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Contents
- 1 Detecting self-promotional reference spam
- 2 The West Country Challenge
- 3 Defining general readers
- 4 Inconsistency with English variety categories
- 5 Measuring use of a template that includes a specific website in a field
- 6 Looking for feedback on guidance and VE compatible template for importing open license text into Wikipedia
Detecting self-promotional reference spam
By mere coincidence, I found two cases of self-promotional reference spam within the past two months: Jojojava and 151.72.6.77, both adding numerous references to published articles of J. Benchimol and F. G. Santeramo, respectively, to various Wikipedia articles. I doubt that those two are the only cases out there, so I wondered if we could think of a way to automatically detect this sort of edit behavior: IPs or single-purpose accounts adding identical references to numerous articles (while adding no content). Maybe we could have a bot flagging this type of edits, because it is very hard to spot for the human eye. --bender235 (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
- Seemed appropriate to mention your idea here: Wikipedia:Bot requests#extract cite: journal template information from history articles, so I did. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:04, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
The West Country Challenge
If anybody would like to win up to £250 ($330) in August for improving articles on SouthWest England sign up at Wikipedia:WikiProject England/The West Country Challenge. All participants are welcome! Just a bit of fun, there will be three days allocated to each country such as Devon, and Cornwall and something to win daily.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:03, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Defining general readers
How are general readers defined? Are they rich or poor? Intelligent or broad? Curious or ignorant? I spent my time figuring out who qualify as general readers. So far, I end up more concerned about quality more than about quantity. Still, do readers usually go for the introduction of an article and then shift to another article? Do readers go for statistics? Plot summaries? Are they curious enough to read further after reading the lead? How do I find out who is a general reader without generalizing people? --George Ho (talk) 19:08, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
- They are exactly like other people, only more so. Dumuzid (talk) 19:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
- "How do I find out who is a general reader without generalizing people?" You won't, so don't worry about it. Britmax (talk) 13:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- Come to think about it, do general people read Wikipedia always? Frequently? Seldom? How much do they read Wikipedia? If seldom or less, then I don't know why I spent most of my time here in Wikipedia. I felt as if I lost opportunities to socialize in real life. --George Ho (talk) 17:41, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- "How do I find out who is a general reader without generalizing people?" You won't, so don't worry about it. Britmax (talk) 13:18, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
Can you explain exactly why you are asking this remarkably unfocused question? I can't help but feel that if we understood what actual issue you were trying to address here it might save an awful lot of wasted time. As the question stands there is no way to give a meaningful answer. I'll close it if you can't clarify. Begoon talk 14:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- The questions came in two groups. The first group addressed readers, which is to say WP:AUDIENCE for which perhaps survey data can be collected to make estimates of how many fit into various classes. The second group addressed reading behavior, which I suspect can only come from laboratory studies. As for summarizing the hypothetical data by defining one general or typical reader or reading style, umm, why? Jim.henderson (talk) 13:20, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
Inconsistency with English variety categories
Why do we have Category:All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Category:All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, etc. but not Category:All Wikipedia articles written in British English? – nyuszika7h (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- No-one's bothered writing it. Fancy a go? Britmax (talk) 13:11, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- @Britmax: Seems like it existed before, and on May 9, 2011, it was deleted as "G8: Populated by deleted or retargeted template" by Rich Farmbrough, but I'm not sure what happened there. nyuszika7h (talk) 13:31, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- Seems like it was removed from the template citing a talk page discussion, but I can't see this mentioned anywhere on the talk page. nyuszika7h (talk) 13:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- The purpose of this type of templates, as opposed to those requiring a fix, is to enable people to make sure that the appropriate style for the article is followed. The idea, therefore is to periodically check each pages and make any necessary emendations. After this the date of the template will be updated. I believe this was being done by User:Ohconfucius. The general idea was to have a yearly check.
- The "All" category is if little use for this function, and really only serves to count items, which
{{Progress box}}
does just fine. The "hidden categories" list at the bottom of the page (if you have it enabled) is full enough without having two items for each maintenance issue. - I proposed removal on 7 May 2011 and removed it on 9 May 2011.
- All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 16 July 2016 (UTC).
Measuring use of a template that includes a specific website in a field
Hi all
I would like to know if there is a way to find all the instances of a template that use a particiular website in at least one field. Specifically I want to know how many of the uses of Template:Open-source_attribution have a url that includes unesco.org in at least one field. Currently this is possible to do by hand but I expect it will be used a lot more in the near future.
Many thanks
John Cummings (talk) 09:45, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
- @John Cummings: a bot could quite easily do this by retrieving all the pages listed at Category:Open-source attribution and then using a regex search to check for instances of /unesco\.org/i in {{Open-source attribution}} -- samtar talk or stalk 09:50, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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- Hi @Samtar:, thanks very much, how could I get something like this created? --John Cummings (talk) 09:58, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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- @John Cummings: gimme a mo, I might be able to run a one-time task - would a page listing all the pages with the instance on be sufficient? -- samtar talk or stalk 10:45, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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- @John Cummings: there's a list at User:Samtar/botrun1 which has every page in the category Open-source attribution where the {{Open-source attribution}} template has a mention of
unesco.org
within it -- samtar talk or stalk 11:59, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
- @John Cummings: there's a list at User:Samtar/botrun1 which has every page in the category Open-source attribution where the {{Open-source attribution}} template has a mention of
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- @Samtar:, wonderful, thanks so much, will this stay updated or is it a manual thing to keep running it? Thanks again --John Cummings (talk) 12:17, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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- @John Cummings: it's currently manual, but I can always add it as an additional task once xphois (hopefully) gets its bot approval. Until then just leave me a message when you want it run -- samtar talk or stalk 12:20, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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- @Samtar: great, I might ask you maybe once every month or two until the bot gets approved if that is ok? --John Cummings (talk) 12:27, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
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Looking for feedback on guidance and VE compatible template for importing open license text into Wikipedia
Hi
I've been doing some work on creating guidance and a VE and Source editor compatible template for importing open license text into English Wikipedia. Currently there is a bug with VE meaning it cannot use nested templates so we have created a workaround, once this bug has been fixed then a better technical solution will be found. I'm more looking for suggestions for additions to the guidance page at the moment and how the attribution is displayed. If you would like to try it out I've created some guidance on using open license text from UNESCO publications and descriptions in Wikipedia.
Many thanks
John Cummings (talk) 10:23, 22 July 2016 (UTC)