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Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

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The fourth round of the competition has finished, with anyone scoring less than 673 points being eliminated. It was a high scoring round with all but one of the contestants who progressed to the final having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Epicgenius, with 2173 points topping the scores, gained mainly from a featured article, 38 good articles and 9 DYKs. He was followed by
• Sammi Brie, with 1575 points, gained mainly from a featured article, 28 good articles and 50 good article reviews. Close behind was
• Thebiguglyalien, with 1535 points mainly gained from a featured article, 15 good articles, 26 good article reviews and lots of bonus points.

Between them during round 4, contestants achieved 12 featured articles, 3 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 126 good articles, 46 DYK entries, 14 ITN entries, 67 featured article candidate reviews and 147 good article reviews. Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them and within 24 hours of the end of the final. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. 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. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

I will be standing down as a judge after the end of the contest. I think the Cup encourages productive editors to improve their contributions to Wikipedia and I hope that someone else will step up to take over the running of the Cup. Sturmvogel 66 (talk), and Cwmhiraeth (talk)

Guild of Copy Editors 2023 Annual Report Our 2023 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Introduction Membership news, obituary and election results Summary of Drives, Blitzes and the Requests page Closing words – Your Guild coordinators: Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

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• Good Olfactory
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Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

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Administrator Elections | Discussion phase

The discussion phase of the October 2024 administrator elections is officially open. As a reminder, the schedule of the election is:

• October 22–24 - Discussion phase
• October 25–31 - SecurePoll voting phase
• November 1–? - Scrutineering phase

During October 22–24, we will be in the discussion phase. The candidate subpages will open to questions and comments from everyone, in the same style as a request for adminship. You may discuss the candidates at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase.

On October 25, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close again to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.

Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a week or two. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose). As this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").

Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.

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Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

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Administrator Elections | Voting phase

The voting phase of the October 2024 administrator elections has started and continues until 23:59 31st October 2024 UTC. You can participate in the voting phase at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Voting phase.

As a reminder, the schedule of the election is:

• October 25–31 - SecurePoll voting phase
• November 1–? - Scrutineering phase

In the voting phase, the candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies for a vote will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.

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Thanks for your comment, and for taking the trouble to read through the background.

yes, it's boring to stick narrowly to source material, but that's what editing a CT on Wikipedia requires.

The page where I cited that joke, like a very large number of IP pages, is marked precisely by too many editors not sticking to the source material, but talking their way around it, in many cases, documentably, without even troubling themselves to read those sources. This is the curse of that area. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 06:37, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241026063700","author":"Nishidani","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Nishidani-20241026063700-Just_a_note,_no_followup_needed","replies":["c-Vanamonde93-20241026163000-Nishidani-20241026063700"]}}-->

I don't disagree, Nishidani, and I've gone on record several times that editors ignoring or misusing source material are the most serious form of disruption we face in several CTs. But responding with strong language - or other rhetoric - makes it near impossible to deal with that problem. I hope to see you around. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:30, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241026163000","author":"Vanamonde93","type":"comment","level":2,"id":"c-Vanamonde93-20241026163000-Nishidani-20241026063700","replies":["c-Nishidani-20241026205200-Vanamonde93-20241026163000"]}}-->

I'm extremely careful about language. Any practiced writer knows that every word that comes to mind opens up several options, each one potentially riding off in a different direction. And the art one learns consists of herding them along, thinning out the the limper or rebarbative or untamable ones, until the remainder can be corraled into a sentence that best suits the desired intended meaning. The premise of focused writing is that the mind must, in short, conduct a dialogue with itself as it oversees the surge of language, before speaking to an other.

My use of that joke was not rhetorical in the detrimental sense of that word: (Brian Vickers has a wonderful book on the abused term showing how central it was to civilized discourse traditionally). In theory, everything said can be parsed in terms of rhetoric's extensive taxinomy. A completely innocuous note can be heard/read (as often in conversation when it was an art), beyond whatever its author's intention, to yield up a tone of crassness, Schadenfreude, contempt, an ironic smirk, etc. seething between the simple form of a straightforward to-and-fro of chatting That is why we read novels: the best authors thrive deliciously on ambiguities intrinsic to language's mischievous playfulness.

Rhetoric doesn't, in this high sense, mean a kind of disingenuous verbal posturing to achieve, cynically, a contrived effect. In the disputed edit, I underlined my view by citing an academic source, so that what I said wouldn't be dismissed as some off-the-top of the head opinion (which is mostly what happens on talk pages). I added the joke as an 'illustrative' afterthought to, I thought, gentle the laborious academic source's thrust by something that would appeal to commonsense.

Jokes are deep, far too complex in their compact, unpacked laconic insights into culture and psychology, to be shrugged off (not that you were doing this in choosing the term) as 'rhetorical'. For me, rhetoric in the modern sense is a damaged good monopolized by politicians and their journalistic sutlers, used cynically to persuade others of something the speakers may not even quite believe or even think. (if thinking is appropriate to describe the thoughtless 'weaponization' of words to win an argument, or blindside one's interlocutor, or spellbind an audience).

A good many AE cases against me, and there are many, have pivoted on taking anything I write that goes beyond what Miss Manners would say to her daughter as 'intemperate', 'inflammatory', 'antisemitic' or whatever. And most did not achieve their end when the issue was laid before peers for a judgment. I admit I have been exasperated at times but that has not been the norm, quite rare in fact. At least five stick in my craw, because they arose, not from the animosity of editors, but from admins who failed to read correctly what I'd written, and rushed to a sanction. Most were overturned within a day or two when the misprision, or failure to catch the irony, was explained (often by others). I have consistently said when that happened, once the issue was cleared, that I don't fault the admins in question (save in one case). For the simple reason that, were I placed in their position, with that terrible fardel of having to read a huge amount of indifferent prose and random argufying, I would throw up my hands in despair. I admire them for that unthankful task and consider that flawed moments of judgment cannot but crop up, even with the best of wills, due to the rapid nature of wikipedia talking.

This margin is greater the greater the conflictual reality we strive to represent in 'contentious' topic areas. In that area, my concern from the beginning has been a systemic bias that saps NPOV. Precisely because we all have, or should have, after the Holocaust, antennae fine-tuned to antisemitism, a mainstream tendency has arisen which, in conflating Israel a nation-state with Jews as one coherent identity, has engendered a hypersensitivity to the one, the political reality that, properly, should be reserved rather for our regard for every single Jew. But when two peoples are in a chronic state of conflict, our sensitivities cannot be unilateral. One cannot allow oneself to indulge in hypersensivity for one side's dignity or image, while tacitly ignoring the right to a claim on our sensitivities by the other party. It violates NPOV structurally. That is why, apart from trying to ensure a fair representation for the silenced party, I nonetheless wrote a good many complex articles on aspects of Jewish culture, and have advised all editors to prove their impartiality, whatever their POVs, to write up articles that bear on both worlds, preferably unrelated to politics.

But - if TLDR hasn't kicked in - finally, the sanction, which I take to be just one more instance of a hasty ergo flawed judgment, tells me two things. One, that a further precedent has been established that, inadvertently, will ease work for the ingrained habit of hawkish editors who comb minutely my every edit, to find even more proof for more such cases at ANI/AE in the future. 8 times this year (August 23-October 24) someone, half of them socks, have managed to get the ear of admins to complain. All failed except for the 'raising the temperature 'no-smoke-without-fire syndrome effect' which, ultimately, I believe, kicked in here. Secondly, per my remarks on language and rhetoric, I realize that I am simply not cut out for contributing to wikipedia if the care I exert to get things right so often leads to misunderstandings. So I am closing shop. Yesterday, when I decided to abandon a place I love, I felt relief, and I spent an enjoyable afternoon talking with an archaeologist about Romulus and Remus, and obscure figures like Caeculus, without a thought for the responsibilities I once assumed as a daily tithing of my time, to try and do a little to lower the tone and reality of violence which afflicts our world. My very best regards then, and keep up the good work.Nishidani (talk) 20:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241026205200","author":"Nishidani","type":"comment","level":3,"id":"c-Nishidani-20241026205200-Vanamonde93-20241026163000","replies":["c-Vanamonde93-20241026231000-Nishidani-20241026205200"]}}-->

My regards to you too. You will understand that I can't opine directly on a lot of what you have said, but I do acknowledge our weakness in dispute resolution of focusing on presentation over substance - that is, language over content. I will not say language isn't important, but it's not the only problem, but it's the easiest to police. Vanamonde93 (talk) 23:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241026231000","author":"Vanamonde93","type":"comment","level":4,"id":"c-Vanamonde93-20241026231000-Nishidani-20241026205200","replies":[]}}-->

Hey, I learned that this book made it to featured article status with your help. I read parts of The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition about a year or two ago, and I convinced my dad to pick it up last week and read the first story. Just wanted to leave a brief thanks I guess? It's really something special to see something like that get the recognition it deserves. Though I doubt I'd ever be able to write something that well, I'd really like to extend some gratitude to people like you who can write on broad topics like that. It really means a lot to me. Fathoms Below (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241030135200","author":"Fathoms Below","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Fathoms_Below-20241030135200-A_Wizard_of_Earthsea","replies":["c-Vanamonde93-20241030151200-Fathoms_Below-20241030135200"]}}-->

That's very kind of you, Fathoms Below. It was a pleasure to work on and I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. It's been my ambition to get the first trilogy entirely to FA status. Someday, perhaps. Vanamonde93 (talk) 15:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20241030151200","author":"Vanamonde93","type":"comment","level":2,"id":"c-Vanamonde93-20241030151200-Fathoms_Below-20241030135200","replies":[]}}-->