Hosta

unsigned posts

I saw you pasted in a message about signing at UnDR today. It's much easier to use the template {{Unsigned3}} -- it takes the same parameters as {{Unsigned2}} -- {{unsigned3|date and time|username}} and takes much less time to do. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 19:22, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

@Jameslwoodward: Ah yes, cheers for the heads-up. I have just been experimenting with custom notes e.g. at User:Green Giant/Unsigned and User:Green Giant/Note, by substitution, which is why it looks pasted. Green Giant (talk) 19:30, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

I've written several such notes, all of which are available as templates. See:

• {{Odelay}}
• {{NPI}}
• {{Drfop}}
• {{Osend}}

I like the unsigned3 format because there is a bot that puts unsigned2 in place and we can add the note by just changing the 2 to 3. Feel free to suggest changes to it -- I don't see any reason why we need two such templates. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 20:42, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Closing my RfA

Hello Green Giant,

As previously said on my RfA and since the debate on canvassing accusation is now settled (no consensus but enough information shared so each has enough information to make his opinion), I'am considering withdrawing my RfA. Since I appreciated your vote's rational, I prefer to ask you for guidance on it.

• I previously stated that I was giving 2 days to my RfA then would likely withdraw
• We are about 24hrs away from normal closure
• I don't know the process of RfA withdrawing, should I fill something ?

Yug (talk) 21:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello @Yug:. It is very unfortunate that the RfA went this way because I had hoped to see a successful second RfA in a few months. It is entirely up to you to close it at anytime. If you wish I can close it for you. It requires putting some boilerplate text to make clear it is closed. The page is then protected from further editing, categorised at Category:Unsuccessful requests for adminship, and listed at Commons:Administrators/Archive/Unsuccessful requests for adminship. I hope that clarifies the procedure. Green Giant (talk) 21:49, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

ok, thanks for the guidance. PC is turned off now so i will do tomorrow.

If you look for more successful RfA, it may be needed to look into this as well. I don't think it to be malicious but it would be better to let applicant write their RfA peacefully if we wish higher successful rates. 50mins was a bit short to write a solid RfA to be voted on. Yug (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello Green Giant, I confirm would like to close my RfA. I saw this practice: request by applicant to admin. Could you help me for that ? Yug (talk) 14:57, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks and thanks for the guidance & vote ! Issue closed. Yug (talk) 16:55, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Yug: I was slowly composing some advice but we had an edit conflict. I am happy to help you prepare for a second RfA but I would recommend a lot of patience and to wait at least six months. In the intervening time I would suggest engaging in some of the activities such as anti-vandalism work, looking for copyright violations especially amongst new uploads, trying to fix some files at Category:Missing legal information, etc in addition to your proposed project work. I would also recommend having a look through some recent RfA’s and note the sort of questions that are asked. It’s a good idea to make a checklist of things to do that would provide evidence for when you apply again. For example I used to tag a lot of copyright violation files, answered questions at the help desk/village pump, joined OTRS to help answer emails sent to Wikimedia (particularly about Commons files), looked on other wikis for free-licensed files that could be transferred to Commons (e.g. Meta-Wiki, Wikibooks and Wikisource), etc. I also became familiar with Commons policies in regard to copyright in different countries, acceptable licenses, freedom of panorama, threshold of originality etc. In particular, although I disagree with edit counts for RfA’s, it is helpful to have a larger edit count over the previous 6-12 months. For example I think I had about 40,000 edits in the year before my RfA (a significant number were semi-automated edits though). That’s an extreme example but about a thousand edits each month for approximately six months would be a good target. I hope that gives an idea of how to approach this. If you need more advice, please feel free to ask me. Green Giant (talk) 18:44, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello Giant, thanks for the recommendations.

I cannot provide this level of commitment anymore as I now work in start up conditions and have correct IRL family and associative lives with Wikimedia France. I used 3 weeks Xmas vacation to jump back on the ACC and SO projects, list the to do, noticed and though my expertise (Chinese characters graphy) could speed up a spring clean up of the said projects. This plan being my extreme potential involvement. Involvements on the RD and vandalism would be artificial and time consuming. The community's request for all admin to be complete multitasking admins is beyond my reach (time and will limitation). Yug (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Aside of what ! I will do some calm review in the ACC and SO project. I also now try to raise awareness about the inadequate RfA selection process.[Edit:I actually prefer to not take up engaments]

There will be 50 millions file in 2018, we cannot afford half of the 234 admins to be long time zombies under 50 deletions / 6 months, nor only 12 new admins a year. It's not sustainable, not healthy for the community nor the admins themselves. Wiki communities have stressing and cooling periods. Given numbers of successful RfA and the tone / red-flags I noticed, we are in a stressed period. I will push a bit so people realize that the numbers and process must change. (I don't expect it to give me adminship tho ) Yug (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Post note: 20 admins have lost their admin rights in 2017. Yug (talk) 20:00, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

XRay may worth mentoring for a 2nd RfA. Yug (talk) 21:12, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Yug: I agree it is very unsustainable to have so much going on but so few active administrators. However, any necessary change is likely to be incremental rather than drastic. In my personal opinion, one of the problems is that we don’t have as much engagement with other wikis as we should. There are, for example, dozens of users involved in the File namespace at the different Wikipedias and Wikisources, who are not active at Commons. I feel that we should be encouraging them to become active here too, whilst also encouraging active Commoners to become active elsewhere too. One major issue is free-licensed and PD files uploaded locally to other wikis, e.g. the thousands of files in Category:Creative Commons files on English Wikipedia, many of which could quite easily be hosted here but we don’t have enough people looking in the right places. We also have a deficient system of deletion, which could do wonders if every time a file was nominated for deletion here, a bot should leave a note on the talk page of every article/chapter/course/quote/transcription on other wikis that use that file. There have been instances of upset users from other wikis only realising that a file was nominated when it goes missing from a page there.

Personally I think we could ease some requirements and tighten others. For example a file that is tagged as a copyvio can be deleted immediately but many files are nominated with Deletion Requests, which nominally last seven days. Quite often there is no response from the uploader because some people don’t login every day or even every week. It wouldn’t hurt to change the policy to something like 28 days to give time for more input from users. Currently there are 39 days worth of deletion requests waiting to be closed (with another 8 due to join them soon). We could cut the backlog to just 18 days by granting an extra 21 days to each DR. It is pretty much the default position, so why not formalise it?

To touch on an issue raised at your RfA, the minimum requirements to retain adminship is 5 admin actions in six months. I accept that we all become busy in real life, but in my opinion the threshold is far too low. It should be at least 100 admin actions over six months, which is still easy to achieve but pushes a few admins to do an extra 95 actions. We even had a bureaucrat who had been logging in every six months, doing five admin actions, for about five years. Green Giant (talk) 22:27, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree, wiki and democratic community only allow incremental changes. Up to a core of individuals to structure the issue, its facts, make it readable and raise awareness, change one tiny thing here and there On tiny actionables :

• RfA candidacy process :
  • create page with potential RfA candidates, listing them
  • set up mentorship for RfA,
  • nominate more for RfA and mentoring the applicant (help to answer the voters concerns)
  • remind civility (RfA and volunteer work should be positive, inclusive, mentoring, constructive, not in part a blunt stoning zone)
  • Half of voters are Commons admins, which is a biases of representativity and an oligarchic selection of candidates. Canvassing accusation and Dave2010 position that "relevant expertise" means "expertise in RfA" is representative of this state of mind.
• RfA quantitative and qualitative analysis
  • collect numbers, make them accessible and visible, make sense of them (analysis)
  • Average admin in 2017 has 60 actions / 6 months
  • Top third in 2017 has 74,162-187 actions / 6 months, admins from #1 to #75 (In term of quantity, we actually just need them XD)
  • Middle third in 2017 has 187-24 actions / 6 months, admins from #76 to #150
  • Bottom third in 2017 has less than 24 actions / 6 months, admins from #151 to 234
  • Table RfA entrances vs exits vs files on commons
  • Table of unsuccessful RfA vs reasons of failure(I saw a hand of "I want to be admin on THIS project.s" being rejected, it's like having an upper FBI, but denying having municipal police)
• Active admins HR management
  • Recommend more clean up of the tail (bottom third with less than 24 actions / 6 months) so we realize we only have 150 "active" admins
  • Find out the Average Actions per Month (AAM) curve along time for all admins
  • Recommend integration of as many new admins, who will likely have higher AAM the bottom third

I'am structuring here some ideas, but we may now or soon move this to a dedicate draft page to co-edit with the community. Yug (talk) 13:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Note: I listed mainly the point I though of, I haven't integrate your points yet (automatic message on local wikis, encouraging Wikipedia users to become involved here, more than 100 actions / 6 months, etc). Feel free to edit and add those to the structured bullet list above. Yug (talk) 13:15, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest creating a draft page linked to COM:Village Pump/Proposals. Note a fresh proposal had been made about admin activity. Green Giant (talk) 15:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Awesome , one push underway. I voted. Then really needs to soften up the gate for RfA. Yug (talk) 18:59, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

More RevDels?

I notice you hid some revisions on P199‘s user and talk pages; you will probably want to to the same for Mitte27’s user page (both pages) because the same abusive rant was posted there as well.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC) P.S. I see you got the talk message now, but not the copy on the user page. 09:20, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479:  Done Thank you. Green Giant (talk) 09:22, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

License review question

Hi, thanks for closing my request. I've been looking through the category and sometimes I come across files like this, whereby the author is apparently the copyright owner but we've got no proof besides their own word. Do I accept such a file or do I tag it as "no permission"? Cheers, Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:30, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, here, the source just says "CC-BY-SA" and no version. "Разрешено использование изображения на условиях лицензии CC-BY-SA" (translated to "Permission to use the image under the terms of the CC-BY-SA license" according to Google Translate). Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

@Anarchyte: Hello. Good questions:

• I would mark the first file as No-Permission simply because it appears to be an organisational logo, and as you said, we have no evidence the uploader is the copyright holder. Sometimes people will claim that they are the copyright holder because the username is the same as the copyright holder name. It might be true (and feel free to quote me), but would you believe me if I said I am The Green Giant of frozen and canned food fame, just because the username matches? (I only picked the name because I was young and foolish, and there was a can of peas in front of me!) On closer inspection, via Google search, I note that it appears to be a variant of the logo at execedconnect.com not mention a couple of others, which muddies the situation and makes it even less likely it is Own Work by the uploader. It might arguably be {{PD-textlogo}} but I think it is above the threshold of originality.
• The second one is also fairly straightforward for us. Without a version number, we cannot host it, nor can we assume which license it might be. I would nominate it for regular deletion because we can assume the copyright holder did mean to license it, so No-Permission and No-License are not appropriate. It is not often that Instagram yields CC-licensed images, so it would need a little more scrutiny.

I hope that helps, and feel free to pick what little brains I have left. Green Giant (talk) 12:03, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the insight! I've nominated the first under "no permission" and created a discussion for the second. I'll keep this in mind for the future. Cheers, Anarchyte (work | talk) 13:29, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Malasana yoga pose image

Can you give me a pointer as to where on the internet I may find an equivalent Malasana yoga pose image that would be acceptable to Wikipedia as I am not in a position to take such photos myself.--Penbat (talk) 23:10, 5 January 2018 (UTC)