Dr vulpes

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October lichen task force newsletter

<--- Previous issue | Next issue ---> | Tip Line SYMBIOSIS: The lichen task force newsletter — October 2022 A look at what we've accomplished, working together
As a subset of WP:FUNGI, the lichen task force is working to improve coverage of the world's lichens – unique organisms composed of one or more fungal partners with one or more photosynthetic partners. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of the roughly 1000 secondary metabolites produced by various lichens may prove instrumental in our ongoing battle against harmful pathogens. Want to learn more? Join us!	Articles of note Esculenta has nominated two articles for GA: Solorina crocea Verrucariaceae – a family of mostly lichenized fungi found primarily on rocks and soil in the Northern Hemisphere Solorina crocea – also known as "orange chocolate chip lichen", this was one of the first lichen species to be formally scientifically described
Project news It's been another busy month for the task force. Among the accomplishments: We've tagged another 700 articles, categories and templates as being under the purview of the task force. Importance levels have now been set for nearly all of the task force's articles. Thousands of articles have been tagged with lichen class/order/genus/species categories as appropriate. Work has continued on converting those articles which still using old "taxobox" templates to the newer automatic taxobox and speciesbox templates. There are now fewer than 95 left to modify. MerielGJones has created articles for a number of important lichenologists, including James D. Lawrey, Thomas George Allan Green, Pier Luigi Nimis, Hannes Hertel, Ludger Kappen, and Christian Leuckert. Esculenta added one for Georges Clauzade. Dozens of articles have been created for genera and species of lichen and lichenicolous fungi. The outline of lichens is now almost completely referenced. Work has continued on the Draft:Glossary of lichen terms, which will hopefully be ready to move into main space within the month.
Lichen news A recent study strongly suggests that industrial forestry, along with the introduction of nitrogen, is the main cause of lichen declines in Norway spruce forests. This decline has resulted in "cascading effects on biodiversity and function of boreal forest canopies", according to the study's authors.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello Dr vulpes,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

• There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
• Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
• Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
• This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello Dr vulpes,

New Page Review queue December 2022

Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Hello Dr vulpes,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp ^connect on IRC.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Happy Christmas

	Merry Christmas, Dr vulpes
	or whatever else you may celebrate at this time of year. Thank you for all your work on Wikipedia throughout the year and may 2024 prove to be a happy and successful year for you and your family Josey Wales Parley 22:06, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Congrats on your adminship!

Congratulations on your election. You have literally contributed too much by some standards in WP:PERM on your first day. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 09:21, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• Congrats! Andre🚐 22:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks☺️ @Bunnypranav and @Andrevan. Wish I could do more but this is just a super busy time of the year at work for me. Dr vulpes (Talk) 19:24, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

AWB trouble

Hello Dr vulpes, there's something strange going on with your AWB. This edit added categories for 569 births and 570 deaths. You might want to look into that. DrThneed got a bit confused why her articles start showing in those weird categories. Schwede66 23:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Any thoughts? Schwede66 18:19, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Schwede66 sorry for the delay, I had a coworker leave unexpectedly and have been swamped. I mentioned the error a couple days ago and found a fix, I'm planning on starting on this in the next day or two. Dr vulpes (Talk) 18:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

And thanks for pinging me about this! Dr vulpes (Talk) 18:39, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

New page reviewer

Hello @Dr vulpes, I have observed the growing backlog in New pages patrol and would like to apply for New page reviewer rights. My primary focus has been on improving existing articles through copywriting and adding verifiable references to those lacking in sources. Additionally, I have created articles as needed to support mainspace pages and to highlight specific subjects independently.

However, before applying, I would appreciate your insight into my suitability for New page reviewer rights, if it falls within your purview. Thank you. QEnigma (talk) 18:53, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Update: Request for insight withdrawn. No further action is necessary. Thank you. QEnigma (talk) 07:25, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Wilf Perreault

On 12 November 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Wilf Perreault, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Wilf Perreault's artwork of landscapes and alleyways was influenced by artists such as Reta Cowley and Dorothy Knowles? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Wilf Perreault. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Wilf Perreault), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Sohom (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

@Eisbergsk your article is up! Dr vulpes (Talk) 01:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

Hello,

I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

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A Smile for you!

Hello Dr vulpes, Cooldudeseven7 has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Cooldudeseven7 _{join in on the tea talk} 12:17, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks ☺️Dr vulpes (Talk) 19:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from LetMeWrite4U (10:45, 23 November 2024)

I have written a Christmas Play but don't have $ to publish it. I have several publishing companies interested, but don't have the money they are requesting I pay upfront. --LetMeWrite4U (talk) 10:45, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

@LetMeWrite4U (talk page watcher) I don't understand. If your work gets published, wouldn't you be the one getting paid through royalties? I dream of horses (Hoofprints) (Neigh at me) 19:06, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @LetMeWrite4U, sorry I'm not familiar with this kind of publishing. I've published academic articles in the past but that's very different than the kind of work you're doing. Best of luck in finding a place to publish your material. Dr vulpes (Talk) 19:22, 23 November 2024 (UTC)