User talk:Vanamonde93

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Feedback

Hey Vanamonde,

I can feel you're frustrated at the quality of discussion at Talk:People's Mujahedin of Iran, so am I. Are there things I can do differently? I would love your feedback. Thanks VR _talk 16:44, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I think your tone and language have been better than most others on that page, but you have often been just as reluctant to offer compromise with respect to content. Your latest proposal is a step in the right direction, but it's only a small step. If the article is ever to comply with our guidelines for size and summary style, considerably more compromise is needed. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

• Vice Regent suggested me to ask you for guidance on how to handle the things on the talk page of MEK. Please kindly let me know if there are more things than what you already suggested him. Best, --Mhhossein ^talk 03:17, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Mhhossein: What I've told VR is applicable to most people on that page. You have gotten so entrenched in your respective positions that you've lost sight of any larger encyclopedic goals. Compromise is necessary, if that article is to ever be readable; and that means both accepting suggestions and changes that you think aren't ideal, and also working to offer alternatives to changes you don't like. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:40, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

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AE

Hi. I noticed you rollbacked comments made by Swarm at AE. I didn't see why they needed reverting, and presumed that it was an accidental click. I've reverted your reversion there, but if I have missed something do let me know. Happy editing and mopping, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 22:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• I assume it was a misclick via a mobile touchscreen. I've done it too many times myself. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 23:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • @Swarm and Dreamy Jazz: My apologies. It was indeed a misclick, and I happened to step away just then, so didn't see what I had done. Funnily, I've enabled the pre-rollback-from-watchlist in my preferences, and got that prompt; but I was quite certain I'd hit "cancel", not "continue", so I didn't bother to check further. Apologies again. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:31, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

No apology needed. Congrats on your FA! ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 10:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Promotion of Dreamsnake

Congratulations, Vanamonde93! The article you nominated, Dreamsnake, has been promoted to featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. The nomination discussion has been archived.

This is a rare accomplishment and you should be proud. If you would like, you may nominate it to appear on the Main page as Today's featured article. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) via FACBot (talk) 00:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
• When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
• The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points.
• Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths.
• ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score.
• Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points.
• Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items.
• The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs.
• Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews.
• Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews.
• Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles.
• Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Dreamsnake

Hello again. I just wanted to say a belated congratulations on the promotion of Dreamsnake to a FA status. I greatly appreciate and respect your work on female sci-fi writers. I have never heard of this book before, and after reading through the article, I am genuinely interested in checking it out. This FAC also inspired to possibly work on the The Crystal Star star (a far less well-received novel by Vonda N. McIntyre) in the future lol. Anyway, just wanted to say my congratulations on this. Aoba47 (talk) 04:47, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Aoba47: Thank you! Always nice to be appreciated. I can't say I'm familiar with The Crystal Star, though I know McIntyre's Star Wars/Star Trek work was not viewed favorably by critics. Vanamonde (Talk) 04:52, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• Of course! I only know about The Crystal Star because it is one of the most-hated Star Wars novels, and for whatever reason, I find that to be an interesting reason to explore it further. I would imagine that it could be quite difficult to write stories based on major franchises, like Star Wars and Star Trek, given how much a fanbase is invested in the material and has his or her own interpretations of the characters and universe. Aoba47 (talk) 04:56, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• Yeah, and for that reason it has rarely been a genre that appealed to me; but it has its place. I did enjoy some of the Star Trek short stories, from the 60s, but that's a very different format. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:11, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback please

Hi, in the case you have missed my ping, would you please kindly respond to it? --Mhhossein ^talk 10:20, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I did miss that; I have now responded. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:33, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Intractable Balkans matters

Hey. All I can say is that I welcome any bold approach to moderate the conduct of several of the Balkans regulars who are featured in that report. Much respect to anyone who dares to tread in that walls of text minefield of content which is of relative obscurity (especially pre-modern history and/or language disputes). But as to what to do, specifically, that I don't know. My sense, though, that an escalation is called for. Best, El_C 22:12, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the more I dug into those diffs, the larger the number grew of editors conducting themselves poorly. I'm worried that AE doesn't have the resources to resolve the issue; but few people have the stamina to file an ARBCOM case, either. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to frame this, so I'll just blurt it out. Admins at AE often focus on non-content -related conduct. Repeated NPA/civility breaches makes matters simple, and I'm not saying it shouldn't take priority, especially when entering the realm of harassment. But what I find (and maybe it's just me) is that the endless, as you call it, "argumentation" (and I'd add also WP:TE- to it as a suffix) often is the root of such misconduct. Both sides engage in it, both sides suffer its grating effects, and both sides falter with occasional outbursts over it.

Not unique to this topic area, of course, but similar to the Balkans, several topic areas which are relatively obscure to the average English speaker, like WP:ARBAA2 or the new WP:ARBKURDS, do not make it easy to tell what's what (concerning reliability, up to and including fabrications outright). How to best tackle this problematic, that I don't know (again). But identifying what is happening down in the trenches is undoubtedly an important part of any possible amelioration to this perennial problem. El_C 01:00, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@El C: Sorry for taking a while to reply; been pre-ocupied off-wiki. I agree that we tend to focus on tone, broadly speaking, over substance, when assessing conduct matters; and this is a problem. I think the tendentious editing you mention is an obvious example of civil-but-problematic conduct; I'd argue the problem is wider, in that we have a number of users, even very experienced ones, who are utterly unable to separate content work in contentious areas from their personal POV. This is bad enough in well-understood areas; in obscure topics it becomes utterly intractable. With respect to the MEK, for instance, I am sorely tempted to abandon the administrator hat and dive into the source material myself; in the absence of anyone willing to treat the source material in its entirety (rather than cherry-picking), the trench warfare on the talk seems set to continue indefinitely. And that's far from the only arena where it's a concern; I honestly would rather discuss other ones over email, if you want to carry on this conversation. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:54, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Vanamonde, go for it. I'm always up for privately corresponding with you. Best, El_C 16:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Dreamsnake scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Dreamsnake article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 6, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 6, 2021, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:15, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, due to a late date-linked request, this will now run on 14 April, sorry about the change Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: Not a problem, thanks for letting me know. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:11, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Revdel request

Would you be able to fill a revdel request? These two edits that are grossly offensive. (user 141.154.78.170 already blocked) (Article history). Kingsif (talk) 18:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@Kingsif: Done. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:29, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

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Talk:Kingdom of Kashmir

Hi Vanamonde93. I'm not sure if you got the ping, but I included you in a request for administrative help at Talk:Kingdom of Kashmir. Best regards. पाटलिपुत्र Pat (talk) 08:50, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your positive impact. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Gog the Mild submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

A tireless worker in the engine room of Wikipedia. They work on a wide range of maintenance activities that helps give us all this vast playground which we take for granted. They also produce impeccable FACs on speculative fiction - they may as well be given a pass to save the reviewer effort. They have created 12 FA's and 48 GA's. Their interests in other mainspace topics is impressively broad: Guatemalan politics, South African music, specialised biology, Abu Ghraib, Indian politics, you name it. Certainly an editor who should be encouraged to do more of what they are doing.

You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:

{{User:UBX/EoTWBox}}

Thanks again for your efforts! ―Buster7 ☎ 15:38, 20 March 2021 (UTC)