User talk:Cirt/Archive 3

Request for reviewing and other assistance

Hi. Next week is the start of the IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships and two Wikinewies will be attending to cover the para-alpine skiing ahead of the 2014 Winter Paralympics . This is part of an effort outlined at Wikinews:IPC Alpine Ski World Championships. Immediately following this event, there will be a Meetup in Barcelona where Wikinews, the Paralympics and efforts to similar sport coverage will be discussed. At the moment, there are only two active reviewers on a daily basis. Demonstrating an ability to get reviews for these types of events done quickly is important for Wikinews credibility and gaining access to these types of events. I would really appreciate it if you could sign up on the IPC World Championship page to review, promote articles published during this period, assist in translating these articles into another language or attend the meetup in Barcelona. Thanks. --LauraHale (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay I'll take a look, no guarantees because I'm pretty busy with a few ongoing projects at the moment. -- Cirt (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Kitties on fire

Spammed again with user name abuse. --LauraHale (talk) 03:37, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

IRC

You should "Torrorise" some of the #wikinews and #wikinewsie channels sometime. ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:03, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Daniel Tom

Do you have any remarks on this? --Pi zero (talk) 17:16, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Cirt, you should unblock Diogotome. And you know how silly it is to say that my public rename is a sock, all the more here where it has zero edits. Could you unblock these accounts, as the original blocking admin, just as you did on Wikisource? If they are used abusively later on (unlikely) you can actually block them, but otherwise I'd like to move on. DanielTom (talk) 17:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I thought we were done here. I'm not going to be wheel-warring and undoing the action of another local admin. You'll have to take this up with another admin other than myself from here on out. Good luck, -- Cirt (talk) 18:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I asked Laura to rethink the block. I've also sent her very personal information just so that I don't keep wasting my time. This whole mess was created by you Cirt. ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:17, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

DanielTom has been warned about accusations. I've imposed a 24-hour block to give them some thinking time. --Pi zero (talk) 18:23, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, Pi zero (talk · contribs), thank you for the notification, and I'll respectfully defer to your judgment and that of other local admins regarding further admin actions in this matter. -- Cirt (talk) 23:11, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

If you need any assistance, please let us know. You do really good work here, and there are no problems from my end (and I think other admins) for cross wiki blocks given abuse and sock puppetry. Happy to support this work. --LauraHale (talk) 23:18, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, LauraHale (talk · contribs), that means a lot to me, -- Cirt (talk) 23:20, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikinews interviews Dr. Michael Mazilu on creating world's fastest spinning manmade object

Hi, the images on the above are mired in Commons backlog. Three are local uploads but there's also three sourced for the article that are on Commons. One needs a license review and two need OTRS permission added. Could you take a look? As if there's some problem I'm liable to eventually forget to keep checking Commons for updates. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:07, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Done, hopefully these are addressed satisfactorily. :) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 19:23, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciated! The spheres one is CC per the main page for the whole paper. I left the others as-is because WN:FU says the built-in rationales in the templates are sufficient (although WN:FU is far from my fav policy...). Best, Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:52, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Left a few more replies on my talk; in essence, all dealt with, and thanks again for your help. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:09, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Marc Randazza

I remember you interviewing Marc Randazza over the Glenn Beck satire case he worked on (so well, in fact, that you got FA on it). You still able to get back in touch with him? I'm working up a feature on this and I'm keen to grab some background expertise. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 07:34, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Accreditation

Hai!

Every now and then you pop out the woodwork and deliver a nice bit of Original Reporting. We've had the precident set by David Shankbone (née Miller :P); and, I know you've identified to the Foundation to handle CheckUser requests.

On that basis, I'd like you to think about asking for accreditation. You don't need to give a location more-specific than a state; nor would I expect your requested firstname.lastnamewikinewsie.org to be genuine. But, you'd be "stuck with it" as a byeline.

I've time, over the next few days, to do some of the bits related to tidying wikinewsie.org for a move to Icelandic hosting. So, as-good a time as any to give you a push. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry not interested at this time, will give it some thought for a later date, too busy in life in other things. -- Cirt (talk) 00:30, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Some image stuff over on Commons

Hi there. I'm not sure what size Commons backlogs are, or aren't, right now. With enwn working to deadlines it'd be good if the copyright details on some images could be confirmed at the Commons end, mainly so we can fix any issues before we forget forever after archiving the article.

There are two to deal with:

• I sent an email to OTRS which covers most of the images used on Celebrating 'Green' on Glasgow Green.
• Although not tagged as needing it, the map and the teeth photo from Wikinews interviews Paúl M. Velazco about new yellow-shouldered bat species are cribbed from a compatibly licensed journal and need permissions verified by a Commons admin.

If you could get to these in the next day or two, and alert me to any problems so I can try and get those sorted, I'd be very grateful. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:12, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm no longer on OTRS, Blood Red Sandman (t · c · b), but the 2nd thing checks out okay for both. -- Cirt (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. In this case the backlog seems to have been negligible for OTRS as I have an email in my inbox noting they've been actioned without problems. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, great, glad it worked out! :) -- Cirt (talk) 15:09, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Election committee

Would you care to add your name to a bulleted list at WN:Arbitration Committee/2014 election#Election committee members? Since it'd look best if the edit was by you (though I s'pose any of us could do it, referencing the water cooler). --Pi zero (talk) 13:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Usually the election committee just has to certify the results of the election at the end of the voting period. Which is usually very straightforward. In theory it's possible for other issues to come up, but that hasn't happened for several years.

It would be helpful, at the moment, though, if you'd sign the election committee roster, here. (As I mentioned.) --Pi zero (talk) 00:02, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Voting has closed. Would the election committee care to set up a page WN:Arbitration Committee/2014_election/Results, along the lines of WN:Arbitration Committee/2013_election/Results? --Pi zero (talk) 13:18, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Responded, at User talk:Bddpaux. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

1 year, 364 days, 18 hours, 10 minutes and 48 seconds

wtf is with those last blocks? BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I am wondering how you can justify your xwiki actions against a person

Cirt. I do not see how your local policy allows you to undertake a block here for actions taken elsewhere. I especially do not see that you can justify it without addressing this issue to the English Wikinews community. For that reason I have raised the issue of your blocking to Wikinews:Administrators. I also don't see how the spirit and approach of the broader wikimedia would find this retributive action acceptable. There is a process of global bans, and locks that the xwiki community can apply as fit the rules of the broader WMF community. One would have that we don't have to have rules about administrators with rights on multiple wikis who seem incapable to keep their finger off the button. We have had this conversation previously on English Wikisource. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I think seeing this on WN:AAA is more-annoying for the assumption people here on Wikinews will carry out the detective work to see what blocks are being alluded to. I, to a limited degree, did look at that. There do appear to be a number of blocks which aren't fully in-line with policy. However, I did note a sockpuppet investigation where users have gone cross-project elsewhere. Do you have compelling evidence Wikinews could have been drawn into such? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Brian McNeil: I am currently working my way through where the blocks have been placed and taking an evidentiary approach to those discussions, in the small amount of available time that I have (and giving up much needed sleep to do this). This started from my undertaking a steward's check for the enWQ community. The confirmed accounts only became socks at enWQ where the person is an administrator,in a voting process. I know of no traditional xwiki sock puppet activity of confirmed accounts; I know of no irregular editing crosswiki by the blocked user, nor the confirmed accounts. I don't think that it should be to me to have that burden of proof, that more belongs with Cirt to demonstrate that he needed to block these accounts. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I've commented at AAA. --Pi zero (talk) 15:15, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the comments by both Blood Red Sandman (talk · contribs) and Pi zero (talk · contribs) at AAA. Thank you both [1]. -- Cirt (talk) 19:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Archiving

I'll point out, for several years now we've been following a convention that we leave ten articles unarchived, even if they're much older than seven days. It's mentioned at WN:Archive conventions#Age for Protection. We want a representative sample of archives on the main page, especially when times are slow. If we were archiving everything older than a week, we recently would have had zero articles on the main page, which is entirely unworkable (because we had a full seven days between consecutive publications).

The list of archives at WN:Archive conventions#To archive makes this easy by providing a horizontal line after ten articles; if there isn't anything below that line, we simply suspect archiving. --Pi zero (talk) 01:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah okay, thanks Pi zero (t · c · b), sounds good. :) -- Cirt (talk) 03:04, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Archiving

Hi Cirt, When archiving, don't delete the {{Publish}} tag. Thanks, --SVTCobra 23:50, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah, quite right, will do, thank you. -- Cirt (talk) 17:21, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Redirect cats

In the past we've pointedly avoided redirect categories, on grounds it tangles the infrastructure; there used to be some specific technical problems where it'd cause the software to misbehave (my attitude toward the wiki software is, in any case, always to ask as little as possible of its detailed behavior, so as to be as robust as possible against introduction of bugs and, moreover, against bad future design decisions which seem to me to be increasingly prevalent). I recall, as of a few years ago, bawolff was of the same mind as I was about avoiding redirect cats like the plague. --Pi zero (talk) 05:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Pi zero:Then how to deal with broken incoming links from other sister wiki sites? -- Cirt (talk) 18:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Preferably one would fix the link at its origin. If there's some reason that couldn't be fixed at the other end, I'm not visualizing it. Some reason that solution doesn't work? --Pi zero (talk) 18:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

We should probably make sure our category names match those most commonly used at most other sites. -- Cirt (talk) 19:53, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing it. News categories are often different from enclyclopedic categories, and even without particular reasons like that, different sisters often use different names for things anyway. It seems unlikely another sister would create a link to a category here without bothering to check whether it exists. A link to an en.wp article without checking whether exists? Sure, happens all the time (though we really should all be more careful); but to an en.wn category? On the face of it, seems a bit of a stretch. --Pi zero (talk) 20:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

We have mainspace redirects. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, wiki is not paper, not sure why we can't just have redirects, as redirects are cheap. :P -- Cirt (talk) 18:57, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

To my mind, that's a case for redirects in mainspace, and maybe project space; but category redirects are accidents begging to happen. In essence, they gratuitously create ways for articles to get lost. --Pi zero (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I'll have to think on this some more, thanks. No worries, -- Cirt (talk) 16:21, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Texas student Ahmed Mohamed inspires social movement‎

Hi. Sorry I couldn't get to your article a few hours earlier. I'm uncomfortable with the sharpness of focus, and the closely related matter of establishing freshness. Tried to capture that in a review comment. I really hope we can make it all work out! (I recall another article you submitted where I had (I think) concerns about the focus, and we managed to get that one to come out well; I always worry that things might go wrong and an article doesn't come together after all, but it's pretty awesome when it does, so I'll hope for that. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 16:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion over the leads. It took me a few moments to line up what I was trying to do, which involved two leads rather than just one, and then discovered after saving that, that you'd put it in another place (not an unreasonable place, just a different one than I'd used). Reverting yours was the simplest/quickest way to straighten things out. I recall someone... brianmc?... suggested a while back that when we're finally in a position to upgrade these basic infrastructure tools, Makelead should have a feature to automatically do multi-lead rearrangements. --Pi zero (talk) 23:52, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, no worries Pi zero (t · c · b), it looks good where you put it. :) Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 23:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Pricasso article

Userspaced, User:Cirt/Pricasso paints pleasing portraits with penis. --Pi zero (talk) 02:19, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good for now, Pi zero (t · c · b), thank you. -- Cirt (talk) 02:44, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Just a reminder to self to revisit this with further research. -- Cirt (talk) 23:57, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar

I, 14.139.242.195 (talk) (the IP of acagastya) award you the team barnstar for the tireless contribution to keep Wikinews updated!
14.139.242.195 (talk) 02:04, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, this is most appreciated ! -- Cirt (talk) 09:33, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Review collision

I saw it on the queue, saw a problem, and immediate started writing a not-ready review. Apparently you must have started working on it just after I started writing my comments. Sorry about that; I should have used {{under review}}. I have in mind for an upgraded review gadget that it would automatically add the under-review tag, if not already there, when entering the gadget. --Pi zero (talk) 02:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

obit

did I step on your toes? sorry; it seemed a reasonably tame review that I thought I could probably handle... --Pi zero (talk) 19:54, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Review lag

No offense, but the two articles in the queue aren't touched for a long span of time. It has been 40 hours since it was submitted.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 06:34, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry been quite busy lately with other quality improvement projects. -- Cirt (talk) 07:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Fwiw, my observation over time has been that a full review is really quite a large lump-sum of effort and intense mental focus, so that any particular individual may only be able to do it at very irregegular intervals (the intensity makes back-to-back reviews very problematic even when the reviewer theoretically has "time", and we get plenty of reviewer burn-out cases causing long wikibreaks). Matching up irregular opportunities for reviewers to review with irregular submissions is quite a challenge for the project. In the relative priority of major infrastructure improvements, I'd rate the review-scheduling problem as number two, after creating really good semi-automated assistants to reduce the size of that lump-sum for a full review (because making the review lump-sum investment a lot smaller would, hopefully, make each individual reviewer's opportunities to review a lot less irregular). Although more reviewers would obviously help, in the past I've occasionally seen an article go stale waiting on the queue when there were lots of reviewers all active on the project during the days it was happening. Just a bit of perspective (and, I realize, not of immediate help with the current review queue; the current review queue is always the immediate problem, which is one reason major infrastructure improvements are so hard to come by here). --Pi zero (talk) 10:47, 24 October 2015 (UTC)