User:Raul654/archive23

A request for deleting or renaming the acount

Hello. Could you please delete my wikipedi acount my username is sushiante, and my acount is placed in english and persian wikipedia. if it is not possible to delete please rename it to xz1037tpm. thank you very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushiante (talk • contribs) 15:32, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

April

• Wikipedia talk:FAC#Summary of potential FAs (Quehanna isn't at FAC yet, but Ruhrfisch & Co write nearly perfect articles that clear FAC quickly). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

• I've posted a comment at Talk:Wife_selling#April_Fools asking for a suggested April Fools blurb. Raul654 (talk) 17:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

TFA March 15, 2010

Hi Raul654. Please see my comments at March 15. Is there any chance whatsoever of having the Hurva featured on March 15? Regards, Chesdovi (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

The article only recently appeared at FAC, is not even close to promotion yet, needs a lot of work, and March 15 is only a week away. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

If it gets promoted by that date, yes. But from skimming the nom page, that seems unlikely. Raul654 (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

No progess yet: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hurva Synagogue/archive1. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

FARs due for closing

Hi Raul. These ones are eligible for closing and I've already chimed in, so it's up to you

• Music of Minnesota
• Battle of Smolensk (1943)

Raul Wikipedia:Featured article review/Music of Minnesota/archive1 is approaching four months at FAR, and now has significant feedback. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Raul, I am doing a copyedit on Music of Minnesota now. I hope to be done this weekend. Kablammo (talk) 21:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

These two as well please

1. Wikipedia:Featured article review/Canadian federal election, 1993/archive1
2. Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sino-German cooperation (1911–1941)/archive1

MAny thanks YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

And Soren Kierkegaard too please YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 01:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Please? YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 23:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Doing it now. Raul654 (talk) 00:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. Raul654 (talk) 00:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Superb Fairywren

Someone asked me why today's FA Superb Fairywren was also featured on 10th Jan Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/January_2010. Is that odd? William M. Connolley (talk) 12:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I hope you pointed out to them that the article featured on January 12 (not 10) was Splendid Fairywren, not Superb Fairywren. Bencherlite^Talk 13:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Aaaaaarrrgghhhh William M. Connolley (talk) 13:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Makes me want to get an FA on the Bitchinest Fairywren. And the Tight, Awesome, and Superfine sparrow. --Moni3 (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Get back in your cage. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey man

Hey man, I just want to take the time to thank you. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication. I, as well as many other users I am sure, really appreciate your help on this site. It's people like you that makes me want to get on this site. Again, thank you.

Drakedurbin —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drakedurbin (talk • contribs) 21:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Raul654 (talk) 17:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Help with processing lists/tips/advice?

Hey there Raul. Seeing as you seemed to have obtained the Stanford archives lists with the help of a bot/automatically and also managed to add them with the correct formatting (i.e. adding the * and [ ] between the names), I was wondering if you can help out with the new set of lists I just made. I just started this sub list: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Global Names Index and I was hoping the have the lists organized in such a way so that they look like this: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Global Names Index/A. Now if worse comes to worse I will go on ahead and do all that manually but in the hope of saving a bit of time I was wondering if you could tell me/assist me in a way that would make it all done automatically (as I said; in the style that your stanford archive lists were automatically added). Kindest regards.Calaka (talk) 12:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I threw together a script to do it (available here). It's running now. I'll paste the output when it's finished. Raul654 (talk) 17:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. The output was 4.4 megabytes in size (130725 entries). It took the script about an hour to run to completion. Raul654 (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh CRAP. I just noticed that some three letter entries have more than one page. Doh. Ok, not done. Raul654 (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've tweaked the script to do pagination. It's probably going to take the better part of a day to run now. Raul654 (talk) 19:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh wow! I did not expect to see this! This is fantastic! I thought I was asking for trouble/too much if I expected a wikilink to every single name. I will modify the main page that describes this saying every single name is listed and to just remove a section of names when a particular name is complete (instead of every single 3 letter link). Yeah, I think ABA has like 150 or so pages compared to AAA which has like 3 pages. Thank you so much for this. Hope the pagination part of the script works well.Calaka (talk) 20:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

PS: Would it be OK when you update the new pages so that in addition to haveing a wikilink they also have a {{search}} template next to them? I think it would prove useful.Calaka (talk) 20:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It just crashed at AAC because I wasn't closing URLs after opening them. I've fixed the error, but there's probably other edge-case issues like that in the script. This is probably going to take a number of tries before it runs through. Raul654 (talk) 20:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

PS - I've added the search template to the script. Raul654 (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey hey. That is no problem. Let me know when the run ends up being completed. If it is not 100% perfect remember that anyone can check the links at the actual site and would easily be able to identify the name (if it is slightly distorted for example). Oh and I guess as I was not expecting every single name, I didn't do multiple pages for each letter, but for the sake of computers all around the world I think it would be best if the letters were to be split up into sections (1,000, 2,000, 10,000 per page?) but that means we are looking at 18,000, 9,000 or 1,800 sub pages respectively. I guess you can do what you think is suitable?? Oh and thank you for making sure you will add the search template at the end of every name in the final edit. I think I will need to convince people to also add in a search button on the search template for the global names database for ease of access. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I let the program run overnight and it died at ADE. My best guess is that python allocated too much memory. I've tweaked the program to dump the contents more frequently now and I'm rerunning it.

As for what to do with all the names - I honestly have no idea. I am not going to create 1800 subpages by hand and I don't know how to program a bot to do that. Raul654 (talk) 16:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The connection times out every few hundred thousand entries. The script dumps frequently now, and I've added the ability to manually restart the script, so all that is required is restarting the script every few hours. (Eventually, I might add a try-catch cability so it doesn't crash). Anyway, here is the first data set. The file is 17 megs, and consists of 321,341 entries covering AAA through ADX. I'll let you decide what to do with it. There's probably another 50-75 files like that in this database. Raul654 (talk) 19:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

ADY-AMA (32 megs)Raul654 (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Two more things - (1) I noticed that the search template is wrong (it searches for "X" instead of the entry). I've fixed this going forward. (2) On the instructions at the top of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Global Names Index, you said that "Under no circumstances are these names/articles to be created with the assistance of a bot/computer/program." I think that's a bit naive. If you and 9 other people created one article from that list, every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it would take you the better part of a year to finish. More realistically, without substantially more effecient tools (including bots and editing assistance programs), I don't think you have a chance of scratching the surface of that list. Raul654 (talk) 19:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, that is excellent! Sorry I am quite naive to all this scripting/automatic list sorting and was not aware of its capabilities/what it can/can't do so I wasn't sure if it can make pages automatically, but yes with the data link you gave me I will add in all the names myself on to pages as I see fit (will try to use my best judgment). Oh and regarding point 2, you are right about what you say and I guess I should tweak what I say. I guess my worries/concern is two things: (a.) People would use the bot indiscriminately and create an article for every single name (so on my first example as you can see on the global names index, they will automatically create an article for Aaaba and the other 6 names when that is not needed and (b.) unless done properly, it might to the creation of countless one line stubs with one reference (at a minimum I expect as much references as possible to an article that is longer than one sentence. Perhaps I can specify that a bit better on the page. Thank you again for all of this. I got a bit of work to do hehehehe. Kind regardsCalaka (talk) 22:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh yikes, there might be a problem. I was just adding the list now (Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Global Names Index/A and it seems that for species or any name with more than one word in it, the search template only searches the first word and then writes down the second word on the search feature. Calaka (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like either (a) the search template needs fixing (so that it can search for multi-word phrases) or (b) replacement is in order. If you go with the latter, a simple search-and-replace can be done easily. Raul654 (talk) 00:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I have noticed in other cases that multi searching is a possibility though (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Hot/B2) - Having said that I did notice that there is a "+" between each word in the one wikilink and hence it gives the ability to search for the whole thing at once instead of the first letter. Not sure why the +'s were not added on this databse though. In any case how would you go up with the later (sorry I did not understand what you meant a simple search and replace?)Calaka (talk) 00:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed the data files to add + signs where appropriate. Raul654 (talk) 00:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Sweet! Looking forward to the updated lists. Oh and FYI, it seems that there is a limit of roughly 2,000 names per page due to the search template (after a certain point it just says there are far too many and completely removed the search feature on the page for the remaining names). Which means I will have lots of fun creating ~9,000 pages of lists! :D. Perhaps they can be created easier with the help of the AWG program)!Calaka (talk) 00:29, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed that the + has been added! Will see how it looks now.Calaka (talk) 00:38, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Updated page one with as much names as the search template allows and just created page 2. All is going well and there seems to be no more issues. Thank you for your patience!Calaka (talk) 01:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh and just in regards to editing assistance programs/tools/bots, would you be willing to direct me to where I can learn more about this? I have been going at it for a while now starting from the very top and I guess it wouldn't hurt to speed things up a bit (in the end, all the references/sources are there... it is just a matter of adding it all in and having access to the journals/pages they provided to expand the articles). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 12:50, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've added ART-BOK, BOL-CAK, and CAL-CAO data files to the directory. As I write this, the script is up to CAT. Raul654 (talk) 23:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

To answer your question, if you want to learn about bots, you have to learn to program in Python. Python is a *wonderful* programming language - incredibly powerful and extremely easy to use. To get started, I suggest going to A Byte of Python and reading their examples there -- that's how I learned to program in Python. Raul654 (talk) 23:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds great! I will initially make 10 pages for each letter (so I made 10 for A already) before I complete the rest of the names from that particular letter (to have more variability I guess). I will monitor the link you gave me for future updates. Oh and in re: to your answer, with your mention of this python program, thank you for the info! I think though that if I was to use the bots I would have to make my own textfiles on the computer and then paste the data manually to Wikipedia, correct? Cheers!Calaka (talk) 07:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think though that if I was to use the bots I would have to make my own textfiles on the computer and then paste the data manually to Wikipedia, correct? - that depends entirely on what your bot is programmed for. A bot could be programmed both to paginate the files and to post them to Wikipedia, But in my experiences, it's *much* easier to program a read-only bot than it is to program a bot that can post to Wikipedia. (I programmed a file upload bot in the days before Commonist was available, and found it nightmarishly hard, even with help from others who were more familiar with cURL, cookie jars, and the like. I have no desire to repeat the experience.)

To be perfectly honest, if you really want to deal with all 18 million entries in this list and finish in less than a century or two, you're going to need better programmers than me to put together some custom tools for you. In particular:

1. You need a bot that will use these files to generate about 9,000 subpages (This must be entirely automated. You cannot do any part of this by hand and expect to finish in a reasonable amount of time)
2. You will need a quick way of selecting 20 or 30 articles at a time from the list and redirecting them to one target article. For example, here and here, most of those should redirect to Homo sapiens except for instances of particular fossils. Such editing tools might already exist - I'm not sure, I've never really tried out any scripts or automated editing tools. (Except ones I programmed myself) But if they don't exist, you need someone to put them together for you.
3. You need a quick way of purging blue links from those lists
4. You need several other people besides yourself - people knowledgeable about taxonomy - who can help you.

And lastly, to get #1, #2, and #3 done, you need someone who is familiar with using Python to program GUIs, and sending HTML post requests. And I'm not especially familiar with doing either. Raul654 (talk) 06:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Hehehe, good thing you replied as such because I was just going to tell you that I downloaded Python and tried a few things out following the steps but my brief exposure to turbo pascal in high school was of little help! You are right, I need a pro at programing that can help out with this. Now as for your points:

1. I agree. I am quite confident though that this should not be hard to achieve (for someone that knows programming)
2. This I find tricky. Would a bot be powerful enough to be able to distinguish a legitimate redirect over one that is not needed? As in the example I made on my main page: Aaaba Bellamy 2002, Aaaba de Laubenfels 1936, Aaaba fossicollis (Kerremans 1903) and Aaaba nodosus (Deyrolle 1865) do not need to be made into redirects to Aaaba as I am sure it is not a manual of style according to the taxonomy people (I have a slight suspicion that hellfire will be brought on me by countless Wikipedians if I did make them as redirects). But a case where a redirect was used was with Aachenoxylon as by looking at the references provided, it was determined that it is a synonym. I guess I am not capable of seeing a bot powerful enough to do that.
3. This is also tricky since we have to be careful not to remove anything that is a false positive. Perhaps the bot can be: "Remove blue, if no taxobox: keep, if redirect remove, if no taxobox: keep"? Better yet, make the 9,000 pages - obtain all blue links on one page (doubt there will be a lot) and then manually check rather than siving through 9,000 pages).
4. I was wanting to officially announce it once the lists/total counts got organized, but you are right, I can not do this on my own.

I should also point out that while the 18 million names does sound incredible, the actual amount of articles to get out of this would more likely be 1-2 million (including species+genus + articles already created) and perhaps 1 million redirects with most being similar in style to the Aaaba example above.

So now my goal is to find a computer programming pro. Perhaps I can make a request at a forum somewhere?

Cheers and thanks for all the info/time you are giving me to this. I know I am not being as productive as those that do actual contributions and no admin stuff like what I am doing now but my hope is if it leads to more quality content/gap filling on Wikipedia, then so be it. :) ...I found a few internet forums that are specific for coders/programmers and I think I will register and ask away if anyone is willing to help out with the idea of the program. Don't know how much luck I will have in getting someone to help out but I will let you know what replies I get. Oh and who would have thought that 18 million names are the tip of the iceberg! I wanted to post you a link but apparently it is listed as spam so to find it: Click on the global names index website, then feedback, then click on 'Add a "recently added" or "since last updated" feature'.Calaka (talk) 08:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

So status update: I asked at one forum and got my message deleted. I didn't bother asking in a second forum after I signed in as there was a whole section dedicated to asking for programmers to help out on a project (for a price), a third forum I got no response as of yet and in a 4th I only realized that no one goes on it. I guess I might need to send out a "help me" call in the general wikipedia public (I sent a little note to user:bugboy as I have noticed he created a lot of species articles and I gather he got the ability via a list of one of the websites). Oh and I created 1 genus article today. So at the current rate assuming there are only 5 million genera (the rest being species/redirects etc.) I will complete all of the genus articles in 14,000 years. Joy! :DCalaka (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I have scraped 9.2 million names - so that means I'm just over half-way done. The total data size is 731 megabytes. Raul654 (talk) 03:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good! I haven't got a response yet over at the bot request page so I am still waiting up on that. Let me know when the whole list is done. :)Calaka (talk) 11:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey there! I noticed you tweaked the files and now there is a lot less? What happend? Did you end up removing all the things that were not necessary? I was actually thinking I might have gotten close to get help from someone external, but if you managed to do it, it made things so much easier! Here is the posting I made: [[1]]. I think you followed a version of the 3 rules proposed by the admin there?Calaka (talk) 03:26, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I got a notification from the sysadmin on that system that I was close to my disk quota (I didn't even know I had one). So I wrote a very simple filter called tweak3 that removed any names that were 3 words or longer. What's left are one word names (genuses), or two word names (species using binomial nomeclature). The trinomial nomeclature (about 75% of the total) is gone. If you want them, I still have the original data elsewhere (on a system with no disk quota) but I thought this would help you. Raul654 (talk) 02:58, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

This is indeed a very good thing! I guess if it is not too much trouble you can go ahead and remove more according to the rules I set out (i.e. remove numbers and remove binomials where the second word is in a capital letter in regards to the genus). Removing the trinomials and anything beyond that is excellent (since it takes care of all the species with numbers/names of individuals etc.) and would make this list business easier. The thing is only the genus (one word) and species (two words) will be needed to appear on as a wikilink since that is what the article will be looking like - the remaining are peoples names and year they made the discovery which can be looked at over when actually doing the article. The reason I was asking around other people was because I was not sure you were capable of doing what you just did (I.e. not capable with the current layout etc...) but yeah as I said above, this makes things so much easier. Looking forward to an update. PS. There will be some that will miss out (i.e. only the sub species) but they can be redone at a later date (priority is genus and higher taxonomic rankings, followed by species then by subspecies). Cheers and thanks again for all the excellent work! Calaka (talk) 03:26, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh and just let me know when you end up changing them to the above rules. I thought you might make the change by indicating a new tweak (i.e. making it into tweak4) but I wasn't sure. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 06:36, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey man. I just wanted to ask you (and this in no way is asking you to actually do it - I know you are a very busy person in the wiki world so no stress) how the code changing was going along for the list? I hope there were no problems encountered in trying to change the code to remove the names of individuals (i.e. second word being a capital letter). I am feeling quite good re: the fact that the list got shortened down so much that I am anxiously waiting for the final touches before I copy/paste all the genus/species names on the lists! Oh and in case you are curious there are many many subspecies that inevitably got removed (I have been doing a few mammal articles so I came across quite a few!) but as I probably said somewhere above: 1st priority Genus and higher taxonomic rankings. 2nd priority species. 3rd priority subspecies. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 09:59, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

They looked relatively easy to implement, but I haven't done any of that yet. Can you repost your rules here? Raul654 (talk) 15:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Sure!

1. If first word with capital letter keep; otherwise remove (this removes cases where accidentally the second half of the species name is on the list)
2. If second word lower case keep; otherwise if upper case remove (this will remove duplicate genus pages)
3. If more than two words; remove. This will inevitably remove subgenus and subspecies pages, but it will remove all the duplicate species pages which there are a lot of! Better of two evils.
4. Paranthesis/numbers/square brackets present? Remove. Again this might remove potential articles but far too many years/parenthesis/square brackets which are not article material.

Point 3 removed most of the issues as we clearly saw when you had to due to the size restrictions, but the remaining 3 rules will smooth out the "bad" from the "article potential" names. Once that is done I will update all those pages lists that I have started on and start pasting all the names in. It would be quite interesting to see the number that we get of missing articles. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 23:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey there Raul! I thought I bring you a bit of good news/info: [2] a bot that can create all the species articles! It is first going through the marine species (from the Worms database) which will eventually create ~200,000 or so species articles (or less depending how many are not already on Wikipedia) and subsequently the genera and higher taxonomic rankings. There is hence the potential for this to be utilised with the other databases. To sum up, we might be able to see this project getting completed sometime this century hehehe! But of course that particular list of 200,000 or so names will take a bit of time so I am not going to get help from them for the other databases with the bot until later on. Anyway, all the best. :)Calaka (talk) 02:55, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I finished acquiring the last data this morning. I will post a filtered version later this week or next week. Raul654 (talk) 15:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! Looking forward to it.Calaka (talk) 10:37, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I know it is not the end of next week as of yet, but I was wondering how the posting of the data was looking?Calaka (talk) 09:42, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm in Orlando at the moment. I'll post when I get back this weekend. Raul654 (talk) 15:12, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

All done. The final data and filtering program are here. Raul654 (talk) 03:39, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Legend! Thanks a million man! Just a question re: future updates by the site: Would you be able to somehow distinguish new entried/names that they add from the current list we got? That is, say they add another 5 million names. Do you think it would be possible to get those new names added as well on a separate list without including the first 18 million that we got? Cheers!Calaka (talk) 07:13, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Would you be able to somehow distinguish new entried/names that they add from the current list we got? - it would be technically easy to write a program to compare a new set of scraped names to the old one and find new entries. However, since the scraping program crashes about once per per million names or so, it would have to be re-run numerous times, and that's something I really don't want to do again. (As you well know, it took me about 2 weeks of re-starting it to finish the list) More importantly, before worrying about that kind of minor theoretical problem, I suggest you concentrate your effort on dealing with the immediate problem of how to work with the 18 million names you have now. Raul654 (talk) 16:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm I tried to add the list of names on the second page of A at least 10 times now but it constantly fails/gives me an error message. I might have to employ a bot for this if they are going to end up crashing so often in placing up the lists. :( Calaka (talk) 09:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, you're going to need a number of bot tools to do this. Getting them scraped was step #1. Getting them posted (or at least getting a subset posted) is step #2. Raul654 (talk) 16:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought I would have been able to handle it but I am not having luck! Yeah I will get in contact with someone that can do this via a bot. Will let you know when I finish. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 09:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

History of logic

Raul, could you keep an eye on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of logic/archive1? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure - I've added it to my watchlist. Raul654 (talk) 16:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You're invited to Wikipedia Takes Philadelphia

You're invited to the
Wiki Takes Philadelphia
April 11, 2010
Time: 12 pm
Location: Drexel Quad (33rd and Market)
University City, Philadelphia

RSVP

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Wikipedia Takes Philadelphia is a photo scavenger hunt and free content photography contest to be held all around Philadelphia aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Scheduled for Sunday, April 11, 2010, the check-in location will be at the Drexel University quad (between Chestnut and Market, 33rd and 32nd) at noon, and the ending party and photo uploading (location to be announced) will be at 6 PM. To reach the Drexel quad, walk south from Market Street at 32nd Street into the campus.

This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 15:07, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

NYC Wikipedia Meetup Sunday, March 21

New York City Meetup Next: Sunday March 21st, Columbia University area Last: 11/15/2009

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, review the recent Wikipedia Day NYC, plan for the next stages of projects like Wikipedia at the Library and Lights Camera Wiki, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, for example User:ScienceApologist will present on "climate change, alternative medicine, UFOs and Transcendental Meditation" (see the November meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and generally enjoy ourselves and kick back. And if the weather is good, we'll have a star party with the telescopes on the roof of Pupin Hall!

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 15:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Main page: Ruffed lemur

I've tried to track down how Ruffed lemur got nominated or set up for inclusion in "Today's Featured Article", but have not been able to do so. I noticed that you added it to the queue, so I guess you're the person to thank. I've been wanting to nominate one of the lemur FAs I've written for months, but every time I add up the points I just don't make the cut. Therefore, I haven't bothered to nominate them... yet. Anyway, thank you very much for the honor! Any time you want a biology article added to the nomination page (due a lack of good submissions), just ask. I don't always check the nomination page. I've currently got 5 FAs on lemurs, and I hope to eventually make all 100+ articles FA or GA, so there should be lots to choose from in the future. Best wishes! – VisionHolder « talk » 18:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've tried to track down how Ruffed lemur got nominated or set up for inclusion in "Today's Featured Article", but have not been able to do so. - that's because I picked it myself. Most of the articles that go on the main page are not requested, but get there because I picked them. Would it be less confusing if the requests page had a note about this? Raul654 (talk) 16:24, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The Signpost Dispatch is linked on TFA/R talk, but I'll have a look to see if it can be added to the main page there; slow going on dialup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

ITW

It looks like you are skilled with bots, maybe you can help out the Intertranswiki project? Thanks! Djacku (talk) 15:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Can't you at least say no? A bit arrogant. Djacku (talk) 12:37, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

After the storm

Raul, I'm on dialup for the near future, after a nasty storm wiped out half my town; how about archiving some of your talk page :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. Raul654 (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Much better! I added the link to the Dispatch at TFA/R. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Nazi General is Inappropriate Choice for Featured Article

Raul,

I opened up Wikipedia today and noticed that your featured article for March 14th is about Luftwaffe General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. As a person of Jewish descent, I found this choice to be somewhat troubling. Field Marshal Kesselring was found guilty of war crimes by a British Military Court and sentenced to death for his role in the massacre of 335 Italians during the war. He was later pardoned and then released from prison for medical reasons, afterwards becoming the leader of the neonazi organization Stahlhelm Bund der Frontsoldaten. He kept this position until his death in 1960. As an unrepentant supporter of the Nazi regime, I have nothing but contempt for him.

Curious as to the occasion for this article, I looked up the historical anniversaries that occurred on March 14th, and found that this date was the anniversary of the final "liquidation" of the Krakow Ghetto in 1943. On this date, 2000 Jews were murdered. On March 13th, which was the date in my timezone when I found the article, the Nazis completed Anschluss, the unification of Germany and Austria. This was for Hitler a major accomplishment, as he desired the formation of an empire uniting all the German-speaking peoples of Europe, those who were part of the Aryan "master race".

I would like an explanation as to why this page was chosen for the Feature Article on this date. Nazism is a highly charged topic and you should recognize the impact that this article has on your readers. As the Featured Articles Director, you have a responsibility to choose articles that promote decency or at the very least do not promote indecency. The selection of a Nazi General and war criminal is in poor taste, especially on this date.

Sincerely,

Eric —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.251.6.252 (talk) 20:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Eric - I'm sorry that you were offended, but Wikipedia contains content that you may find objectionable. If this is something you cannot accept, then you should not be visiting this website.

To address to the specifics of your complaint, the appearance of a featured article on the main page does not constitute an endorsement of that person or thing's ideology. I agree with you that Nazism is a controversial topic. And the best way to deal with the controversy is to provide people with well written articles about it; not to hide from it.

You objected to Kesselring's appearance on March 14 because it happens to be the anniversary of some Holocaust-related events. As is the case with most featured articles, there was no particular reason the article was chosen for that date. It could just as well have run on March 13 or on March 15. And following your logic, there are Holocaust-related reasons to object to both of those dates too [3][4] or, for that matter, almost any other day of the year. And the same thing could be said about almost any controversial article and almost any date, which is why I take these tenuous date-connection objections with a large grain of salt.

"As the Featured Articles Director, you have a responsibility to choose articles that promote decency or at the very least do not promote indecency" - I'm sorry, but that is simply not the case. I'm neither a pastor nor a Sunday school teacher. It is not my job to make moral judgments about what people should be learning about. My job is to provide readers with well written, factually accurate, neutral articles. And that is what happened here. Raul654 (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well responded to.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:21, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, quite well, indeed. -- Cirt (talk) 00:25, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Raul, I looked into the history of this article, and I don't think the article was thoroughly reviewed before reaching Wikipedia's Main Page as a Featured Article. This article is a bit scandalous. Here is the Talk Page for the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?title=Talk:Albert_Kesselring. You can see that there is a dialogue, mostly between three users, Piero Montesacro, Hawkeye7 and Monsieurdl. Three times in the discussion, Piero accuses Hawkeye and Monsieur of trying to write an apology for Kesselring and openly questions whether they are Nazi sympathizers. Much of the discussion page is filled with Piero's intelligent and pressing arguments about the content of the page. Monsieurdl and Hawkeye7 basically dispute everything he said which would lead to a less positive viewpoint of Kesselring. Piero's objections, despite being well-grounded, relevant and well-documented, are mostly ignored and the page ends up being almost entirely what Monsieurdl and Hawkeye7 want to see. Despite the editing turmoil, the article is then certified as a "Good Article" by RJH on April 26, 2009 and made a Featured Article on March 14th, 2010. There is something really wrong with what happened here. This article has lots of positive things to say about Kesselring, including the medals he won, the respect he garnered from his opponents, and his military prowess. However, the article does not go into his relationship with Hermann Goering, the fact that he perjured himself both in the Nuremberg Trials and in British Military Court, and the details of his release from prison, which many do not believe was actually for medical reasons. Additionally, two of the main contributors in article are accused of, at best, writing an apology for Kesselring, including Hawkeye7, who helped push the article to Featured Status.

This article violates several of Wikipedia's Neutrality guidelines, including impartial tone, balance and undue weight. One of the contributer's viewpoints was mostly excluded from the final article. The whole article seems like a tribute to Kesselring as a general. As one of Hitler's most loyal generals, this man does not deserve such a gleaming article.

Wikipedia is a great source of information and to say that this article is among its best is an insult to the thousands, if not millions, of contributors who have made this a great resource. Furthermore, to let such a skewed article be held up as an example of quality is an insult to the millions of people who died in concentration camps under the Nazi regime. I beg you to please remove this as a Featured Article, at least until it substantially reflects Wikipedia's neutrality policy and gives a balanced view of Kesselring.

Sincerely,

Eric

96.251.6.252 (talk) 04:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Beethoven's Fifth

Are you still interested on feturing the article or at least make it get the GA status? OboeCrack (talk) 23:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't feel like doing it by myself (again), but I wouldn't mind taking another crack at it as part of a collaborative effort with other people. Raul654 (talk) 06:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Another FAR delegate?

Hi Raul. Is there a chance of getting another delegate? Marskell and Joelito aren't around anymore, and on a lot of the FARs that are non-trivial (those that weren't flagrantly failing, or had some work done on them) there are often no more than one serious review, and on many of them I see lots of problems, but if I comment, it may cause about 50% of the FARs to be unclosable by me. So I recommend adding Dana boomer (talk · contribs); she has done a lot of reviews including many on the in-depth, non-trivial cases where there is usually no comment or people just sit around looking at each other YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right, we need another delegate or two. I'll see what I can do. Raul654 (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Archived FAR for Manila Light Rail Transit System

Hello. Recently you archived Wikipedia:Featured article review/Manila Light Rail Transit System/archive1. Admittedly it has been at FAR for a long time, but I was actively editing it and I was given to understand from the various discussions there that while that was so, it wouldn't be a big deal for the article to stay there. I'm not familiar enough with FAR to know the chances of the article being retained as FA but I believe I have made material improvements to it and if the issues that were initially brought up are the only ones to address, the article can be brought up to standard if it is not there already. Would it be all right to request that the article be reinstated for review? There were three holds there at the time it was removed and two delists that were given before most of my improvements. If the article is still deemed deficient after attempts to address the concerns, then there's not much to say, but I would like the opportunity to get the opinion of those who reserved judgment pending the outcome of my efforts. Lambanog (talk) 05:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've put it back on FAR. Raul654 (talk) 05:23, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Lambanog (talk) 06:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Error on Ruffed lemur summary

Sorry to not catch this sooner, but there is a small error on the Ruffed lemur summary that is now on the main page. In the opening sentence, it starts off by saying: "The ruffed lemur is a Strepsirhine primate" "Strepsirhine" should be lowercase and have a double "r": strepsirrhine. Anyway, sorry for the trouble. I'm doing my best to monitor things, but I'm out of town at the moment and having to work off a public computer in a hotel. – VisionHolder « talk » 06:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've fixed it, but I'm about to head off to bed. If there are any other issues, post them on talk:Main page and someone will fix it. Raul654 (talk) 06:17, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

FAR Delegate

Hi Raul! Thanks for the note on my talk page. I would be willing to step up into a position as FAR delegate. You have probably already been through my contributions, and if you believe that I have the experience and knowledge necessary, I would love to be able to help out more on the FAR page. Dana boomer (talk) 11:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you doing a background check at the moment Raul? YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I checked and I liked what I saw. I've made her a FAR delegate. Raul654 (talk) 21:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Raul! Dana boomer (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Raul. You'll have to close Bath school disaster as both of us have bitten already YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 03:30, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

March 22 TFA

Sorry to bother you... but if we wait eight months, we could get a 100-year anniversary. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:54, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. Raul654 (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks as always. :) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

TFA request for May 11, 2010 - USS Triton (SSRN-586)

Hello, Raul645! May 11, 1960 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the return of the nuclear submarine USS Triton following the completion of its maiden voyage, which included the first submerge circumnavigation of the world. Triton was commanded by the late Captain Edward L. Beach, a highly-decorated naval officer from World War Two and author of the novel Run Silent, Run Deep.

I have worked hard to improve the Triton article from its original B-rating, and it has been upgraded to A-Class status, and it is currently undergoing a FAC review. Can you offer any assistance on moving the FAC process forward so that the Triton article can be considered as the TFA for May 11, 2010? Thank you for your time and consideration. This is an important anniversary for me and those who have helped me on this matter. All the best! Marcd30319 (talk) 23:21, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Question

Hi Raul, does Quehanna Wild Area have any chance as the April 1 TFA for 2011 (assuming it passes FAC, which looks pretty good at the moment)? The reason I ask is thet if it has no chance, I will nominate it for a DYK for April 1 this year. If it has a chance I will wait and take my chances next year on TFA (and not spoil the surprise this year with a DYK). Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you'd be best putting it on DYK. I won't rule it out for next year's april fools article, but I think there are ones out there with better potential. Raul654 (talk) 19:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:06, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

TfA

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

for letting File:Insane Clown Posse concert.jpg hit the main page unprotected. β^_command 00:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I never protect the images on the main page. Last I heard, that was done automatically. Raul654 (talk) 14:19, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

contact

is there a way to contact you in private? I have some information that you may be interested in. This is not spam, I am just trying to stay anonymous. 99.106.226.1 (talk) 19:08, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Register a user account here, and go to Special:EmailUser/Raul654 to send me an email. Raul654 (talk) 19:13, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Why is the ICP the Featured article?

Could you have least picked a band who makes good music?

"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"

How wonderful it is you created this article! I hope you won't mind me butting in at some point and expanding; after having brought Stephen Crane to FA almost a year and a half ago, I'm finally spending time improving the articles dedicated to his works; "The Open Boat" is a GA and bound for FAC in a week or so, The Monster may soon be GA-worthy, and just a few days ago I created The Black Riders and Other Lines. It's so great to see someone take an interest in Crane. :) María (habla conmigo) 16:45, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Go ahead and expand it. I created it to turn some red links blue. In particular, I'm working my way through Wikipedia:Stanford Archive answers and that page is linked from lots of them.

Our coverage of individual books, poems, and paintings is surprisingly poor. I think one big reason is that most newer editors somehow think it's wrong to create red links. So the article's we don't have don't get linked, and as a result they don't get created. Raul654 (talk) 17:17, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment on upcoming event, plus information

Just to let you know, in case you've been too busy to notice, that the potential April 1 item Quehanna Wild Area cleared FAC on Saturday. I am aware that you had already scheduled (or at least added the blurb) for Wife Selling prior to this FAC.

That is fine. Wikipedia is not censored, and, just as I support the right of the German Wikipedia to feature "Vulva" on the main page, so I support the right of the English Wikipedia to feature a serious article on an emotive topic with serious blurb on a joke day: some readers may think it is a joke, others may be offended, but that is their problem, right?

If you have the view that all publicity is good publicity, then such a choice is likely to be a big success. I don't have that view. My personal opinion is that our freedoms should be employed and deployed with discretion: Wife Selling, with such a blurb, would be a great article to feature on any other day, when it would be unambiguously clear that the project was taking the subject seriously. Using it on April 1 may instead be damaging.

I've been wrong before, though, and I could be wrong now. You are the expert in TFA's, and I am grateful for the work that you do. Geometry guy 21:34, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article review/Bath School disaster/archive1

Not sure if you were aware of this but both delegates have !voted on this one, so you will have to close it. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 12:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

another nag, per the "FAR Delegate" nage above about this article YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello from Hephaestos

Hi, there! What's up? It's me User:Hephaestos. I'm back, but I now have a new account, because I lost the password to my Hephaestos account. Well, take care! John Maynard Robinson (talk) 21:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Catch22 cover.jpg

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Thank you. DASHBot (talk) 00:44, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Protection of Main Page article

Do you have any thoughts on whether or not the current Main Page article wife selling ought to be semi-protected? Has consensus changed about this? See here and here. Paul August ☎ 20:50, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Unprotected images on the main page

Not to be confused with Cod throwing.

Whacking with a wet trout or trouting is a common practice on Wikipedia when experienced editors slip up and make a silly mistake. It, along with sentencing to the village stocks, is used to resolve one-off instances of seemingly silly behavior amongst normally constructive community members, as opposed to long term patterns of disruptive edits, which earn warnings and blocks.

Example

Whack!

The above is a WikiTrout (Oncorhynchus macrowikipediensis), used to make subtle adjustments to the clue levels of experienced Wikipedians.

To whack a user with a wet trout, simply place {{trout}} on their talk page.

For letting File:AnnaAnderson1922.jpg hit the main page unprotected. β^_command 00:09, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I just tried using a non-admin account to upload over File:AnnaAnderson1922.jpg (a file which exists on commons and is currently used on the main page, but which does not exist on on). I got the following error:

This page is currently protected from editing because it is transcluded in the following pages, which are protected with the "cascading" option: Wikipedia:Main Page/1 Wikipedia:Main Page/2 Wikipedia:Main Page/3 Wikipedia:Main Page/4 Wikipedia:Main Page/5

So thanks for your concern, but apparently there's nothing to see here. Raul654 (talk) 00:30, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

actually you are incorrect, If I where to go to commons before J Milburn protected it (4 minutes after it hit the main page) I could have uploaded what ever I wanted and bypassed the cascade protection. Because the file is hosted on commons local cascade protection only prevents local reupload. β^_command 02:14, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Popular TFAs

Do you know of a list of popular TFAs, by view count? 307,600 views of Wife selling would certainly belong on it... Parrot of Doom 11:49, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't remember all of them, but Cheese, Lord of the Rings, and Museum of Bad Art were all record-setters on the day they ran. Raul654 (talk) 16:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

In that case, I'm going to create a list article, in a similar style to DYKSTATS. Hopefully nobody will mind. Its only a bit of fun. Parrot of Doom 18:55, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

As long as I don't get stuck maintaining it, that sounds like a great idea :) Raul654 (talk) 19:00, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok I've proposed it on Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article. I'll start filling it up with articles I'm aware of. Parrot of Doom 19:11, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I am slightly confused. Prior to the stats tool, hit counts were done using edits, not actual views. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-12-11/Features and admins, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-12-11/SPV, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-23/News and notes, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-23/SPV, etc. Raul654 (talk) 19:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm slightly worried that people will get too "into" the statistics, and that it will be thrown around as a reason to run/not to run an article. Didn't we run Thriller on the day of MJ's funeral? Or his birthday? It no doubt got ten or twelve hits during the day.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:36, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Well its a bit of fun really, although it could prove useful as an indicator of which types of articles tend to get the more views. I suppose then the arguments will be "but do we run a salacious story that we know will get views, or do we stick to good old solid articles that might be a bit less 'tabloid'.

We'll see what the general reaction is. Parrot of Doom 19:47, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand

Thank you for the kind words. I'm a big fan of your work, especially the photos you posted from the Taubman Museum. And you've cleaned up my messes more than once. I appreciate it. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 21:21, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you left a word out of this sentence: "The painting lacks what Eakins [ ] was always the essential element in art:" BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 17:43, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

User:Raul654/GoRight

The user this page pertains to has been site banned. What reason is there to keep it?— Dædαlus ^Contribs 06:36, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

You may also wish to read Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:GoRight/Raul654. Although I still think the evidence page you have should be deleted, I'm not going to nom it right away. I'm rather going to seek input from others, including yourself, in hopes you yourself will delete it.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 06:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll hang onto it until his current appeal is rejected. Assuming that outcome, I'm fine with deleting it. Raul654 (talk) 15:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I should have researched more into this. I wasn't aware of any such appeal. My apologies.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 02:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject NINES and 18th Connect

I thought you might be interested to know that I am working on getting peer reviews of FAs on 18th- and 19th-century topics. Awadewit (talk) 05:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Jon Wilhite

I have nominated Jon Wilhite, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jon Wilhite. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 11:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Bath School disaster

Fourth nag. Please? YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 02:38, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I've had no involvement with that article, its FAC or its FAR, and Wikipedia:Featured article review/Bath School disaster/archive1 has five Delists, no Keeps-- if Raul agrees, I could move FARs like that one to archive, considering that both FAR delegates have been involved. It's a clear delist, no controversy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Template

Why not include the Bio link in the template? - it seems to me that it aids navigation...Modernist (talk) 16:37, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't remove the link to his bio - I moved it into the template header, which now says "Thomas Eakins - List of works. That seems a more rational layout than putting his biography in the works section. Raul654 (talk) 16:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Good move...Modernist (talk) 16:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

File:Edward Elgar.jpg

Hi, I nominated File:Edward Elgar.jpg for deletion, of which you had uploaded the original version. Hekerui (talk) 19:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

May 6

You may wish to use George V of the United Kingdom as TFA on May 6. It will be 100 years since his accession. DrKiernan (talk) 11:55, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Ping, I will also endorse this request. It is on the pending template but not at WP:TFAR. -MBK₀₀₄ 04:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder - I've scheduled it. Raul654 (talk) 04:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

April 25 TFA special request

Hi there Raul. I had nominated United States Academic Decathlon at WP:TFA/R to run on the main page on April 25[5]. However, due to some unfortunate circumstances the article was bumped after having received eight supports and no opposes, and I don't see a chance for it to be readded to the list before April 25 is scheduled. Is there a possibility that I could make a special request to you to run it on the main page that day regardless? NW (Talk) 11:13, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, on behalf of The Rambling Man, do you think you could featured England national football team manager for St. George's Day (only England-related article that hasn't been on the main page and that isn't about a monarch, which we get quite a bit of as TFA)? Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 03:43, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll be doing some scheduling later today or early tomorrow. I'll consider these requests then. Raul654 (talk) 19:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

William Rush and His Model

I found an unrestricted copy of G-110, and uploaded it. Interesting, how this changes things: G-113 is obviously a direct study for G-110, and G-113's lacy blue & white patches are the chaperone from G-110 turned 90 degrees to face the model. Eakins tried 5 different locations/positions for the chaperone, but the problem of where to put her was never really resolved. It makes me wonder if G-109's chair with the clothes was a deliberate provocation by Eakins to distract from a composition that never quite satisfied him.
Funny, except for the location of the chaperone and the (probably inaccurate) high-ceilinged workshop, how well the vertical composition of G-110 works. And, with the model on a higher pedestal, how much stronger the visual connection is between model and nymph statue. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 15:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

P.S. There's a great, probably-still-under-copyright photo of the Nymph and Bittern at http://siris-juleyphoto.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!sijuleyphotos&uri=full=3100001~!128914~!0#focus BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 16:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Reproductions of public domain works (including that photo) are not copyrightable.

Also, I just had a chat with Bill Weistein from the Philadelphia Museum of Art regarding the Eakins project and getting their support for it. Raul654 (talk) 16:36, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I admire the principled stand. There are some that disagree: http://crystalbridges.org/collection/

G-110, what appears to be a vertical composition, now looks like a horizontal composition that was cut-down. Possibly an intermediate step between Yale and PMA. It is so helpful to have all the images together. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 13:37, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Doh, this is what I get for not clicking the link first. I get to eat my above words. I thought you were talking about a photograph of a 2D work (which, the Crystal Bridge's all-encompasing disclaimr aside, are definitely not protected by copyright). However, you are talking about a photograph of a sculpture (a 3D work), which is not in the public domain.

Not to fear, though. I was planning to email a certain avidly pro-Wikipedian Smithsonian employee later today to follow up on our Denver meeting. I will also ask her if she can provide certifiable PD images of that sculpture.

Regarding this particular image, I'm pretty busy at the moment but in a couple of weeks I'll pull out my copy of Goodrich '33 and compare his descriptions in there to what you've found. Raul654 (talk) 04:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

LFKs

Hiya! The report is held by an agency called NTIS, which hasn't digitized it, sadly. See [6]; they will scan & send it to you for $73 (and then it's digitized forever, though not free). If you're looking for a copy for yourself, I'd check with your university library's government publications department -- tell them you're looking for NTIS report DE87009360. Chances are pretty good that they received it on microfiche back in the 80s and you can go down & copy/print the thing off the fiche; else they can likely get it through interlibrary loan (these DE fiche sets are commonly held; we almost certainly have it in our collection, and if I'm feeling ambitious I could scan it for you - though it's 200 pages, so not today :). If you're looking for a copy to link in Wikipedia, I'm not seeing a scanned copy online :( - and I'm not sure if a Livermore pub would count as government PD or not - probably not, it's probably copyright UC. See also the related site [7]. best, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 23:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Lawrence Livermore Labs seems to have a pretty weird copyright policy. NW (Talk) 04:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Doh - that's not really what I wanted to hear, Phoebe, but thanks for looking into this for me. Raul654 (talk) 19:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Question (2)

After the completion of the Bolognia push, which is still several months out, would you allow an exception at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests for the list of cutaneous conditions. I realize lists are generally not reviewed for possible feature on the main page, but I wanted to know if you would make an exception for this particular article, given the scope and quality? ---kilbad (talk) 19:29, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm willing to give the idea a fair hearing, but right now is a very bad time (between real life travel, the journal review of FAC, and the GLAM collaborations I need to follow up on, I don't have time to give this a fair hearing) Can you come back in about a month and poke me? Raul654 (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

As a suggestion, perhaps you could start a discussion of this at WT:TFA/R in the meantime. I seem to recall that putting a featured list in the slot was discussed several months ago, and that the reception of the idea was not friendly.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Let me do this, I will finish the Bolognia push over the next few months, and then will repost the idea here. Thanks for the quick replies! ---kilbad (talk) 19:57, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

DYK for The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand

On 17 April, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand, which you recently nominated. If you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 00:02, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/delist/Aloe aristata

Hi Raul, I wanted to let you know that I've suggested one of your featured pictures be delisted, here. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, please do! Thanks, Maedin\^talk 00:47, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Cecilia Beaux

Hi Raul, I just thought of you re: this article, which is in pretty nice shape; I don't know if you've looked at it, but given your efforts on behalf of Eakins, she might interest you as well. Cheers, JNW (talk) 23:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Bot for 18th- and 19th-century FAs

It was so nice to meet you in person! You should have stayed for the rest of the conference - it was so much fun! Anyway, I wanted to figure out a way to automate the list of 18th- and 19th-century FAs that I am trying to get peer reviewed. As new FAs get promoted, how can we add them to this list? We briefly talked about this at dinner, but I wanted to make sure we made it happen! Awadewit (talk) 04:30, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

File:Dred Scott.jpg missing description details

Dear uploader: The media file you uploaded as File:Dred Scott.jpg is missing a description and/or other details on its image description page. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors to make better use of the image, and it will be more informative for readers.

If the information is not provided, the image may eventually be proposed for deletion, a situation which is not desirable, and which can easily be avoided.

If you have any questions please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for the help in sorting out the block. All the best.4meter4 (talk) 06:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

John Vanbrugh

Wikipedia:Featured article review/John Vanbrugh/archive1 could probably do with you (or Sandy, Karanacs, Yellowmonkey or Dana Boomer, who I assume watch this page) stepping in and making an ex cathedra ruling as to what FA criteria 2c actually means; at the moment it's turning into an angels-on-a-pinhead exercise which shows every sign of turning into a shouting match. (In my opinion, both sides are 'right'; custom-and-practice and letter-of-the-law do seem to have diverged.) – iridescent 14:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

David York71

My my he is getting cheeky in his old age http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/DavidYork71&oldid=360288709 even editing his long term abuse report - is it worht putting another checkuser request to make sure - or did your action do a good block ? SatuSuro 14:08, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry there was no need to bother you - I have added it to a report that cirt has been waiting for a checkuser report SatuSuro 15:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion of purpose of FAR

See Wikipedia talk:Featured article review#Time to re-evaluate?. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Request for input on discussion regarding a FA recategorisation.

Hi Raul, Sandy has suggested that I ping you to ask for some input on the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#International Space Station. I feel that International Space Station has been misclassified as a Physics and astronomy when it better suits the Engineering and technology category. Any input you could offer would be appreciated. Colds7ream (talk) 12:01, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Raul, he also mentioned several others that might be moved for the same reason on that talk thread; should we move them all? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

?

1) Are you stalking me? Pdfpdf (talk) 12:44, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

2) I couldn't find a reference with his date-of-death. I gather you did? If so, could you tell me the citation please? Thanks in advance. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Here and here and here, among others. Raul654 (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Pdfpdf (talk) 02:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

[Brief reply]. Pdfpdf (talk) 03:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Reply. Pdfpdf (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Planning Discussions Now Underway Regarding DC Meetup #10

• You are receiving this message either because you received a similar one before and didn't object, or you requested to receive a similar one in the future. If you don't wish to receive this message again, then please let me know either on my talk page or here.
  
• Please be advised that planning is now underway (see here) for DC Meetup #10. --NBahn (talk) 15:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Can't discuss huh?

When I reverted the edit on Laura Ingraham, I opened a discussion on the talk page.....but so much for discussion. You don't even bother with it. It appears it's going to be your way, no matter what, and nobody elses input matters. Niteshift36 (talk) 17:23, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't notice the talk page discussion. I'll respond there. Raul654 (talk) 18:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hirohito move voting blocked

You have no right to close a discussion based on the "concencus reached over months of discussions", so what?lets discuss its move again, where in wikipedia does it say that concensus is an inmovable mountain that oncereached its untouchable,huh?.Concensus changes as people changes according to the survey of people who vote so you have no right to stop the voting,i read that in a policy.--Andres rojas22 (talk) 02:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed numerous times in the past (including all of archive page 4 and most of archive page 5). Discussion was extremely strongly in favor of keeping it at its current name, per Wikipedia policy, which has not changed. Wikipedia is an exercise in discussion at infinitum. Raul654 (talk) 02:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

No right. There are articles that have been moved, deleted and recreated several times and have more than ten discussions on the subject and you tell me a mere two archive pages is too much?let the people vote!!!1--Andres rojas22 (talk) 02:34, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Kinda think about it,isnt that also a concensus?--Andres rojas22 (talk) 02:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

banlieue

Hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why when i click on the first external link, on this page "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue", it displays a porn website?!!!!! Is it expected to happen?!!!!!!!! bye!!!!!!!--bee (talk) 13:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

NYC Wikipedia Meetup Saturday, May 22

New York City Meetup Next: Saturday May 22nd, OpenPlans in Lower Manhattan Last: 03/21/2010

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, review the recent Wikimedia Chapters Meeting 2010, plan for the next stages of projects like Wiki-Conference NYC and Wikipedia Cultural Embassy, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the March meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and generally enjoy ourselves and kick back.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 21:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

FA goals?

In primary school, you can get a gold star for writing an essay that is much better than classmates. Use that same essay in journalism school and you will easily flunk.

What should our standards be for FA? Compared to stubs, all FAs are much better than that. Compared to an average written newspaper piece, some FAs fall short of even that, much less being equal or better.

It would be unfair to single out an article. It would be more fair to make the standards clearer and subject new candidate articles to this standard. There is one article that reads like a diary. It is not organized well but just a chronological list written in paragraph form.

Can you think of a way to improve the FA instructions? I do not seek to sink a particular article, just to standardize and raise the standards. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that if you ask any FA regular, standards have risen and continue to rise. Obviously, you will still have some older articles that don't measure up to the new marks, they are either improved, or meet their fate at FAR.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Would you like to have a three year standard? Three years is a long time online. Then the article can be held to the current standard. If one nominates an article for reconsideration, that can cause hard feelings. The way it is now, FA promotion is permanent unless someone has the balls to protest. There is one editor who constantly protested against RFA (prospective administrators applying for the job) and he was harshly treated for doing this. I can already see 10 articles that are not to current FA standards but nominating 10 articles can be interpreted as troublemaking. If there is a set period, then every article would be equally treated. We can have the renewal process to be less rigorous if we want.

Also, the original post was meant for Raul to answer, not for everyone except Raul to answer. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If the renewal process was "less rigorous", then that would surely defeat the object. You have to bear in mind as well the practical difficulties of reassessment in the face of a diminishing pool of reviewers. Malleus Fatuorum 21:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The problems are two, Suomi. Standards continue to rise for FA, and they are not written standards, they are dictated by reviewers who more ready to oppose at FAC then they used to be. At the same time, articles, after they become FA, sometimes drift away from their authors, who no longer keep an eye on them and to and fro of community edits often degrades the article. It is not a question of whether the written standards are adequate.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It is also very hard to write standards that apply to every subject matter that Wikipedia covers without sounding a bit vague! However, if you would like to help us try to clarify what we have, please do try. We would like to be clear! Awadewit (talk) 21:15, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Raul, I am disappointed that you have ignored my question.  :( Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:11, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for not responding sooner, Suomi. I haven't had much time to edit here lately.

I'm not really sure what you are getting at. At least in theory, all FAs follow the same standards - the ones laid out at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria.

Compared to an average written newspaper piece, some FAs fall short of even that, much less being equal or better. - I don't agree with this. I've never seen a newspaper article that cites references; nor do most newspaper articles have anywhere near the kind of depth that our FAs do.

It would be more fair to make the standards clearer and subject new candidate articles to this standard. - if you have suggestions for improving the FA criteria, I'm all ears. I don't really know how we can make them any more standard than they already are. Raul654 (talk) 18:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps those who have written FA should have more say. I have not done so yet (write a FA from scratch) so I am not claiming more power. Or maybe that those who give valid critique should not be dismissed. For example, one article was just a diary. Just listed the singer's songs and had not much organization other than chronological. However, the review of the article was highly technically based, such as getting references in the same format. When technical criteria are met, these should be strongly considered for GA but FAs should require better prose and a more analytical review process.

Perhaps a solution would be that FA can be brought for full FA review after two years. This doesn't mean FAs get yanked after two years but that FAs can be decertified after two years and be submitted for a full FA review if they see fit (if nobody brings it up, the FA would be past two years and nothing would happen until someone brings it up, say 3-4 years down the road). I would think that this would probably only be done once a month. The current system is such that if you challenge a FA, you are making trouble. If things have an expiration date, then it's not the fault of the reviewer. As of now, challenging an FA can be rightly seen as confrontational. I know because I wrote a GA with someone and we both were defensive when the GA was challenged. I'm more mature now but I've been there, done that. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 17:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been mulling over a proposal to have some sort of a listing of FA's three years after their last FAR or FAC. If no one objected, they'd go back in the pool for another three years. If there was a significant feeling that they weren't up to standards, then they'd be FAR'd. However, we presently do not have the reviewers available to make it work, especially given that a fair number are already over three years old. Just something I'm mulling over.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Renewal of FAs

This is an excellent idea. It is non-confrontational since all articles would be subject to it. Articles awarded FA from 2000-2003 could be open for renewal in the next 6 months. Articles awarded FA from 2004-2006 could be open for renewal in the first half of 2011. Articles awarded FA from 2006-2009 could be open for renewal for the first half of 2012. From then on, they can be renewed 3 years from becoming FA or their last renewal. If there are no comments, then renewal is automatic.

Right now, if an article is proposed for FA, if there are no comments, it doesn't automatically become FA. But for renewal, we could do that to make things easier. What about it, Raul? Wehwalt's proposal is very good! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 20:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Ouch. It is not a proposal, it needs a lot of comment and work, and it is just an idea. It is too early to ask for a thumbs up/thumbs down.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:55, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

And at this point, the thing we need most is more reviewers, not more processes. We don't even have enough reviewers to fill the need at the existing FA/FAR pages, much less adding a new process with more bureaucracy. Suomi, I'm not sure why you think nominating FARs is so controversial - it happens on a regular basis with little drama. Yes, there is occasionally an editor who finds it an affront to their pride when one of their articles is nominated at FAR, but for the most part editors simply fix up the article and are done with it. Either that, or the main editor has already left the project, and so the article is either picked up by someone else or quietly delisted. If there are particular FA articles that you feel need to be reviewed, nominate them for FAR. It's not seen as a disruption, simply a part of the process. Or, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, mention the article to one of the FAR directors (myself or User:YellowMonkey) - either on one of our talk pages or in an e-mail. A third option would be to mention the article on the FAR talk page - many editors watch that page and will often bring articles to review that other editors mention but don't feel comfortable in bringing to FAR. I agree that there are many old FAs that need reviewing, but a bureaucratic process of "this set of articles now, that set of articles then" is not necessarily what we need. What we need is simply more editors willing to bring them to FAR and then stick around to help review other articles. Dana boomer (talk) 21:00, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Suomi Finland, with all due respect due respect do you understand just how much work a FA review takes? The key sentence in Wehwalt's post above is "we presently do not have the reviewers available to make it work". We have around 3000 FAs; even if you're only planning to review 500 of those, than assuming each review takes around an hour and each article is reviewed by three reviewers, that's 1500 work-hours that would be taken away right there. FAC and (especially) FAR are already buckling under the strain as it is. – iridescent 21:00, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

So then lots of articles could be automatically renewed. Someone could read several of them rapidly and decide that nothing needs to be done. They could flag the ones that need further look. By having all subject to review, it would be very fair. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 15:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Suomi, who do you propose to do this work? As Iridescent and I keep saying, there are already too few reviewers. Your obviously not advocating for every article to go through a full FAR, so how is it any different than what the process is now? There are already some time guidelines (a minimum of three to six months between promotion and FAR), and reviewers look through old FAs to find ones that need review. Old FARs that need review are already listed at WP:Unreviewed featured articles, and articles that have cleanup tags are listed at Wikipedia:Featured articles/Cleanup listing. I really don't think we need any mroe review processes or "flags". Dana boomer (talk) 16:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It's an idea. It has had no feedback because I haven't discussed it. It might be a good way of screening older FA's, but it is not yet ready for prime time, nor is prime time ready for it. I probably should not have mentioned it.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:20, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't be afraid. I thought of it but was too afraid to mention it until you mentioned it. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 15:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we can work through a fleshed-out version for public comment.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Fair-use TFA pic

Hi Raul, thanks for scheduling Victoria Cross (Canada) as the TFA for 24 May. As a note, the image that you have scheduled is a Fair-use image. The award has never been awarded so there is no free-use image, though there are a number of images of the old VCs. Just to let you know as I didn't think fair-use images could be on the main page. Thanks, Woody (talk) 09:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I missed that - I just assumed the pic was copyleft or PD. Thanks for catching my mistake. Raul654 (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to change TFA for May 24

Raul, I thought I should make you aware fo this proposal since you are the person that can make the final determination. [8]. I put the discussion on the TFA page because I thought that would be the best place to get all of the interested parties involved. I know that the switch may not happen because I am too late, but I didn't really think about it until recently. While it may be a pain, I hope you will take this consideration under proposal. Cheers and keep up the good work. Remember (talk) 16:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. Raul654 (talk) 19:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

AWESOME! Thanks!!! Remember (talk) 17:26, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

TFA...

Can I beg a favour? I'm going to be traveling for the next 6 weeks, and it'd be great if none of the articles i've worked on became TFA while I was gone, since otherwise there probably won't be anyone to deal with the more subtle forms of vandalism. Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 15:00, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 28, 2010

Hi. This is the FAC nominator of Iravan. Thanks for choosing Iravan as tomorrow's featured article, however IMO, the current draft misses out important facets of Iravan, so I propose the following draft (may need a copyedit) which IMO gives due weight to topics in accordance to Iravan's importance in them. Iravan (known as Aravan in Southern India) is popular because of his marriage to the transgender Alis (Koovagam ceremony has wide coverage in LGBT literature and sources like BBC and Indian media). Actually, the Aravan name is more popular in LGBT related affairs. Can you please check and do the needful. Thanks.

Iravan (Aravan) is a minor character from the Hindu epic of Mahabharata. The son of Pandava prince Arjuna (one of the main heroes of the Mahabharata) and the Naga princess Ulupi, Iravan is the central god of the cult of Kuttantavar and plays a major role in the cult of Draupadi. Both these cults are of South Indian origin, from a region of the country where he is worshipped as a village deity. The Mahabharata portrays Iravan as dying a heroic death in the 18-day Kurukshetra War, the epic's main subject. However, the South Indian cults have a supplementary tradition of honouring Iravan's self-sacrifice to the goddess Kali to ensure her favour and the victory of the Pandavas in the war. The South Indian cult focus on three boons granted to Iravan by the god Krishna in honour of this self-sacrifice. Iravan is also a patron god of well-known Indian transgender communities called Ali. In Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, an 18-day festival holds a ceremonial marriage of Iravan to Alis and male villagers (who have taken vows to Aravan) and followed then by their "widowhood" after ritual re-enactment of Iravan's sacrifice. Iravan is also known in Indonesia. Independent Javanese traditions present a dramatic marriage of Irawan to Titisari, daughter of Krishna, and a death resulting from a case of mistaken identity.(more...)

--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 04:35, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the blurb according to your suggestion. Raul654 (talk) 05:49, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. But can the name Aravan (a corruption of Iravan) be included? it is more popular in the South Indian context, where he has paramount importance. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 05:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't put alternate names or acronyms for main page FAs unless the blurb cannot be understood without it. I don't believe that is the case here. Raul654 (talk) 05:55, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

If you observe the article uses mostly spells Iravan as Aravan. IMO, for identification of the topic by experts (readers and writers of the LBGT literature published throughout the world that primarily uses Aravan and discusses Koovagam), the name Aravan is important. IMO, the blurb has to have this identification without which the experts may be confused. A FA reviewer suggested me I move this to Aravan. Please see my explanation at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Iravan/archive1 (Dr. Blofeld's comments and my reply). --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 06:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Minor reworking (spelling consistency and grammar). I request you to also check for any grammar mistakes in the wording (may need a copyedit) as this is a reworking of the lead and the follow of the lead is very different:

Iravan (Aravan) is a minor character from the Hindu epic of Mahabharata. The son of Pandava prince Arjuna (one of the main heroes of the Mahabharata) and the Naga princess Ulupi, Iravan is the central god of the Kuttantavar cult and plays a major role in the cult of Draupadi. Both these cults are of South Indian origin, from a region of the country where he is worshipped as a village deity. The Mahabharata portrays Iravan as dying a heroic death in the 18-day Kurukshetra War, the epic's main subject. However, the South Indian cults have a supplementary tradition of honouring Iravan's self-sacrifice to the goddess Kali to ensure her favour and the victory of the Pandavas in the war. The South Indian cults focus on three boons granted to Iravan by the god Krishna in honour of his sacrifice. Iravan is also a patron god of the well-known Indian transgender communities called Ali. In Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, an 18-day festival holds a ceremonial marriage of Iravan to Alis and male villagers and followed then by their "widowhood" after ritual re-enactment of Iravan's sacrifice. Iravan is also known in Indonesia. Independent Javanese traditions present a dramatic marriage of Iravan to Titisari, daughter of Krishna, and a death resulting from a case of mistaken identity.(more...)

--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 07:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

African museum curators

Hi, I take it you've had no response from the museum curator you mentioned on Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Africa...? Dsp13 (talk) 13:28, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

No, I have not heard back from him. I should follow up. Raul654 (talk) 20:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Independent Review Request on Stephens City, Virginia

Hello, I am awaiting an official peer review, but was told by a FAC delegate to get as many people looking at the page as possible. The page just received GA status today. At your earliest convenience, could you take a look at the Stephens City, Virginia page and review it (placing it on the page's talk page or mine is fine) independent of the official peer review. I would open to any and all requests during the review. Thanks...NeutralHomer • Talk • 01:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Just lighting this up again as it seems to be covered up. Hope all is well. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:06, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm hardly an expert, but it looks fine to me. Raul654 (talk) 23:19, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Steve McIntyre

I have nominated Steve McIntyre, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steve McIntyre. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. TexasAndroid (talk) 03:54, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

FA quality

I transformed Nokian Tyres from a stub to a GA and have improved it more. However, it is not an extremely long article. I have seen some FA that are very long but are not the best written. Is length a requirement? I am debating whether to do further repairs to the Nokian article then submit it for a FA. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Length is not a stated requirement for FAs, although there is the "comprehensiveness" requirement that usually makes FAs be a certain length. At almost 33 kb, your article would be nowhere near the shortest article, as there have been several successful FACs where the article was under 20 kb. As long as you can make the case that the article is comprehensive, if the question should come up, then you won't have a problem with length on the article. On the other hand, sometimes reviewers bring up the issue of an article being too long, and as such not using proper summary style, but that is generally when the article is over 100 kb. Dana boomer (talk) 21:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

POTD notification

POTD

Hi Mark,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Traumatic insemination 1 edit1.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on June 4, 2010. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2010-06-04. howcheng {chat} 16:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Teehee - I'm tempted to switch tomorrow's FA to something equally disturbing. If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears. Raul654 (talk) 16:36, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

request to postpone Mary Rose as TFA

I am notifying you a request has been made here to postpone the TFA date of Mary Rose, which is scheduled to appear as tomorrows article as you are no doubt aware. Yoenit (talk) 14:29, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Much oblige, Raul. Really appreciate it. I'll make sure to have some nice, supporting updates in store for July 19.

Keep up the good work.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

BTW

In order to demonstrate that I don't disagree with every edit you make, I'll point out that I think this one was a good move. Pdfpdf (talk) 15:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

FA opinion

I want to make an article an FA or FA like. I don't want people to complain that the references are not the same format. XXXXX Is it ok if the references are not exactly the same format?

Here is something that was on another talk page.

I manually put "retrieved" because if I don't, people say that the references are not a consistent format. I want the article to be either a FA or equivalent to a FA. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, no problem - I just wanted to make sure you knew about the parameter option. I usually use accessdate= because it forces the refs to stay consistent, but it's up to you. MastCell Talk 18:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MastCell"

Others may answer but I would like the answer of the main FA person, which is you. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Raul, are you awake? Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure I understand your question. You are asking me if it is OK to use a particular citation template for websites to show the date retrieved. I don't think the FA criteria proscribe any particular citation style or templates; they simply require articles to have a consistent style. Raul654 (talk) 23:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. You answered my question. A consistent style is a requirement, it seems. All must say "retrieved" not some "retrieved" and some "access date". Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 20:20, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

World Cup

I don't want to take up a slot at TFAR, especially with only three days' notice, but in case you've missed it can I draw your attention to Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests#World Cup? I wholeheartedly agree that we ought to highlight it in some way; in Europe, Africa and Latin America this is by far the biggest event of the year (the Olympics come a distant second), and the Final in particular will be certain to break the worldwide TV and radio audience records. – iridescent 21:39, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Please, *do* file a request at TFAR. The reason I created it was so that I don't have to commit all these requests to my very fallible memory. Raul654 (talk) 22:39, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Move protection on the TFA

Hello, I come here to ask a favour. Since the admin script that used to move protect the TFA appears to have been down for several weeks, myself and several other admins have been running round making sure that the TFA is move-protected before it hits the Main Page, but since you schedule the things, would you mind protecting them, setting it to expire after the new TFA is up. It would be... undesirable, shall we say, if Grawp or one of his moron sycophants were able to move the TFA. Thanks for your time, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:17, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I would actually not object if every FA were move-protected, as the chances that any of them would need to be moved without a discussion and a requested move are very slight. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

That process was started but it was removing the existing semi-protection which was undesirable. A new discussion should probably be opened up somewhere. Woody (talk) 10:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well it wouldn't take very long to move-protect them all, NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs) started the process. I'd be willing to to do it, but, to the best of my knowledge, there's no way of knowing which were semi protected previously. It could, of course, be brought up at RfPP and it could be an opportunity to see if the previous protection was still necessary. On another note, I wouldn't object if the page move feature were disabled for all but admins, but I think my chances of getting support on that are relatively low. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Revision to Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri articles

I noticed that you have revised either Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.

I intend to revise those articles following the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines. There are more details on the discussion pages of those articles. I'd be interested in any comments you have. It would be best if your comments were on the discussion pages of the two articles.

Thank you.

Vyeh (talk) 10:55, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Canterburg, Virginia

I noticed you Wikified the link for Canterburg, Virginia on the Stephens City, Virginia page. One problem with this is that Canterburg, Virginia is a redlink and Stephens City is a newly-minted GA. My question, will you be making an article for Canterburg, Virginia? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked about this. It's one of my biggest pet peeves and I've been meaning to write an essay on it.

To answer your question - no, I have no intention of writing an article on Canterburg, Virginia. I linked the term so that someone else who knows more about that locale than I do can come along later and write it.

Somehow, somewhere along the line most Wikipedians got the impression that making a red link is a bad thing and should be avoided. (Some people even remove them!) This is absolutely not true. Red links should be used for topics that could reasonably use an article. If nobody makes red links, it is extremely hard to tell what is left to be written. Raul654 (talk) 23:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Okie Dokie...I just knew that on the GA review they asked for redlinks to not be on the page. I can create the article, no problem, just didn't want to step on your toes while you were creating it. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I just knew that on the GA review they asked for redlinks to not be on the page - (Forehead slap) Sigh... this is exactly the problem I am talking about. Raul654 (talk) 23:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

It was my first GA so I went along with what they said on that one, wasn't sure of the rules and what to do. I will create the Canterburg, Virginia article in a bit. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Stephens City, Virginia

I was also wondering if you could re-review this GA review. I am asking as User:Risker has blocked User:Xtzou as a sock of a blocked account. This is a problem for me as Xtzou was my GA Reviewer. Since Xtzou was blocked as a sock, I want to make sure this doesn't void my GA review, hence my request. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 23:24, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Stats help

I seem to remember you had some edit check tools. See this can you help with data on the number of cases commented on in the uninvolved section by uninvolved editors? By hand is TDS --BozMo talk 11:03, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Dürer

Would you mind page moving Knight, Death, and the Devil to Knight, Death and the Devil. The second is the British Museum title and the most usual in the sources. I am searching about for possible BM FA candidate, by the way, if you are interested in a colab at some stage. I think it would give us a lot of creditability with them if we did it sooner rather than later. I know that a relic would be the most obvious choice, but you me and lith are all interested in Dürer, and that goes a long way to generating work. Ceoil (talk) 18:11, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Direct links for Featured items?

Hi - would you consider setting up links like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Today%27s_featured_article

for each of the elements of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Featured_content

These would be similar in spirit to the link for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

but would be much more likely to lead to an article of general interest.

Rationale: one could bookmark a link to TFA, or other TF? items, perhaps as part of a set of links one might visit on a daily or other regular basis, but without having to enter the Portal:Featured_content salad page.

thanks, 24.5.184.87 (talk) 19:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.184.87 (talk)

Doing it as a special page would require a developer to implement it. (Go here) and file a feature request). Alternately, there may already be a toolserver tool that does that. If not, it shouldn't be too hard for one of the toolserver people to create one. Raul654 (talk) 18:55, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

ISS TFA

Hi Raul, is there any chance you could please deselect International Space Station for June 16? I was hoping to run it in October, on the date it takes the 'longest continuous human presence in space' record from Mir. Thanks, Colds7ream (talk) 09:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks! Colds7ream (talk) 16:56, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

A request for renaming

Hello. Could you please rename my English Wikipedia account from SZv to Ang15. It was already done in Russian Wikipedia. SZv (talk) 09:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Todays featured article

Is there any way of changing the current featured article (Empire Strikes Back)? It is in horrible shape and certainly not something we should showcase. I've already put it up for featured article review, but I'd like to see something (even another of the films if any of them are better) more deserving of the position. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

And I've removed the FAR; please read the instructions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:36, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

My mistake, I didn't notice the second set of instructions further down the page. I still stand by the initial point though. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Knight, Death and the Devil

— Rlevse • Talk • 18:03, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Peerage privelege

Hi. Please take a look at Talk:Main Page#Peerage privilege. A user has raised a concern about the quality of this upcoming TFA and feels it should be substituted. I've motivated for it being postponed somewhat, on the basis that the article was a very old FA and was last reviewed in 2007. Your response would be much appreciated. Zunaid 18:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I only see two complaints - one that the article has red links, which Bencherlite correctly points out is an invalid objection (see my comment further up this page for more information on why "it's bad because it has red links" is my personal pet peeve); and the other that it has too few (30) references. I don't find either of these particularly compelling. Raul654 (talk) 00:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

July 4

I was wondering if there was any thought to get some sort of American article for TFA on July 4th. If there isn't, I'd like to put in a plug for our article on Virginia. We'd got a good amount of support on the requests board before Wehwalt decided it was too similar to the article on the city of Grand Forks. So just a thought. It would also work if you needed an article to replace Privilege of Peerage, since June 26 was one of the state's anniversaries, and the date we'd nominated Virginia for. Thanks!-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 23:04, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You also have To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World, History of the Grand Canyon area and several battles to choose from if you do do that. Prodego ^talk 07:27, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Raul, July 5 is Venezuela's declaration of independence day, in case you're looking to run The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (film) any time soon (it could also be saved for another day, since it's the only Venezuelan FA). Steve did a great job on it-- he was more neutral than I liked! [9] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Ban of Sugar Bear/Ibaranoff24. Thank you.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 02:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Changing a link in Template:TFAfooter

He Raul. As you're the FA director, I thought I'd notice you about a small change I suggested. Cheers, theFace 19:47, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Portrait of William-B. Kurtz - Photgraphy workshop

Hi, please read my comment: "There are two color changed versions. The second one is a bit little washed out. Please, compare with [10], if it is better - you can return to it". PawełMM (talk) 21:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

British Museum collaboration - Royal Gold Cup promoted

Hi Raul. I'm in the process of processing FAC today, and I'm promoting Royal Gold Cup. This is the first FA resulting from the collaboration with the British Museum. I wanted to let you know so that you could decide when this would hit the main page. Karanacs (talk) 17:18, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Unprotected images on the main page

Not to be confused with Cod throwing.

Whacking with a wet trout or trouting is a common practice on Wikipedia when experienced editors slip up and make a silly mistake. It, along with sentencing to the village stocks, is used to resolve one-off instances of seemingly silly behavior amongst normally constructive community members, as opposed to long term patterns of disruptive edits, which earn warnings and blocks.

Example

Whack!

The above is a WikiTrout (Oncorhynchus macrowikipediensis), used to make subtle adjustments to the clue levels of experienced Wikipedians.

To whack a user with a wet trout, simply place {{trout}} on their talk page.

for letting File:GardenStreetBridgeSchuylkillRiverSkylinePhiladelphiaPennsylvania.jpg (todays FP) reach the main page unprotected. β^_command 00:13, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

So long, and thanks for all the fish. Does that make three?Wehwalt (talk) 17:37, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Mary Rose on July 19

My impression from the discussion at /requests that you intended to feature Mary Rose on July 19. If this assumption is correct, I have an altearntive blurb for the article that you might be interested in. If you're interested, reply here and I'll post it.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:46, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm interested. Raul654 (talk) 15:13, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Alright. Here we go:

The Mary Rose was a warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII in the first half of the 16th century. During four decades of service in wars against France, Scotland and Brittany, she was one of the largest ships in the English navy and one of the earliest ships specially built for warfare. The Mary Rose is well-known today due to the fact that she sank intact on 19 July 1545 in the battle of the Solent north of the Isle of Wight, while leading an attack on French galleys. The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971 and salvaged in October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. Though much of the ship has deteriorated, the surviving section of the hull, with thousands of artefacts, is immeasurable value as a time capsule of the Tudor period. The excavation and salvage of the Mary Rose has since become a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable only to the raising of the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961. The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies and a wide array of objects used by the crew, providing detailed knowledge of the era in which the ship was built, in peacetime as in war. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. While undergoing conservation, the remains of the hull and many of its related artefacts have been on display since the mid-1980s in the Mary Rose Museum in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. (more...)

Pretty similar to what you wrote up for June 8, but slightly longer. I shuffled around some statements for continuity and tried to focus on what I felt is most relevant to the average reader.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:04, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Admin & stuff

Hi, back from a 3 year wikibreak or so, been fairly active again - don't know if you remember but I asked you how to find where to de-admin (and you kindly replied like always :)) as I was going on a long wikibreak at the time (reason was as I stated I think - I didn't want some new user turned off because he tried to get help from a non-active admin), and of course I was rather active on... everything ;p. Glad too see you around still.

3 years later there still don't see any notes about former administrators re-applying; says 3 months now which in fine if I have to go through the process again. A lot of people I knew from back then aren't around anymore, even my old nominator :\. So question: What's the process for reapplying - and if it's just the normal way through RFA again how much of my previous administrative history should I mention, as it could be a fairly long nomination intro o_O? If I still have to do it the normal way it will be a couple months and such so more for future reference in that case. RN 15:34, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

If you voluntarily gave it up under non-controversial circumstances (which seems to be the case), then re-adminship is automatic. Just drop a note on Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard asking for your admin bit back. Raul654 (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Will do so, thank you as always :). RN 15:43, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

-- Wow. Maybe, despite it mentioning it at WP:ADMIN also, and even getting my adminship back, wasn't the best idea; I don't know. See the massive amount of comments and... bitterness over "corruption"? at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard.... I'm not sure why that happened there. If anything I was expecting controversy over any of the mistakes I made in the past (if there were any); instead I seem to be made an example of something about admin term limits or somesuch and seem to be already making some.... non-friends :\. I really don't mind waiting out the 2+ months to link up with people for a proper RFA.... perhaps you could help the other Bureaucrats calm down and come to a consensus or something? Right now there's just a finger pointing going on; it's like a nightmare RFA. Sorry about this, didn't mean to cause community unrest. I'll try to avoid using admin tools until the unrest subsides at the very least... RN 01:02, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

That always happens, don't worry about it. Prodego ^talk 16:20, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Banned / blocked person editing article re: Michel Thomas

"Rivenburg" has made edits to the Michel Thomas article, from which he was banned & blocked several years ago. He was an LA Times reporter who was sued by Thomas for defamation a couple of years before Thomas died at age 90, in 2005, and for several years after Thomas died Rivenburg made extensive edits exclusively to Thomas's article to defend his point of view about the subject. I'm not an expert Wikipedian, how does one go about getting the ban and/or block enforced? 71.198.59.52 (talk) 06:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Just so's we're clear

What'd I Say TFA July 13 and Ann Bannon TFA July 15, both mine. Just... you know...tell me right up front that you hate me. I won't be offended. I'll just respect you all the more for your honesty. --Moni3 (talk) 17:03, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realize they are both yours. Would you like me to change the scheduling for one or both of them? Raul654 (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

What's your formula for scheduling, if you have one? How far apart do you try to schedule articles from primary authors? I have another book to read for Ann Bannon that will take me a week or so. If you postpone either of them, I'd prefer that one. --Moni3 (talk) 17:21, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

My "formula," such that it exists, is that I open up the list of featured articles and pick a section (Biology, Economics, Warfare, etc) that we haven't had on the main page in a while. From that section, I pick an article or two or three, open them up in new tabs, and read the first few sentences. If I like one them and don't find any major problems, I'll check make sure it "fits" with the recent ones that have appeared on the main page (so that we don't have too many consecutive articles from one country - particularly the US and UK - and that we don't have too many biographies in a row). If it fits, I schedule it.

I don't make any effort at all to look at the article history, so situations like yours are possible (although extremely unlikely). Raul654 (talk) 17:44, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

If you postpone either of them, I'd prefer that one. - I'm leaving that choice entirely in your hands. I'd prefer not to reschedule either article, but if you want me to, I will. Raul654 (talk) 17:44, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

FAC question

Greetings. I nominated the FAC Sentence spacing. It's garnered some support, but seemingly not enough. [11] Can you give me a rough idea of how many more "supports" it will take to pass so I can start asking other editors for a review? I started doing so (with some success), but not sure how many more people to ask. Thanks, and best regards, --Airborne84 (talk) 15:30, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Not Raul, just nudging in here, but generally there's no set number. Supports with actual comments carry more weight then "looks good to me" or similar; it's a discussion on the merits of the article. For example, it's likely that even with a single oppose containing legitimate concerns that go unaddressed and/or without comments from other commenters (support comments included) to tank an article's FAC. If it's the case where there's just a couple supports without much comment and not much else it should generally pass unless the FAC maintainer catches obvious stuff that people missed (Also, keep in mind there's a bit of a backlog right now due to one or two of the maintainers being on psuedo-wikibreaks). RN 15:59, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'll stand by for a few more days and then start asking some more editors if the current status quo is unchanged. --Airborne84 (talk) 18:16, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Question about citation style

Hi, Raul. Since you focus on areas that are relevant to writing quality, I wanted to ask you, is the citation style in Life of Joseph Smith, Jr. from 1827 to 1830 appropriate? Not only does it have two different sets of footnotes (One called "Notes" and one called References"), but the inline citations of the former are interspersed throughout the text of the article body in the form of parenthetical wikilinks. This looks like a poor way to cite that makes the text difficult to read. It also constitutes multiple wikilinks of the same term in the same section, and even the same paragraphs. Is this right? Nightscream (talk) 03:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Generally, when writing academic stuff, you have references to tell readers were information comes from, and footnotes/endnotes ("notes" hereafter) that can be used by the author for asides and other ancillary material. Since Mediawiki only provides <ref> </ref> tags, frequently our articles use ref tags for both for references and notes, but I don't have a problem with articles that separate them. Raul654 (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Political Cesspool TFA nom

Hi Raul,

It's now been over three days and still no word from James Edwards. I noticed at the top of the TFA requests page and saw that there is a time limit of 7 days for articles in the "nonspecific date" slot. Since I nominated this article on July 9, it appears as if the deadline is drawing near. I'm wondering what I should do; should I withdraw the nomination and resubmit it when (and if) I hear from James Edwards? Or should we make an exception and keep this article nominated for a couple more days even though that would violate the 7 day time limit, in hopes that James will finally respond? Or, should we just run the article using the Duke photo (or the fair-use logo, or no image at all)? Ultimately I think you should decide since you're the FA director. What do you think the best course of action is? Stonemason89 (talk) 01:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Another user has expressed the view that since the show's logo is so simple, it is uncopyrightable and therefore should be treated as if it were public domain. I agree with this view, but I wanted to see what your position on the issue is. Stonemason89 (talk) 03:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The bar for copyrightability is very low. I'm going to err on the side of caution here and not use it. I've scheduled the article for July 21 -- that should give Edwards plenty of time to get back to you, assuming he does get back to you. Raul654 (talk) 16:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Sure thing. He hasn't gotten back to me yet (I just checked) but I'll keep checking again in the next few days. Stonemason89 (talk) 17:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

James Edwards

Well, he finally e-mailed me; however, he's not being very cooperative, and the e-mail he sent me was quite rude.

To Whom It May Concern:

I have no interest whatsoever in being of assistance to you or Wikipedia.

It has been brought to my attention that there are numerous factual errors pertaining to the article "The Political Cesspool," which is the talk radio program that I created and host.

For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Cesspool

One such problem is the claim that we are syndicated by, "Stormfront Radio, a service of the white nationalist and supremacist website Stormfront.org."

This is false and I have reason to believe that you have been made aware of this error. Unfortunately, attempts by fans of my show to correct this problem have been erased and they have supposedly been reprimanded for trying to add an element of accuracy to that particular article.

If the Wikipedia article about my show represents one of the "best articles" of the Wikipedia community then that speaks very poorly of Wikipedia. Perhaps you should learn how to check for facts.

I have filed an official complaint to the following e-mail address: [email protected]

If the passage that has been brought to your attention is removed, as it should be, I will consider assigning a staff member to correct your other mistakes. If not, I will simply wash my hands of it and allow my legal team to handle the matter.

Sincerely,

James Edwards

That last sentence from his e-mail was especially troubling as it represents a legal threat. If you want proof of the legal threat, I will gladly forward a copy of the e-mail to you (or whoever else is in charge of such things); is there a specific e-mail address you want me to use? James Edwards himself has not, as far as I know, tried to set up an account on Wikipedia. However, his legal threat means that if he decides to do so in the future, we have grounds to indef him right away. In any event, I don't think we're going to get any cooperation out of this guy; it doesn't really surprise me, since he's a white supremacist after all. So looks like we're going to have to go image-less. Stonemason89 (talk) 02:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

In fact, I think this guy: [12] might be James Edwards, since his IP address geolocates to Memphis, TN and his edits coincide with the timing of this e-mail (which was on July 17, 2010). Stonemason89 (talk) 02:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow or Monday. Before then, I'm going to pull the article from the main page queue. It can be rescheduled later, but I don't want to antagonize him. Raul654 (talk) 04:42, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I found the OTRS ticket -- it is #2010071710026123. Raul654 (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:TFA Question

Hello, I am working on getting an article up to snuff for FA (still just a lowly GA) and when I finally get it to FA, I would like to have it featured on the main page. My question, how does one go about doing that? Do you and the other people at WP:TFA just pick an article out of the FA articles or is one chosen by !vote? Thanks...Neutralhomer • Talk • 04:36, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

In a nutshell, I (alone) pick all the articles that appear on the main page. To avoid having my talk page flooded with requests, I prefer that people file requests on the TFA page. TFA has a point system for determining which requests are better than others, so the good ones tend to stick around until scheduled, while less good requests tend to get deleted. Raul654 (talk) 04:45, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Okie Dokie...thanks. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 04:59, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

I'm overjoyed that Confirmation bias has been selected for TFA. Thanks also for making the suggested change to the summary. Friday will be a happy day! Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 16:20, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Featured reviews & promotion question

I was looking at some old featured article promotions, and have a couple of questions you may be able to answer. I noticed that most articles have a link to the promoted version, but some do not. Is there a standard practice for that? If so, how can I find out which versions were promoted so I can help clean up any gaps I find (e.g., Yom Kippur War)? Related to that question, the dates on the same article look odd. It looks like one FA candidate discussion that ran from 8-13 June. Is that right?

Thanks --Pneubehdeet (talk) 10:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

All modern FAs do have a link to the promoted version (known as an "oldid"). For the last few years the FA processes (FA, FAR) have been aided by a bot that takes care of technical details such as adding/removing the star and updating the {{ArticleHistory}}; this bot adds the oldid as well. I fixed the ArticleHistory at Yom Kippur War. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Wrestlers has moved

It was news to me, but Eakins's finished version of Wrestlers (painting) (G-317) is now at Los Angeles County Museum of Art: http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record&id=156181&type=101 The LACMA accession number contains the year 2007, and Columbus Museum of Art does not list the painting on its website. I updated both the individual page and the list of works. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 09:50, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info -- I had the article that way originally and later changed it. I'll call the LACMA and have a chat with the registrar to find out what the deal is.

Also FYI, I intend to get the list of Eakins works published as a book. I've been using the list article as my drafting area. William Innes Homer has agreed to be my co-author. Raul654 (talk) 20:27, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

That sounds terrific! A service to the public, and perhaps you'll get some compensation for all your good work. Congratulations! BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 23:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

So I called LACMA and finally got it touch with Veronica, the registrar there. She confirmed they have both the Wrestlers portrait and one of the studies for it; she said she is going to send me a full listing of all their Eakins works, but I haven't gotten it yet. Raul654 (talk) 05:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

FA milestone

We should hit 3,000 FAs sometime in August; perhaps someone will volunteer to write WP:FCDW/3000, from Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-14/Dispatches. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Also, July promotions hit a new high, since October 2008, at 53. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Make that 54. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:57, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to be traveling until August 13. After then, I should be able to pit in for a write up. Raul654 (talk) 17:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Ping ! WP:FA at 2994. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:08, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

You're on! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:33, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll start a signpost blurb. Raul654 (talk) 01:35, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Which one is #3000? Raul654 (talk) 01:36, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Based on the 2000th FA Signpost article, I thought it would be good to mention all of the articles promoted in that diff. If you go by the logs, though, it appears 90377 Sedna is the "official" 3000th FA. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:24, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

No official single one; all of them, as last time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm interesting in possibly writing this. Would that be ok? ResMar 00:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Sure - by all means. Raul654 (talk) 00:34, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Please put the draft at WP:FCDW/3000, referencing Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-14/Dispatches, and when you have a draft ready, please put it at WT:FCDW so others can review. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:13, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Sure, but I have to sleep first :) How fast are you at processing articles? We're deadlined in 47 hours. ResMar 03:16, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

There does not have to be a Dispatch every week-- there never has been. It is more important to get it right, even if it means missing a week, than to push something out the door before it's ready. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:18, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference NYC (2nd annual)

Our 2nd annual Wiki-Conference NYC has been confirmed for the weekend of August 28-29 at New York University.

There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. Register for the Wiki-Conference here. And sign up here for on-wiki notification. All are invited!
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 15:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Union City High School

Hi. I'm really proud of the work I've put into Union City High School, and was wondering if you could advise me as to what its ratings should be, and what it needs to get closer to Featured status? Can you respond on my talk page? Thanks. :-) Nightscream (talk) 18:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Request for advice on Akira Kurosawa article

Hello. Let me describe for you our unique project and I hope that you will be able to advise me how to proceed.

For the past six weeks, I and another Akira Kurosawa expert, Vili, have completely transformed the existing article on the Japanese film master. The reason we chose to work on it now is that 2010 is both the director’s centennial and the 60th Anniversary of the Tokyo premiere of his film, Rashomon, which became the first internationally-acclaimed Japanese film and which opened up Western film markets to Japanese cinema. We feel that the worldwide observance of this great director’s centennial has been decidedly underwhelming, and that a Today’s Featured Article about him on Wikipedia would be an exciting and well-deserved tribute.

That article, when we started working on it, was a “C” class article. When I finished some preliminary work on it, I submitted it for peer review for promotion to a “B”-level article, and the person who responded suggested that the process would be easier and quicker if we simply revised the whole article completely and then submitted it for Featured Article status. This made sense to me. We started serious work on the project in mid-June (the earliest period, for reasons I won’t get into, that I could devote time to it), hoping to get the work finished, accepted as a Featured Article and then appear as “Today’s Featured Article” for August 25, 2010, the 60th Anniversary of Rashomon’s Tokyo premiere.

The work has been much more difficult and slow than either of us had planned. My goal now is to get it ready to become a Today’s Featured Article by September 10, 2010, the 59th anniversary of Rashomon’s historic win of the Golden Lion at Venice. So if you look at the article and tell me it has problems, I am already very aware of these:

• It’s far too long – It is now well over 100 KB, which I am told is the limit for a Featured Article. (That limitation seems a bit arbitrary to me, but I can see the point of imposing limits.) But I intend to cut the “Life and career” section by at least a third, and will drastically cut my own sections as well.

• There are not enough graphics – I wanted to finish the first draft of the text before dealing with this issue. Surprisingly, there are very few good images of Kurosawa himself on Wikipedia commons, but there are some good images from the films and I think we will have to use those to break up the text.

• Succession Boxes – I’ve been informed that articles with succession boxes (such as the one listing Kurosawa’s awards at the bottom of our article, which somebody else created before we worked on it) would not be allowed to become featured articles. Is this true? If so, I can eliminate the succession boxes and create another page listing his awards to which I would then link from the main page. But I will do this only if necessary.

• The format of the references is not consistent – All the references I included in the passages I worked on are in the “Harvnb” format, so those parts are consistent. Vili changed some of his notes in the Life section to that format, but not others. I will make all the references consistent when editing the whole page.

• The page is too ambitious – You may or may not believe this, but our page just scratches the surface of Kurosawa scholarship. But I very much wanted to create something that would suggest the depth and range of that scholarship.

It may seem like a small difficulty, but the rules specify that in the blurb that needs to be created for a proposed Featured Article, a non-Fair-Use image is necessary. I believe that all the images I would have available, or which could become available for this article, would be Fair Use images. How can I get around this problem?

I would appreciate any help you could give us to accomplish our goal by the September 10th deadline.

Regards,

Dylanexpert (David Baldwin)

Dylanexpert (talk) 01:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 11

Hey, just in case you missed it, there is an oppurtunity to get a free dinner this Tuesday August 11 and a chance to meet and hang out talk about Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy and WP:GLAM/SI. Sorry that this is so late in the game, I was hoping the e-mail would be a better form of contact for active members (if you want to get on the e-mail list send me an User e-mail ). Hope that you can attend, User:Sadads (talk)12:37, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Tulsa

Well, I've often wondered what exactly is 24 Hours from Tulsa. Now I know: it's the flag of Singapore, and the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix :-)

Keep up the good work! —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 22:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

TS at TFA/R

Raul, of course it's your call (and I still don't understand how Pending revisions works), but I'm going to be traveling from 20 to 30 August, and in the absence of Colin and Eubulides, I may be the only editor left on Wiki who can answer talk page queries on that article. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Tooltips and collapsible text

I asked for a clarification on an FAC-related issue here. That talk page is not frequented much by users, so I'm sending out some messages in the hope that one of you can shed some light on this. Prime Blue (talk) 16:48, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Tooltips and collapsible text (2nd notice)

This here really is a pressing issue given the length of the discussion – and the virtual inability to continue without having this issue clarified. Those proposed solutions would directly affect FAC candidates if they are impossible to use, so you FAC delegates are propably the only ones who can answer this. Please help. Prime Blue (talk) 22:38, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

3000th FA

I've drafted the beggining of the article. Some of it is forked from the 2008 article, admittingly :) ResMar 16:31, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I've notified all involved editors, and the draft is done. I'm hoping to get authorical comments from the editors. Regards, ResMar 00:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Software patents.png

Thank you for uploading File:Software patents.png. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of that website's terms of use of its content. However, if the copyright holder is a party unaffiliated from the website's publisher, that copyright should also be acknowledged.

If you have uploaded other files, consider verifying that you have specified sources for those files as well. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged per Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion, F4. If the image is copyrighted and non-free, the image will be deleted 48 hours after 22:02, 29 August 2010 (UTC) per speedy deletion criterion F7. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:02, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Request leave

I am requesting leave to renominate The Harbingers for FA on the grounds of minimal feedback from previous FAC (WP:Featured article candidates/The Harbingers/archive1 and WP:Featured article candidates/The Harbingers/archive2). Thanks. d'oh! _talk 02:36, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

DC Meetup #12

An off-wiki discussion is taking place concerning DC Meetup #12. Watch this page for announcements.
—NBahn (talk) 04:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

P.S. You are receiving this message either because you received a similar one before and didn't object, or you requested to receive a similar one in the future. If you don't wish to receive this message again, then please let me know either on my talk page or here.

FYI

Hi, I work with Hookers, Escorts and Masseurs Association and we are adding a new politicians section, we needed a picture of the U.S. Capitol and have chosen yours as it meets our needs and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, we have credited wikipedia & you, let us know if that is okay with you and check it out at HemaNetwork.org and click on politicians when it is live. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hemanetwork (talk • contribs) 02:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

New Zealander

"New Zealander" is certainly the demonym for people from New Zealand, but a demonym is a noun. It is not at all appropriate to say a "New Zealander politican". The appropriate phrase is "New Zealand politician". I realise that most demonyms can be used as adjectives, but this one cannot. The informal term "Kiwi" is suitable as either a demonym or adjective, but is too informal for use in this context.

You might like to try google searches for "New Zealand politician" vs "New Zealander politician". Then try using some other occupation - artist, for example, in place of politician.-gadfium 01:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

TFA for September 15, 2010

I was wondering whether you could have tomorrow's FA not be a hurricane one. I know Juliancolton would really, really, really like 1910 Cuba hurricane for some time in early October (it'd be its 100 year anniversary). Also, I'm not particularly proud of Irene, FWIW. --Hurricanehink (talk) 13:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

PING

Raul, I've emailed you. Tony (talk) 14:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

FA categories

Raul, see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Stats and Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Subsections for the very long sections.3F; it may be time to tackle this because we have several cats close to or over 200. I have no brilliant ideas, but expect it to be a tedious discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Restart. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Raul, that discussion seems to have stalled, so I went ahead and split out biographies from the largest categories. That still left more than 200 articles in Warfare, so I split them further. Don't know how to handle Biology, as it has very few biographies, is large, and the Bio editors don't agree yet on how to split it. I also split Meteorology out. Could you have a look at WP:FA to see if you like what I've done? I don't want to continue in the event you may have other ideas-- if you like it, I'll continue splitting biographies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Double recusal

I may need to send this one to you: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/School for Creative and Performing Arts/archive1#Questions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem, although FYI I'm not going to be online much this weekend (a sibling is getting married this weekend). Raul654 (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No hurry-- I'll keep you posted. Have a fun weekend! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

DOUBLE RECUSAL!!!! OY MY GOD!!! IN MY FRONT YARD!!! WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN????

Just curious. --Moni3 (talk) 17:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid of what's in your front yard! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Just in case you've been under a rock or something. --Moni3 (talk) 20:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Warning: don't watch that with the video off. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Well...watching anything with the video off would be difficult. I agree. --Moni3 (talk) 20:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

You dork. Minimize the screen and listen to the video 'til the end. YMMV. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:34, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/School for Creative and Performing Arts/archive1 looks to be ready for your review now (both Karanacs and I reviewed, so we shouldn't close it). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Doing that now. Raul654 (talk) 01:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll do the "bookkeeping" if you decide where to put it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

It's good for me to do it every once in a while so I keep in practice :) Raul654 (talk) 01:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

We may send you more then! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Addie Williams

Nice additions to the article. Thanks, JNW (talk) 23:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Surrender of Japan

No big deal, no urgency, and I'm not looking to pick a fight. But I am interested to understand why. Thanks in advance. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 14:18, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I remove it because at first glance, I didn't see any useful content on the linked page -- merely a list of books, the most important of which are already cited in the article's bibliography. Moreover, the editor that added the link looks a lot like spammer. On second look at the link he added, it does link to a a few websites linked that are useful, which we might want to link from our article, but otherwise I stand by my original judgement that there's not a whole lot of useful content there. Raul654 (talk) 04:29, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I guessed it must be something like that. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Advanced request for a TFA

When I say advanced, I mean it. I'm hoping to reserve August 31, 2011 for Don Valley Parkway, as that will be the 50th anniversary of the road. My apologies if there's a specific venue to make such a request. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:16, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests is probably the page that you want (although I do not think pages are scheduled that far in advance). meshach (talk) 15:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

There's no way I'm going to remember requests this far out. Use the requests page when the date gets closer. Raul654 (talk) 04:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

quick question on {{FA/BeenOnMainPage}}

Wouldn't it be easier to have the template as:

<noinclude>{{{1}}}</noinclude>

and then transclude wp:FA to a different page? Nergaal (talk) 04:17, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't that break the use of <onlyinclude> </onlyinclude> at the top of the page which allows the number of FAs to be transcluded? Raul654 (talk) 04:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You are right, I forgot about that. Although it wouldn't break the "onlyinclude" syntax, the trick would not work as onlyinclude overrules any noinclude. It could work though if {{FA number}} would be setup to be edited by the bot that also does the closing procedure for FAC and FARC. Although that would alleviate any human countig errors, I am not sure though if it is really worth the energy (for now). Nergaal (talk) 01:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

One minor related thing though: the name of "FA/BeenOnMainPage" is at least 10 characters/bytes too long (I am guessing 12 or 13 characters can be cut from the name). If the name would be changed to something 10 characters shorter, since there have already been 2k pages on the mainpage, the wp:FA page itself could go down by 20k (considering it is already at 130k it might be worth thinking about such a change). Nergaal (talk) 01:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

TFA comment

Oakwood Cemetery's TFA nom is scheduled for Oct 16, however some editors have suggested using this on Halloween. I'm not opposed to either and will leave the decision up to you, but I'd like to know soon since I will be emailing local historical societies, non-profits, and the cemetery itself to inform them of the date. upstateNYer 14:17, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Grace Sherwood, the Witch of Pungo, is on the pending list for Oct 31. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 31, 2010. Am I missing something? upstateNYer 23:49, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests, Courcelles told me he was planning to nom it for TFA. I didn't mean it had already been selected. 00:12, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Ping

Mark, I emailed you about The Signpost. [A minute later: oh sorry, I see I made a similar post above. Just need to know if I should make other arrangements.] Tony (talk) 13:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

'Tis ready for you. I emailed the link, but you have it already. Thanks. Tony (talk) 03:45, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I've posted my blurb there. The description of my role isn't quite accurate -- user:Bmills came up with the idea for brilliant prose sometime in the second half of 2003. But brilliant prose languished until January of 2004, when two things happened in short order: (1) the main page was revamped to the 4-pane look roughly analogous to what we have today. At my suggestion, the featured articles were put in a prominent spot, and went from being obscure to very high profile; and (2) I "took over" the featured article process. That is to say, I took it upon myself to do promotions, schedule articles, etc. Nobody complained, so I just kept doing it, right up until today. Raul654 (talk) 04:23, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Lovely text, thanks. I'll fix your intro. Tony (talk) 04:46, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia NYC Meetup Sat Oct 16

New York City Meetup Next: Saturday October 16th, Jefferson Market Library in Lower Manhattan Last: 05/22/2010

In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, review the recent Wiki-Conference NYC 2010, plan for the next stages of projects like Wikipedia Ambassador Program and Wikipedia Academy, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the May meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and generally enjoy ourselves and kick back.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 16:16, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Oct 31 TFA

I see you've set Oct 16, which Oakwood Cemetery had 10 votes for; discussion also led to use for Halloween. I'd appreciate your consideration for using Oakwood for the Halloween article. Let me know what you think. upstateNYer 18:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

re User_talk:Raul654#TFA_comment, why are you repeating yourself? — Rlevse • Talk • 18:50, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

and pre this permalink : [13], if you wanted 31 Oct why did you yourself ask for 16 Oct? — Rlevse • Talk • 18:52, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I had asked for Oct 16; others suggested Halloween. Then this morning, the 16th had been taken, so the only other meaningful day I could grab was Halloween. I don't just go around posting randomly, I assure you. upstateNYer 00:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hrm... I hadn't noticed that Oakwood and the Cuba Hurricane were both requested for the 16th. Hrmm... I could bump cuba by a couple of days (which was OK according to the requestor) and put Oakwood in for the 16th. Raul654 (talk) 18:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

As for Halloween - once I finish scheduling the current batch, once I finish with the current batch, I'm going to open a discussion on the topic so I can get all the suggestions in one place before deciding. Raul654 (talk) 19:02, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, well if any change is made (i.e. Oakwood moves to Halloween) before the 16th, please let me know. Thanks. upstateNYer 00:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

The picture chosen to illustrate Grace Sherwood isn't a free image. Daniel Case (talk) 05:12, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I suggested an alternate free use picture. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Sunderland A.F.C.

Hi, do you think it would be possible to move Sunderland A.F.C. in the this months queue from October 21 to October 17 as the date would be more relevant. The Battle of Lissa article states no relevance to the date October 17 so they could easily be switched. Thanks. Sunderland06 (talk) 21:59, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that we have a soccer-related featured article scheduled for tomorrow, October 11. (William McGregor) I would prefer not to have another soccer related featured article scheduled so soon after. Raul654 (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I never noticed. Guess its not that important. Thanks anyway. Sunderland06 (talk) 23:46, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

YellowMonkey

Hi Raul. I'm rather concerned that you have someone helping you with the FA review process who has such a poor grasp of policies relating to WP:RS and who is so quick to rubbish an established academic. Please see [14], where YellowMonkey calls James S. Olson a "joke" and a "clown" and trashes anything he has had any involvement with on the basis of the fact that YellowMonkey thinks he found errata in two (unrelated) publications. What is the process for becoming your helper - are editors elected or do you select them? Presumably there is some way of requesting a review of an editor's appointment to such an important role? Thanks. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick ^t 01:31, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I select my helpers, typically with community input. They serve at my pleasure.

As far as his comments there, YM obviously has first-hand knowledge of Olson's work, is able to cite specific errors the author has made in previous works, and therefore doesn't consider him credible. I'm not going to second guess him on this. Looking over the discussion, I think BritishWatcher's suggestion (to replace citations to Olson's book for controversial statements with more reliable ones) is an extremely useful idea. Raul654 (talk) 03:49, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm rather shocked YellowMonkey has made it to around 40 FAs without an understanding of WP:RS. Shocked, shocked.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:24, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

TFA request

When you are considering TFA selections, may I ask that you do not pick Farthest South, the reason being that I am proposing to nominate this for 14 December 2011, that being the centenary of Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole; I don't think there is a more appropriate FA for this at the moment. Thanks. Brianboulton (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Ditto on Statue of Liberty, that would be best to run either around the 4th of July (25th anniversary of Liberty Weekend), or October 28, 2011 for the 125th anniversary of dedication. Wouldn't mention it but you've run so many of mine recently ... you've been very kind.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:21, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Lissa (1811)

Hi Raul,

I wrote (with assistance from others) today's featured article Battle of Lissa (1811), and was quite surprised to find it on the main page today as I had been waiting for the 200th annivesary next March to nominate it. Given that the main contributors to the article were not consulted before it was put on the main page (and I can't find the process by which it was nominated - how did it happen?), will this prejudice its anniversary nomination next year?--Jackyd101 (talk) 12:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, once an article has run, you can't nom it at TFA/R. It was a Raul selection, it did not come through TFA/R.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

This is very disappointing. If the principal editors (effectively me) had been asked at any stage or been given any warning that this was going to happen, then I'd have asked for a delay. Since this basic courtesy was not taken, the once-in-a-century opportunity has been ruined. I realise I'm being a bit melodramatic, but it is a little hard to take after putting a lot of effort into getting an article to FA in time for an anniversary only for someone to jump the gun six months early without so much as a note on the talk page. Is there anyway to prevent this sort of thing happening in future? --Jackyd101 (talk) 17:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

There was a notice posted on the talk page 6 days ago. Raul654 (talk) 18:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

As notices go, that doesn't exactly seem like fair warning. In future could you (or whoever does it) at least leave an edit summary that explains what is going on? If in future an article is selected for the main page prematurely, what is the procedure for halting it?--Jackyd101 (talk) 21:10, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I've dropped a note on User talk:Tbhotch requesting that he use more descriptive edit summaries.

As for un-scheduling them once they have been scheduled, drop a note here on my talk page. Raul654 (talk) 21:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for listening to me on this, much appreciated. May I also say that I think you do an excellent job, and I'm sorry if I came across as annoyed earlier.--Jackyd101 (talk) 21:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Would it be worthwhile to consider having a bot notify say the top five contributors of any scheduled article? I have no idea if this is practical, so excuse me if it is a foolish idea. I'm not out to give them an opportunity to object particularly, I'm thinking it would be useful to have them on notice so as to help them defend the article on TFA day.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:27, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why we need personal notification when a talk page note should be more than sufficient. But if someone wants to go ahead and do it, I won't object. Raul654 (talk) 00:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It won't be me, sticking an electric plug in an outlet is about the limit of my technical expertise.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I were bold and start doing it by myself. Manually of course, but I have no problem. Tbhotch^{Talk C.} 19:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Tbhotch, would you mind using descriptive edit summaries when making those notifications? I have many FA writer talkpages watchlisted, and my watchlist went nuts when you started doing this. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, but I usually click the New section, and cause I copy-paste it, the header is already noted, so I guess I'll click the Edit button instead. Tbhotch^{Talk C.} 19:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I saw the one you left for Grace Sherwood; well done. Surely this can be automated.--Wehwalt (talk) 03:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Request

Re: [User_talk:Raul654#Battle_of_Lissa_.281811.29 this discussion] - in the future, when tagging articles scheduled for the main page, could you use a more descriptive edit summary -- something like "This article is schedule to appear as the main page featured article in the near future" (or something like that)? (Also, thank you for doing it - it's a thankless task). Raul654 (talk) 21:17, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Understood. Summary added. Tbhotch^{Talk C.} 23:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia DC Meetup, October 23

You are invited to Wikipedia DC Meetup #12 on Saturday, October 23, 6pm at Bertucci's in Foggy Bottom. Special guests at this meetup will include Wikimedia CTO Danese Cooper, other Wikimedia technical staff and volunteer developers who will be in DC for Hack-A-Ton DC. Please RSVP on the meetup page.

You can remove your name from the Washington DC Meetups invite list at Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Invite/List.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 02:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

November 1 TFA

Hi Raul. I'm not sure if you had any special reason for scheduling Acra (fortress) for TFA on Nov. 1, but there does appear to be an article, Posting system, that should have been requested (although nobody actually put it up) and has a date connection (see Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/pending). Just wanted to let you know. Cheers, Dabomb87 (talk) 04:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't have any particular reason for giving Acra that date. But the date connection to Posting system is pretty tenuous - I don't think it's worth rejiggering the schedule for it. Raul654 (talk) 19:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem; just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 14:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Gunpowder Plot

Just wondering if you were going to run this on the 5th or not? Not that I'm bothered either way, but if you are I'd like to run through it again to make sure there aren't any silly mistakes. I've been working on the 13 plotters and therefore am more familiar with the source material than I was when I helped write this. Parrot of Doom 20:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I nominated it anyway. Parrot of Doom 10:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)