WikiCup 2024 July newsletter

The third round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 28 June. As with Round 2, this round was competitive: each of the 16 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 256 points.

The following editors all scored more than 400 points in Round 3:

• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,059 points, mostly from 1 featured article on DeLancey W. Gill, 11 good articles, 18 did you know nominations, and dozens of reviews;
• Skyshifter (submissions) with 673 points, mostly from 2 featured articles on Worlds (Porter Robinson album) and I'm God, 5 good articles, and 2 did you know nominations;
• Sammi Brie (submissions) with 557 points, mostly from 1 featured article on KNXV-TV, 5 good articles, and 8 did you know nominations; and
• AryKun (submissions) with 415 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Great cuckoo-dove, with a high number of bonus points from that article.

The full scores for round 3 can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 28 featured articles, 38 featured lists, 240 good articles, 92 in the news credits, and at least 285 did you know credits. They have conducted 279 featured article reviews, as well as 492 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 22 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed during Round 4, which starts on 1 July at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:29, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

July 2024

Hello, I'm Sumanuil. I noticed that you recently made an edit to Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article requests in which your edit summary did not appear to describe the change you made. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 04:34, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

List of inventoried conifers in Canada

I don't understand this edit; it seems to be de-italicizing a binomial name for some species, and leaving others italicized. - Dank (push to talk) 02:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems to be the bot not knowing what to do with the rarely used "at" parameter. I'll mention it on the bot's talk page. Abductive (reasoning) 02:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks much. - Dank (push to talk) 02:33, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 August newsletter

The fourth round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 29 August. Each of the 8 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 472 points, and the following contestants scored more than 700 points:

• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,150 points, mostly from 3 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 7 good articles, and 13 did you know nominations;
• Arconning (submissions) with 791 points, mostly from 2 featured lists, 8 good articles, 4 did you know nominations, and plenty of reviews;
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 718 points, mostly from a high-multiplier featured article on Genghis Khan and 2 good articles; and
• BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 714 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Susanna Hoffs, 2 featured lists, and 3 good articles.

Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated. Contestants put in extraordinary amounts of effort during this round, and their scores can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 36 featured articles, 55 featured lists, 15 good articles, 93 in the news credits, and at least 333 did you know credits. They have conducted 357 featured content reviews, as well as 553 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 30 articles to featured topics and good topics.

Any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed during Round 5, which starts on 1 September at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. If two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Remember to claim your points within 14 days of earning them, and importantly, before the deadline on 31 October.

If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2024 Barsalogho attack

Please revert this move and reopen the discussion. You closed it only 9 hours after it started, and move discussions should generally run for a week. There was an objection to the change from "battle" to "attack" in the comment just preceding the move discussion, less than a day ago, so this was not an uncontroversial move. Thanks, Dekimasuよ! 08:46, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Naw, it's on the Front Page and was an embarrassment. There was a clear trend on talk. Abductive (reasoning) 08:50, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

There were three comments, and the close was performed incorrectly. It is still showing as a broken move request at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Malformed requests. I have no opinion on this move, but I don't see why an out-of-process move should be performed over objections in service of something cosmetic. For that matter the close would have made more sense if there was a summary or link to the discussion of the nomination at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates, which also didn't use the "attack" title. At the least please clean up the close and then maybe no one else will object. Dekimasuよ! 09:00, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

It got turned from an embarrassment for all of Wikipedia to an embarrassment for me, I guess. This was no battle, as it is quite likely that any soldiers involved were not there to protect the victims, and the statement the "Burkinabe soldiers, auxiliaries, and air support responded to the attack, reportedly killing several militants and diverting a deadlier attack" is a lie. Abductive (reasoning) 09:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

The template is still broken and the reasoning behind the early close is still not explained. That can be fixed on the talk page regardless of content issues. Best, Dekimasuよ! 09:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't know how. Having it broken on talk is a consequence of a title so embarrassing that an editor such as myself is motivated to move it even though that is not something they usually do. It would be best in the future to avoid such eventualities by titling articles better. Abductive (reasoning) 09:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree that titles should be chosen better; that's why I work on move requests and why there are procedures for performing them. In this case I have never edited that article or its talk page, and have never been involved in its titling. My pared-down request is simply for you to write a sentence after "page moved" to explain why the page was moved (there isn't anything to learn—it's just writing the reason—mention WP:RMEC and WP:SNOW if that's your reasoning) and then to remove Template:Requested move/dated, as it says to do in the text of the template when you now visit the page. Dekimasuよ! 09:45, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Like I said, this is an embarrassment for me. I'm sorry I can't be of any more help. Abductive (reasoning) 09:47, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Pseudosciaena

The redirect "PseudosciaenaPseudosciaena" is not mentioned on the target page Larimichthys. Apparently from e.g. Pseudosciaena polyactis it should be mentioned as a synonym in the infobox? In any event, I marked that as an {{R from alternative scientific name}} since {{R to former name}} didn't make sense to me. wbm1058 (talk) 17:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

When I created that redir in 2010, Pseudosciaena was synonym of Larimichthys. Now it is a synonym of Argyrosomus. All synonyms should be checked in the various databases before adding them to infoboxes. Abductive (reasoning) 18:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That's why I brought this to your talk. You obviously have more experience in this topic area than I do. I don't have a particularly high level of confidence that I know what I'm doing when I "check the databases". – wbm1058 (talk) 18:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't either. But they are shown in the taxonbar. Abductive (reasoning) 23:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Coord template and mobile viwers

Which ones dose it break? The foundation ones simply don't render it.©Geni (talk) 17:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

• I don't know, but somebody told me that was why MOS:SECTIONORDER requires it to be put all the way down just before the categories. Maybe ask on the the talk page there? Abductive (reasoning) 18:54, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Re: Hawaii series by Georgia O'Keeffe

Are you knowledgeable about copyright? There’s a Commons user who claims all of the paintings in this series might be in the public domain because the copyright was not renewed, but I’m not sure how to verify all of this or confirm it. This is regarding Hawaii series by Georgia O'Keeffe. Only one painting in the series has been uploaded to Commons so far, but I have no idea if the series qualities in total. Viriditas (talk) 23:09, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid not, sorry. Abductive (reasoning) 23:10, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Hammersmith Brewery

I apologize for not checking the coordinates. I was editing to fix a script error and had assumed that the existing coordinates were correct. I'll be more vigilant about such edits. — hike395 (talk) 02:47, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Great, sorry to bother you. Abductive (reasoning) 02:49, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Date format throughout article tool?

I notice in this edit you changed all the month-day-year formatted dates in the article to day-month-year. Since Homer House is a United States associated article, the former is correct. Not a big deal, we all make mistakes. However, since other people made good edits since, reverting them will be a pain. Did you use some sort of automatic tool to change them all (I hope!) and can you tell me the tool, so I (or you) can use it to change them back? --GRuban (talk) 08:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I changed the article to mdy. The script is linked in the edit summary, but here it is too: User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates. Abductive (reasoning) 15:40, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! --GRuban (talk) 21:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Moraea villosa

Please note that it is not nice to snark at someone for being slow to add all the bells and whistles to a new wikipedia page, as you did with this addition to my talk page. I was working on a mess that had been created at peacock flower, which necessitated adding citations and new pages to justify restoring what had been deleted. Believe it or not, the work involved plus the repeated crashes of the wikimedia site made the process a bit slow. It is hard enough to maintain cheerfulness about the state of wikipedia; please do not leave such negative comments on my talk page again. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:45, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your apology. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 02:02, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

STS

Hi Abductive. You do a lot of good work here. Are you interested in working on upgrading stubs to start class? I think your presence would really make an impact. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 06:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Eewilson: I am planning on discussing the STS further with you, on its talk page. Abductive (reasoning) 06:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay, cool. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 07:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

WikiCup 2024 November newsletter

The 2024 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round being a very tight race. Our new champion is AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who scored 2,283 points mainly through 3 high-multiplier FAs and 3 GAs on military history topics. By a 1% margin, Airship beat out last year's champion, BeanieFan11 (submissions), who scored second with 2,264 points, mainly from an impressive 58 GAs about athletes. In third place, Generalissima (submissions) scored 1,528 points, primarily from two FAs on U.S. Librarians of Congress and 20 GAs about various historical topics. Our other finalists are: Sammi Brie (submissions) with 879 points, Hey man im josh (submissions) with 533 points, BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 432 points, Arconning (submissions) with 244 points, and AryKun (submissions) with 15 points. Congratulations to our finalists and all who participated!

The final round was very productive, and contestants had 7 FAs, 9 FLs, 94 GAs, 73 FAC reviews, and 79 GAN reviews and peer reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

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

• Generalissima (submissions) wins the featured article prize for 3 FAs in round 4, and 7 FAs overall.
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize for 23 FLs overall.
• MaranoFan (submissions) wins the featured topic prize for 9 articles in featured topics in round 1.
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize for 110 FA/FL reviews overall.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize for 58 GAs in round 5, and 70 GAs overall.
• Fritzmann (submissions) wins the good topic prize for 6 articles in good topics in round 2.
• Sammi Brie (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize for 45 GA reviews in round 2, and 78 GA reviews overall.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 131 Did you know articles overall.
• Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 15 In the news articles in round 1, and 36 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2025 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

CS1 error on Doronicum austriacum

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Doronicum austriacum, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A missing title error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 11:23, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

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Editor experience invitation

Hi Abductive. I'm looking for experienced editors to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:53, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2025 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2025 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.

For the 2025 WikiCup, we've implemented several changes to the scoring system. The highest-ranking contestants will now receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are now open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants will no longer be eliminated at the end of each round.

The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Citation bot won't stop adding incorrect dates to articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:49, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Sentence spacing

Hi -- I'm sure you saw the revert, but I wanted to stop by and say I think it's generally a bad idea to change sentence spacing of an article that is being actively maintained -- of course it's cosmetic, but it's usually going to represent the preference of the editor(s) working on the article already. I did see that you reduced the precision of the coordinates too, and I've re-applied that change -- thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:52, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

coordinates for Bellfield Plantation?

Hi! Do you remember where you got the coordinates for Bellfield Plantation at in this edit? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bellfield_Plantation&diff=prev&oldid=1271502578

I think the original was pointed at the cemetery/graves, curious if you found a source for the actual house location. I don't believe the roadsign/waterside is representative. Jacobsatterfield (talk) Jacobsatterfield (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

• Well, I saw no evidence that turnout was for the graves. The photo with the big tree says it shows "looking east from the Bellfield Plantation site". That tree is still there, where the turnout for the historical maker is. You can see it on Google Street View. Additionally, one can assume that the local historical society, which often has to apply for the signs, and sometimes pay for them, knows what they are talking about. The only times I have ever seen them be wrong is when they are trying to drum up tourist business and the real location would be bad for that. In this case, there are two turnouts on a stretch of empty road, so there was no incentive to pick the incorrect one. Thus the signs are as representative as it gets. Abductive (reasoning) 22:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

  Hmmm, thanks, I'll try to do some more digging and find a citable source for some coordinates then. One of the turnouts is indeed toward the old cemetery, which is fenced now/closed to public. Some of the cited articles seemed to indicated the old house foundation was nearby on that side of the road, but don't remember if any actually had hard coords. Usually the NHRP docs will have a hard survey point attached, I'll start trying to locate based on that. Pretty sure the roadsign is there because, indeed, it's the closest spot that tourists would see as they drive by on the Parkway. Appreciate the interest/edits/fixes! Jacobsatterfield (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

  ... Some good clues in the Hatch, Charles E. Jr. (1970) Bellfield Estate General Study, which cites an earlier Clyde F. Trudell, CNHP, 1938 archeological survey on Pg 54: partial, uncovered "the foundations of both the seventeeth and eighteenth century structures" "A vaulted brick drain 24 by 26 inches has been uncovered"..."runs from the house in an easterly direction toward the york river".. "a distance of 500 feet". Appendix III has the most comprehensive inventory and description of previous excavation, but it says no final report appears to have been filed by the 1930's Colonial National Historic Park superintendent. I didn't see an explicit coordinate set, so I'll keep digging.... Jacobsatterfield (talk) 17:14, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Citation bot

Hello. Please, do not use the Citation bot to modify the capitalisation in languages whose orthography you don't know. Standard Croatian orthographic rules are available at pravopis.hr. Thank you. – Phazd (talk|contribs) 12:30, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Hyperprecise coordinates

Hi Abductive, regarding this edit, is there a particular reason .34 was changed to .7? Shifting the point slightly east would be a bit more accurate. Best, CMD (talk) 11:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

WikiCup 2025 March newsletter

The first round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 26 February. As a reminder, we are no longer disqualifying the lowest-scoring contestants; everyone who competed in round 1 will advance to round 2 unless they have withdrawn or been banned from Wikipedia. Instead, the contestants with the highest round-point totals now receive tournament points at the end of each round. Unlike the round points in the main WikiCup table, which are reset at the end of each round, tournament points are carried over between rounds and can only be earned if a competitor is among the top 16 round-point scorers. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far.

Round 1 was very competitive compared with previous years; two contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and the top 16 contestants all scored more than 500 round points. The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,168 round points, mainly from 4 featured articles and 4 good articles on old military history, in addition to an assortment of GA and FA reviews.
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,095 round points, mainly from 2 FAs, 2 featured lists, 8 GAs, and 16 Did You Know articles mainly on historical topics.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions), with 866 round points from 20 GAs, 23 DYKs, and 2 In the News articles primarily about athletes.
• Sammi Brie (submissions), with 846 round points from 16 GAs about radio and TV stations, 45 GA reviews, and 3 DYKs.
• Hey man im josh (submissions), with 816 round points from 5 FLs about sports and Olympic topics, 46 FL reviews, 3 ITN articles, and a large number of bonus points.
• MaranoFan (submissions), with 815 round points primarily from 3 FAs and 1 GA about music, in addition to 9 article reviews.

The full scores for round 1 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 18 featured articles, 26 featured lists, 1 featured-topic article, 197 good articles, 38 good-topic articles and more than 100 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 23 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 550 reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after 26 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2, which begins on 1 March. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Weigela florida has been accepted

Weigela florida, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.

The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. Most new articles start out as Stub-Class or Start-Class and then attain higher grades as they develop over time. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

Since you have made at least 10 edits over more than four days, you can now create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for creation if you prefer.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk. Once you have made at least 10 edits and had an account for at least four days, you will have the option to create articles yourself without posting a request to Articles for creation.

If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider leaving us some feedback.

Thanks again, and happy editing!

Sophisticatedevening🍷^(talk) 13:47, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Nomination of Aaryn Gries for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Aaryn Gries is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 03:58, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

WikiCup 2025 May newsletter

The second round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 28 April at 23:59 UTC. To reiterate what we said in the previous newsletter, we are no longer disqualifying contestants based on how many points (now known as round points) they received. Instead, the contestants with the highest round-point totals now receive tournament points at the end of each round. These tournament points are carried over between rounds, and can only be earned if a competitor is among the top 16 round-point scorers at the end of each round. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far. Everyone who competed in round 2 will advance to round 3 unless they have withdrawn or been banned.

Round 2 was quite competitive. Four contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and eight scored more than 500 points (including one who has withdrawn). The following competitors scored at least 800 points:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,233 round points from 24 good articles, 28 Did you know articles, and one In the news nomination, mainly about athletes and politicians
• Thebiguglyalien (submissions) with 1,127 round points, almost entirely from two high-multiplier featured articles on Black Widow (Natasha Romanova) and Grace Coolidge, in addition to two GAs and two reviews
• History6042 (submissions) with 1,088 round points from four featured lists about Michelin-starred restaurants, nine good articles and a good topic mostly on Olympic-related subjects, seven ITN articles, and dozens of reviews
• Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,085 round points from three FAs, one GA, and four DYKs on military history, as well as 18 reviews
• Arconning (submissions) with 887 round points, mostly from four FLs, six GAs, and seven DYKs on Olympic topics, along with more than two dozen reviews

In addition, we would like to recognize Generalissima (submissions) for her efforts; she scored 801 round points but withdrew before the end of the round.

The full scores for round 2 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 13 featured articles, 20 featured lists, 4 featured-topic articles, 138 good articles, 7 good-topic articles, and more than 100 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 19 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 300 reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 April but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed in Round 3. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:02, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Bot management

Did you even look at the output of this bot edit before you committed? Even a superficial glance would have told you that it was nonsense. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:21, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. I will mention it on the bot's bug report page. Abductive (reasoning) 23:04, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:36, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Sanahin Bridge

Hello.

I have a question to ask you regarding the page Sanahin Bridge. I added links to Armenia and its province in the infobox, as any location infobox would normally have.

I came back to the page and found the links were removed.

Why was that?

EncyloThesaurus (talk) 10:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

• Explained at the article just now. Abductive (reasoning) 12:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks. Didn't know they were excessive links. EncyloThesaurus (talk) 20:56, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Early Earth

Loved your edit summary! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:00, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

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WikiCup 2025 July newsletter

The third round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 28 June. This round was again competitive, with three contestants scoring more than 1,000 round points:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,314 round points, mostly from articles about athletes and politicians, including 20 good articles and 48 did you know articles
• Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,197 round points, mostly from military history articles, including 9 featured topic articles, two featured articles, and four good articles
• Sammi Brie (submissions) with 1,055 round points, mostly from television station articles, including 27 good articles and 9 good topic articles

Everyone who competed in round 3 will advance to round 4 unless they have withdrawn. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far, while the full scores for round 3 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 4 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 1 featured picture, 9 featured-topic articles, 149 good articles, 27 good-topic articles, and more than 90 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 18 In the News articles, and they have conducted more than 200 reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed in Round 4. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:49, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Extracting coordinates

How did you do so for Hobe Mountain? I would like to do so in another article of mine. CapeVerdeWave (talk) 15:53, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

• @CapeVerdeWave: I use Wikimapia. Typically I click on the coordinates already in the article, or if there are none I open an article about a nearby place and click there. A link to Wikimapia is listed on the geohack.toolforge page. First I just look around Wikimapia because if you hover the name of the place pops up. Sometimes I use the Search Categories function (the text search in the upper right is largely useless). Wikimapia allows you to toggle between Google and Bing to get a better look. The exact coordinates that the reticle is pointing to are given in the lower left corner, and clicking on them brings up a window to copy from. Then I paste them and format in the Wikipedia article according to the guidance at WP:OPCOORD. Abductive (reasoning) 19:45, 12 July 2025 (UTC)
  • @Abductive: Unfortunately, the site in question—a landform—does not exist on WikiMapia, but does on Google Maps/Earth. (There is no way to look it up on GeoHack.) If I enter its name, how can I extract DMS coordinates? Also, if seconds contain decimals, do I round? CapeVerdeWave (talk) 10:28, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
    • @CapeVerdeWave: Well, if you want to use Google Maps, you just right-click on the object, and click on the coordinates given at the top of the pop-up, which automatically copies them to the clipboard. Then you paste them into your article. Google Maps gives way too many digits, which is thought to be a sort of a copyright trap, so you round or truncate to about 4 digits per WP:OPCOORD. Abductive (reasoning) 13:50, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

July 2025

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. This means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be although other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:29, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

GNIS is primary and unreliable

Could you please explain your recent edit to Port O'Connor, Texas in which you reverted my recent update to the article with no explanation. Vsmith (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

So you are saying that GNIS is unreliable, but the version you are restoring is also using GNIS as a source. Please explain. Vsmith (talk) 22:56, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

GNIS is down right now, but for the majority of features it points to what seem to be random spots. Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, Yandex, and OSM point to the centers of towns, and often agree exactly. The coordinates I am restoring across Wikipedia to undo the damage you are causing are selected using those secondary sources. Abductive (reasoning) 10:14, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

and are you referencing those sources in your changes? In the Port O'Connor article you simply reverted to an older GNIS value. How is that helpful? Vsmith (talk) 15:13, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Due to your last absurd edit the article has been protected temporarily. You are welcome to discuss on the talk page. Cheers, Vsmith (talk) 20:38, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying that, due to a editing dispute with me, you used your powers as an admin to lock the article? Abductive (reasoning) 00:43, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

The talk page for the article is the place for discussing changes to the article. Please take your discussion there. Vsmith (talk) 19:40, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

لا تسنیتتی

ز یخسخستسا یتایخسا یتوبتیدی ۳۱۳۲ تیویتیتبوینیوینتیو تبویتنبو در خواب دیدن در خانه ای که خوب میشه یا حضرت امام ۴صلوات خوانده شده ۳صلوات خوانده شد؟؟؟؟ 103.51.113.97 (talk) 07:45, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

WikiCup 2025 September newsletter

The fourth round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 29 August. The penultimate round saw three contestants score more than 800 points:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,175 round points, mainly from sports-related articles, including 17 good articles, 27 did you know articles, and 9 in the news articles
• Arconning (submissions) with 1,090 round points, mainly from articles about athletes and politicians, including a featured article on Philippines at the 1924 Summer Olympics, 9 good articles, 28 did you know articles, and a wide assortment of featured and good article reviews
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 854 round points, mostly from a high-scoring featured article on the Indian leader Rani of Jhansi and two good articles, in addition to 13 featured and good article reviews

Everyone who competed in Round 4 will advance to Round 5 unless they have withdrawn. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far, while the full scores for Round 4 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 9 featured articles, 12 featured lists, 98 good articles, 9 good topic articles, more than 150 reviews, nearly 100 did you know articles, and 18 in the news articles.

In advance of the fifth and final round, the judges would like to thank every contestant for their hard work. As a reminder, any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed in Round 5. In addition, note that Round 5 will end on 31 October at 23:59 UTC. Awards at the end of Round 5 will be distributed based on who has the most tournament points over all five rounds, and special awards will be distributed based on high performance in particular areas of content creation (e.g., most featured articles in a single round).

Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges – Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), Frostly (talk · contribs), Guerillero (talk · contribs) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs) – are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck!

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:47, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Rhamphospermum

I am a bit confused right now since it looks like the pages for plant species formally listed under the genera Brassica and Sinapis are lumped under Rhamphospermum right now. So far, the page for Rhamphospermum only cites one paywalled journal article justifying the taxonomic revision. I would like to see if there are other independent sources not directly linked to the paywalled article to further justifying the adjustment to the pages under the Brassicaceae category. I was specifically looking at the transfer of Sinapis arvensis to Rhamphospermum arvense and Brassica nigra to Rhamphospermum nigrum.Rigognos Molinarios (talk) 22:51, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Being discussed at the talk page. Abductive (reasoning) 19:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

#MedievalWiki Editing Drive: 25th October 2025

Hello Abductive/Archive 23.

We are reaching out as you have been highlighted by the Invitation List tool as someone who may be potentially interested in our upcoming #MedievalWiki event on Friday 25th October.

You can find out more about the event on the registration page. We hope to see you there!

With best wishes, Medievalfran (talk) 18:45, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Run of citationbot on Category:K-pop music groups

Hi Abductive, just a heads up, the run of citationbot on Category:K-pop music groups you started is creating a lot of errors with regards of author names and first1/last1. I've reported the bugs on the talk page of the bot, but it might be best practice to not activate it on korean categories untill it is fixed. Redalert2fan (talk) 16:55, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I stopped the job, thanks for the heads-up. Abductive (reasoning) 19:44, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

WikiCup 2025 November newsletter

The 2025 WikiCup has come to an end. Our top scorers, based on the tournament point rankings (which can be seen here), are:

1. BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,604 tournament points, will receive the 1st place award.
2. Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,075 tournament points, will receive the 2nd place award.
3. Arconning (submissions) with 860 tournament points, will receive the 3rd place award.
4. History6042 (submissions) with 804 tournament points
5. Sammi Brie (submissions) with 635 tournament points
6. TheDoctorWho (submissions) with 386 tournament points
7. AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 373 tournament points
8. Thebiguglyalien (submissions) with 362 tournament points

Our high scorers in the final round were:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,035 round points, mostly from 19 good articles and 21 did you know articles about athletes
• vigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions) with 819 round points, mostly from 13 good articles and 11 did you know articles about a wide range of topics from abortion topics to African cities
• TheNuggeteer (submissions) with 508 round points from 9 good articles, 4 good topic articles and 6 did you know articles mainly about Philippines topics, along with 19 good article reviews

The final round was very productive, and contestants had 2 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 106 good articles, 5 good topic articles, 178 article reviews, 76 did you know articles, and 9 in the news articles. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

The top eight scorers will receive awards shortly. The following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. These prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field during the competition.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, with 12 featured articles total, and the featured topic prize, with 9 featured topic articles in total
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize, with 10 featured lists total
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, submitting the only featured picture in the entire contest during round 3
• History6042 (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize, with 127 featured content reviews. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize, with 100 good articles total, and the DYK prize, with 147 did you know articles in total. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• TheDoctorWho (submissions) wins the good topic prize, with 16 good topic entries in total
• Arconning (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, with 68 good article reviews in total

A special mention also goes to these users who scored the highest in a particular category in a single round:

• Sammi Brie (submissions), with 27 good articles in round 3, and 45 good article reviews in round 1
• Tails Wx (submissions), with 10 in the news articles in round 3

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate. The WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2026 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!

On behalf of the judges, Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email):

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

Wikilinking countries

MOS:OVERLINK says that "major examples" [italics in original] of countries shouldn't be wikilinked, giving examples like Brazil and China. It doesn't say that no countries should be wikilinked. In the list at Allium oreoprasum, you left Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan unlinked. I would be very surprised if most of our readers knew where these countries were, and I would wikilink them. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Just because they don't know where the country is doesn't mean there should be links. I draw the line where the average reader isn't even sure it's a country, such as Kiribati or eSwatini. Abductive (reasoning) 10:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I guess we draw the line in different places. I'm as sure or unsure about Kiribati as Kyrgyzstan. But the examples in MOS:OVERLINK seem much more common than these countries. Ideally the MOS should be less subjective. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Putting oneself in the shoes of the readers is difficult. But the article says "Central Asia". And they may be looking for information other than the countries. Meanwhile we have users mass-creating one/two sentence permastubs. Abductive (reasoning) 20:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

LLM generated plant sites

Hi Abductive,

I noticed you used Botanical Realm as a source on Vicia lenticula. Based on errors in their articles and how quickly they "write" the articles I'm confident that they are generated using a Large Language Model. The two other plant sites I'm aware of like this are Botanikks and Selina Wamucii. Since the only information cited to Botanical Realm is that it is in Fabaceae I just removed it. Ping me if you have any questions. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:32, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I was just using it for the common name, searchability was hampered due to the recent change from Lens ervoides to Vicia lenticula. Abductive (reasoning) 22:06, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Common names are exactly the sort of thing I am most suspicious of a LLM "hallucinating" into existence. I did a search on archive.org for "dwarf lentil" and there just two hits, one in a book written in German (and in blackletter, I so hate trying to read blackletter). The German book says that it is a common name in English for Ervum lens, an old synonym of the lentil. I'm not sure, but maybe it is a cultivar named "minor". Anyways, I've wandered away from my point. The other hit is for a description of another plant in India. I cannot find any evidence that "dwarf lentil" is actually used for any plant species and I think Botanical Realm made it up as that is the only place it appears outside of Wikipedia mirrors.

It might have been known as Egyptian lentil in the mid 1800s. At least under the botanical synonym of Ervum lenticula. https://archive.org/details/profitableplants00arch/page/19/mode/1up?q=%22Ervum+lenticula%22

🌿MtBotany (talk) 03:05, 8 November 2025 (UTC.

Actually, I got the name from iNaturalist, https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1375469-Vicia-lenticula, which is what the bots are drawing from, but last time I used iNat as a ref, someone complained that it was a circular ref (it wasn't—iNat updates from new Wikipedia articles in seconds sometimes). Abductive (reasoning) 03:27, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I found two uses of dwarf lentil. One is in a historical recipe for A dish of lentils and barley taken from Platina's De_honesta_voluptate_et_valetudine. This is translated from Latin so not a valid English name. The second is from a recent scientific paper on food grain quality (Jamanca-Gonzales et al, 2024), which lists dwarf lentil as one of the lentil types of Lens culinaris. This suggests the dwarf lentil is a type of lentil (Vicia lens) rather than Vicia lenticula. Although its not an article where the taxonomy is important, it is consistent with the German article mentioned above.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:22, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I wonder where iNat, which is unlikely to have made a mistake, came up with it? Abductive (reasoning) 19:59, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

iNat absolutely has some common names that have been made up there. It is against their policy, but it happens. It has also taken some common names from Wikipedia that were probably made up here.

iNat has "Fire Printzia" as the common name for Printzia pyrifolia. That name doesn't appear on the internet anywhere other than iNaturalist and Wikidata/Commons (via the file name of a photo imported from iNat). That is clearly a mistranslation of the scientific name; pyr- is pear, not fire in the context of -folia.

And iNat common names that can be traced to other sources aren't necessarily carefully checked. iNat had "Procellaris grotis noctuid moth" as the common name for Agrotis procellaris, which is how it is misspelled on the IUCN Red List ("grotis" should be "agrotis"); it can be found correctly spelled in some other sources. I flagged it on iNat pointing out the spelling issue and they ended up deleting it altogether (it is utterly useless as a supposed common name since it just rearranges the binomial and adds a name for the family that is still based on the scientific name). Plantdrew (talk) 17:25, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Do what you think is best. Abductive (reasoning) 17:53, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:EDITWARring

You have been WP:EDITWARring at Talk:Killing of Meredith Hunter for 2 days. You seem to be an experienced editor, so I don't see any excuse. I asked you previously on the article's Talk page not to revert further. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I didn't revert. I put in new numbers that went along with your suggestion. Abductive (reasoning) 02:02, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Once a discussion begins on the Talk page, you must wait for a new WP:CONSENSUS before changing the old consensus coordinates. -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:49, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Those coordinates were not a consensus, they were copied from the article on the raceway. Given that the event did not occur on the raceway, the appropriate course of action as an editor is to fix them. You have come across a dispute between me and another editor that predates this particular article. Abductive (reasoning) 02:53, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

They were reviewed by multiple editors. See WP:STATUSQUO. By edit warring you are undermining any good arguments you may have and might be blocked. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:00, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

ArbCom 2025 Elections voter message

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Citation bot

As you are a frequent user of Citation bot, I thought you should know that another editor has blocked that bot.

• 16:43, 24 November 2025 Ritchie333 talk contribs blocked Citation bot talk contribs with an expiration time of 72 hours (multiple errors reported on WP:ANI, concerns about maintainability mentioned on talk page discussion)

Regards, LeapTorchGear (talk) 00:42, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Abductive!

Happy New Year!

Abductive,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 16:14, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 16:14, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2026 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2026 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here, and a bot will set up your submissions page within one day, ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.

For the 2026 WikiCup, the highest-ranking contestants will receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. This is the same scoring system that we had last year. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants are no longer eliminated at the end of each round.

The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Sfn errors

Sejong the Great it seems youve suggested this page for citation bot several times, and every time it's broken many sfns but you haven't followed up on making sure nothing has been broken afterwards. Do you have User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors installed by any chance? It points out broken sfns grapesurgeon (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

WikiCup 2026 March newsletter

The first round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 26 February. As some of you may have noticed, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, an increase from 5 points in the previous year, as per a consensus at WT:CUP. This point increase has been retroactively applied to all good article reviews for which competitors have claimed points in this round. Peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 1 will advance to round 2 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 1 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and the top 16 contestants all scored more than 300 round points. The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1,467 round points, largely gained from 1 featured article, 5 featured lists, 15 good articles, and 42 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Olliefant (submissions) with 1,246 round points, largely from 4 featured lists, 9 good articles, 2 featured topic articles, 4 did you know articles, and 75 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,095 round points, largely from 3 featured articles, 6 good articles, and 5 did you know articles;
• MCE89 (submissions) with 848 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 32 FAC and GAN reviews; and
• Rollinginhisgrave (submissions) with 838 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 14 FAC, GAN, and peer reviews.

The full scores for round 1 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 7 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 2 featured-topic articles, 168 good articles, 13 good-topic articles and more than 50 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 14 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 700 reviews. The tournament points table will be updated within the next few days.

Remember that any content promoted after 26 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:56, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

CS1 error on Sinking of MV Sewol

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Sinking of MV Sewol, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A dates error. References show this error when one of the date-containing parameters is incorrectly formatted. Please edit the article to correct the date and ensure it is formatted to follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style's guidance on dates. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 09:58, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 26

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Adichunchanagiri Peacock Wildlife Sanctuary, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Securinega leucopyrus was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:07, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

WikiCup 2026 May newsletter

The second round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 28 April. As a reminder for contestants who just joined or are unaware of recent changes to our round-points system, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, an increase from 5 points in the previous year, as per a consensus at WT:CUP. Peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 2 will advance to round 3 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 2 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points; nine scored over 500; and fourteen scored over 300. The top seven contestants had at least one featured article (two of them with two apiece). The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• MCE89 (submissions) with 1,333 points, mainly from good and featured articles about Australian people and geography
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,169 points, mainly from good and featured articles related to shipping ethics controversy in fanfiction, waterways, and Gu Yanwu
• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1,149 points, mainly from good articles, featured articles, and featured lists about figure skating, along with many article reviews and two good topics
• Olliefant (submissions) with 830 points, mainly from good and featured articles about television shows, episodes and media, along with nearly four dozen good and featured article reviews
• Gommeh (submissions) with 827 points, mainly from good and featured articles related to Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail

The full scores for round 2 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 12 featured articles, 13 featured lists, 2 featured-topic articles, 106 good articles, 22 good-topic articles and more than 40 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 3 In the News articles, and they have conducted over 200 reviews. The tournament points table has been updated.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 April but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed in Round 3. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:48, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

CS1 error on Battle of Tsushima

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Battle of Tsushima, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A dates error. References show this error when one of the date-containing parameters is incorrectly formatted. Please edit the article to correct the date and ensure it is formatted to follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style's guidance on dates. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 10:04, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:50, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Questions on changes to Nile article

Did you make a change to the Nile article here? The edit summary was:

"WP:MOS stuff. See WP:RIVERS for guidance."

It looks like that edit made these changes:

1. change uses of {{convert}} to {{cvt}}
2. truncated lat/long degrees to 4 decimal points e.g. 0.3598541896 to 0.3598
3. Destroyed the clean tidy formatting of all the source "cite" templates in the "Sources" section by collapsing all the template fields into a single line. See example below.

Questions:

1. Where does WP:MOS or WP:RIVERS indicate that any of those changes you made are required, or even beneficial?
2. Why did you make that change when the article was in the middle of an WP:FAC nomination, without a courtesy ping to the nominator?
3. Are you running a bot or tool to make these changes? If so: are you manually reviewing the changes?
4. Do you think any of these changes improved the article?
5. Why did you make these changes?

Here is how you damaged the source markup

you collapsed all the fields into a single line. From:

cite book
 |title=River Culture 
 |chapter = The Egyptian Nile
 | editor-last=Wantzen 
 |editor-first= Karl M.
 |first1= Judith 
 |last1= Bunbury 
 |display-authors=etal
 |pages = 43–78 
 | author-link= Judith Bunbury
 | isbn=  9789231005404
 |doi=10.54677/HHMI3947
 | year= 2023
 | url= https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382775 
 | publisher= UNESCO
 | access-date= 10 March 2026

to this:

cite book |title=River Culture |chapter=The Egyptian Nile |editor-last=Wantzen |editor-first=Karl M. |first1=Judith |last1=Bunbury |display-authors=etal |pages=43–78 |author-link=Judith Bunbury |isbn=9789231005404 |doi=10.54677/HHMI3947 |year=2023 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382775 |publisher=UNESCO |access-date=10 March 2026}}

Obviously, your change made the source data much more difficult for future editors to read or update. Noleander (talk) 22:56, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

• Please see WP:OPCOORD for the coordinates change. As for the ref formatting, I changed it to "tidy" with User:Mesidast/Tidy citations.js script. Abductive (reasoning) 01:29, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Abductive - I see you are an experienced editor 20 years ... congratulations, and thanks for all the good work you've done. I also have 20 years in. My issue here is that your edit is causing me a lot of work, with virtually zero (no) benefit to readers or editors. In fact, the change to the cite template layouts is increasing the workload of future editors. Here is the work I've had to do (so far) because of your edit:

  1. Review the change history
  2. Categorize the changes made
  3. Manually restore the original cite templates from an older version
  4. Made a mistake in that, that another editor corrected
  5. Thanked that editor
  6. Post a note on your Talk page asking why you made those changes
  7. Read your post in the Nile article talk page about lat/long precision
  8. Perform detailed research of old and new versions to supply examples of how some of the lat/long changes were bad
  9. Write a reply in the Nile talk page summarizing the results of my research
  10. Edit the Nile article to restore some of the lat/long data that was valid, but truncated. [not yet done]
  11. Write this post on your Talk page

  Can you see where I'm coming from? I'm busy in real life. Currently I'm working on the dam article, trying to bring it to FA status. But now I have to spend valuable time going back to the Nile article (whcih is WP:FA quality!!) and resume working on it.

  It would be one thing if your edits really improved the Nile article: fixed bad grammar, added some new 2026 river related events, etc. But your edits were trivial copy editing that had virtually no benefit to readers or editors.

  WP is losing readership for the past 2 years, due to competition from AI. Remaining editors like you and me need to use our time very efficiently.

  Thanks again for your 20 years. Noleander (talk) 14:36, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Abductive - I'm thinking of lodging a complaint at WP:ANI regarding the changes to the coordinate precision, and collapsing the "cite" fields onto one line. Before I do so, I'd like to confirm what tool to mention was responsible. Can you confirm that the tool User:Mesidast/Tidy citations.js performed both those changes? I looked at that tool page and did not see any mention of coordinates, but maybe I looked in the wrong place. Noleander (talk) 19:08, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Abductive - Thanks for repairing the lat/long coordinate in the Nile article in this edit ... the loss of data from the 17 April edit has been fixed. I think we can agree that losing data in the markup is not good, so I'm still trying to understand how the edit happened. I asked a question immediately above, but you have not replied yet. I'll restate it, and add a ID # to it, continuing the numbered questions at the top of this topic:

  6) Was the truncation of lat/long data to 4 decimal points in the Nile article done by the User:Mesidast/Tidy citations.js bot? or manually by you?

  7) When you truncate a lat/long to 4 decimal digits (whether with a bot or manually) do you examine the nature of the object to see if it is something small like a fountain or statute where 5 digits of precision are warranted (per WP:OPCOORD)? (7a) Do you look at the citation in the article accompanying the lat/long value?

  8) After you run bots on an article (to perform any sort of mass edit) do you manually review the changes to make sure they are correct? Or do you assume all the changes made by bots are valid?

  Thanks in advance for helping me understand how these changes are happening. Noleander (talk) 13:40, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

• False precision data is not data worth saving, but the information is always preserved in Wikipedia's article history system. As I mentioned, the lengthy coordinates point to a spot on the earth in the 10 picometer range. The genesis of this error almost certainly comes from either a user not understanding how to convert from degrees, minutes and seconds to decimal degrees, or from users right-clicking on Google Maps and copying the lengthy coordinates that gives them. We suspect that Google has taken to providing 16-digit coordinates in what is believed to be a copyright trap scheme. Similarly, Wikipedia and Wikidata are not allowed to directly copy OSM data. As for my editing methods, editors are not supposed to make non-cosmetic changes without making substantive edits at the same time. So I combine them. Many of my edits would be considered Wikipedia:WikiGnome-ing. I have corrected tens of thousands of coordinates, always checking where they point. If one where to select random articles with coordinates, one would find that more than half suffer from either missing the target or porr formatting, or both. Abductive (reasoning) 18:28, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

  Here's the deal: I'm trying to decide to whether to create an ANI report. I genuinely don't know if you've damaged many articles or not. I'm asking you simple questions to determine if you have or not. The fact that cannot give straightforward answers makes me wonder if there is a major problem. I asked 7 questions above. You only answered three of them, partially. So, at this point I'm reduced to speculation.

  I'm guessing that you use a tool to collapse the citation template (damaging the future readability for editors) ... and you've done that on hundreds of articles? Have you ever posted a note on any Talk page stating that you are collapsing citation templates and asking if that is okay? And you still have not answered the question of why you are collapsing the cite templates. It has no benefit whatsoever to readers, and it certainly is bad for editors.

  And I'm guessing (since you wont come out and say it) that you are rounding lat/long coordinates manually, correct? And you say you make an effort to check each coordinate to see if it needs a precision of 1 or 5 or 10 or 100 meters, correct? And you are reading the source cited for each coordinate to validate the precision, correct? And you say you have never rounded a coordinate lat/long and lost precision that was valid and supported by the sources, correct?

  Can you provide some edits here where you changed coordinates in other articles? Maybe I can glance at those and get some assurance that you are not damaging lat/long values for well-defined objects. Don't forget that in some articles the editor may have gotten the lat/long from a source (book or journal) that had a precisely surveyed lat/long value.

  Again, maybe there is no problem here. But WP:DISRUPTSIGNS behavioral guideline (4a) says "Fails to engage in consensus building: repeatedly disregards other editors' questions or requests for explanations concerning edits or objections to edits;" and that is what I'm seeing in your behavior. It is not so much damaging articles, it is refusal to even cooperate in a discussion to assess the magnitude (if any) of the damage. Noleander (talk) 17:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

How can choosing "tidy" on a widely available tool (User:Mesidast/Tidy citations) to make the citations horizontal be considered "damaging"? And, once you undid that change (which would be the same as choosing "vertical" in the same tool, and which I assume you used to make the citations vertical--if not I recommend it), did I edit it back? No, because a user (you) said you liked it vertical, which I don't understand, but respect. Most of the time that I and many other editors improve (our opinion) the formatting from "crammed" or "vertical" to "tidy", nobody complains. So no disruption occurred. Abductive (reasoning) 20:37, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Noleander (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

June 2026 GAN Backlog Drive

Good article nominations | June 2026 Backlog Drive
June 2026 Backlog Drive: Do you want to become more experienced in the GA process? On 1 June, a one-month backlog drive for good article nominations will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles reviewed. Mentors are available, and new reviewers (<6 reviews) get bonus points! Interested in taking part? You can sign up here.
Other ways to participate: Join the conversations on our talk page.
You're receiving this message because you have participated in a good article review this year or participated in the previous backlog drive.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I see you on ANI...

I see that you've made it onto ANI. I hope you don't get too stressed (like @BrownHairedGirl). Remember that it's always okay to apologize, take a cooldown, or even a small to medium (or even large, although we (the Wikipedia community) don't want you to be gone for too long) Wikibreak.

I hope this message finds you in good health,

Sincerely, Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:28, 27 May 2026 (UTC) (signed)

• Thank you for your concern and your kindness. Abductive (reasoning) 08:41, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Flags

Hi Abductive, I would love to get rid of the flags at 2026 Venezuela earthquakes but I can't see a directly relevant section in MOS:FLAG to justify such action, is there something I'm missing? Mikenorton (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

• Well, there is MOS:FLAGCRUFT, with the term "cruft" indicating absolute withering contempt, and WP:QUOTECRUFT, and MOS:USEPROSE. In addition, when editors raise the issue on an articles' talk page, the consensus almost always ends up being to prosify. Abductive (reasoning) 13:02, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

• Thanks, the sooner the better, but, in a few weeks to months time, there will be a lot less interest and it should be possible to remove where necessary. condense and prosify. Mikenorton (talk) 16:56, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

WikiCup 2026 July newsletter

The third round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 28 June at 23:59 (UTC). As a reminder, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, while peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 3 will advance to round 4 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 3 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points; eight scored over 500; and thirteen scored over 300. The top three contestants had at least one featured article (two of them with two apiece). The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• MCE89 (submissions) with 1567 points, mainly from good and featured articles about Australian people and geography, as well as some article reviews
• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1547 points, mainly from good articles, featured articles, featured lists, and a good topic about figure skating, along with 20 article reviews
• Reconrabbit (submissions) with 1004 points, mainly from a high-multiplier featured article on European rabbit and several good articles, DYKs, and reviews
• A.Cython (submissions) with 1004 points, mainly from good articles about warfare, along with 22 article reviews
• Generalissima (submissions) with 859 points, mainly from good and featured articles about rivers and East Asian topics

The full scores for round 3 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 12 featured articles, 12 featured lists, 7 featured-topic articles, 117 good articles, 74 good-topic articles and more than 30 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 13 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 180 reviews. The tournament points table has been updated.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed in Round 4. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 29 June 2026 (UTC)