19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

The second round of the 2019 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to scored 32 points to advance into round 3. Our top four scorers in round 2 all scored over 400 points and were:

• Cas Liber (1210), our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three DYKs. He also made good use of the bonus points available, more than doubling his score by choosing appropriate articles to work on.
• Kosack (750), last year's runner up, with an FA, a GA, two FLs, and five DYKs.
• Adam Cuerden (480), a WikiCup veteran, with 16 featured pictures, mostly restorations.
• Zwerg Nase (461), a seasoned competitor, with a FA, a GA and an ITN item.

Other notable performances were put in by Barkeep49 with six GAs, Ceranthor, Lee Vilenski, and Canada Hky, each with seven GARs, and MPJ-DK with a seven item GT.

So far contestants have achieved nine featured articles between them and a splendid 80 good articles. Commendably, 227 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2019 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. The judges are pleased with the thorough GARs that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Heartbeat Bill. Since you had some involvement with the Heartbeat Bill redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 03:38, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The third round of the 2019 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round needed to score at least 68 points, which is substantially lower than last year's 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with 500 points derived mainly from a featured article and two GAs on natural history topics
• Adam Cuerden, with 480 points, a tally built on 16 featured pictures, the result of meticulous restoration work
• SounderBruce, a finalist in the last two years, with 306 points from a variety of submissions, mostly related to sport or the State of Washington
• Usernameunique, with 305 points derived from a featured article and two GAs on archaeology and related topics

Contestants managed 4 (5) featured articles, 4 featured lists, 18 featured pictures, 29 good articles, 50 DYK entries, 9 ITN entries, and 39 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and it is imperative to claim them in the correct round; one FA claim had to be rejected because it was incorrectly submitted (claimed in Round 3 when it qualified for Round 2), so be warned! When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello! Your submission of Elinor Lupton Centre at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 00:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Let me strongly suggest that you refrain from reviewing requests at WP:AFC/R: most of the declines that you made today were grossly in error, to the point that I question whether you even read them. You claimed that Let 100 flowers bloom was not a valid redirect to the page that already has a redirect from Let a hundred flowers bloom. You claimed that Mini Mouse was not a plausible error for Minnie Mouse. You rejected a redirect from Romanian to a Romanian topic because "No need for foreign language redirects", despite the existence of thousands of foreign-language redirects underneath Category:Redirects from non-English-language terms. And most egregiously, you demanded a source for OERX to Southern California Railway Museum, despite a source having been provided already. If you continue reviewing requests in this manner, you will be blocked for general disruption. Nyttend (talk) 22:06, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

I can only apologise that my judgement is not as good as yours. I read each request as I reviewed them, and tried to use precedent and guidelines for making the decision. Maybe I forgot that redirects are cheap and got a bit too picky about what a reader is likely to search for - e.g. flowers, Mini Mouse - but I decided against allowing foreign language ones after reading Wikipedia:Redirects from foreign languages; I felt that the Romanian example related to the Dutch soil example on that page - why encourage foreign language searching on the English Wikipedia? As for OERX, the script response includes the request for a source, which is unfortunate as one was provided, and my error. However, I still feel that it is an unlikely search term and noted that other reporting marks do not have redirects. The original requester was free to challenge me. Altogether, I was merely doing a one-off backlog clear so rest assured that I won't be continuing reviewing requests, at least for a long while. I don't feel like you've assumed good faith with your message and block threat - how much is arguable value judgements on redirects really general disruption? Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (state) 23:04, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings! Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include: ARBCOM Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it. BAG Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion). BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG. Two BAG members retired Madman (talk · contribs) retired. BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired. Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG! Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks. TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs). Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts. We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary. BOTDICT Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not BOTPOL Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC). Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality. Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION. BOTREQs and BRFAs As of writing, we have... 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can! 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status). In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied. Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied. 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion). New things All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally. {{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion). WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests. The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made. AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions. Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot. Other discussions These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active. Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Adminbots requests page Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Double-redirect tagging (2019) Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Long and Winding Road to Parsoid Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Bot-like user scripts Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#WP:URLREQ Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Wikipedia:Bots/Status Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group#Minimum edits Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Minor update to WP:BOTISSUE Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Semi-automated Portal creation Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Clarification on "Bots operated by multiple users" Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Bots triggered by multiple users Wikipedia talk:Bots#How to use Special:ApiFeatureUsage See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard. Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC) (You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

		All-Around Amazing Barnstar
		Thank you for more than just your excellent work on locator maps of municipalities in Edgecombe County and Nash County and of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, but being willing to respond to and sacrifice your time for a random user's request. This to me more than anything exemplifies the best spirit of Wikipedia, and is deserving of this barnstar. — aegreen (talk • email) 12:28, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

valereee (talk) 00:02, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I was wondering if you can easily update your map on Wikipedia_U.S._county_articles_by_quality.svg, or if that would be an inordinate amount of work for the benefit involved.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 16:53, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Probably is quite a lot of work for a semi-active project. Something for me to do on a rainy day. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (sermonise) 19:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

15:36, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello. I saw this edit. How did you look up the status? Can you do it again? Thanks! --evrik ^(talk) 19:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

I don’t remember making this edit, but I probably just looked up each user’s last contributions and made a judgement on whether they were still active. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (parlez) 00:30, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought there might be an automated report. --evrik ^(talk) 01:20, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

	US Banknote Contest
	November-December 2019
There are an estimated 30,000 different varieties of United States banknotes, yet only a fraction of these are represented on Wikimedia Commons in the form of 2D scans. Additionally, Colonial America, the Confederate States, the Republic of Texas, multiple states and territories, communities, and private companies have issued banknotes that are in the public domain today but are absent from Commons. In the months of November and December, WikiProject Numismatics will be running a cross-wiki upload-a-thon, the 2019 US Banknote Contest. The goal of the contest is to increase the number of US banknote images available to content creators on all Wikimedia projects. Participants will claim points for uploading and importing 2D scans of US banknotes, and at the end of the contest all will receive awards. Whether you want to claim the Gold Wiki or you just want to have fun, all are invited to participate. If you do not want to receive invitations to future US Banknote Contests, follow the instructions here

Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

14:38, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

16:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:

1. Adam Cuerden (submissions) with 964 points
2. Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 899 points
3. Casliber (submissions) with 817 points
4. Kosack (submissions) with 691 points
5. SounderBruce (submissions) with 388 points
6. Enwebb (submissions) with 146 points
7. Usernameunique (submissions) with 145 points
8. HaEr48 (submissions) with 74 points

All those who reached the final will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

• Casliber (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 7 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 14 GAs in round 5.
• Yashthepunisher (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 4 FLs overall.
• Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 91 FPs overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 7 articles in good topics in round 2.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 14 did you know articles in round 5.
• Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 7 in the news articles in round 1.
• Ed! (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 56 good article reviews in round 1.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2020 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

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) 00:13, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

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) 21:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

16:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

16:38, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

00:18, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

20:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:01, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders and improvers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. We are relaxing the rule that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2020 will count; now to be eligible for points in the competition, you must have completed significant work on the content at some time! Any questions on the rules or on anything else connected to the Cup should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

21:22, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

19:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
• Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
• Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
• Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
• CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
• The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included L293D, Kingsif, Enwebb, Lee Vilenski and CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)