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2019-2022

<--- Previous issue | Next issue ---> | Tip Line SYMBIOSIS: The lichen task force newsletter — October 2022 A look at what we've accomplished, working together
As a subset of WP:FUNGI, the lichen task force is working to improve coverage of the world's lichens – unique organisms composed of one or more fungal partners with one or more photosynthetic partners. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of the roughly 1000 secondary metabolites produced by various lichens may prove instrumental in our ongoing battle against harmful pathogens. Want to learn more? Join us!	Articles of note Esculenta has nominated two articles for GA: Verrucariaceae – a family of mostly lichenized fungi found primarily on rocks and soil in the Northern Hemisphere Solorina crocea – also known as "orange chocolate chip lichen", this was one of the first lichen species to be formally scientifically described
Project news It's been another busy month for the task force. Among the accomplishments: We've tagged another 700 articles, categories and templates as being under the purview of the task force. Importance levels have now been set for nearly all of the task force's articles. Thousands of articles have been tagged with lichen class/order/genus/species categories as appropriate. Work has continued on converting those articles which still using old "taxobox" templates to the newer automatic taxobox and speciesbox templates. There are now fewer than 95 left to modify. MerielGJones has created articles for a number of important lichenologists, including James D. Lawrey, Thomas George Allan Green, Pier Luigi Nimis, Hannes Hertel, Ludger Kappen, and Christian Leuckert. Esculenta added one for Georges Clauzade. Dozens of articles have been created for genera and species of lichen and lichenicolous fungi. The outline of lichens is now almost completely referenced. Work has continued on the Draft:Glossary of lichen terms, which will hopefully be ready to move into main space within the month.
Lichen news A recent study strongly suggests that industrial forestry, along with the introduction of nitrogen, is the main cause of lichen declines in Norway spruce forests. This decline has resulted in "cascading effects on biodiversity and function of boreal forest canopies", according to the study's authors.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

Hello Dr vulpes,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

Suggestions:

• There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
• Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
• Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
• This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Hello Dr vulpes,

Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Hello Dr vulpes,

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp ^connect on IRC.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Hi My Mentor, I'll like to ask that how can i edit my page like the other big Rappers because I want mine to be exact --1O1chain (talk) 11:29, 3 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey @1O1chain sorry for taking so long to get back to you. What kind of help did you need on making an article? What kind of rappers are you looking to edit? Come back and let me know I'll be more then happy to help you. Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, do you know how to start a Wikipedia page? --Caleb Fisler (talk) 20:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey @Caleb Fisler, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. What kind of help did you need on making an article? Check out this link Wikipedia:Articles for creation and click the blue box to start a new article. Come back and let me know when you start and I'll be more then happy to help you. Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello! I was assigned you as a mentor on Wikipedia, and I am interested in making election maps for various places in the world. How would I find a place that needs an election map done? Thanks! --Heatyeet (talk) 03:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey @Heatyeet, I'm sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Are you still looking to make election maps? Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No worries at all. I am indeed. Heatyeet (talk) 00:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So @Heatyeet if I were you I would download something like Inkscape and fill in a map you find on commons or from an earlier election. If you want to make the parlament style graphics there is a tool for that which can me found here [1]https://parliamentdiagram.toolforge.org/ . Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks. I actually taught myself how to make legislative elections, I was just curious as to how I can find articles that need a map made. Heatyeet (talk) 00:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ooo that's a good question I don't think that a lot of article are tagged or have a category. Maybe check out, for example I checked Australia and a lot of their early elections lack maps. Dr vulpes (Talk) 00:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

	Merry Christmas, Dr vulpes
	or whatever else you may celebrate at this time of year. Thank you for all your work on Wikipedia throughout the year and may 2024 prove to be a happy and successful year for you and your family Josey Wales Parley 22:06, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2024 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving 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. Signups will close on 31 January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), and Frostly (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) 00:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The January issue of the lichen task force newsletter is available here. Delivered by MeegsC (talk) 03:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, Dr vulpes. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, move subpages when moving the parent page(s), and move category pages.

Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving a redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.

Useful links:

• Wikipedia:Requested moves
• Category:Requested moves, for article renaming requests awaiting action.

If you do not want the page mover right anymore, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Thank you, and happy editing! Hey man im josh (talk) 15:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks! I've thought about requesting this in the past but just never got around to it. Dr vulpes (Talk) 16:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

	The Original Barnstar
	Well done for your work on Clipperton Island Case! And thank your kind comment and review! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 04:12, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you I've put a lot of work into everything Clipperton Island 😊 Dr vulpes (Talk) 07:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

How can I make my Wikipedia anonymous? --Jpchihane (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi @Jpchihane, you can make an article as just an IP editor if you don't want the article tied to your account. If you have more questions feel free to reply and let me know. Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In that piece is says attic char have no Kyle or it is barely visable, yet above that is a photo a a gut holding a very large Artic Char with a clearly visible Kyle. Very prominent. I'm new here and not sure how to go about things so whatever you think is fine with me as they said you were the mentor to ask. Thanks --Angelo863 (talk) 23:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey @Angelo863, glad to meet you! I think it's fine to leave it alone. In the article it says that "Among American species of charr, the kype reaches its maximum size in the large anadromous males" and then later it says "whereas it is reportedly absent or hardly visible in large nonanadromous males, Arctic char". So the image and text are both correct since the char in the image is returning from the sea (anadromous) to breed. Do you have any other question's about Wikipedia or any direction I can provide for you? Feel free to leave a message asking any questions on my talk page any time. Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:45, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Delighted to see you enjoyed reviewing it. I have a lot of similar pages at GAN you might be interested in and a titanic backlog of pages to nominate. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 02:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'll have to check them out later this week! I know you know this but your work is very good and wonderful to read, thank you for all your contributions. It's honestly refreshing to read something professional and in-depth. It makes me want to go back and improve my own work! Dr vulpes (Talk) 03:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, Dr vulpes! As part of the January 2024 NPP Backlog drive re-review process, I wanted to let you know that you should not have marked List of states with cities larger than their capital city by population as reviewed because the topic is already covered by other existing lists and is not notable enough itself for a standalone list. No action is needed on your part, but feel free to let me know if you have any questions. ––FormalDude (talk) 02:40, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

		The New Page Patroller's Barnstar
		For over 100 article reviews during 2023. Well done! Keep up the good work and thank you! Dr vulpes (Talk) 02:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For doing the work to send barnstars to all NPP patrollers. It's a great motivation for me, thank you very much! ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 07:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks @SunDawn! It's my first time doing this so this means a lot to me, thank you. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:23, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Dr vulpes. Thanks so much for the barnstar. Just a quick note that, like all talk message page templates, these should be substituted on use, i.e. ((subst:The New Page Patroller's Barnstar|type=iron|text=your message here ~~~~)). – Joe (talk) 08:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for the heads up @Joe Roe, sorry for the (massive) mistake. It's my first year doing the awards coordination so I haven't really had to give out that many awards before. Won't happen again. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have added ((subst only|auto=yes)) to the documentation for this barnstar, so AnomieBOT should fix all of these sometime soon without causing any new pings. SilverLocust 💬 08:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you so much @SilverLocust, I was kind of dreading having to go back today and fix those mistakes after work. Dr vulpes (Talk) 13:46, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, How do i create a page ? --Oui Management (talk) 16:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi @Oui Management, can you give me some more details about what you mean? Dr vulpes (Talk) 08:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]