Andrew Davidson

Invitation

There's a meeting this Friday: Editing team/Community Conversations#3 March 2023 that will ask some questions about what reviewers/experienced editors want from newcomers. Please join if you are interested. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation. I'll try to attend but find it easier to work on such things in writing. For example, I started some discussion about the relevance of the proposed feature to Sub-Saharan Africans but didn't get any response from the WMF team.

As a fresh example of an article created by a new editor which I have been looking at lately, see Windsor Framework.

For myself, I have some technical concerns about list-defined references which I prefer but they don't seem well-supported by the Visual Editor. I also prefer the {{citation}} template to the confusing family of {{cite <whatever>}} templates generated by the Visual Editor. This stuff is plenty confusing for experienced editors, let alone newcomers or Sub-Saharan Africans.

Andrew Davidson (talk) 22:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, you got a reply from me today. That's why I thought you might be interested in this meeting.  :-) Comments on wiki are good. Some people, and some subjects, are easier in different formats. Please use the one that fits you/your subject best.

One of the problems I'd love to have you thinking about is the reviewers' unfamiliarity with African sources. It's not much help to cite your source, if the reviewer is going to dismiss it because he's never heard of the newspapers or magazines in your country and therefore assumes that it is unreliable. Some basic information, such as independently certified circulation, may also not be available, so it's difficult to say, e.g., which newspaper is the biggest daily. Is this something worth worrying about? Or am I worrying about something that is very irritating when it does happen, but which doesn't really happen that often? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The typical patroller tends to be perfectionist rather than pragmatic and this especially hurts regions like Africa. I'm quite atypical in this respect. To see this in a relevant discussion, please see Articles for deletion/Railways Africa. I managed to save that one but am currently forbidden to help in this way now and so this would be exceptional.

Andrew Davidson (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that. Some patrollers are perfectionistic, but a brand-new article will have dozens of page views in the first 24 hours, but it doesn't get tagged for deletion dozens of times. Maybe what we see on wiki are the actions taken by "the one outlier" rather than the silent acceptance by "the typical" patroller. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

New Page Patrol activity on the English Wikipedia is usually dominated by just a few high-volume patrollers. But the feature we are considering would apply to any edit and so is more like recent changes patrolling. I have little experience of who does that and how. Checking every edit to Wikipedia seems quite daunting and so some automation seems sensible.

My general point is to cite some examples of African topics to help understand the issues in that geography. Here's another fresh example of a different sort at ITN: 2023 Nigerian presidential election. This is the 16th largest article on Wikipedia and has 822 citations!

Andrew Davidson (talk) 10:40, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Harunobu and nuri-oke

I recalled to inform you about Harunobu’s print of eight sceneries : a copy is at the National Museum of Tokyo locally, introduced by an art fan here.

• I am so excited to expand my understanding of Edo period life. A source expains that the utensil the younger lady uses in Harunobu's print actually is not a heater:
• lower quality silk cocoons are boiled, you pull and stretch each on that container, then pile up several sheets to make square swabs for quilting kosode kimono;
• That container is called 塗桶 lacquared wooden bucket with tall walls;
• sourced from コトバンク, a combined thesauri site says: ② 綿摘み用の器具。真綿を上にのせて引き伸ばすのに用いる。木製または土焼製で、桶に似た黒の漆塗りのもの。Original entry in: 精選版 『日本国語大辞典』, Shogakukan Inc.
  

A side note: I am wiping tears after reading the archive you have pointed me to about the M-word. 勿体無い actually includes the kanji mu some editor used as a shield to avoid balls hitting them... That kind of attitude is really 勿体振る, but I won't explain what 振りをする relates to. もったいない sourced from Daijirin published by Shōgakkan. Oh, well, well, can't stop giggling.
Happy 3rd of March, a day to cerebrate good health with blossoming branch of peach (neither dolls nor infant girls came before peach blossoms AFAIK). Thank you so much for the merry laugh which I have stored away for weeks. Cheers, --Omotecho Omotecho (talk) 12:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Topic you raised on Talk:Edit check

hi @Andrew Davidson – ~1 month ago you raised, what I consider to be, an important question about the relationship between the current scope of Edit Check project and the impact its intended to have on one of the populations of people whose needs are centering in this work (newcomers editing in Sub-Saharan Africa).

This message is an effort to communicate that:

1. I've seen your message
2. You can expect a response from me in June

Note: I realize the potential absurdity of me informing you that I plan to respond to a question you posed a month ago in another two months. Although, tomorrow I begin a sabbatical that will last through May and I'd rather you at least know that I'm aware of the message you sent than to risk you interpreting me not saying anything at all as an indication for the importance, or lack thereof, the Editing Team is placing on the topic you raised.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 07:51, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

If you or your team had a good answer to the point I made, then they would have already responded. I therefore deduce that this is a difficult issue. Perhaps your sabbatical will provide some useful perspective but I'm wondering what is happening to the project in the meantime. Is it suspended? Andrew Davidson (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Old upload interface at Commons

c:Special:Upload still exists, and you're free to use it if you prefer it. (I use it fairly often myself.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 22 August 2023 (UTC)