF.com exhibit Advertising Council Retrospective on aef.com which is a bit more "research-y" but since it's sponsored by a related organization is not unbiased, neutral, etc.; fine to delete as spam.
• a link to a different advertising-related organization. No apparent connection to AdCouncil so spam & should be deleted. -- Outdoor Advertising Association of America homepage

So when I look at what you've done, I don't see you exercising careful judgment; just going through and taking out wide swaths of links. External links, I agree, are quite subject to abuse, but you still have to exercise some judgment. I am worried that you aren't exercising sufficient judgment. This makes me question much of your work, and I'm currently assembling a list of pages you've edited to scrutinize more closely. Which is tedious and time-consuming, and would ultimately lead to me filing some kind of request for fellow admins to intervene / scrutinize. It would be easier if you would check your behavior and modify as appropriate. --Lquilter (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Please read WP:EL. I know it's long, but a lot of the issues you seem to have are with it and not me or my editing here. Since the Ad Council has an official website, Twitter/Facebook/etc. run afoul of WP:ELNO. Only one of the two archive links actually go somewhere, as the other is a dead link WP:ELDEAD. When I visited the Illinois link before removing it, it seemed mostly to be a resource for people visiting the archive and not actually making archival information available online. It was the link I was most unsure of removing, but have no problem with it being put back in. Your accusations of not exercising any judgement are rude and unfounded. As you have obviously agreed with all but two of my removals for Ad Council *and one of them is a deadlink*. Either we're both not exercising 'some' judgement or I have since we're 68% in agreement on what links needed to be removed. Absolutely feel free to follow behind me and find external links that fit WP:EL and should be put back. I make mistakes all the time and could use the help. In fact, you could also find articles that don't follow WP:EL and help the Wikipedia:WikiProject External links.

As to your threats to get your fellow admins to ban me for removing external links that run afoul of WP:EL on your article. I'd hope you'd at least use the processes in place before outright banning me. This is my first interaction with an admin who has threatened me, so this is new for me. I don't intend to stop removing spam or ELs that run afoul of WP:EL, however. Stesmo (talk) 17:21, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not threatening anything. I'm pointing out that your current approach to removing WP:ELs raises some concerns, and it would be easier if you would take the advice of another editor to re-examine some of your approaches, rather than have us go through one of those tedious Wikipedia bureaucratic procedures that waste all of our time and energy and generate bad feelings. I am happy you're removing unnecessary ELs; that's an important project, and I'm sorry that I didn't make that point more clearly at the outset. You are doing valuable work, and I appreciate it, and I have no doubt that there are many millions of spam links that absolutely need to be removed. What I'm doing is pointing out, however, is that your approach can use some tweaking, and that you may have to slow down to allow yourself to consider the links more carefully.

On archive links: For the most part, research archives put finding aids online, but do not have full-text of the materials online. That's completely normal for research. In fact, since it is unlikely that all information will ever be digitized, it is especially important that links to the offline content be included to assist people in further research. --Lquilter (talk) 21:07, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello Lquilter. Thanks for stopping by again. Having worked with other editors on EL issues, including on the EL Noticeboard, as well as thousands of edits adding, fixing, removing and pruning external links, I feel my approach is working somewhat OK. Obviously, any process can be improved. Sometimes my edits result in discussions that require consensus to move forward (results: sometimes my edits are untouched, sometimes a discussion occurs and consensus is reached on which links stay and which are removed). Sometimes my EL edits result in another editor clicking the Thanks link. If you discount spammers and vandals, I expect my EL edits are accepted or appreciated more than they are disputed or hated. You can see from my Talk page & archives the unappreciative folks are a bit more vocal, though. :D I appreciate your feedback, though. Stesmo (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes we older editors can be a bit curmudgeonly or gruff in our tone, so I appreciate your continued efforts to stay positive and work on solutions. It's all too rare. --Lquilter (talk) 22:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Law School Transparency is not a reliable source

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources E-commerce sources While the content guidelines for External links prohibits linking to "Individual web pages that primarily exist to sell products or services," inline citations may be allowed to e-commerce pages such as that of a book on a bookseller's page or an album on its streaming-music page, in order to verify such things as titles and running times. Journalistic and academic sources are preferable, however, and e-commerce links should be replaced with non-commercial reliable sources if available. Biased or opinionated sources See also: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Bias in sources and Wikipedia:Neutrality of Sources Shortcut: WP:BIASED Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject. Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. While a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context. When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control and a reputation for fact-checking. Editors should also consider whether the bias makes it appropriate to use in-text attribution to the source, as in "Feminist Betty Friedan wrote that...", "According to the Marxist economist Harry Magdoff...," or "Conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater believed that...". Questionable and self-published sources Main page: Wikipedia:Verifiability § Reliable sources Questionable sources Shortcuts: WP:QUESTIONABLE WP:QUESTIONED

Reliable sources must be strong enough to support the claim. A lightweight source may sometimes be acceptable for a lightweight claim, but never for an extraordinary claim. Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties, which includes claims against institutions, persons living or dead, as well as more ill-defined entities. The proper uses of a questionable source are very limited. Beware of sources which sound reliable but don't have the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that WP:RS requires. The Journal of 100% Reliable Factual Information might have a reputation for "predatory" behavior, which includes questionable business practices and/or peer-review processes that raise concerns about the reliability of their journal articles.[10][11] Self-published sources (online and paper) Shortcuts: WP:USERGENERATED WP:USERG WP:UGC Main page: Wikipedia:Verifiability § Self-published sources Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable. This includes any website whose content is largely user-generated, including the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), CBDB.com, content farms, collaboratively created websites such as wikis, and so forth, with the exception of material on such sites that is labeled as originating from credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff, rather than users. "Blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the news outlet's full editorial control. Posts left by readers may never be used as sources; see WP:NEWSBLOG. Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications. Self-published information should never be used as a third-party source about a living person, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unemployed Northeastern (talk • contribs) 19:41, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Unemployed Northeastern. I assume this copy-paste is in reply to my request at your Talk page for a link to a discussion or Wikipedia determination that the lstscorereports.com site is unreliable. 1) That isn't a determination that this link is not a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes. 2) The text you quoted includes this very line: "However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective.. You should cease your removal of this source and take it to the Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard to get consensus on if this is or is not a reliable source for law school articles. Stesmo (talk) 19:49, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not just the lack of neutrality. They are a commercial website attempting to monetize information that the American Bar Association makes available for free, and they've introduced errors into the data. They are unreliable because their version of the data is so full of errors and they are clearly biased based on their founder's statements. They also lack any relevant qualifications or expertise. The underlying data should be cited instead of LST. For law school data, there are much better sources available. I've posted on the noticeboard, but I don't see any process for resolution, so pending resolution will continue to remove LST sourced material. It can be replaced with ABA or NALP sourced material by others. Unemployed Northeastern (talk) 19:59, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for stopping by again, Unemployed Northeastern. I'm glad you've started the process at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard, but it doesn't seem like you've followed any of the instructions there... You've not even linked to the website address lstscorereports.com. You may want to go back and read the "Before posting, please be sure to include the following information, if available:" The process may take a little time as other editors weigh in. Until its fate has been decided, please stop your unilateral declaration of reliable-ness and war on this source. Additionally, even after the Noticeboard says "Goodness, this source is horribly unreliable!", please be more careful and cut with a scalpel and not with the sledgehammer you're currently using. I'm going to be reverting some of your edits where you've been less than precise. When the Noticeboard gains consensus, please revisit the law school articles and make your edits then (if they don't already have a process in place for unreliable sources). I'm also going to place a notice about Edit Warring on your Talk page for you to look over so you don't get your account blocked unknowingly after reverting reverts. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 20:22, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I suggest not reverting any of my edits pending resolution of the discussion. The LST information was only recently inserted (apparently by someone at LST) over the last month or two, without any prior discussion about whether they are appropriate or not. They are presumptively not a reliable source since LST is a commercial website, is biased, lacks any relevant expertise, and more reliable sources of information such as the American Bar Association and National Association for Law Placement are available. The edits I am making are restoring these websites to the condition they were in 2 months ago before massive broad based editing by LST staffers (DC IP addresses). If LST is found to be a reliable source, we can discuss reverting edits then, or replacing them with citations to underlying ABA data and more comprehensive data on overall employment numbers. Pending resolution, the presumption should be in favor of restoring the websites to the condition they were in before the controversial edits by LST.Unemployed Northeastern (talk) 20:33, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello again Unemployed Northeastern. I'm going to continue reverting edits where you've tried to remove unflattering, yet sourced by other-than-LST, content. You've now been advised to stop your LST removal by two editors, myself and WikiDan61. Your cause maybe just (I make no judgement on it), but it may take more than a day to accomplish your apparent goal of ridding Wikipedia of LST. Let the process occur and see what happens and make your edits then. Stesmo (talk) 20:41, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. Revert surgically, please. I.e., restore information sourced to someone other than LST who is reliable (not a blog like "The Law School Tuition Bubble"), but leave out the LST sourced material pending resolution. It can always be restored if LST is found to be a reliable source, or can more easily be replaced with ABA data or NALP data, which is uncontroversial and non-commercial in nature. I will endeavor to be more surgical in my edits and only remove LST sourced material or LSTB sourced material.Unemployed Northeastern (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

@Unemployed Northeastern: No, you should not be more surgical in your edits. You should stop the process altogether until the discussion has run its course. The material is not libelous or otherwise dangerous in any way, so there is no deadline to remove it. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 21:09, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Law School Transparency criticism

The criticisms were deleted without explanation by yourself and another user. I provided information on the talk page. You did not engage and simply deleted the criticism. This is not appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unemployed Northeastern (talk • contribs) 23:59, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Law school transparency non-reliable source discussion

We should include the full ABA data from this website http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/, without any editing or commentary, which will always be the most up-to-date data available, and will always be available to everyone free of charge. The deleted text presented the ABA data in a misleading light by excluding certain categories of employment and only reporting the categories that LST says count as real jobs. That's not the position of the ABA or of the U.S. Department of Labor. Check out the definition of "Employment." U.S. News is behind a paywall, and if we can provide the information for free from an equally reliable or more reliable source, like the ABA, we should do that so that everyone can see the data for themselves without having to pay U.S. News for a subscription. I thought Wikipedia was all about open access for all? I'm trying to find a sensible solution. Let's discuss what makes the most sense going forward and focus on the substance. My proposal is that we replace all references to employment citing to LST with the following text: "The latest employment data for recent graduates 9 months after graduation is available for all ABA approved law schools from the American Bar Association.[3] The data includes both overall employment--which includes jobs other than practicing law--and a breakdown by specific categories that may be of interest. Information on tuition, fees, living expenses and scholarships is also available from the American Bar Association, free of charge.[4] Information about debt levels at graduation is available from U.S. News, but is behind a paywal." Unless trusted Wikipedia editors can confirm that the reported U.S. News data is what U.S. News actually says, we should not rely on it, since someone from LST may have inserted data that is different from what U.S. News actually says. They've made many mistakes in the past with ABA data. And with the paywall, we and other Wikipedia editors won't be able to spot the mistakes. As between LST and US News, US News is clearly the more reliable source, but it is a paid source that is basically just repackaging ABA data, so ABA is preferable. Can we get consensus behind something close to this proposal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unemployed Northeastern (talk • contribs) 00:32, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

You deleted all, not online what you thought it was promotion

hi stesmo, Actually, I just updated the information of our company with current numbers, current formats and new sponsors. You deleted all what I updated and not only one part as you said. I would like to know what do you consider promotion, so I can review. I follow the rules of Wikipedia so far. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by RKMP (talk • contribs) 06:54, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi, RKMP. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Thanks for asking about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines on promotion and advertising. You may want to read Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion as well as the plain and simple guide to conflict of interest (COI). Stesmo (talk) 07:44, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Sure, I read that before and I was careful not to sound as promotion. It is just actual information about the company. I think you refer to the external link I added to Icecat live. I will reedit it again. Tx — Preceding unsigned comment added by RKMP (talk • contribs) 08:01, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Your retaliation edits are a violation of wikipedia policy

Epeefleche and Stesmo have apparently expressed their frustration over Law School Transparency being deemed a non-reliable source by attacking Brian Leiter's wikipedia page and the wikipedia pages of the University of Chicago, Philosophical Gourmet, The American Bar Association and Kirkland & Ellis: http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Philosophical_Gourmet_Report&type=revision&diff=663725919&oldid=642947761 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Brian_Leiter&type=revision&diff=663826565&oldid=663635214 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Philosophical_Gourmet_Report&type=revision&diff=663712714&oldid=642947761 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=ABA_Journal&type=revision&diff=663728099&oldid=643625305 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Kirkland_%26_Ellis&type=revision&diff=663728236&oldid=652907416 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Brian_Leiter&type=revision&diff=663725721&oldid=663714656 http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=University_of_Chicago&type=revision&diff=663727449&oldid=662822725 This is a violation of Wikipedia's policies against retaliation. http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_repeated_arguments http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Sour_grapes http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility Unemployed Northeastern (talk) 18:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC) Unemployed Northeastern (talk) 18:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unemployed Northeastern (talk • contribs)

Hi, Unemployed Northeastern. As amusing as you may think you are, my edits are purely in line with Wikipedia policies. My primary editing is with External Links, spam and vandalism. I can assure you that I do not have the depth of feeling you've displayed over this issue. Rather, like with most of my thousands of edits, these edits have nothing to do with my feelings towards your cause. It is because when I followed wikilinks, I saw the articles did not meet the guidelines and policies of Wikipedia. Please stop trying to disrupt Wikipedia. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 20:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and my having removed external links from some of the articles you're following does not constitute edit warring, as pointed out on the edit war noticeboard. Please take a step back and let the process slowly grind on at the Reliable Sources noticeboard. Oh, and do note that notifying the editor you are reporting to a noticeboard is usually required or suggested (depending on the noticeboard - Edit Warring requires it). Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 21:17, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree with what Stesmo says above. Furthermore, I have concerns about Unemployed's ethics and/or gross negligence, which I have indicated on a couple of the indicated talkpages, in response to Unemployed's multiple false statements -- both as to the conclusion of the noticeboard discussion, and as to his assertions that I had edited certain articles in retaliation ... when in fact I had not even edited those articles any time recently (if ever) at all. Epeefleche (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Epeefleche, you've edited Brian Leiter's Wikipedia page 22 times in the last 3 days. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Epeefleche&offset=&limit=500&target=EpeeflecheUnemployed Northeastern (talk) 17:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

You've falsely, unethically, in trolling fashion accused me of editing other pages. More than one. That I had not edited -- as recent "retaliation" Have you not read what you wrote? How can you be so devoid of ethics that you would make patently false accusations? And how would you be so brazen as to do it where everyone can see that that is the case? Epeefleche (talk) 19:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Same editor?

Do you think the two editors who revert our edits at the same article, most recently of me here, are the same editor? They both claim "retaliatory edits" -- with perfectly appropriate edits, and think it cause to revert. And one appeared just for the first time during his Memorial Weekend vacation, while the other has now appeared upon his disappearing.

Similarly, both refuse to answer if they are editing under different names. More than that -- both answer the question by asking the same in reverse (though not answering). More -- both claim COI in the editors they are reverting, with zero basis. Thoughts? --Epeefleche (talk) 02:27, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

At most, it would seem there's a campaign from UN to rally editors to his cause. But, based on Philosophy Junkie's brevity in Talk (compared to UN), I believe he is not a sock of UN. Just a friend / fellow fan of Leiter that got pulled in to help. Using the duck test, I'm not seeing a Quack here. Stesmo (talk) 17:42, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Sharp Corporation

What is the point of Wikipedia if every time someone contributes some information it constantly gets taken down by editors who clearly know nothing about the subject???

I recently added some useful information to the SHARP page in the form of their PC3000 computer that I own(!) helped develop the use of Windows for it in allegiance with DIP and SHARP!

I give up... Wiki is too heavily censored to waste time on any further... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59bassman (talk • contribs) 17:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Hello, 59bassman. As most people reading that article don't know the subject either, we need to have reliable, third-party published sources for verification that what you've added is correct and matches what the source says. Another page to read would be No Original Research policy (one of the three core content policies at Wikipedia). Additionally, please don't add external links to your article. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 18:37, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Humble Bundle Page edits

Hi Stesmo,

I saw that paragraph as yet another attempt by HIB folks, or whoever put that paragraph there to make me look like a bad guy in the situation HIB created. Not only they quoted my interview, despite lack of quotes in other paragraph relating to other cases of criticism, but also referred to me simply as "Zubov" instead of either referring to me as Mr. Zubov or by a full name as it was done with other persons mentioned on the page. I find it quite offensive on top of what was already inflicted on me by the Humble Bundle Inc.

Therefore I deleted the paragraph. I didn't know how to add comment explaining reasons motivating me to remove that content. Another person restored it immediately, which was outrageous as that person could have cross reference my name and nickname and left it as-is.

The paragraph brings absolutely no solution to how HIB and other big corporate entities run their agenda (which is as they please) without any regards from small people, and it only does more harm to me and my reputation.

Please keep that paragraph removed.

Sincerely

Motorsep (talk) 22:53, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Motorsep. You can add the reason why you've made the edit to the Edit Summary (below the edit window you're typing in and above the Save Page button). That reason will show up in the Edit History page of the article and people won't have to guess as to what happened (vandalism, etc.). As to someone cross-referencing your account name and the information, they shouldn't have to guess as to who is editing, cross-reference or guess as to what is going on with that edit; and won't need to if you include Edit Summaries or take it to the Talk page of that article. Which is why I reverted your edit; You were removing sourced content and you appeared to be a vandal engaged in an Edit War. My suggestion to you here is 1) Don't edit that page for 24 hours to help keep your account from being blocked for edit warring. 2) Add your rationale why the material should be removed to that article's Talk page so other editors can help remove it during the 24-hours, let you they agree with you or offer information on why it should stay.

Additionally, note that people should be referred to only once by full name in an article after the lead paragraph, then by surname/last name from then one. And, never by Mr. Name, etc. as per the Manual of Style. If you aren't referred to by full name at least once, that should be fixed. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 23:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

List of websites before 1995

Hi,

I have mixed feelings about your edits to this page. I agree to some degree that a page full of offsite links is problematic. However, in the context of this article, these links are also part of the content. In many cases, websites are known by their domain name as much as by the regular name. URLs to current locations of these sites is part of this content that I think is important to document. I do see that having them purely as links doesn't necessarily serve the content aspect, but people could at least hover and see the link. Ideally, the text could be altered to make the links part of the explicit content. But the changes you've made serve to simply remove content. Battling McGook (talk) 04:42, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Battling McGook. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. My decision to remove the external links came from three thoughts 1) As you said a page of offsite links is problematic WP:EL. 2) Most of the list entries had their own Wikipedia articles (where an external link probably exists) 3) The links weren't to an 'historical', archive copy of the site of how it looked back in 1995 (one was to an archive, but the entry has a cite to a Medium article on the historical site). You may find a recent discussion on the Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard titled "Links in Webby award lists" interesting. It discusses 'historical' archive external links vs. modern links in lists about old websites. Stesmo (talk) 16:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Barracuda

Thank Stesmo for the guidance. Greatly appreciated Ronnie Findlay (talk) 20:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Albany Law School Citation Needed

You added a citation needed tag to the proposition that Justices Jackson and Brewer graduated from Albany Law School. I've added citation for each proposition (A piece by a Jackson scholar working at St. John's for the former and a link to the Supreme Court Historical Society for the latter). If these are acceptable sources to you please remove the tag. If not, please explain why they are not so that I can find something else that will work. Sneekypat (talk) 17:44, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Hey Sneekypat. Thanks for adding those cites in Albany Law School. I kinda figured there were a couple cites out there for those and that those two did not meet the usual 'non-notable list entries that should be removed' category. I've removed the CN. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 17:53, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Happy to do so. On the subject of tags, do you think that the List of Albany Law School Alumni page still needs the additional citations tag? At this point all of the entries on the list have their own free-standing Wikipedia entries except for one which has a citation. I'm not sure what other sources might be needed. Sneekypat (talk) 18:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems like the issue has been resolved, Sneekypat. Please remove it. Stesmo (talk) 18:16, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

• Page stalker -- Sneeky, just so you know for the future, if there is in the future a cn tag, and you supply the appropriate RS citations, you should feel free to remove the tag yourself. Best. --Epeefleche (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for cleaning up my article! For what it's worth, I agree with all the changes you made to Greg Brockman, except for gutting a lot of the context/accomplishments in the cryptocurrencies and capture the flag sections. Would you mind please adding some of that back? It helped contextualize. 109.45.1.60 (talk) 20:12, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Factschreiber/109.45.1.60. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. When I read those sections, it seemed mostly content that was 1) over promotional, 2) trivial, 3) more like a resume and less like a biography/encyclopedia entry, 3) sourced only by Brookman himself (blog posts while at Stripe, him talking, etc.) and/or 4) duplicated on/more suited for the articles about Stripe / Stellar (board of directors, raising money). I might see more being added to cryptocurrency if it was more than just "a company he was with did bitcoin while he was there" and was backed by reliable, third-party published sources (and not from his previous company, blog posts, a video of him talking, etc.). But what was there was very promotional/resume-like and I can't see bringing most of that back. Thanks again for stopping by. Stesmo (talk) 00:25, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Before	After
Brockman co-created Stripe's "Capture the Flag" (CTF) IT events, which are coding and security skill-based competitions that the company uses for brand awareness and recruitment purposes within the tech industry. They are widely known within the software engineering community for their technical complexity and novelty. These programming challenges provide developers with the opportunity to solve complex, enterprise-level engineering problems that they may otherwise not be able to get exposure to. Stripe's first CTF ran in February 2012. Its second CTF, in August of that same year, challenged participants to leverage cross-site request forgery-based exploits in web application security to win the competition. Over 16,000 developers from around the world participated in the second competition. The third CTF, which took place in January 2014, focused on distributed systems.	Brockman co-created Stripe's "Capture the Flag" (CTF) IT events, which are coding and security skill-based competitions that the company uses for brand awareness and recruitment purposes within the tech industry.
Under the guidance of Brockman, Stripe invested ($3 million) into and helped launch Stellar, a non-profit open source currency-exchange network with the potential to overhaul the financial systems of developing countries. The Stellar network can be used to send and receive payments across international currencies with quick processing times and minimal fees. Stellar’s board of directors includes Khosla Ventures’ Keith Rabois and Stripe's Patrick Collison. Its advisors include notable Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, Naval Ravikant, and Matt Mullenweg. In December of 2014, Brockman presented an overview of Stellar at The Future of Money and Technology summit. In February 2015, Stripe began supporting bitcoin as a payment method on its platform. On the integration, Brockman remarked, "Bitcoin has huge potential as a way to transport value. It’s surprisingly difficult to move money today, and the experience of paying for something online is just about the only part of the internet that hasn’t changed dramatically in the past twenty years." He outlined his vision for bitcoin's role as a protocol rather than a currency at the CoinSummit conference in July 2014.	Under the guidance of Brockman, Stripe invested ($3 million) into and helped launch Stellar, a non-profit open source currency-exchange network. The Stellar network can be used to send and receive payments across international currencies.

References

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages. The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools and fixed many bugs and changed some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages (where applicable). Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector. (T98085)

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter. (T70425)

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter. (T95696) The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter. (T53049)

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the VisualEditor Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
• The team is planning the second VisualEditor-related "translathon" for July. Please follow this task on Phabricator for details and updates! Announcements will follow in due course.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF)

10:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

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Revert OpenOLAT edit 28.04.15

Hi Stesmo, I'm KScherer. You edited my OpenOLAT page at the end of April. I don't quite understand why you completely removed the paragraph about the assessment mode, as it was correct, along with the link to the OpenOLAT manual, which should have been placed correctly as a citation. Well, at least I thought I placed it correctly. Do you think you could tell me what I did wrong there? I strongly disagree with your correction of the version number and the release date though, as yours is incorrect - you should check on the OpenOLAT jira.

I'm going to update it to the newest version though now. 

But thank you though for your work. KScherer (talk) 07:54, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, KScherer. I removed your edit as it contained an external link in the body of the article to safeexambrowser. I left the reason for the reverted edit on your Talk page at the time. The guidelines for external links is at WP:EL if you'd like to learn more. Additionally, I would have also removed your external link in the EL section to the manual/wiki as there is already a link to the official website (where this is kept and linked to, no?) and Wikipedia rarely links to other Wikis (with a few exceptions listed in WP:EL). I had no issue with the version number or release date, they were just innocent bystanders after you added the external link to the article. Please note that looking over the article, it really needs more reliable, third-party published sources (not from OpenOLAT, press releases, manuals, blogs, wikis, etc.) for the information already in the article. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Stesmo (talk) 08:11, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo, thank you for your answer. That clarifies it. Your're right, of course. I'll see to it that I'll soon add more reliable sources. The manual isn't kept on the main site though, that's why I added it. It used to be incorporated in the system, and only got separated with one of the last releases. Again, thank you for pointing those issues out to me, though. KScherer (talk) 08:56, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Help with Uber?

Hi Stesmo, I'm looking for help with an article, and I noticed that you had recently made edits to several articles for apps, including Soundcloud, Lyft, Viber and Instacart. Since you're interested in mobile applications, I thought I'd ask you to take a look at my suggestions for Uber's article. If you have a moment to share feedback, I'd really appreciate it! Thanks, Craig at Uber (talk) 23:04, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Re: your comments on Voat

It would be counterproductive to relitigate the editor's topic ban on every article talk page. The ban exists and the article has been explicitly identified by the enforcing administrator as within the scope of the ban. 169.57.0.214 (talk) 06:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

169.57.0.214, Take it to the Admins. Please stop edit warring. I'm unfamiliar with this topic ban. Can you link to me the list of articles that editor is banned from? Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 06:39, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I assumed you were familiar with the topic ban; I apologize for not assuming good faith. I will provide you with the relevant diffs. 169.57.0.214 (talk) 06:42, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom's topic ban is the standard Gamergate topic ban, found here-

Any editor subject to a topic-ban in this decision is indefinitely prohibited from making any edit about, and from editing any page relating to, (a) Gamergate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed.

Voat is not related to Gamergate, any gender-related dispute or controversy, nor is it a person associated with a or b. Therefore, TRPoD editing this page does not violate his topic ban. He is unpopular with some angry idiots, and is thus unfortunately often the target of vandals and time wasters. PeterTheFourth has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 06:45, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Ahhh... Gotcha. Thanks, PeterTheFourth. Stesmo (talk) 06:47, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Voat has been explicitly identified by the enforcing administrator as within the scope of the topic ban, which the above editor knows well. Please be patient while I search for the diff. 169.57.0.214 (talk) 06:49, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

While I haven't found the diff I'd hoped, this request by an editor under the same topic ban to narrow the scope of the ban so that he may edit the Voat article among others has so far been denied; implicit in that request is that Voat is within the scope of the topic ban. I do find it amusing the editor above, a self-professed Gamergate SPA, edited Voat previous to tonight's unfortunateness yet now disputes any relation. The connection's clearly identified on this well-curated "Timeline of Gamergate" page; quoting "June 11: Reddit competitor/clone Voat begins to buckle under the increased server strain as a result of the exodus from Reddit, with the new user base trying to rally for Bitcoin payment to help. Voat is now favored by Gamergaters, (Redacted), and neo-Nazis for some reason." 169.57.0.214 (talk) 07:22, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

But that doesn't mean Voat is associated with Gamergate. Being associated with and just having an encounter are 2 different things. --TL22 (talk) 11:11, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Revered edit on Quirky article

Hi! I noticed that you reverted my edit on the Quirky article. Can you please tell me why so I can change what is necessary? The current Quirky article is full of outdated information because their business model has completely changed.

Daylen (talk) 01:57, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Daylenca. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. I removed your edits not because you added more information, but because your new lead paragraph was overly promotional in tone. If you don't mind my asking, are you employed by Quirky or otherwise compensated to promote Quirky? Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 02:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I have a Quirky account but have never earned any money from the company and in no way am I associated with them. I will try my best to try to explain it in a non promotional way. Daylen (talk) 02:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Daylenca. Generally, if it sounds like something that would appear in the company's brochure or sales pitch, it might be too promotional. Additionally, please avoid talking straight to the reader with "You" (see WP:YOU). Stesmo (talk) 02:41, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

App download links in external links

Hi Stesmo! I noticed that you removed the iOS and Android app download links from the ecobee article. I was wondering if app download links are okay in articles because when I started on Wikipedia most of the home automation products had the download links and support webpage as external links. Also, if the official website is the only external link and it's already in the infobox, should I get rid of the external links heading?

Thanks, Daylen (talk) 18:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Daylenca. Thanks for stopping by again. It's OK by WP:ELOFFICIAL to have the Official website in both the infobox and in the EL section. It is also OK to not include it if it isn't already there. Personally, I tend to leave it there when pruning EL sections. I wouldn't revert someone removing it if it exists in the Infobox, however.

As to App download links, these are most likely linked to inside the Official website if the company thinks they are important. Additionally, the spirit of WP:EL seems to be keeping the EL section pretty sparse by keeping the links to a minimum and making each one count. As a link to each of the various app stores, product purchase pages on Amazon, download sites, etc. doesn't expand the reader's knowledge of the subject of the article or "contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons", it doesn't seem like these are good links to add to an article. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips! Daylen (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Quirky partnership with Harman and Mattel

Hi Stesmo, I noticed that you took out the information about the Powered by Quirky partnerships with Harman and Mattel. I was wondering why? If it was because of company statements, the third reference I provided on each of the articles were written by newspapers. GE is a Powered by Quirky partner and has information about it on their Wikipedia page, why is it different for some of their other partners. Also, these partnerships are a big deal, for example, Harman announced it to their investors and their whole executive team was at a Quirky Eval.

Daylen (talk) 23:43, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Daylen. I did not remove your edits about Quirky from Mattel or GE. I made other edits on those pages that removed external links in the body of the article, etc., but I don't think I removed Quirky info unless it was an external link or unsourced. And, no. I am absolutely sure these partnerships with Quirky are a big deal *to Quirky*. GE, Mattel and Harman all are much bigger players and these deals are for a couple products in really deep histories and vast product lines. While it may be worth noting for on their Wikipedia articles, I'm sure 1) if it was notable, it would be covered by reliable, third-party, published sources (not press releases, company websites, blogs, etc.) and not just tiny tech/music websites, etc. 2) If it is interesting, it doesn't quite belong in the WP:LEAD, especially backed only by a passing mention and press releases.

While you've previously said you're not being paid to promote Quirky, it does seem like some of these edits are clearly trying to promote Quirky and not just documenting Quirky. Out of curiosity, I searched for news about Quirky and GE/Harman to see if it maybe that there aren't any reliable sources that talk about their partnerships. And, there was a couple, including from WSJ, Fortune and The Verge, but I noticed each also includes not-so-positive information. It's OK to include not-positive-information and sources that include information that aren't flattering to the company. We're not looking to puff up Quirky or GE or the Yankees or the random celeb. It's OK to include when a business lays off a third of the company or eliminates most of its product categories and product development.

Sample news stories mentioning Quirky and partners:

• http://www.wsj.com/articles/ges-first-quirky-device-isnt-very-quirky-1404323143 (Google the headline to read, e.g. "GE's First Quirky Device Isn't Very Quirky" )
• http://fortune.com/2015/06/12/quirky-wink-funding-products/ (Exclusive: Quirky ditches device manufacturing, preps for new investment)
• http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8488531/quirky-invention-powered-by-quirky (How the invention factory at Quirky almost imagined its way out of business)

Stesmo (talk) 17:30, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo,

I have noted all of the information you have given me for my future edits on Wikipedia, I am still getting used to what should and shouldn't be in a Wikipedia article, I have been editing Wikipedia for less than six months. Also, I am not associated in any way with Quirky. If you saw my edits when I started, you would think that I worked for LIFX or IFTTT because I was editing those pages so often. When I see an article that needs work, I like to see it to the end; when I started work on those pages, they had multiple messages at the top of the article, now they are all gone. I enjoy editing pages about Home automation products and companies! However, I am in the progress of writing four new Wikipedia articles (Curbside (app), an app to order groceries and pick them up at the store's curb, Ring, a Wi-Fi connected video doorbell, August Smart Lock, a Bluetooth door lock and the Drop Kitchen Scale, a Bluetooth scale that works with an iOS companion app). None of those products are related to Quirky!

Daylen (talk) 02:01, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Sir, why were the content of our pages removed ? Without seeking right permission or even notifying

Our page about oracle nosql db was editied and the entire content was removed with the message "Your recent edit to OrientDB appears to have added the name of a non-notable entity to a list that normally includes only notable entries. In general, a person or organization added to a list should have a pre-existing article before being added to most lists"

I am sorry sir, but i don't fully understand what do you mean by non-notable entity ? Can you please elaborate on what is notable and non-notable? The article described the key features of our product and underlying computing principles behind the technology, which would be extremly helpful to those in industry, academia and overall developer community. I am also not sure what do you mean by "pre-existing article" there's a very detailed article about oracle nosql db, and I invite to please read that, it would be certainly very educational. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anandchandak15 (talk • contribs) 04:22, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello Anandchandak15. You mention "content of *our* pages" and seeing permission. Whose pages are they? Who should I get permission from? Who do you represent? Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 05:54, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

ABN Newswire Wiki Page

Hello Stesmo, firstly thank you for your close attention to the Wiki page. It is encouraging to know that pages on Wiki are well maintained and monitored in its credibility and neutrality. I'm sure the same efforts are applied to all pages, and as I use Wikipedia a fair amount on a casual basis, to know the information is well maintained is comforting.

I would like to seek some advice from you with regards to the edits being made to ABN Newswire. I'm attempting to be as neutral as possible, providing as much information as possible regarding the company itself but without drawing on any promotional angles. Unfortunately most of the structure I had written up in my last edit has been removed. I have been referencing similar company pages on Wikipedia such as, PR Newswire, Business Wire, MarketWired - who all have similar structure and information.

Is there any of the information added in my previous edit that might still be usable on the ABN Newswire page?

Many thanks for your time and consideration.

PR Newswire: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/PR_Newswire

Business Wire: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Business_Wire

MarketWired http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Marketwired

webmechanic (talk) 23:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

August 2015

First, you are unillaterally removing content from pages. You are not removing just links, you are removing content and information. If you feel you need to make any changes to the articles, do them, not just remove entire sourced opinion polls just because the link format seems wrong to you. In any case, as you may know, WP:EL and WP:LINK can be subject to exceptions such as WP:IGNORE. For the case of opinion polling, external links are much prefered and much widely used over citations/references due to the amount of links and the simplicity ELs give to readers to reach the source of information in a more quick and clear way. It has been also a custom practice for most election opinion polling articles in Wikipedia for a long time due to this. Furthermore, external links here are used in tables, not "in the body of the article". As WP:EL is not forcibly required, we can make use of the exception for opinion polling so as to avoid creating unneeded issues.

So, to put you some examples, the Spanish, Italian or UK opinion polling articles may get up to hundreds or even thousands of opinion polls, which would be a nightmare to check out if links were to be put as average references/citations. External links do the work here and help simplify matters by a great deal. Cheers. Impru20 (talk) 00:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Impru20. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. There are two kinds of links here at Wikipedia. We have those contained inside of citations/footnotes that help show other editors where we got the information we're adding to an article and there are External Links, which are placed at the end of the article in the EL section and in the infobox, as appropriate. We obviously want the citation/footnotes inside the body of the article and not in the External Links section.

The problem with the Opinion articles are that editors are mistakenly putting their citations as External Links, which isn't how we handle those. You can take a look at the WP:CITE for more information and WP:EL for more information on External Links. You can also post on the EL Noticeboard if you have any more questions on appropriateness of External Links in the body of the article.

This is why the external links are being reverted from the edits on the Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2016 article. Not for the content being provided, but for the external links. This is usually done because editors are not aware of the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, which is why I've let the editor who posted the external links in the body of the article know on his talk page, in the edit summary and on the article's Talk page in this case so he/she could revert my edit and make the changes. And, I've linked to the WP:EL page so they can for themselves. This is akin to Teaching someone to fish... Once editors realize, they tend to convert those ELs into cites.

To your points about 'being in tables', those are in the body of the article (instead of in the footer, for example, where EL section lives). We don't need to make exceptions for a group of articles because they didn't know how to create Cites instead of just bare linking external links. Perhaps you should visit the EL Noticeboard to discuss this change to WP:EL instead of unilaterally deciding opinion poll articles don't have to follow Wikipedia guidelines and policies.

Thanks again for stopping by. I would much rather discuss this and make some changes in behavior instead of reverting edits. I'm more than happy to discuss this with you in a wider audience (Noticeboards, article talk pages, your talk page, etc.) if you'd rather. Just ping me and let me know, please. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 00:23, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

No, you don't understand my point; in opinion polling articles the external links are added in purpose. Check again my argument about some opinion articles having hundreds to thousands of links which would make it really nightmarish for someone to look for a specific link in the reference section of the article, specially those in which opinion polls are mixed with other information (such as an election background, electoral system, etc which bring into place links different than opinion polls that are shown as citations). So no mistake here, this is done to help readers. This way of acting has been a custom practice for opinion polling articles for many years now by many people because of the simplicity it provides. Again, there is an exception to WP:EL, provided in the policy page itself, which is WP:IGNORE: that is, that if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. In this case, it is clearly like this as explained above, specially when considering the WP:ELYES, WP:ELMAYBE and WP:ELNO requisites do may allow for this way of acting (not forbidden in the WP:ELNO section, and justified on the WP:ELYES 3rd condition under the "other reasons" justification (that is, the one I explained you above regarding clarity and simplicity in the case of opinion polls)).

In any case, in Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2016 I reverted your edit because it was just an entirely unjustified removal of content. You removed the entire opinion poll just because of the links' format, with no issue with the poll data itself whatsover. That would be justified if the link was wrong or the data was invented, but the data is correct. And sourced. Removing the entire opinion polls just because of the link formatting seems a bit too much. Sorry if it seemed too harsh on my part to revert your edit twice, but I believe it was entirely out of place to just remove data. Impru20 (talk) 00:42, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Impru20. I'm sorry, I don't believe that External Links instead of citations are an improvement on those pages or elsewhere in Wikipedia. Now I may be completely wrong here, so this should probably be brought to the EL Noticeboard so your point of view can be explained and other editors can back you up on making all of the Opinion Poll articles exempt from following WP:EL.

You did read what I posted on the article's Talk page and in edit summaries, correct? And, what I've mentioned here? For that revert, I've pointed out repeatedly that the easiest path to adding that content is to revert my change and *then convert the ELs to cites* to keep the data and cite their sources. I'll also point out recently, other editors on that article are actually using the Wikipedia standard of putting their sources in citations/footnotes instead of ELs. Reverting an edit with a note on how to improve it to meet Wikipedia's standards, policies and guidelines is not a new practice, and I believe it's one of the ways that's how we all grow as editors. Thanks again for stopping by and discussing your thoughts on the matter. Stesmo (talk) 01:13, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #4—2015

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Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.

Wikimania

The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.

Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.

For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).

For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%). There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).

We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. We thank the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.

Future changes

The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.

On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page is now using Flow instead of LiquidThreads.
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mediawiki.org if you can help.
• If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
• Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF), 22:27, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

C-SPAN interview program edits

Hello - I just wanted to mention that I just realized that there were several edits you did to some articles on lists of C-SPAN interviews (such as this one) that removed the links to the interviews themselves. I see that you do quite a bit of work with policing External Links, so I can see where perhaps an analysis of pages with a high number of links might come to your attention, and that such pages might seem fishy. However, each of the links on the C-SPAN pages have been specifically added so as to give viewers a quick and easy route to jump to interviews that they might be interested in. I realize that there are some users in some parts of the world (or perhaps using certain devices) where the links are not as effective as they might be for other users, but it is my feeling that on the whole, they have strong potential to be of use to WP users. I just wanted to give you that heads up before I did the reverts, and ask that if you still feel that the links should not be present, that we have some sort of public discussion on it first. Thanks for all the important contributions you make to WP, and please let me know if I can comment further. KConWiki (talk) 04:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Please watch List of Human

Hello Stesmo, Thanks for your message about the page - List of human rights organisations. I had added a website link of 'Sahyog Trust' which is an registered trust working for human rights in Maharashtra, India. You may visit the site for information. This trust is run by Mr. Asim Sarode(you can find his name mentioned on Yerwada page of Wikipedia.) (Advocate/B.A. LL.B.) and Mrs. Rama Sarode (Advocate/M.A. LL.M.). Both are social activists. Now coming to inserting link on list of human rights page; earlier there was no external links section on the page. So I thought like adding it under Indian list of organisations. But now I have created 'External links' section on the page and I have added the organization link 'Human rights and law defenders'. Human Rights and Law defenders is a legal wing of the Sahyog Trust, which was established in 2002. Thus I request you to look into this page (List of human rights organisations) again and retain the link of Sahyog Trust mentioned in External Links section. Please let me know if you want some more information about the organaisation. -Thanks & Regards Joytreejanata — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joytreejanata (talk • contribs) 06:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Web filtering in schools

Hello, Stesmo.

Just wanted to ask you something about an article you edited recently (we just got a notification). Checking the history of the article I see you undid some of our recent changes to "Web filtering in schools" because they "appeared to be promotional". Then you've cuted down it even more then you deleted an external link, then you've deleted ContentKeeper entry completely... So I don't get it.. you think that "ContentKeeper is a comprehensive content filter for K-12 environments (over 16 years of development) with SSL decryption for granular filtering of websites and reporting, BYOD & Mobile device including tamper proof controls, full user identification & Reporting for IOS,OSX, Chromebooks, Android coverage.", that is promotional content, while the following is not (and it's still there)?

"Opendium's Iceni systems provide granular controls with optional Active Directory integration, extensive auditing/reporting and use a multilayered approach to content categorisation, teaming an extensive database of URIs with intelligent on-the-fly content analysis."

or

"WebScreen 2.0 is a bespoke web filtering system specifically designed for use across the UK education system, produced by Atomwide Ltd. Currently used throughout the UK, it provides granular control down to user level based filtering through integration with the award winning Atomwide USO (Unified Sign On) authentication system. Time based filtering is another feature that aids flexibility so that filtering policies can be adjusted automatically for different users at different times of the day – for example, allowing access to social media during lunch times. All filtering is Internet Watch Foundation compliant and set for the highest level of e-safety. The largest user of WebScreen2.0 and USO is London Grid for Learning (LGfL) with in excess of 1 million end users."

or

"Sophos provides web content filtering products for endpoint, gateway and cloud. Filtering is granular and customizable providing the ability to filter URLs based on students, teachers, locations and devices. Additionally filtering can be performed against applications being used. SSL filtering is highly configurable allowing determination of what is decrypted and scanned and what is not based on URL and/or category. Sophos can provide Children's Internet Protection Act certified solutions."

or

"Smoothwall is the leading web filter in UK Education, protecting over 40% of the market. Content-Aware technology categorizes web content in real-time, without relying on outdated URL lists."

Not trying to start any wars here, but I just try to understand why do you think that our language was more "promotional language" than WebScreen or Sophos description? Or MANY others?

Thank you.

McFactor (talk) 06:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

A message re: your subscription to the VisualEditor multilingual newsletter

Hello there! I noticed your name on m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. I'm just making sure you're aware of what follows, but you're also free to disregard this message entirely :)

• en.wiki gets the newsletter earlier, because that's not translated into other languages. If you want to receive the newsletter on the English Wikipedia, please suscribe to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter instead;
• if you want to get the newsletter in a language which is not English (assuming a translation has been provided for that month), then please update your Meta subscription to your talk page on the wiki in that language.

That's all! Thanks a lot for your interest in VisualEditor, and please don't hesitate in requesting my support if you need me to do anything on your behalf. HTH, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

touching base

Hi Stesmo

This is Bill

I think I made a change to Cognizant's pasge but I dont remember the context.

I am sure I provide a citation for you, if you help me remember the context of the change.

Many thanks

Bill

william.arzt@verizon.net william.c.arzt@icloud.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.96.72.98 (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"snap crackle and pop" by CARGILL and more...

How kind of you to remove by previous edit in this page. Monsanto, Associated British Foods, Coca-Cola Co, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez International, Nestle, Unilever, AND CARGILL sent their tyrannic government workers (like you, go on! wean off of them...) to round up any "negative statement" regarding processed foods. -"'murrika". The truth is, we want all the food corporations to get down on their knees to consumers just like the tobacco industry. All of these corporations are responsible for the food addiction crisis (which leads to several health issues) these days, marketing it everywhere as healthy, even genetically modified organisms. One day you will hopefully pay for the damage you've done, "'murrikans". "The former marketing banner led to increased rage and skepticism regarding "immunity" and "alertness" by doctors and parents. This marketing campaign was used during the H1N1 virus outbreak in 2009-2010 in order to boost sales for unhealthy processed foods. Several sources have proven those synthetic "vitamins" and "minerals" found in Kellogg's cereals to have no beneficial effect due to being artificial and processed. Better sources of vitamins can be naturally found in fruits, vegetables, organic meat, and non-processed foods instead of processed foods." Clear 'nuff? — Preceding unsigned comment added by HoHey22 (talk • contribs) 17:29, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Business Wire Wikipedia page

Hi Stesmo, I see you removed a line from the BW page with a note that you would add it back in with a valid media source. The source, Bloomberg, was listed in the initial update. Is Bloomberg not considered a valid source? Or was this update considered to be too trivial? Thanks!Mediawoman (talk) 18:44, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!

Happy Halloween!

---

Hello Stesmo:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
    – Daylen (talk) 03:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

VisualEditor News #5—2015

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.

Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

Educational features: The first time ever you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.

Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.

Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use it on all devices regardless of size if they wish. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.

Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227, T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes

You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
• Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
• The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF), 18:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #6—2015

Did you know?

A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.

If you prefer having separate edit buttons, then you can set that option in your preferences, either in a pop-up dialog the next time you open the visual editor, or by going to Special:Preferences and choosing the setting that you want:

The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Since the last newsletter, the visual editor team has fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398, T58337) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.

In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)

Testing opportunities

• Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wiki.x.io. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
  • Remember my last editor,
  • Always give me the visual editor if possible,
  • Always give me the source editor, and
  • Show me both editor tabs. (This is the current state for people already using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Elitre (WMF), 00:03, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I stand by my corrections to Ising

Ising got the Nobel prize for poor work...his approximate model of ferromagetism is easily written down in exact equations — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.55.213.199 (talk) 04:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, 47.55.213.199. I have no opinion on the matter. Feel free to add it back, but with reliable, third-party published sources that back up your claims. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Why are the changes to David Wood not constructive? There are no citations for the claims made for him; all I did was make the claims more tentative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.77.156 (talk) 13:21, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Power of Attorney Edits

Hi Stesmo,

I was citing a source as for the different terms being used in the world aside from USA.

What is the best way to do that?

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Netgurusg (talk • contribs) 04:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Netgurusg. Thanks for stopping by. Use reliable, third-party published sources and not a business website. That looks like you're trying to use a spam link for the business. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 04:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Allowed links in body of article

Hi Stesmo, I saw that you had identified a link within the body of an article on a high school (St. Patrick's Higher Secondary School, Asansol) to its alumni association as spam. More than 90% of those interested in the school and looking up it's wiki article are alumni, and hence I felt that is highly relevant for them. Is there an acceptable format to do this?

Thank you for your time, Wikifan2001 (talk) 15:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Wikifan2001. The edits promoting your group has been removed a few times now. No external links within the body of an article are permitted. The content of the link isn't an issue at that point. Also, Wikipedia does not permit advertising yourself, your products or your facebook groups. Additionally, there's almost no reason to link to a facebook group from Wikipedia. So, your link was removable for any of those three reasons. Please check out WP:EL for more info external links. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

content

.. And I could have added a better explanation without you changing what I did to fix those articles, because they were extremely incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by X-Ekitz (talk • contribs) 23:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

X-Ekitz, follow the rules and it won't get reverted/removed. You deleted sourced content while trying to pretend you were fixing sentence structure and punctuation. If you don't feel you know how to edit correctly, not a problem. Bring up your issues with the articles on the Talk page for those articles. Someone there might make the edits for you. Stesmo (talk) 04:06, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

changes on hastings school

It was true though — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:787F:9B00:219:E3FF:FEDF:117A (talk) 16:02, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Regardless, what would you know about this school.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:787F:9B00:219:E3FF:FEDF:117A (talk) 16:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC) <

I can contribute as I want. You can change the colours and team so on but the writing is fact. What wikipedia doesn't need is vigilantes checking up on pages they know nothing about. I am disappointed in what I thought was a good helpful site. I do not plan on ever visiting wikipedia again. I will tell of my experiences.

Good bye — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:787F:9B00:219:E3FF:FEDF:117A (talk) 16:20, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello, 2001:569:787F:9B00:219:E3FF:FEDF:117A. Specifically, it wasn't about school colors that made me suspect you weren't here to build an encyclopedia, but this "The hornet. HASTINGS HORNETS BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ ". Stesmo (talk) 03:38, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

hello stesmo

Truly I am beginner and apologize to you for external links. But I'm several years in business and business PTC sites in general. I think I can enrich this article if I get the chance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Claualfa (talk • contribs) 05:50, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Welcome, Claualfa! I'm sure you'll do well with your editing of Wikipedia, once you've familiarized yourself with some of the guidelines, including how to add references/sources for the content you're adding. I'll add some more links to your Talk page. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks friend, best I will study these points. Any doubt I will be communicating with you. Thank you!--Claualfa (talk) 06:07, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Reliable sources for tori kelly page updateAmazajim (talk) 07:11, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Here are some sources i found and concluded.

http://www.criticofmusic.com/2014/06/vocal-range-and-profile-tori-kelly.html?m=1

http://www.divadevotee.com/2015/07/vocal-profile-tori-kelly.html?m=1

and i would like to make new changes. The sources are reliable and true. not fake. thanks.I edited and updated the page so people could know more about tori kelly and help understand her

Article doubts about paid to click

Hello Etesmo. Regarding article Paid to Click.

Truth wants you could help me in some doubt to do a good job on the article.

Usually reliable sources such as newspapers, magazines, reliable pages that talk about Paid to click, they know nothing about the world PTC. They are just people who hear about the world PTC and get to write on the walls.

But also, if I argue with fountains of people who usually work in the world PTC, the information is no longer neutral.

On the other hand, I know a lot about the Pay to Click and most online businesses in general, and I have real and fresh information to really be helpful to those who read it. (Assuming that he who reads the article on PTC, is because they want good and real information)

All this leads me to a dilemma. Or I put incomplete and inaccurate information from "reliable source" or give my real information, according to my experience from a neutral point of view. ???

I would like your opinion Etesmo.

A greeting!!!--Claualfa (talk) 13:22, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Claualfa. Great questions. As much as having the fresh information might be interesting, we need to stick with what has been published by reliable third-parties. Since anyone can add anything to this encyclopedia, other editors and readers need to be able to verify the information via the citations/references. Thanks for stopping by again. Stesmo (talk) 01:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverting of edits by user Michael Fjord

Hello, I wanted to explain the reason I removed information from Airbnb, Santander, IndusInd Bank, and Alibaba. I am affiliated with General Atlantic, and my goal on Wikipedia is to accurately list investment information concerning General Atlantic and General Atlantic’s portfolio companies. The investment information I removed was sourced from 3rd party news articles, but cannot be verified by General Atlantic or the companies who’s Wikipedia pages the information appears on as the details of those deals were not officially made public. I am able to verify the year of investment, so I kept that information available. If removal of the source is an issue, then I recommend keeping the source and date of investment, but removing other investment details (as my recent edits were intended to do). Thank you for your help! Michael Fjord (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Michael Fjord. As someone involved with General Atlantic, you have a Conflict of Interest (COI) and need to stop editing things involving General Atlantic. General Atlantic does not have veto results on what appears on Wikipedia. And, the fact that the information you tried to remove was sourced from third-party, published sources is exactly what a source is supposed to be. Please feel free to continue editing Wikipedia, but I'd suggest avoiding to do with General Atlantic. Perhaps you have hobbies or other pursuits that would make better subjects. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 05:29, 13 February 2016 (UTC).

If you are such a homophobe...

It is probably not apropos for you to continue as a Wikipedia editor. This site encourages tolerance, not bigotry. --71.165.237.4 (talk) 23:59, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Spinal Tap

New to adding content, so I probably did something,wrong. But why did my contribution to "Musician's Reactions" get reverted? Thx JFK JFKamin (talk) 07:13, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello, JFKamin. The reason for the revert was left on the talk page of who made that edit (an IP address: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User_talk:2605:E000:1A00:E:486:8150:E474:1D96). Just need to add reliable, third-party published sources for the claims you made in the article and you can add it back. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 17:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Super Bowl 50 box score

Please stop filling in the references in the box score section of the Super Bowl 50 article. I am not adding spam to that section. I'm only trying to ensure that the formatting for the box score is visually similar and consistent with articles discussing previous Super Bowl games, such as Super Bowl XLIX. Thank you. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 18:18, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Are you adding external links to the body of the article, Charlesaaronthompson by removing the ref tags? There are no external links in the body of the article. If they're references, which I had assumed they were, they get put in ref/cite tags. If they are not, they do not belong in the body of the article. It doesn't matter if there is an old format or previous articles that have spam/external links. Otherwise, we'd never improve as an encyclopedia if "Yeah, but other articles get to have spam/external links on 'em!" was a valid excuse. Stesmo (talk) 03:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Use of external links in List of datasets for machine learning research

Hi Stesmo. You recently removed all external links from the article List of datasets for machine learning research. I see that you are a member of Wikipedia:WPEL and therefore probably know much more about this topic than I do, so I wanted to ask you for help. For now I've reverted your edit because I plan on adding to the article tomorrow, but if we end up deciding that external links aren't the way to go, I'll be glad to remove them. I've already inquired at the teahouse. Here is the dilemma I see for this article -

• Without any external links, it loses it's utility. Users will have to follow citations, acquire the cited paper, and then track down the location of the dataset online.
• With external links at the bottom, the "external links" section would be massive and unwieldy.

The article could grow to be several articles as more datasets are added, and I see it becoming a significant resource for the machine learning community. To maximize its usefulness, external links seem to be warranted. Datasets also often have pretty bland names that might make them difficult to locate by web search.

I see in Wikipedia:EL that "lists themselves should not be composed of external links." However, it also says "This section does not apply if the external link is serving as a citation for a stand-alone list entry that otherwise meets that list's inclusion criteria." Perhaps this applies here. Looking forward to chatting with you further. DATAKEEPER ✉ 07:48, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Datakeeper. Thanks for stopping by! While you've obviously put a lot of work and thought into List of datasets for machine learning research, the links do run afoul of WP:EL.

You do raise good points about this list lacking utility when it is no longer a list of links leading out of Wikipedia. This doesn't make me want to see them added back in, rather that perhaps the list isn't a good candidate for inclusion in Wikipedia.

Additionally, I also agree that putting these external links at the bottom of the article isn't a solution; not only because it's unwieldly, but each link wouldn't be about the topic of the article: A list of datasets. A link to caesar0301's list or similar link might be appropriate in this instance, but not dozens of links to individual datasets.

The best way to get an external link from Wikipedia to the individual datasets would be at the bottom of an article directly about that dataset. However, the problem here would be 1) there are probably no articles written about individual datasets and 2) they probably don't meet WP:NOTABILITY requirements.

It seems like your Teahouse discussion has stalled. The next step would be to familiarize yourself with WP:EL and take your case to the Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard to make your case for an exemption and continue our discussion there.

Please revert your revert and remove the external links until you can gain an exemption to WP:EL.

Thanks for stopping by! Stesmo (talk) 09:12, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the info Stesmo. I appreciate the detailed response. I do think the list will serve as a good resource to Wikipedia and should be included. Machine learning, as a field, is growing quickly right now and the importance of good datasets can't be understated. I've read WP:EL, I'll start a discussion on the noticeboard. For now I'm going to keep developing the article with links. Perhaps a workaround would be to add the link to dataset to the reference for each dataset rather than in the list itself? DATAKEEPER ✉ 18:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Datakeeper. I'd recommend not continuing adding external links. Your efforts should not be wasted when it would be removed/reverted here. The external links should be removed; either you can remove them or the easiest route would be to revert back to my previous edit that removed them. Personally, I've had no problem finding links to datasets without having a link farm on Wikipedia and am quite sure others, once armed with the name of the dataset can use a search engine as well. Converting these external links, when they are not references, to avoid WP:EL would result in those being removed as well. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 03:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #1—2016

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Did you know?

Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features.

If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.

Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.

Recent changes

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.

Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.

The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:

• Remember my last editor,
• Always give me the visual editor if possible,
• Always give me the source editor, and
• Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)

The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. This will affect the following languages, amongst others: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic.

Let's work together

• Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wiki.x.io. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
• Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Does typing in these languages feels natural in the visual editor? Language engineer David Chan needs to know. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Elitre (WMF), 19:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

citations

I updated the text and wanted to add citations. I made a 5 min break and the text + pictures disappeared. How do I restore the text to add citations? Or shall I write all of it from the scretch again? :(((( — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexander Gutnik (talk • contribs) 23:04, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Alexander Gutnik. Luckily, Wikipedia keeps track of every edit made. If you go to the original article Bo Andersson (businessman) and click on the View History, you can click on the edits you made and see what you typed the first time. Please add the reliable, third-party, published citations at the same time as you add any claims/information. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 23:08, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Are citations not in English languare reliable in the English version of Wiki?

Are citations not in English languare reliable in the English version of Wiki? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexander Gutnik (talk • contribs) 23:11, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Alexander Gutnik. You may want to check out WP:RELIABLE for info about what's a reliable source. If you're not finding the answer there, you can always ask on the Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. Stesmo (talk) 09:55, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Company registers list

Hi Stesmo, I'm SERutherford. Regarding your most recent edit to List of company registers, this would make the list essentially worthless. As it has been, the List of company registers has existed for years and is quite a useful tool for MANY people. At present, the list aims to keep as much within the Wikipedia ecosystem as possible, but there are many cases when external links are absolutely necessary for the functionality of the list. No external link is indiscriminate in nature. All external links are inherent notable for the purpose of the list as they refer to authoritative (typically governmental) sources of company incorporation. Furthermore, other examples of such lists exist such as List of financial regulatory authorities by country, which have also been well-established for years. For this reason, it makes sense to keep it as is while adding in new internal links (whenever they become available, as I active monitor this) instead of removing all of them wholesale. SERutherford (talk) 23:19, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, SERutherford. Stand-alone lists should be navigation aids to help readers find Wikipedia articles and not a list of external links. WP:EL explicitly covers lists and that they are not to include external links in list entries. Additionally, Stand-alone Lists also states that these list must meet What Wikipedia Is Not, which includesWP:NOTLINK:

"Wikipedia is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files. Wikipedia articles are not merely collections of:

External links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia."

You may be right, in that the article may not have a place in Wikipedia. These external links need to be removed and the list needs to meet the standards of Wikipedia in order to be a part of it. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 23:38, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

You broke useful thing, dude. You are not a good man.·Carn !? 10:03, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate the explanation. However, wouldn't the 'Links in lists' in WP:EL have a commonsense exception to this? That is, "This section does not apply if the external link is serving as a citation for a stand-alone list entry that otherwise meets that list's inclusion criteria." My sense is that this is one of those rare instances, given the nature of the list, where this would apply. SERutherford (talk) 23:47, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

No, that would not apply. Not to give you false hope, SERutherford, but do realize that Wikipedia has a Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard. You can definitely visit there and make your case for an exemption to WP:EL or clarification and continue our discussion there. Stesmo (talk) 23:52, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to chime in. What SERutherford does in the Wikipedia ecosystem is what governments and major technology companies are trying to invest millions into making happen. Open access to company registers is a crucial tool for good governance, anti-corruption, and law enforcement efforts to support journalists and democracy activists around the world. Nitpicking about where links go to ruin the functionality of that service would be a travesty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anon212121 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Anon212121. Having a spam/external link from Wikipedia to the company registers does not make them Open Access. If Google/DuckDuckGo/etc. didn't exist, perhaps keeping these links here might be more compelling. It's not nitpicking over the placement of a comma, rather it's one of those things that Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. A giant set of links to these company registers could be hosted anywhere else on the internet. This is not the place for it. Stesmo (talk) 03:11, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Stesmo - I am honestly astounded at your answer. That you do not recognize the value of what you are destroying is beyond comprehension. And yes, I am sorry you can paint this pig any way you want but you have chosen style over substance. And that is the only way to view this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.40.169 (talk) 05:17, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, 66.44.40.169. This is something that Wikipedia has decided through consensus, as What Wikipedia is not... These articles don't belong to just one editor and they do need to meet Wikipedia's policies. There is nothing that precludes anyone from taking the same information and placing it elsewhere on the internet with all the external links intact. Stesmo (talk) 09:52, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Cursive edit revert

I understand that you removed my edit on the page for cursive. I said that it was unrelated to cursing. It is. What's the problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.238.97.227 (talk) 00:11, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

PIAs

The source is knowledge. Am in teh industry but from our side of teh fence. Am slowly getting to grips with teh pages relating and they are way incorrect, eg. GardaWorld International Protective Services now owns Aegis...

Also an amendment... ADS Ltd. and ADS BVI... http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2016/11.html

If possible can I punt the stuff as able and try to follow up with citations, believe me I hate citations as some of te stuff is not spoken of or known of generally..

What i will do is work on a level 3 OSINT on teh companies, I know a few of them aswell; but trust me the use of FININT, SIGINT, HUMINT and All Int is day to day fodder....

On teh industry, I will do an overview but alot will be self citation given that I have 30 years in the industry.

I think I know the crew that founded Wiki - something a young Heiko Khoo mentioned to me in about 1993...

my best you and if you want to drop me an email pls do and pls bear with me - I can barely code and new systems take some getting used to, problem of being ancient and a ultra left...

Mwaah. J — Preceding unsigned comment added by Etikx (talk • contribs) 04:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Etikx. Just need to add reliable, third-party, published sources to back up each of the claims/info for that article. One of Wikipedia's three core content policies is WP:VERIFY. Welcome to Wikipedia! Stesmo (talk) 09:43, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Most recent contribution to 'Horsham'.

Hi Stesmo. Just wondering why my most recent contribution to the 'Horsham' wiki page was removed? I was simply trying to add detail to the cricket section of the page to provide a more engaging reading experience to the user. I feel as though the post allowed the user to gain more information regarding the Horsham Cricket Association. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.142.203.130 (talk) 05:09, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Help

How do I add a photo on Wikipedia TheMunchieGamer (talk) 21:19, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey, TheMunchieGamer. Wikipedia:Uploading_images talks about uploading. Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial talks about adding a picture that has already been uploaded. Stesmo (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

edit of the page

Dear Stesmo, Thank you for your review. I think http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/List_of_financial_regulatory_authorities_by_country page gives a list of regulatory authorities to the readers. Thus i have added the names of regulators of Nepal. So will it be good enough to add the names only without external links?

regards,

NepaliKiransathi (talk) 07:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC) kiran 21 march 2016

NepaliKiransathi, the only issue with your edit was the external links. Please continue to add to Wikipedia otherwise. Stesmo (talk) 07:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

External links in the CoreOS article

Hello! Regarding my edit on the CoreOS article, which reverted your earlier edit, please note that those external links have been carefully picked by hand over time (not just a random collection that grew out of control), are highly usable, and are actually beneficial to the overall usefulness of the article by pointing the readers to some good further reading that goes beyond what the article covers. With all that in mind, IMHO they should remain as part of the article. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:58, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Dsimic. Those links don't meet WP:EL. Add those to a DMOZ type collection site and point to that one instead. You can read through WP:EL and add how each link meets it in the Article Talk if you'd like. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 17:54, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Please, keep in mind that following the guidelines blindly and without deeper knowledge of the subject isn't beneficial in most cases. The external links are fine, even when going strictly by the WP:EL guideline (which I've read long time ago), so I've restored them again; I'd appreciate if you'd leave them as part of the article. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:29, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Dsimic. Except most of those are actually just links to articles, etc. which, if they contain interesting/pertinent information, could be used as sources for that information when added to the article. I'll draw your attention to:

"Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.

...<snip>...

If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it. Guidelines for sourcing, which include external links used as citations, are discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Citing sources."

I don't think these can be left behind in the article and I'm sure you can see why now. Please remove them so they other editors don't need to. If those links should be used as cites and you can't get to that now, please save them to the article's Talk page for yourself or other editors to use at a later date. Thank you, Stesmo (talk) 07:41, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

See, those external links go beyond what the article describes, and using them as sources isn't an option because that would require the article to grow far beyond what's useful to an average reader (that's the "amount of detail" in the quotation above). Thus, we have external links in place to point further the readers interested in more details about CoreOS; that's one of the essences of external links, if you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Vandalism

Just a heads-up that this edit constitutes vandalism. It's their third addition (first one was from an IP) to the IoT article, and is promotional, regardless of references. Thanks, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 10:55, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Links

Thank you for leaving a notice. I understand your rationale and agree with most your removals. For example, mass linking to individual YouTube entries definitely qualify as spam in most cases. You are doing good job by removing them. Here is my general approach to including links in WP entries: if I used certain links to find certain information and found them helpful, I assume that the same links (on appropriate pages) would be helpful for others. This is assuming there are no copyright violations, which should be checked on a case to case basis. Speaking about links like that, yes, I realize they are "commercial" type links that should be best avoided if there are equivalent links to other sites. However, in the absence of such equivalent, and since I used some of such links to get familiar with the songs (this is an official site which is presumably copyright-compliant), I think using them would still be helpful for a reader. I understand of course that only few people are going to use these links - those who know Russian and are interested in poetry and songs like me. Perhaps the link should be modified like this. Then it is clear that the link is about the person since its provides her brief biography and links to her discs. So, I would like to re-include this link, even though, generally speaking, I have no very strong opinion about it and do not think this is such a big deal... My very best wishes (talk) 15:57, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Now, speaking about the rules, I think this link qualify at least as a site "that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources" [22]. Maybe it even qualify as RS, but debating this would be waste of time. One could argue it falls under "Links normally to be avoided" #5, but I do not see a lot of advertisement out there. In any event, the guidelines should be "treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply", as header tells. My very best wishes (talk) 00:13, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

• More important, links like that qualify per Wikipedia:External_links#Official_links, even though they are links to "social sites" (note that "More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites", but this is usually the case with YouTube and Facebook sites of musical artists). This is very clearly written (even marked as bold) in the policy.My very best wishes (talk) 01:47, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Hey, My very best wishes. Thanks for stopping by. A couple points to start with: There should never be a link to a store to buy products. That moves from 'external link' into the unabashedly spam realm. So, no iTunes, no Amazon, no Google Play, no DVDstore, etc. In addition, there shouldn't be an external link out from inside the article or from a list.

"Some external links are welcome (see § What can normally be linked), but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable according to this guideline and common sense. The burden of providing this justification is on the person who wants to include an external link."

As a general rule, if there is an official site and they can't be bothered to link to their youtube videos, their fansites, social media sites, etc.., I can't see why Wikipedia should. So, if we link to their official site, they have a voice and do not need us to link to their social media accounts WP:ELNO. These sites have wonderful search functions to find the person, as does Google. Per Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, "Wikipedia is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files." Additionally, "Wikipedia does not attempt to document or provide links to every part of the subject's web presence or provide readers with a handy list of all social networking sites," WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. If they lack an official link, having the most useful social media link would absolutely be acceptable (a link to their facebook *or* twitter *or* instagram, for example).

As to the non-english links, please feel free to link to the articles already on the various non-english Wikipedia sites [23] where people can read up in non-english languages and view links to non-english websites. WP:NONENGEL.

I hope you can see why most of those links were removed. Thank you for continuing to improve Wikipedia and stopping by for a discussion. My very best wishes to you, too. :D Stesmo (talk) 19:24, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, it does frequently require multiple linking precisely because their websites are organized sub-optimally and sometimes do not even properly work. Yes, sure, "Wikipedia is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files." That's why removing mass linking to individual YouTube entries is fine. I only disagree about one thing (see above): the links to "commercial" sites can actually be used if needed to source statements or provide information that would be important for readers, but not available through other sources. According to the guideline, those are "Links normally to be avoided". If needed, they can be used, but this does not happen very often. My very best wishes (talk) 17:16, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Disruptive editing

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at List of Google easter eggs. Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been or will be reverted or removed.

• If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor then please discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
• If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, please seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Please ensure you are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and please do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive, until the dispute is resolved through consensus. Continuing to edit disruptively could result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. fredgandt 17:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Fred_Gandt. I'm well aware of our policies. Do be aware that Consensus has been reached already on if External Links can appear in the body of an article and it's defined in WP:EL and WP:NOT. Stesmo (talk) 02:00, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

If you're well aware of Wikipedia policies, there is no excuse for the disruption you caused. Per wp:MULTI I will discuss the article content on its talk page. I feel no need to discuss wp:EL or wp:NOT as I have no issue with either, but if I did, I'd discuss them on their respective talk pages.

I'm pleased that you have chosen to join the discussion on Talk:List of Google easter eggs (although I wish you'd do so earlier) and hope we can reach an agreement in the best interests of the article. fredgandt 14:52, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

NYIT

Hi, on NYIT, please add the following under the Old Westbury subsection of the Campus section:

"Half of New York Institute of Technology’s 1,050 acres Old Westbury campus is located in the Village of Brookville."

Thank you very much and best regards.

References

Editing News #2—2016

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Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references. Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.

Recent changes

The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.

The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.

Future changes

The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

17:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

• You can now set text as small or big.[24]
• Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[25] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[26]
• Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[27]
• At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department is adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more at mediawiki.org.[28]
• The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[29] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
• Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[30]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

17:48, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

New deal for page patrollers

Hi Stesmo,

In order to better control the quality of new pages, keep out the spam, and welcome the genuine newbies, the current system we introduced in 2011 is being updated and improved. The documentation and tutorials have also been revised and given a facelift. Most importantly a new user group New Page Reviewer has been created.

Under the new rule, you may find that you are temporarily unable to mark new pages as reviewed. However, this is nothing to worry about - most current experienced patrollers are being accorded the the new right without the need to apply, and if you have significant previous experience of patrolling new pages, we strongly encourage you to apply for the new right as soon as possible - we need all the help we can get, and we are now providing a dynamic, supportive environment for your work.

Find out more about this exiting new user right now at New Page Reviewers and be sure to read the new tutorial before applying. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:29, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Stesmo. 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.

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Stesmo. 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)

Reference errors on 14 December

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that some edits performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. They are as follows:

• On the Comparison of disc image software page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)
• On the Comparison of disk cloning software page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check these pages and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:25, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

smh

you know damn well that the cardinals season is over after today's loss smh — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cardinalfan642 (talk • contribs) 07:49, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

ISO Master [Comparison of disc image software]

Hi, Stesmo

You have removed ISO Master as non-notable entry from Comparison of disc image software Is presence of Wikipedia article for each entry in the list obligatory ? I didn't found such rule.

As of notability there is long discussion in talk Best regards Jean — Preceding unsigned comment added by JeanMolinier1 (talk • contribs) 21:12, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Revision of Obba Babatunde information

I have not finished including what is needed and you have changed it already. I have spent numerous hours working on this as this is my first foray into Wikipedia. I would appreciate it if you would kindly allow me to complete what I have started and has taken days to do before you destroying my efforts. I am using the tutorial and learning WikiCommons at the same time and imagine the horror at the discovery that now my work is deleted! PLEASE STOP!MillenaGay (talk) 03:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, MillenaGay. What you were writing at Obba Babatundé contained a lot of interesting information. However, a lot of it was in an un-encyclopedic and promotional tone. Additionally, while there were plenty of statements about something being award-winning, eagerly anticipated and other claims, almost nothing was backed with reliable, third-party published sources. Please take a look at WP:BLP for more info on the expectations for Biographies of Living People here at Wikipedia. Before continuing much further in adding content, I'd ask that you find citations for the existing information on the article.

Also, please look at the information I left on your Talk page about Conflicts of Interest (COI).

I'm sure you're going to do very well here at Wikipedia and I look forward to seeing how you improve with your future endeavors. Thanks, Stesmo (talk) 04:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Stesmo, My legal background dictates that I thoroughly read all information, which I have. Your contention is unfounded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MillenaGay (talk • contribs) 04:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what contention you're referring to. Additionally, you can sign your comments by including four tildes, like this: Stesmo (talk) 04:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Removal of External Links: Brand awareness

The WP:El policy does not include a maximum or minimum number of external links. Although it says that external links should be kept to a minimum, it qualifies this by noting "Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic". The links that were included included on this page were carefully selected for the purpose. In my view, 6 links is by no means excessive for an article of the size and complexity of Brand awareness.

For each of the following links that you chose to delete, would you kindly provide explanations as to why they should not be included on the page. If you are unable to do so, would you kindly reinstate them at your earliest convenience.

• Association for International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM)

• Journal of Brand Management (Palgrave-Macmillan)

• The Branding Journal

• Journal of Product and Brand Management (Emerald)

• Journal of Brand Strategy

• Product Management Association

As I am sure you are aware, it is not enough to simply cite WP policy as the reason for reversion. It is expected that you show precisely how the policy applies in each specific case. Thank-you in anticipationBronHiggs (talk) 09:56, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

PS. I should have pointed out that links to four high ranking journals and two peak industry associations can hardly be seen as 'poor quality' external links. BronHiggs (talk) 10:26, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, BronHiggs. Thanks for stopping by! Before removing the links, I visited each to see if they improved the understanding of the article's subject. I found them to not be very helpful in that regard. Additionally, not all of the links were still pointing to valid websites. One of the links you've listed above is a Deadlink, which has no place in the EL section.

Per WP:EL: "Some external links are welcome..., but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable according to this guideline and common sense. The burden of providing this justification is on the person who wants to include an external link".

The article in question here is Brand Awareness. All links should address Brand Awareness, for sure. Those links address Associations and/or Journals about Brand Awareness for Brand Awareness professionals. I can see how most folks would think these are the same, of course. My suggestion would be: if these are Notable Journals and Associations, that a Wikipedia article is written for them and the external links to them placed on each of their articles. This would improve Wikipedia (allowing for readers to learn more about these Journals and Associations) and keep these external links (on their appropriate articles). If Wikipedia articles already exist, please add wikilinks to the body of the Article (if appropriate) or to the See Also (though, one or the other, please).

Thanks again for stopping by and chatting about this! And, thank you for improving Wikipedia! Stesmo (talk) 19:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Stesmo: Thank-you for your response. You are right to draw my attention to one link, which while not "dead", directs to a non-existent page on a fully operational website. The link was working well enough at the time when it was added, several weeks ago. That it has become a misdirect in the interim suggests that the page in question is unstable and should be amended.

I regret that your other comments do nothing to persuade me that the 6 specific links are not useful to users of Wikipedia. Some of these links provide access to articles, case studies and other information that common sense would suggest is of great benefit to students of marketing. Nor am I persuaded that 6 links consistitute a "lengthy", "comprehensive" or "excessive" listing of external links in the context of this article. I am happy to add these links back to the article along with a brief explanation as to usefulness of each item - as had been my original intention before my attention was diverted by several articles that were misleading and much in need of attention and which, in my mind at the time, became a higher priority. At the time, I incorrectly formed the impression that external links were relatively innocuous - but as you and several other editors have seen fit to delete external links from articles in the marketing area, I have been forced to revise my view on this subject and I now view external links as much higher priority.

As far as journals are concerned, there are standard independent ranking schemes (See, http://www.abdc.edu.au/master-journal-list.php for the Australian rankings of international and local journals- there are US and UK equivalents, but I just don't have the URLs handy), so it is no secret as to which journals are high ranking. As far as industry associations are concerned, I am wondering whether former links to U.S. associations doesn't constitute a form of inadvertent bias. I am now thinking that the list of external links should be expanded to include peak industry bodies in other English speaking countries including the UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and Malaysia.

I have no intentions of writing new articles for Wikipedia. My mission for the past several months has been to improve the quality of marketing and advertising articles, many of which contain serious factual errors, fundamental conceptual flaws and in many cases internal contradictions, to the extent that these articles have become highly misleading, confusing or downright unitelligible. Sadly, some of the more serious errors, some of which have been in place for 8-10 years, are beginning to to find their way into text-books and journal articles - which is a great concern to me and to marketing academics/ professionals in general. Any work which takes time and attention away from my priority of improving articles is of little interest to me. I simply could not justify the time to develop a new article when older articles desperately require restructuring, reconceptualisation, the addition of reliable sources and the removal of internal contradictions.

If, after adding explanations for each of the links, you are still of a mind to delete, then perhaps we would be best advised to seek the opinion of a 3rd party in this regard. BronHiggs (talk) 23:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Stesmo: I am copying this discussion to the talk page of 'Brand Awareness' BronHiggs (talk) 03:19, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Your recent massive vandalism of the GMAT page

You were recently caught vandalizing the GMAT page removing extensive credibly sourced material added by Wikipedia editors. In your edit summary you wrote, "Removed trivial, HOWTO and unencyclopedic details." The credible sources that wrote about the many items you removed didn't think they were trivial and the editors who added them to the page didn't think they were trivial or unencyclopedic. Wikipedia is for everyone; if you want a website that only includes what you think is encyclopedic, then your only salvation will be to go out and start sesmoipedia. I'll be reverting your most recent vandalism, and if it continues, I'll request a page or topic ban.--TDJankins (talk) 03:15, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I will also forewarn you to avoid edit warring as it will only dig you in deeper.--TDJankins (talk) 03:19, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

List of computer algebra systems - misedition

Dear Stesmo,

could you explain why you had removed Magnus CAS from this page: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/List_of_computer_algebra_systems ? This used to be one of more important CASs in group theory (beside GAP). It is a pity it was discontinued by the authors. Still it is not a reason for deleting it from Wikipedia. A general rule is that if you are not competent on a given subject, please ask somebody competent before introducing changes. And to make things clear - although I was the one who added Magnus to this wiki page, I am not an author of it. I'm just a mathematician who used it some time ago. I'm not advocating for my own product. Pkoprowski (talk) 16:27, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for a page

Dear Stesmo,

As previously you have contributed to Wikipedia in regards to financial articles, would you, please, consider writing an article on Creamfinance? It is a global financial services company that provides personal finance products in emerging markets. The company was ranked as the second fastest-growing company in Europe in 2016. Creamfinance is employing over 220 people and operating in 7 countries both within and outside of Europe – Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Georgia, Denmark and Mexico with an IT office in Austria.

I believe it corresponds to the Wikipedia notability rules as it has been talked about in legitimate third party sources:

If you wish I have put together a first draft for the page and can send it you.

According to Wikipedia guidelines I want to underline that I am a Project Manager at Golin Riga and I have been approached by Creamfinance to help with their representation on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aozolins-golin-riga (talk • contribs) 07:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Editing News #1—2017

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
• A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [31]
• The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [32]
• You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [33]
• The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [34]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [35] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [36]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [37]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [38]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [39]
• A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [40]
• There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K or Command+K respectively. [41]

Future changes

• The team is working on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [42]
• The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [43]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [44]
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

17:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

List of Companies involved in Quantum Computing or Communication

Thank you for the notification about the entry of the company UQDevices being not notable. It is, by definition, a company involved in quantum communication, it was founded by one of the pioneers of quantum computing, and it exists (as of last week, when I visited Waterloo and discussed it with one of the founders). This seems sufficient to put it on the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ComradeVVA (talk • contribs) 15:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, for stopping by, ComradeVVA. I am sure it's company and they are working on Quantum Comm. However, what we need here is to see proof that it meets Wikipedia's definition of notable. One of the ways to show it meets the notability requirement for a list, is to link to a Wikipedia page for the company. If there isn't a Wikipedia page for it yet, you can include reliable, third-party, published sources that show 1) the company is notable enough for a Wikipedia article (it just hasn't been written yet) and 2) that it belongs on this list (in this case, the article discusses the company is involved in Quantum Computing or Communication). Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't allow for 'talked with the founder' as evidence for as proof, as that would be against one of the three Core Content Policies: No Original Research. Thanks for adding to Wikipedia and taking the time to Talk! Stesmo (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Stesmo, FYI, I mentioned this post on the talk page of the list.

Add The Technical Specifications for The Dell Inspiron

Dear Stesmo, The reason, I didn't had a chance to do The Whole Technical Specifications for The Dell Inspiron's, because I didn't had time, so maybe you might make a Technical Specifications for all of The Dell Inspiron's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SchoolBusandComputersFanatic2004D (talk • contribs) 19:22, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

List of DCCGs

Well you clearly don't like working with people and couldn't hold off, nor even respond to my post on my talk page. So, I'm going to abandon converting the ELs into refs. My style of editing works best by not going into sandbox. So, yay, you get your way, but you also lose an editor for improving Wikipedia, which is really what this is all about isn't it? Not very bright on your end. Next time don't edit unilaterally and try to see other points of view, as well as no need for urgency. So my recommendation to you, if you want to save some of these listings, convert the ELs into citations, because I'm going to delete anything with an EL or a citation needed. Leitmotiv (talk) 03:13, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Leitmotiv, apparently you are demanding in edit summaries and your actions that I continue a conversation here before you'll stop putting external links in the body of an article. I'm not sure what you're looking for here, as the your above paragraph is mostly telling me you'll stop doing what you're already not supposed to be doing. Which, I approve of! So, thanks for not adding external links/spam to the body of Wikipedia articles.

What exactly are you looking to discuss here? Stesmo (talk) 18:44, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I'm going to take this to to my talk page. I had questions for you that you never answered. So let's start there. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I had not realized you had continued the thread there, Leitmotiv. If you wish to continue a conversation, please let the person/people know via Template:Reply_to or {{u|editorname}}. Stesmo (talk) 19:01, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

_{Note: Conversation continued with no resolution on Leitmotiv's Talk page, but I did get some new insults thrown at me. I'm apparently a retarded, autistic, not-too-bright arse. Diff up until I WP:DROPTHESTICK'd out of there. http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALeitmotiv&type=revision&diff=806308243&oldid=805247800 Stesmo (talk) 03:50, 21 October 2017 (UTC)}

_{Note: Stesmo refused to directly answer any questions of Leitmotiv's further increasing the stalemate. Unanswered questions: 1. What is the need for urgency? 2. Can you give Leitmotiv time to work on converting ELs? Recommendation, try working with people to avoid these outcomes in the future. Leitmotiv (talk) 04:11, 21 October 2017 (UTC)}

External links in the "List of United States wireless communications service providers."

The links are official links. Sbsail (talk) 07:21, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Your suggestion to put them into an "External links" section lacks common sense and will only bloat the article for absolutely no reason. Sbsail (talk) 07:26, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Instead of removing the links please rearrange them. Thank you. Sbsail (talk) 07:32, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Sbsail. Thanks for starting a conversation on my Talk page. And, thanks for looking into WP:EL! Those external links in the body of the article on List of United States wireless communications service providers need to be removed, as Wikipedia does not want any external links in the body of the article. And, as you point out, they really shouldn't be put in the EL section, either. WP:ELLIST discusses Lists and ELs.

You mention that these are Official Links. And, you have a point that these aren't really citations, just links to brands/companies, which makes them akin to Official Links. Unfortunately, those are Official Links for different articles. And, there is (usually) only one Official Link per article. The only link that meets the standard for Official Link/Official Website for List of United States wireless communications service providers would be a link to something like ListOfUnitedStatesWirelessCommunicationsServiceProviders.com and would have to be controlled/owned by the subject of the article. This makes it unlikely that any "List of..." would have an Official Website.

For example, coca-cola.com is owned/controlled by Coke, so it could be the Official Website/Link for the article about Coca Cola, but not for the article on Pepsi or for "List_of_brand_name_soft_drink_products".

I didn't convert them to Cites instead of removing them, because they weren't links that were being used to provide a reference to a claim or why these list items were included in the list. If they had been reliable, third-party, published sources (similar to the cites/refs for the Top 5 Largest U.S. wireless providers in the article), I would have converted them to cites instead of removing them.

Thanks again for the conversation! Stesmo (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

There is a difference between a directory and a list. Directory exists just for the single purpose of redirecting a reader somewhere else. A list worthy an article contains more than just a list of internal or external links. The example listed in WP:ELLIST is a directory. List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations) is a list that contains more than just a directory of countries. Similarly List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers is not a directory. It contains a list of notable companies within the subject of the article and 5 other columns that list various attributes of those companies. There is no undue weight placed on first column. The links to the official websites do provide references to the coverage column, technologies used and ownership. It would be too burdensome to maintain them as references and confusing to the reader who expects references to be directly pointing to the evidence. There is not much difference between an internal and external link in a "List of ..." article. What you are suggesting is to make the article less useful and harder to comprehend in order to mindlessly follow the rule. I understand that Wikipedia wants to encourage creation of internal articles but in the case of a list of organizations in many cases it is simply not practical to create an article for every company. Sbsail (talk) 20:02, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

It should be also noted WP:LISTCOMPANY calls for "a citation to an independent, reliable source" in order to include an organization without an internal article but in the case "List of United States wireless communications service providers" it is obvious that the official website of a company is that reliable source. WP:EL does not provide a justification why if a list of organizations is allowed then the links to official websites of included organizations that justify the inclusion should not exist or should be tackled into references. For a casual reader there is no difference between an internal and external link. In both cases the links act as "click here to see more" Sbsail (talk) 20:31, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hey, Sbsail. This seems like you may want to swing by WP:EL. The ELs not being in the list (unless as a cite/ref) is part of WP:EL. But, this is due to consensus and this could change. Stop by and bring this up on their Talk page. You could be the agent of that change if you can get consensus there! If it's a particular link you think should be allowed, it's WP:ELN. Stesmo (talk) 00:13, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

A lot of Wikipedians argue that primary sources can't be used, but that's just not the case. In fact, primary sources can be used to prove the existence of something (especially if no other secondary source exists) and work extremely well in list articles where no particular focus is paid to any single listing. Primary sources are often cited when they themselves are the authority for things such as authorship, copyrights, publication information, etc. As college teaches you, you should use pro and con sources for contrast because it shows you did your research and are remaining impartial/neutral. If you are blatantly ignoring a primary source, that too shows you haven't done your research and are perhaps biased. Leitmotiv (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I fully agree with Sbsail. The US is unique in that there are many smaller wireless companies that don't warrant their own articles (for the bigger companies their Wikipedia entries are linked rather than their websites). At same time, an article about the US wireless industry would be inadequate without discussing the "small guys". Also, the usual argument "Just google it!" does not help in this case because the smaller networks are hard to find (e.g. because of generic or ambiguous names such as "Choice Wireless"). The usefulness of the article would be greatly diminished without the links. Drahtlos (talk) 20:41, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Welcome, Drahtlos. You've hit on a very interesting point that intersects with what Sbsail mentioned above. This is a list of Notable Wireless companies. If they don't warrant their own articles, they don't meet the notability bar to be included in the list. Now, they don't have to *have* a Wikipedia article to be included on the list. They can be redlinks/unlinked, but they should then have reliable, third-party, published sources as cites that show that they meet the notability requirements, they just haven't had their article created. However, a cite to the company's web presence isn't reliable, third-party or published and won't help there. And, any links to the cited text would be as cites/refs, not as an external link. Thanks for the discussion. Stesmo (talk) 22:29, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello Stesmo, Perhaps I did not express the point I was trying to make very clearly. While each of the companies in question by themselves may not be notable, in total they can't be neglected. The reliable, third-party information is available in the form of various FCC databases but those are rather hard to digest. It is much quicker to find e.g. coverage information from the operator's website. I am somewhat disappointed that you edited the article again without the discussion here having come to a conclusion. As it is, after your edit the article is much less useful. Is this how we want Wikipedia to be - form over function? In WP:EL I read the word "normally" in many places. I would argue that WP:IAR should apply in this specific case. Drahtlos (talk) 20:36, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Hey, Drahtlos, thanks for replying. The nobility requirement isn't something I'm not arguing for here. Also, note that I did not I remove non-notable list entries, choosing instead to just remove the external links. However, the argument can be made that they should be removed and might be removed by other editors if they lack WP:RS showing they are notable enough to be in the list.

I was pretty sure the discussion had come to a conclusion, as the discussion had stalled here and consensus on WP:EL is external links do not belong in the body of the article, especially dozens and dozens of them. To address IAR, I often find its use in Talk to be a boomarang: IAR also covers my actions as an editor. ;) Thanks for stopping by again! Stesmo (talk) 05:05, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, was that a Freudian slip? Leitmotiv (talk) 05:20, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Drahtlos It's just as I told you in comments that Stesmos deleted. He edits unilaterally and doesn't strive to work together for a compromise or on ways forward. I'm telling it how it is, but he calls it being uncivil. I'm very civil - I'm not calling him names, I'm calling into question his character and behavior. He just doesn't like to face the repercussions of his actions. My recommendation is that you keep the EL information, by converting them to references. Wikipedia is strongest when things are referenced anyway. And there's nothing wrong with citing a primary source if that is the authority on the subject matter, it's citation is kept minimal, and/or if it's the only one available. Just revert his edits per edit warring, start converting each EL into a ref, and Stesmo should leave you alone. Leitmotiv (talk) 21:09, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for being more civil, Leitmotiv. It is appreciated. I actually don't edit unilaterally. I edit within the guidelines and policies of Wikipedia, which have been arrived at by consensus. I've repeatedly suggested you visit WP:ELN or WT:EL so you can be part of that conversation about External Links on Wikipedia.

You are correct that primary sources can be appropriate (for example, www.ExampleCompany.com/about could be used as a reference for when a company was started). But, they are WP:WPNOTRS. And, they are not cites showing notability. And, a reference for ExampleCompany that is just www.ExampleCompany.com isn't really a reference for anything other than the fact that a website for that company exists. As always, I recommend taking the conversation to the folks who deal with that issue to help create, guide or explain. In this case, Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

While others may use these bare domain name links in cites/refs, I tend not to. Especially on a list. It seems too close to being spam/external links masquerading as cites. So, when I run across them as External Links, I will remove them without converting into a cite/ref. I do convert cites used to back up claims (the about page link example, above; a newspaper article that talks about the company, showing notability; a reference to a page in a book; etc.). Example of this in action: [45]. I absolutely appreciate that you are advising people to remove External Links from the body of the article on their own. Thank you! Stesmo (talk) 17:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Stesmo, I read up WP:ELN or WT:EL a while ago. Some of my comments reflect that. Some of your comments seem to suggest you don't understand their full content. Take for example your remark about primary sources citing WP:WPNOTRS. WP:WPNOTRS explicitly states primary sources "can be both reliable and useful in certain situations". Also note, that further down that page under WP:SELFSOURCE it too says "self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves", which is exactly what I'm arguing for above. In fact, your remark about a primary source being used to show it "exists" is nearly what I wrote before you did, which seems to suggest you're either A. not fulling reading people's remarks or B. lacking comprehension skills. That's how I honestly feel about what I perceived as "canned" responses, because it reflects in our conversations where you don't respond or digest what people have written, or even in their edit notations. You can call my remarks uncivil, but it's how I honestly feel, and I think you have room to improve. Next time before you just start linking wiki rules in effort to puff up your feathers, I suggest you actually read them and understand their content. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Removal of citation in "LED strip light" article

Hi Stesmo - first of all, I want to emphasize that I appreciate the work you do to maintain the quality of Wikipedia.

I added a citation to the LED strip light article which you later removed. I added the link because there is an entire section of the article that is fairly technical but has no citations whatsoever. I am working on an LED project and came across this site which I thought would serve well for other readers of Wikipedia who might require additional information and verification.

I do not believe my addition to be "Spam" linking as there is no intention to promote or advertise the link destination website - it appears to simply be an informational website about LED strips.

Would you reconsider restoring the citation? Or, how would you recommend we improve the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1001:FD01:A15C:EEA2:AF41:F3D (talk) 17:12, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

RFCs, ICANN and IANA db links are not spam!

Perhaps you don't understand the importance of RFCs, ICANN links and IANA Whois database links on articles such as Domain Name Registrar and some ccTLDs. These are significant links and removing policy documents and IANA TLD whois links on ccTLD pages is not a good thing either. I've reverted your edits accordingly. Jmccormac (talk) 08:19, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Jmccormac. Thanks for stopping by. External Links are not permitted in the body of the article. You will need to remove any external links you're placing inside the body of the article. The links you've added to the external links section aren't necessary and should also be removed, in my opinion. However, unlike the links inside the body of the article, there is room for discussion. Per WP:ELBURDEN, please start a conversation on the article Talk pages with why you believe each of the External Links (outside of one Official website link) meet WP:EL and are relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article. If you wouldn't mind, please also ping me so I can participate in the conversation. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 08:28, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Pop PHP Framework External Links

Hello - can you please explain how the links you removed do not meet the external links guidelines? Those links are pretty important to expanding on the topic of the framework, including in-depth documentation, API documentation, all of the GitHub repositories for the code of the framework and the help room for those that want to ask direct questions about the framework. Please note, other frameworks have similar important links in their external links section of their wiki pages:

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Laravel#External_links http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Symfony#External_links

Looking at the the section on "Links normally to be avoided" under the external links section, I do not believe any of those links that you removed meet any of those "to be avoided" criteria. Please explain or provide evidence to your edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicks3123 (talk • contribs) 15:07, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Nicks3123. Thanks for starting this conversation! The unnecessary External Links I'm removing from the EL sections generally do not meet WP:EL, specifically ELPOINTS #3,#4 here. One of the primary points that ELs should be kept to a minimum. Usually a link to the Official Website is all that is needed. If we have a link to the Official Website, then we don't need a link to their help docs, API info, etc. on the same site or linked from their site. We also don't need links to github/gitter, as those links also exist within the official site. With just one link, the user can find all that they need.

I'll take a look at those other framework articles and prune the EL section to meet WP:EL there, as well. Thanks again! Stesmo (talk) 19:42, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

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Constant edits to the Gab social network page

Are you an actual editor here? I'd like to talk to you about actual meaningful revisions to the Gab social network's page, and not just random, tug-of-war edits between public IP addresses.

I attempted to "propose" the edit that people seem to be making off the top without much concern for Wikipedia's general processes, and then I reverted it because I didn't really understand what I was doing and accidentally pushed it to the live page. I would prefer to have it discussed before simply applying it, and the page may need to be locked from public editing soon afterwards. A reporter from the New York Times will be doing a piece on the site, and it will doubtless receive a good bit of vandalism here as both sides of the political spectrum attempt to abuse Wikipedia to duke it out for their own ends.

The essential bit of "controversy" is centered around the (in my opinion), slanderous characterization that the site is some kind of echo chamber for "the alt-right and white nationalists". This is a characterization refuted by the site itself, and more importantly is only cited once, by an article that is self-contradictory and clearly biased in its' reporting.

While the site is serving as a go-to platform for both of those groups(who have no other platform to turn to for healthy and non-violent expression), Gab is making great efforts to expand its' user base. They are also attempting, to the consternation of those "groups", to prevent their notorious discussions from being forced upon the general users of the site, without censoring them.

It is a difficult battle, and the slanderous, unfounded, biased, and above all self-contradictory characterizations of one writer should not be placed on equal footing to their own self-identification as a platform for all, where speech itself is safe. It belongs, if anywhere on Wikipedia, under the Criticism heading that already exists.

I have described the problems with this characterization in greater detail here, which you should be able to access as well from the two edits I made to the page. I'm not certain exactly what the standard process is for managing "hot topics" such as this, so please feel free to help me in making sure Wikipedia remains unbiased and fair for all. Kanryo12 (talk) 13:30, 11 December 2017 (UTC)Kanryo12

Hi, Kanryo12. We are all Editors here. The best place to discuss an article and proposed edits/direction for the article is on the article's Talk page (Talk:Gab_(social_network)). If you do not believe the source for a claim is a reliable source, there is a page for that WP:RS and a Noticeboard where you can request more clarification on a source WP:RSN. Stesmo (talk) 21:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I attempted to access a talk page specific to the article from the editing section, but obviously could not figure out how. If preferable, feel free to delete this entire section here, as it's somewhat long, and is no longer necessary. Kanryo12 (talk) 02:04, 13 December 2017 (UTC)Kanryo12

Edit removing the Know Your Meme youtube account address

The reason why I added it back was for convince. If you try to watch episodes from their website it auto starts "all" the episodes all at once, wrecking most browsers, not to mention memory caps for the month for visitors. Devilmanozzy (talk) 14:24, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Devilmanozzy. We don't add external links to Wikipedia articles for convenience. And, we don't add more than one Official link for the subject. People interested in watching the videos on YouTube instead of in the subject's site will follow a link from the listed Official website to their YouTube channel or they'll search YouTube for the subject's name. If the Official website can't be bothered to link to YouTube, then there is no reason for us to do so, either. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 20:56, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Two thirds of the article is about the youtube channel as well. So if anything, the official website should be dropped. Devilmanozzy (talk) 14:37, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

NodeMCU

In your recent edit to NodeMCU you removed all inline links citing WP:EL. However, most of these do not fall under WP:ELNO and therefore by removing the links rather than moving them to an External links section, you have make the article less useful to WP users who want research this topic. Surely editing is supposed to enhance and not degrade the article content?

In this case doing half a job was a lot worse than than not doing the edit at all, so I have restored the valid links in a conforming External Links section TerryE (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, TerryE. Thanks for stopping by my Talk to discuss this. The external links were removed because they were in the body of the article, which we don't want for our Wikipedia articles. I did not move them to an External Links section because I'd have to justify their inclusion per WP:ELBURDEN and I didn't feel they added to the encyclopedic understanding of the subject or otherwise met WP:EL. Additionally, External Links are to be kept to a minimum, and adding these links would not be in support of that. I absolutely enhanced the article by having it meet the Wikipedia External Links guidelines and removing cruft that unnecessarily distracted our readers. So, that's 100% of a job and one I do for 80% of my edits. :)

I've pruned the EL section of the links you've moved there for the reasons above and added the Official website instead. Some of the links should be satisfied by links from the Official site (and if the official site doesn't link to documentation/github, then why would we?) and others were already linked from their Wikipedia articles, which were wikilinked in NodeMCU.

I do appreciate you starting this discussion here. There are other places to discuss External Links, if you're so included, including Wikipedia_talk:External_links to discuss the EL guidelines and the EL noticeboard to discuss particular links. If you do continue the discussion elsewhere, please notify me by including {{u|Stesmo}} in your comment.

Additionally, I've fixed the WP:ORDER by moving the External Links below the References section. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Stesmo, the risk in your making edits from an abstract position without regards to the content of the article itself is that you can change the article. As the lede itself points out:

In summer 2015 the creators abandoned the firmware project and a group of independent but dedicated contributors took over. By summer 2016 the NodeMCU included more than 40 different modules. Due to resource constraints users need to select the modules relevant for their project and build a firmware tailored to their needs.

The primary reference for NodeMCU is now the Github project which maintains the Lua-based firmware. This can be and is deployed on any ESP hardware, and not just the DevKit hardware module manufactured by the originators. It is this community project that generates nearly all hits, and certainly all downloads and changes, etc. from the NodeMCU user community. The original NodeMCU site has had no changes since early 2015 and is of mainly historic interest. By removing all links to the Github project, yet retaining the reference to the moribund original website, your and other recent edits have fundamentally changed the emphasis of the page content. Yes the article is closer to the preferred style, but it now misdirects the user community that use NodeMCU Lua, and surely this is not your role here. TerryE (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

As a codicil, I question your determination of what constitutes an "Official Website". This is surely a judgement based on context. Take an example, is esp8266.com the official website for the ESP8266? No, it is not. The ESP8266 is manufactured by espressif.com and this is the official website, but they are a Chinese company. However, an early US adopter, an end user, decided to bag the .com domain name. In 2015, the originator of NodeMCU was proposing to shut it down because he could not resource the effort to make it viable -- hence a group of community developers took over with his full support. The Github project is the home of this community. However he has left his website up, and still sells a trickle of hardware modules, but has had no further active involvement in NodeMCU. Perhaps we should just change the name of the article to "NodeMCU firmware" to make clear that the active community is based on the Github project. This wasn't previously necessary as the links in the content made this quite clear until your and other editors' changes removed them all. TerryE (talk) 01:18, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi, TerryE. You mention that the emphasis of the article's content has been changed by removing links that take the reader away from the article. I do not understand this article. Removing External Links changes *nothing* about the emphasis of the argument. The text of the article was unchanged by removing these external links.

Wikipedia is *not* a link farm; it is not intended to promote or drive traffic to sites via external links. We don't want WP:LINKSPAM. We are not trying to 'direct' any reader to a user community via External Links. You seem to have misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia if you think the goal is to drive and direct readers to particular websites and communities outside of Wikipedia. This article is not the front page to the NodeMCU github community. This should be an encyclopedic article to educate readers on the subject of the article. If the NodeMCU community meets WP:NOTABILITY requirements for an article, by all means, create a new article for the community, with the Official Website pointing to the github link.

As to the official website, the {{Official website}} template pulls from Wikidata, unless overwritten by a pipe (e.g. {{Official website|https://example.com}}). The Wikidata for NodeMCU, for example, is at http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19729219. If there is not one available, I try to use the one that meets WP:ELOFFICIAL:

An official link is a link to a website or other Internet service that meets both of the following criteria:

The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article.

The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.

There is no exception here for 'the official website doesn't care as much as we do, so we want our site to be the Official website". The good news is that you absolutely can gain consensus from the EL community that your link is a better official link than the actual official website (or that the github link should be included in the EL section) by going to the EL noticeboard and making your case there. I absolutely would abide by the consensus from the EL Noticeboard community. If you do continue the discussion elsewhere, please notify me by including {{u|Stesmo}} in your comment. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 04:02, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Stremo, As I said in my first post on the article's talk page, I felt that I had a potential CIO and was uncomfortable with doing anything other than correcting factual errors. The inline text in the existing article explained that the community had take the lead through the Github project at the NodeMCU owners request, and there were sufficient inline links reference the project that interested WP reader could link to the project. The words still say this but the links are gone. NodeMCU is notable in the IoT community in its own right, and simply typing NodeMCU into Google is enough to find the project, so this isn't about link-bate or promoting.

I agree that an article written in the currently WP preferred style would not have its meaning and emphasis changed by removing inline links, but this article is weak, and is not in current style so it meaning was enriched by those links. In removing them you have unreferenced 3 years of development history. Interested readers could link to the active project, but now they can't because of your edits. That's my issue.

You removed my replaced link to the Github project in the External Links section -- the repository set up by NodeMCU's owner and which he still administers, including appointing its committers (including me), so this is very much the official repository for NodeMCU. This is no adversarial issue here within NodeMCU so I don't understand why the ELN is even relevant.

Following this precedent, are you now also going to go around other all other Github based IT projects and remove their Github references, such as on the Node.js page? -- TerryE (talk) 14:49, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Hey, TerryE. Thanks for continuing the conversation. The solution to a weak article is making it stronger, not adding external links. The same readers who'd work their way through 3 years of commits would also be the same folks who would have simply typed NodeMCU into Google. Or, clicked on the Official website and clicked on the Fork Me On Github! banner prominently displayed to access the official website's github repo.

To your question of removing github links from Wikipedia articles... NodeMCU wasn't the first github external link I've removed (probably not even on that day) and it isn't the last. The latest one is the Node.js github link you pointed out. There is nothing special about github links, and I've left many github links behind in the EL sections of articles when they are the sole Official website link for the subject of that article. It is incredibly rare where there is a company/project that has a github presence that doesn't link to that repo from the official website, making the github link unnecessary and running afoul of WP:EL. Additionally, you called that a 'github reference'. Any external link inside of <ref> or {{cite}} could be a reference (though perhaps not a good, reliable source). A bare external link pointing to the subject's github presence or a fork is not a reference. It's just an External Link. And, Wikipedia treats them very differently, with different guidelines. Thanks again! Stesmo (talk) 04:00, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi Stesmo. Your use of WP:ELMINOFFICIAL to remove repository references on software projects is inconsistent with the repo tag being included in Template:Infobox software. So are you now going to use WP:ELMINOFFICIAL as justification to go round removing all repo fields in the 12,000 or so articles which use this template? TerryE (talk) 14:44, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Hey, TerryE. Are you thinking that I've somehow been picking on or singling out NodeMCU? You can see all of the previous edits for any editor on Wikipedia by checking out their [Contribs]. Removing external links from the body of the article and pruning the EL section is not something happening solely to NodeMCU. I'm actually applying the same standards to each article I edit. (And, yes, I am troubled by the inclusion of the repo tag in the Template for the exact reasons you mention. It is on my list of things to do some day. :D). Stesmo (talk) 17:43, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Hey, TerryE. Are you thinking that I've somehow been picking on or singling out NodeMCU? You can see all of the previous edits for any editor on Wikipedia by checking out their [Contribs]. Removing external links from the body of the article and pruning the EL section is not something happening solely to NodeMCU. I'm actually applying the same standards to each article I edit. (And, yes, I am troubled by the inclusion of the repo tag in the Template for the exact reasons you mention. It is on my list of things to do some day. :D). Stesmo (talk) 17:43, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

---

Stresmo, I don't think that this is a personal agenda. OK, I am a bit out of date with the latest thrusts in WP editorial style and guidelines because I've had other priorities over the last 4 or 5 years, but I still know enough to have a quick scan of another editor's contributions. So I had already gathered that you don't have an article-specific agenda, and that you are working through a personal butt list.

However, I also believe that there isn't homogeneous WP identity. One bunch of editors group around a guideline such as WP:EL, and gain consensus between themselves. However this doesn't mean that this "consensus" is fully adopted by or accepted by other similar but separate groups within the WP diaspora.

WP:EL is a guideline and not a policy or even close to one of the five principles. Whilst a lot of it makes solid sense, IMO some of it like the extreme interpretation of WP:ELMINOFFICIAL is bloody stupid in the context of a IT software project. Any WP reader who is interested in an IT project will ask basic Qs like: "where is the website?", "where is the SW repo", "where is the documentation?" and will want the WP article to give these, as they are 101 Qs. WP as whole does not gain by collapsing these data down to a single link. As I pointed out the software template embodies these and other "drill-down" data attributes. For example the template contains info on the latest released version. NodeMCU like many IT projects has a release at least once every six months. If the policy is a "single link", what you are really saying is fully normalise the metadata so that the project retains its metadata and WP has a single link to it, so WP shouldn't contain version data; the "official" site should provide that. Would WP be enhanced by adopting this policy? Bollocks, IMO. But please feel free to tilt at this windmill if you want, but I suspect that you'd create a shit storm if you try do this -- sorry for the mixed metaphors, but you know what I mean. :(

I've got other priorities now, so my editing days on WP are on a back-burner, but I still monitor 50-odd pages and make sure that no vandalism or edits which degrade the quality of the article occur unchecked. I also will fact-check and correct anything on a page that I visit that jars. The NodeMCU is a weak page and need improving, but as you correctly point out, I am too close for me to do it, but your "WP style" improvement turn a weak page into a crap one. and this tripped my threshold. And to be honest this debate is more interesting than the article itself. Ultimately the true test of a subject being notable is that it is notable in its own right. Like most other vital SW project, NodeMCU doesn't need a WP article, especially a weak one that doesn't do it justice. ut if we believe in WP:5P1 then WP should try to cover the range of articles that enumerate progress in IoT and it is in WP's interest to cover NodeMCU and not in a form that is a travesty. TerryE (talk) 01:54, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Leitmotiv returns!

Stesmo This seems to be another example of you not answering the question and a reason people get frustrated with you. You would do well to stick to the subject at hand. Also, Stesmo, you work ELs a lot, you have a basic understanding of what is good and what is not. If you compare that to anyone arguing for a legal case, they probably also know the arguments that work against it. One of my two main criticisms with your interaction with me, is that you offered nary a thing on how to improve ELs based on your knowledge of the topic - you seemed to come from an angle only helping your own cause and not someone else's even though you had the information to help. My other main criticism, which you never addressed, is that even though I agreed with your assessment, you failed to work with me and give me an allowance of time to work toward your goal. Work on your inflexibility and work on your communication (this means reading and actively showing you comprehend what another writes). Leitmotiv (talk) 20:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC

Hey, Leitmotiv! You're not banned from Wikipedia this week! Congrats! You do know that anyone can see your interactions with me above in my Talk and in your [Talk History?] And via your [Contribs]? I wish I could have answered your questions in a way that would make you happy and I have always tried to WP:AGF with you and everyone else. I am an optimist. I still hope my answers will satisfy you someday! Stesmo (talk) 20:06, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh man, you just haven't caught me in a bad day! Sometimes we get emotional you know? As for our previous conversation, I will try to point out along the way where I feel you could be doing better in your current conversations so we can avoid that whole shitshow that was our conversation. I don't know if you understood this, but I didn't disagree with your edits outright, I was looking for a compromise on your end, which you never did. And it was the simplest of compromises - just give me a couple weeks. I just want you to be more flexible and I want to be understood. Leitmotiv (talk) 20:37, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Removal of primary sources

Hi, I'm quite concerned that about your edits harm (as example: this one http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=List_of_game_engine_recreations&diff=805400071&oldid=800048517) the topmost important wikipedia goal of "verfiability" (of origin) for the readers. Which is an far more important goal than any style guides for artlcles. The citations you removed with the argument "Also removed external links masquerading as cites." are perfectly fine primary sources. The external links you removed could and should have been converted in such referecnes, too. Now, the reader is left alone. Shaddim (talk) 07:45, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Your Pruned EL section edit on Zarnegar (word processor)

Hey Stesmo. I don't agree with your change on Zarnegar (word processor)'s EL section. 1) There is not much resource about this topic on the web and the links are indeed helpful for users. 2) the product page on the company website is an important resource on any wiki page describing a software product. (See Microsoft_Windows#External_links, for example.) 3) The page http://persian-computing.org/wiki/Zarnegar is the place I published the results of my research, under CC-BY-SA, and the content on WP is brought in from that wiki; because of the license, there needs to be a link to the original page. 4) The GitHub project linked is fine to drop, as it's already listed under the References, via Encodings section. What do you think? Behnam (talk) 22:15, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018

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20:54, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Jessica Fitzwater for deletion

As a previous contributor, a heads up that a discussion is taking place as to whether the article Jessica Fitzwater is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jessica Fitzwater until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Bangabandhu (talk) 20:54, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

• The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
• The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
• The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [49]

Let's work together

• The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
• The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

—Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:15, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

IPv6 deployment

hi i edited the hungary section of the IPv6 deployment page which you reverted bc of the lack of citations. The actual text references two sources that 1) are quite famous 2) cited at least 10 times each in the article. do you seriously want me to cite the exact same thing again?

2A01:36D:2800:2721:C4D1:D4E5:534:1C40 (talk) 06:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

2A01:36D:2800:2721:C4D1:D4E5:534:1C40 Yes, you're required to add a citation to claims like this. If the citation is already used elsewhere in the article, you can reuse that citation easily. Check out WP:CITE for more info. Stesmo (talk) 07:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

On what basis do you think that an external link to the official website of the Myers & Briggs Foundation is not acceptable? In my view it is entirely acceptable as being then official website of the organisation most directly connected to the article subject. Ontologicos (talk) 06:47, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Ontologicos Because it was a deadlink. It didn't go anywhere. And, deadlinks cannot be in the EL Section. Maybe you thought it did? Maybe it went somewhere when you added it? Why do you think we should have external links that take our readers to nowhere? Stesmo (talk) 02:57, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

On the reversion of the recent edits to the article on Tinychat on the grounds of possible vandalism

Kindly argue the same given that one of the references in the edit https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/all-american-nazis-628023 states the following "One denizen of this world was Brandon Russell, whose explorations into the darker corners of the Internet led him from 4chan and Daily Stormer into a national socialist Tinychat room loosely sponsored by the American Third Position Party, or A3P, recently renamed the American Freedom Party". I have not inferred that there are alt-right rooms by using additional logical connectives with the proposition stated, which if I did would have constituted original research. We can always syntactically go from Aa ⊢ ∃x:Ax but cannot claim that something exists in a similar manner because existence is not a predicate. However existence is necessary to be able to make any claims about something at all, and thus, despite the said article not explicitly saying that there are alt-right rooms in Tinychat does itself tacitly assume there are otherwise they would not have been able to make any claims about it at all. (i.e You could not have quantified over it, and since we are able to assert Aa, and thus ∃x:Ax, there are objects x which do exists in the collection on which we are quantifying over). These are standard results, and given that they follow kind of analytically from principles that mathematicians and philosophers happen to agree upon, I think, without trepidation, one can argue that any thing asserted by using such elementary facts does not constitute original research. Please argue why this constitutes original research, and an attempt at vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anirban.metal (talk • contribs) 09:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Thefoxycretin (originally Anirban.metal). I did not revert your edit based on possible vandalism. I reverted your edit because what you said, "Most rooms have people smoking cannabis on camera", is not supported by your source. When I checked your source, I saw that half of your comment was backed by the source, Which is why I mentioned "Reverting claims not backed fully by the source. Add back the parts that are sourced or add with sources that back all of the extravagant claims in your edit." in the edit message. Perhaps I missed the source's backing of 'most rooms' have pot smoking, and if so, you're good to go with what you added to the Tinychat article. Could you mention where in the article that is supported, however?

I barely knew Tinychat existed before reading the Wikipedia article, but I'm personally not surprised that there are white supremacists in that chat site. Any more than I'd be surprised that they also use Facebook, watch videos on YouTube, edit Wikipedia, play Minecraft, send iMessages, search on Google and read Rolling Stone. Which makes it odd that this is something worth adding to Tinychat's article. Tinychat is mentioned once in each article by name and the rest of the references to online chatting seem to be generic 'online chats' or 'online communities' in the Rolling Stone article. Perhaps if alt-right/neo-Nazi/white supremacist chat rooms were the goal of Tinychat, it might be enyclopedic bit if information. With reliable, third-party, published sources backing that information, of course.

Trivial or not, that's not why I reverted your comment. I reverted it because you made two big claims, one about white supremacist groups using Tinychat and one about how 'most rooms' have pot smoking, the latter absolutely appeared to violate a principal core content policies: No Original Research. Stesmo (talk) 03:28, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Microfocus - Removal of templates from articles on listed companies

Hi - I think you will find that {{Template:New York Stock Exchange}} and {{Template:London Stock Exchange}} were developed for exactly this purpose. The NYSE template is in use on circa 2,200 articles and the LSE template is in use on very large number of articles including all FTSE 100 companies and all articles on FTSE 250 companies. You might also want to read Template:Infobox company. In the "traded_as" bit it specifically says "use stock ticker templates where possible". Dormskirk (talk) 00:49, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Domskirk. The templates can be used in Talk and other locations as well. Using those templates in the mainspace articles does not meet WP:EL. I appreciate the pointers to pages to help me focus on reducing the number of articles it's on. Thanks for pointing out the errant advice on the Template page for the Infobox. I've changed that, as well, to help future editors. There is *zero* reason to send our readers to check on stock price. If a reader wants to buy stock based on reading a Wikipedia article, they already know how to access it and we're not here to make it easier for them to leave Wikipedia. Thanks for continuing the conversation, Dormskirk! Stesmo (talk) 01:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi - I don't think you should have reversed the template advice without a discussion. The template is in use on approximately 71,000 pages. Dormskirk (talk) 01:48, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey, Domskirk. Template advice isn't sacrosanct and does run afoul of WP:EL. This is setting editors up for needless conflict and readers for useless external links taking them out of Wikipedia. Additionally, WP:EL applies to all 5,779,000+ articles in Wikipedia. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 18:28, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Tulsa University School of Law issue

Hi Stesmo, Sorry I have been rather behind on my emails, but I wanted to respond to yours of December 30. Unfortunately, I am not clear about what change is not adequately referenced, so I'd appreciate clarification from you.

The most significant change to that page was the comment that the school had removed the name of John Rogers from the law school building. However, it seems to me that Reference 9 provides a good explanation for this action. If not, please let me know what you feel is missing.

If my assumption is incorrect, also let me know, and I will be happy to work with you to resolve the issue. Thanks. Bruin2 (talk) 03:40, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey, Bruin2. Thanks for starting a conversation. If you feel that reference backs the claims in the lead, please revert my removal and add the cite to your submission. I reverted your submission as I felt it wasn't non-controversial and needed a cite MOS:LEADCITE. You should be able to use the existing cite; WP:CITE should have how to do that. Thanks for swinging by! Stesmo (talk) 04:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

S&P 500 Component Stocks

Hi Stesmo.

I undid your edit as the links are extremely relevant and, as I noted in my comment, within the guidelines for external links. The links are to specific research pages at the SEC for each stock. This entire page - links and all - has been around for more than a decade and is a widely used reference _table_ - it is not an traditional article per se. There are several active editors on the page maintaining consistency, accuracy and usefulness.

Thanks, jkslindsay — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkslindsay (talk • contribs) 19:04, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey, @Jkslindsay:. Thanks for stopping by my Talk page. Those links absolutely do not meet WP:EL. They are within the body of the article. In addition, "Some external links are welcome..., but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a lengthy or comprehensive list of external links related to each topic". The fact that no one has removed them before does not mean they shouldn't or cannot be removed. I've found vandalism and spam that have been on pages for ages, yet I'm sure you'd agree that does not mean the spam and vandalism are exempt from being removed. Same goes for external links in the body of articles.

And, I don't understand your claim that this is not a Wikipedia article. It absolutely, 100% is a Wikipedia article. The type of Wikipedia article is a Stand-alone List. And, per WP:EL's section on stand-alone lists: "...the lists themselves should not be composed of external links. These lists are primarily intended to provide direct information and internal navigation, not to be a directory of sites on the web."

This list absolutely should exist and list the S&P 500 companies. For Notable companies (which should be all of them, because it's the S&P500 for goodness' sake), there should be a wikilink to the article in the list. And, that company's Wikipedia article is where any detailed information, citations and possibly even external links relating to the companies should be located. Not in the stand-alone list.

I'm more than happy to discuss WP:EL further at the EL Noticeboard if you'd like others there to weigh in. Or continue the conversation here. But, for now these links need to be removed from the article. Please revert your addition of external links to the body of the article. Thanks! Stesmo (talk) 01:22, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

1. Section editing
   • The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
   • The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
2. Loading overlay
   • The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.

• Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
• Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
• Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
• Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.

Looking ahead

• Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to the team about how editing can be improved.
• Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.

Learning more

The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Not me

The drinks thing. Not me. 81.141.154.78 (talk) 20:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

RIP age at death

I'm not very good at editing, and especially adding sources, but RIP Taylor's age at his death needs to be corrected. This is from an AP news coorection today. Could someone make the correction here once you confirm?

LOS ANGELES — In a story Oct. 6 about the death of comedian Rip Taylor, The Associated Press reported erroneously that he was 84. The age came from his publicist, who was relying on incorrect information from the comedian. According to U.S. Census records, Taylor was 88. By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpc65 (talk • contribs) 21:50, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages

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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk pages project

The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor

The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

• On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
• There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
• Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

• In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
  • One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
  • New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
  • Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
• Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

• Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
• Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
• Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

11:11, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

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Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed 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 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:04, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

19:05, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

ActCAD, AllyCAD, etc..

Hello, My name is Mariusz, I am an engineer from Poland. I'm interested in software, in particular CAD software. On the wiki I wrote or modified several articles about CAD software. Among other things, about ActCAD (I moved from Polish Wikipedia), IntelliCAD, AllyCAD. You edited an article about BricsCAD. Could you join the discussion and review or improve the listed articles. I need the help of someone with engineering interests. I will be very happy. Thank you in advance.ZengaONE (talk) 22:02, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2

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

This issue of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily.

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

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

20:29, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote

Dear Stesmo,

Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 05:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

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More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this month, the Editing team offered the visual editor to most Wikipedia editors. Since then, editors have achieved many milestones:

• More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.
• More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
• The visual editor is increasingly popular. The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has increased every year since its introduction.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers (logged-in editors with ≤99 edits) used the visual editor. This percentage has increased every year.
• Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor. 🚀 👩‍🚀
• Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

12:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Dear Wikipedians and contributors, the open source Wikipedia review tool, previously "WikiLoop Battlefield" has completed its name vote and is announcing its new name: WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Read the full story on the program page on Meta-wiki, learn about ways to support this tool, and find out what future developments are coming for this tool.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the vote!

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 18:29, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Join the RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Hi Stesmo,
you are receiving this message because you are an active user of WikiLoop DoubleCheck. We are currently holding a Request for Comments to define trust levels for users of this tool. If you can spare a few minutes, please consider leaving your feedback on the RfC page.
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. Your opinion matters greatly!
María Cruz

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to modify your subscription to these messages you can do so here.

Inconsistent approach in the Panda3D page

Hi, I saw you removed the link in the Panda3d page which I reinstated now: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Panda3D Please don't remove links from a page when a similar one is littered with them: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Simple_and_Fast_Multimedia_Library — Preceding unsigned comment added by Speltmaria (talk • contribs) 07:13, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

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

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

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[50]

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

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

New requirements for user signatures

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

Next: New discussion tool

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

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

15:10, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I never gave any damn about cricket in my entire life

Why are you sending me message of edit? I haven't done it. Nor I am interested to make any edit on wiki. How did you tracked my ip address? Need more explanation.

New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

HI Stesmo,
I'm writing to let you know we have simplified the RfC on trust levels for the tool WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Please join and share your thoughts about this feature! We made this change after hearing users' comments on the first RfC being too complicated. I hope that you can participate this time around, giving your feedback on this new feature for WikiLoop DoubleCheck users.
Thanks and see you around online,
María Cruz
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Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• We have preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[51]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[52] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
• A large A/B test will start soon.[53] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. You can still turn it on or off for your own account in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[54] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at notifications-talk.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:38, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

WikiLoop 2020 Year in Review

Wikipedia mini globe handheld

Dear editors, developers and friends:

Thank you for supporting Project WikiLoop! The year 2020 was an unprecedented one. It was unusual for almost everyone. In spite of this, Project WikiLoop continued the hard work and made some progress that we are proud to share with you. We also wanted to extend a big thank you for your support, advice, contributions and love that make all this possible.

Head over to our project page on Meta Wikimedia to read a brief 2020 Year in Review for WikiLoop.

Thank you for taking the time to review Wikipedia using WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Your work is important and it matters to everyone. We look forward to continuing our collaboration through 2021!

María Cruz
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:35, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

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When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

• Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

External links

Yes, external links do grow like weeds and regular thinning is required. But it is excessive to remove all ELs indiscriminately, as you did at Open University (which is why I reverted your edit as the easiest way to retain the useful/relevant ELs and yes, discard the detritus). The policy is at WP:ELNO, though I expect you already know that. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

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Editing news 2022 #1

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New editors were more successful with this new tool.

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 18:43, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

I saw what you did there, and i wholeheartedly approve. billing me for additional time won't be necessary. SkidMountTubularFrame (talk)

Editing news 2022 #2

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The [subscribe] button shortens response times.

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:35, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

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Editing news 2023 #1

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This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Revision to DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit

You deleted some references. My personal opinion is you shouldn't have done that. I might not object to some, but the sentence discussion an example based on calculus and algebra makes no sense without the reference. 64.183.221.51 (talk) 07:51, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Removal of "empty" EL section header

Hi, thank you for your external links section edits, which in general are helpful. But I've reverted this one, for I do not see how it can be considered empty. According to WP:ELMAYBE, "links to Wikimedia sister projects with relevant material" may be allowed in the external links section, and that includes relevant links to Commons. Please let me know if I'm missing something, thanks. BorgQueen (talk) 08:29, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Ref tags should be placed as close as possible to the relevant claims for text–source integrity

I reverted your movements of ref tags in this edit because they damaged WP:Text–source integrity. Ref tags should be placed as close as possible to the relevant claims for text–source integrity. However, your other changes were fine. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 17:37, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

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BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

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BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

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