User talk:Asaf (WMF)

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WhisperToMe 10 years

Hello, There is a guy in our En WP User:WhisperToMe, an American, he has completed 10 years of Wikipedia-editing and adminship.
In a Wiki-world, where "retiting" is a common thing, we "very rarely" get an editor who is an editor and admin for 10+ years. This is a rare achievement. Plus he has more than 300,000 edits with clear block log.

For last 1 year, I have been asking to give him a reception. People always say that that is a good idea, but nothing really works/goes ahead.
This a discussion where I proposed a reception
Nww, could you arrange a special felicitation by their local chapter (he lives in the US, I forgot state name)? If you read this discussion, few editors suggested "a barnstar". Please NOOO. Something better than barnstar please.
If you absolutely can't help here, could you at least suggest where I can take this? --Tito☸Dutta 13:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this suggestion, Tito. WTM's record is indeed very impressive! I agree it merits recognition, but I'm afraid a modest merchandise package is the best we can offer at this point. We don't generally do anything else for recognition, and the Merchandise giveaways page remains our main mechanism to give out merchandise to great Wikimedians. Could you make your recommendation there? Asaf (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

• Ah, old memories. I was one of the first and most active participants of that Merchandise project. We had to ask many times to revive/make the process faster. See discussions from here. Now it is here at Meta, I don't watch the page. And today you are directing me to that page. "This" happens with community members. No one knows or gives recognition of their works. (most probably it was a joke, but I am not fully sure. )
  Merchandise and deceased Wikipedians — are the two projects where I worked really hard.
  Anyway, I got a shirt for him. I nominated his name and he has confirmed that he got it long ago.
  10 years' anniversary of adminship and Wiki-editing - I don't know any other editor with similar experience.
  Who will take it forward? I have an incomplete essay at Wikipedia No one cares where I mentioned, an editor, my very good friend, after making "100,000" edits, just "went missing". He either died or something else happened. No one knows. Anyway, a special reception (in their country's next conference or Wikimania or just "anywhere") or newspaper interviews (who arranges these interviews? I see some chapter members are regularly giving interviews) or at least Signpost interview or mention in WMF blog could be very encouraging for him and the common community members who are always neglected. --Tito☸Dutta 21:48, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken in thinking WTM's record is unique; it is impressive and rare, but not unique. I'm sure you know as well as I do that there are quite a few members of the ten-year club, and that there are also quite a few people with more than 100K edits (and not just on ENWP, remember). None of them have, to my knowledge, received "a reception" or anything beyond merchandise from WMF. If we were to start flying long-term contributors to SF (or anywhere), we would find ourselves flying hundreds (yes!) of people around the world; that would not be a wise (or even acceptable) use of our donor funds, I think.

I do think it's important to recognize major contributors, and perhaps WTM would appreciate other merchandise beyond that T-shirt. But perhaps a much more meaningful way to recognize WTM would be by WTM's own peers on ENWP, next time they share physical space, i.e. at a WikiConference (there may be another WikiConference USA in a few months) or Wikimania. That would be up to the community to organize, though.

What does make sense to me is, for instance, to invest in funding training and gatherings for experienced admins (such as WTM), thus achieving both an implicit recognition of their importance to the movement and concrete value, in the form of improvement of some admin skills (e.g. conflict resolution) or better alignment with community norms and sense of common purpose with the other participants. Something like this does seem likely in the not-so-far future. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

• You seem to be angry. there are also quite a few people with more than 100K edits (and not just on ENWP, remember) — That is a good point, if there are hundreds of such admin-editors, that is problematic.
  I don't know abut other Wikis, nor I know about desysoped/retired admins. Here is a stat/study of "oldest admins with maximum number of edits" en:User:Titodutta/Ten-year club admins.
  There are 80 or so "10-year members" on En WP. I may try finding i) "active" ii) "admins" and iii) "with 6-digits edit count" among them, it may take time. The stat above shows, WTM is at top "at this moment" (Bearcat is there)
  Your other points are fine. --Tito☸Dutta 05:19, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Oh, certainly not angry! :) Please don't worry about it. Thanks for compiling that data. Are you going to nominate WTM for more merchandise on that page? I don't see other practical steps at this point; the only way toward other forms of recognition (beyond the in-person recognition possible at events), would be through some community-wide conversation on the general question (and not about WTM specifically, of course). Asaf (WMF) (talk) 01:09, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanking/ acknowledging long term volunteers (are admins more desereving than others?)

Sorry for barging in here User: Titodutta and Asaf. The topic of thanking/ acknowledging long term volunteers has been of interest to me for quite some time. w:wp:Miss is a list of editors on the en.wikipedia who are no longer active, but it seems to be a controversial list and has been proposed for deletion several times over the years.

BTW I wonder why some editors believe that Admins are more deserving than other folks with lots of contributions? I don’t believe I have had any direct interaction with User:WhisperToMe, but User:Bearcat who has made a lot of positive contributions also has a dark side, at least where it comes to me personally, and other users who happen to have registered around February 1, 2017. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:18, 16 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

You really are something else, you know that? Anything at all that you want to do on Wikipedia is always a "donation" that Wikipedia always has to keep even if it isn't even remotely encyclopedic, and if anybody ever challenges you on any of it that's because they have a "dark side", rather than because you have a blind spot about what is or isn't a worthwhile contribution? To the point that you'll go around raising it in discussions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the person you're complaining about? Get over yourelf, as they used to say when I was a young'un. Bearcat (talk) 15:58, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I admit it. I am an (officially coming out of the closet) Inclusionist. Any editor convicted of this crime can now expect execution within 5 hours of receiving notice, and their grave-stone removal within a few months.

In my own case I received the notice of the ANI (started by User:World’s Lamest Critic) on 12:28, 1 February 2017 and was indeffed blocked by 17:38, 1 February 2017. My talk-page access was removed six months later (after I posted my own personal experience with a admin who was later desysoped).

BTW Is it me as an editor, or is it the city of Ottawa that makes you see red? After all you contributed ten edits explaining your Delete rationale in an AFD (also started by User:World's Lamest Critic) of an article I tried to create. Despite your very lengthy entry you never once objected to the characterization of Ottawa as a a small Canadian city and even supported it indirectly (referring to the article subject as a local interest) Ottawahitech (talk) 16:47, 29 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

Neither you nor Ottawa makes me see red per se; I lived in Ottawa myself for six years of my life, in fact. What does make me see red is poorly sourced and poorly substanced articles about people or things that don't have any credibly encyclopedic claim of notability besides "this [thing/person] exist[s/ed], the end", which is something you did quite a lot of. I'm neither a "deletionist" nor an "inclusionist" per se, just for the record -- the issue is that Wikipedia is not, nor should it be, about everything or everyone that can be single-sourced as merely existing, but about things and people that pass our notability and sourceability standards and not about things and people that don't. And you've had a lot of administrators explain this to you over the years, not just me, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with you getting blocked, either -- yet you seem excessively hung up on the things I've said to you for some reason, as if nobody else had ever told you the same things. Bearcat (talk) 18:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

@Bearcat: Do you feel w:Ottawa is a small Canadian city? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:09, 9 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

@Bearcat: You said above: you’ve had a lot of administrators explain this to you over the years, not just me, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with you getting blocked, either

• As far as "a lot of administrators explain this to you over the years" I am sorry but I cannot find even one such admin posting on my user talkpage. Can you?
• I checked my user-talkpage and found 24 edits by you. None of those edits had anything to do with explaining this to me. As a matter of fact the first time you "explained" (to whom?) was when you blanked my user-page, more than ten years after I made my first edit, using this edit summary: wrongheaded; Wikipedia is not a place where all content must be kept just because it was "donated" in good faith, but a place where notability needs to be demonstrated with content and sources, and that's the thing Ottawahitech kept missing. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ottawahitech&diff=next&oldid=809245469

• Are you still claiming you had nothing to do with my block? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2017 (UTC) please ping me

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Um, @Bearcat:, @Ottawahitech:, seriously: could you take this elsewhere? It never belonged on my talk page to begin with. Please, just stop, or take it elsewhere. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

WikiConference India 2016 program

Congratulations again on your proposal being selected!

We hope you have registered for the conference. If not please follow the instructions at: http://wci2016.doattend.com/ If you are a scholarship recipient - use the Wikimedia Registration option. In case you are not attending or unable to attend, please let us know at the earliest so that the schedules can be readjusted accordingly.

The program schedule is available here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016/Programs

Please make sure you read the presenter guidelines. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016/Presenter_guidelines

We look forward to seeing you in Chandigarh!

For program committee

Shyamal

en:User:Shyamal

Dedicated to you...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dance&type=revision&diff=763008886&oldid=759182850

Anthere (talk)

Thanks

Hi Asaf Thank you for your good lecture today. I was sitting on your right side.. May God bless you.. --칼빈500 (talk) 08:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Are you in Korea already? Nobody tells me anything here, sigh. --Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 08:38, 17 October 2017 (UTC) (That's me, btw --Piotrus (talk) 08:57, 17 October 2017 (UTC))

Brazilian Catalyst Program

Hi, Asaf. I hope you are doing fine. I have sent you an email, but you might have missed it. I am interested in having a better sense of what happened during the Brazilian Catalyst Program, and I am writing to see if you are the right person or if you could introduce to the right person to whom I could documents and data. There seems to be a lot missing on the formal pages associated to this program. Thanks you! Best. --Joalpe (talk) 14:08, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Need help in setting up Twitter Bot that could post from Wikipedia

Dear Asaf,

Could you help me in setting up a tweetbot that would essentially post Featured Article, On this day... sections to twitter from Telugu Wikipedia. Please connect me with someone who could help me in doing this otherwise. --Rahmanuddin (talk) 06:42, 23 May 2018 (UTC)