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Oh boy, farewell, I miss you already, Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:32, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		Kudos for the thoughtfulness of your proposal at WP:VPR. Bbb23 (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much! 28bytes (talk) 23:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

DEAR ADMINISTRATOR,

I request that my account be deleted with immediate effect, and that all my edits in the past, and past edit histories, be permanently removed from public viewing. Deletion of my account, City of Lukington, would be immensely appreciated.

I hope that this reaches you soon and that you are able to act upon my request.

Yours sincerely, Unknown user (formerly City of Lukington) — Preceding unsigned comment added by City of Lukington (talk • contribs) 20:29, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• As a listed DYK participant, you are invited to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the question of whether Good Articles should appear in the Did You Know? slot in future. Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Thank you in advance. Gilderien Chat|Contributions00:28, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! 28bytes (talk) 15:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi - I work for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science. I performed a quick search today and founds that a page for my agency exists on Wikipedia, but has inaccurate information. I would like to know how to go about protecting our page so that we can manage and protect the content and its integrity.

Thank you! Tricia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retrotric (talk • contribs) 18:59, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. 28bytes (talk) 20:33, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'm new user of Mediaviki. I created some page that used Mediawiki. Can You help me with some thing or show me somebody who can do it? I need some help with upgrading Mediawiki and set option. Thank You.--TraaBBIT (talk) 06:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi TraaBBIT. I'm not familiar with the nuts and bolts of installing the MediaWiki software, but a quick Google search tells me that Manual:Installation guide may have the information you're looking for, with some links to additional resources that might be of assistance. Good luck! 28bytes (talk) 20:36, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Hallo 28bytes! My name is Frid (or Farid), and I am writing to you from the sunny city of Baku! I really need your help - You could create an article - I'm a very bad know English - to create an article about MODELS by named Ricki Hall. If you help me I will be very happy!

In other languages ​​do not have information about him - please! Yours respectfully - Keete 37 —Preceding undated comment added 07:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello.
I'm user Patangel from french wikipedia, contributing since 2009. I've unified all my accounts but, unfortunately, on en.wikipedia.org, there is a user with my user name, user:Patangel. But seeing this, it looks like this user has never contributed to this wikipedia. Is-it possible to usurp this account in order to be able to unify my login?
I do not know if I'm in the right place or not to put this request so sorry if I'm wrong.
Best regards, Patangel (talk) 21:30, 23 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.237.113.190 (talk)

Hi Patangel. The page you want is WP:USURP; if you put in a request there, a bureaucrat will be along to help you out. 28bytes (talk) 16:39, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much.

Best regards, Patangel (talk) 20:30, 25 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.237.113.190 (talk)

I am user Nanako from wp:no. I have unified all my accounts. On wp:en exist no user with the same name, but automatic unification does not work here. Can you help me please? --NanukNors (talk) 05:10, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Check with User:MBisanz; since he's both a steward and bureaucrat he may have some insight as to what is going on. 28bytes (talk) 17:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi there!

I would really appreciate your help. I've been fine-tuning Israel's Daylight Savings article and I was wondering if you could edit the template on the bottom of the page under "Daylight saving time in Asia" to link Israel to Israel Summer Time. Currently, the link pinpoints to an article that was deleted.

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.179.181.250 (talk) 07:34, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done. 28bytes (talk) 11:17, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! :) 79.179.181.250 (talk) 11:50, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello! Can you please change my username from "Guycn1" to "Guycn1 (unused)"? Guycn1 (talk) 18:55, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done. The user "Guycn1" has been renamed to "Guycn1 (unused)". 28bytes (talk) 22:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Can you change "Guycn2" to "Guycn1"? Guycn1 (talk) 14:29, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done. The user "Guycn2" has been renamed to "Guycn1". 28bytes (talk) 14:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you :) Guycn1 (talk) 17:00, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I had a conversation with a borderline user name and the editor agrees a rename is the best resolution. I think it is rather simple and ask if you will consider expediting the request considering the circumstances and the users agreeable manner. Thank you.—John Cline (talk) 22:20, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done. The user "PeaTarBoi" has been renamed to "PeterMan844". 28bytes (talk) 22:28, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

It seems way too early to close the discussion because there is no consensus. What is supposed to happen now, open another discussion? It is obvious that the page should be moved (see the discussion why), but because there's some K-pop fans out there thinking that the policies of Wikipedia don't apply to them, this process is hindered. Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 15:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

How do you mean "early"? The discussion was initiated 7 months ago. No one has commented there for over three weeks. 28bytes (talk) 16:30, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Fine then. But what is supposed to happen now, open another discussion? Raykyogrou0 (Talk) 11:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't believe opening another discussion this soon would be productive. 28bytes (talk) 16:50, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you, but could you delete the pages User:Meeples10/modern.css and User:Meeples10/modern.js? Meeples10 ^{t ~ c} 21:02, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done. 28bytes (talk) 21:08, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

This article is becoming highly frequently edited. Is PC appropriate? --George Ho (talk) 19:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I added the PC protection due to XKCD-related vandalism, but it appears that is no longer happening, so I have now removed it. Cheers, 28bytes (talk) 20:34, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I created my sig, then read the guidelines in Wikipedia:Signatures, and then made changes. Is my sig okay at the moment?

00:56, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not really an expert on signatures. I prefer the plain ones myself. 28bytes (talk) 04:16, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Observing this comment compels me to answer your question as no, it is not okay. The reason is that firstly, it is against policy to have an unsubstituted template as part of your custom signature. In fact, if you add the template into the preferences signature block, it will automatically convert the template to its substitutable form. When the template is subsequently substituted to the page where you add four tildes, the substituted code will appear as:

<div style="float:left; border: 1px solid #999; margin: 1px; width: 238px;" class="wikipediauserbox "> {| style="border-collapse:collapse; width: 238px; margin-bottom:0; background:#FFFFE0" | style="border:0; text-align:left; font-size:10pt; padding:0 4px 0 4px; height:10px; line-height:1.25em; color:black; vertical-align: middle; " | <big>[[User:Curiouscrab0|Curiouscrab0]] '''<big>|</big>''' [[User talk:Curiouscrab0|talk]] '''<big>|</big>''' [[Special:Contributions/Curiouscrab0|contribs]]</big> |}</div>

which is more character bytes than policy allows for comprising a signature. There are other problems too, but you can achieve the exact signature that this code renders, using less code and bringing it into conformance, until then however, what you have shown is problematic. Cheers.—John Cline (talk) 07:47, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you please participate in the Fluorine peer review? It would be good for y...me. 98.117.75.177 (talk) 17:37, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I would, T, but I'm very short on time this week. 28bytes (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi 28bytes,

I just came across this account User:Shelly (HPR) and the related accounts are on the user page. They are, I believe, paid editors working together on articles as they declare. I realize that this is allowed on Wikipedia, but do you think this needs broader discussion? Whether intended or not, they appear to be promoting their business. Meatpuppetry is a gray area here, but there is certainly the possibility of abuse here.--I am One of Many (talk) 21:38, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. Unfortunately, I am not much of an expert on paid editors, so I'm not sure I would be able to be much help here. I do know that paid editing is allowed, although many editors would prefer it not be, for I think quite understandable reasons. If there are specific article edits that concern you, approaching the editor directly on their talk page would be a good first step, and if that doesn't help, the conflict of interest noticeboard may be able to help (although I can't vouch for it personally, having not used it.) Good luck, 28bytes (talk) 21:59, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know of anyone who is an expert on paid editors. It's probably too soon to determine conflicts of interest. As of now, my concerns are (1) although paid editing is allowed is it acceptable to work in ways effectively indistinguishable from meatpuppets or perhaps sockpuppets (checkuser would likely be positive if they work in the same office) and (2) the way they present what they is potentially promotional (i.e., they suggest one can contact them for paid work). The reason I contacted you is because I believe you are among the best at giving advice. My question is whether you think these are issues the community should discuss now or would it be better to watch how the behavior of this group unfolds over time?I am One of Many (talk) 23:03, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you have found my advice helpful! There have been some fairly well-attended discussions on the topic of paid editing in the past, but I suppose another discussion could be beneficial if it was structured well. One thing I would be cautious about is taking any action that would inadvertently discourage paid editors from being transparent about it. We have some fairly counterproductive policies and guidelines that do this already, especially in the area of usernames: if we see "User:Bob from Microsoft" editing the Microsoft article, we can give the edits some extra scrutiny, whereas if Bob chooses to edit as "User:Bob131072" it's not so obvious what's going on. Yet the username policy encourages editors to pick the latter type of username. It's tricky; we don't want to end up punishing people for their honesty, but that's unfortunately something that often happens. 28bytes (talk) 03:38, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

The transparency is a good thing and very rare in paid editing. I think it would be best to wait and see what happens. What I'm worried about is that they are opening up a business on Wikipedia with the best possible advertising you could have. In particular, this statement is on all their user pages: "Towards that end, we pledge that we will at least one neutral, encyclopedic article that we do not have a conflict of interest for in an area of Wikipedia that is currently under-served for every four clients we take on." [my emphasis]. I might come back to you and discuss this some more if there is evidence that they are using their accounts to run and promote their business. Thanks for you advice.I am One of Many (talk) 07:26, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi all - Shelly alerted me to this conversation, sorry for joining it a couple days late. When we started this idea, we knew we would receive a lot of scrutiny in how we conducted ourselves. We think that we'll still be able to conduct valuable work here while being transparent in our practices. We have been following the paid editing situation on Wikipedia since about the time the story about Roger Bamkin's work with the government of Gibraltar broke and evaluating how best we could effectively fit in to the wiki-ecosystem, and we think we've come up with a way that will work for everyone involved. I'm sure we'll be making plenty of refinements to our model, but I think our base idea will work well for all involved.

We've been following the Wiki-PR story for quite a while before the Daily Dot covered it - their actions were one of the motivators for us to finally go ahead with this project. Our own research suggests that Wiki-PR's claim of having created twelve thousand articles without a single one of them being transparent or ethical could actually be true. All of us truly believe in the work Wikipedia is doing, and we want to be a part of this project because we value the work Wikipedia is doing. We view ourselves as fellow contributors to Wikipedia, and the entire goal of our project is to ensure that we contribute, above all else, neutral, accurate, and comprehensive content. We think the fundamentally unethical actions of people like Wiki-PR have the potential to do serious damage to Wikipedia's credibility and thus its utility. Wikipedia is an awesome resource, and we want to see it stay awesome. We want to help make it more awesome. One aspect of the work we'll do here will be stuff like neutrally documenting corporations, which we think will improve the encyclopedia because most examinations of corporate articles shows that they are often wrong or non-existent. Even if you don't like corporations, they are definitely encyclopedic topics, and Wikipedia will be a better place when 60% of corporation's articles don't have problems. This is only one aspect of our intended work however, but it is the one that we anticipate being the most contentious issue so we think it's a good idea to make the community aware of that first.

If either of you are worried that our statement about pro-bono work is meant to lure in more business for us, please let us know if you can think of some wording changes that would make it worry you less. We will try to refine it some ourselves to be more palatable to you as well. We don't intend it to be a marketing gimmick; we realize that our presence here will take up the time of some volunteers, and acting as volunteers ourselves in areas that are currently under-served seemed like a way to balance that out to some extent. As stated previously, we all do really believe in Wikipedia's project, and the desire to better Wikipedia was the catalyst for our decision to make 20% of our work not for profit. Most of our pro-bono work will be aimed at areas that both don't have enough Wikipedian volunteer editors working in them, and where public accessibility of information about them is important. We decided to start off using the Wikiproject Women Scientist tasklist, but as we expand our presence here we are definitely going to branch out in to other under-covered areas as well. We were also thinking about helping out at places like the resource exchange and the help desks where we can. We think that our combination of paid and unpaid work that is all focused towards improving areas that Wikipedia lacks good coverage in will eventually result in a better encyclopedia.

As to the question as whether we'd show up as puppets if someone ran a scan on us - we probably we would. We don't always work from the same spot, since we often work from coffee shops and other open wifi networks. We put HPR next to our names with the hopes that it would make it clear that we are all directly connected accounts - the same reason we link each other from our user page (and use one common article list for all of us, so you can examine all of our collective work in the same place). We have read the policies about meatpuppetry, and except in unusual situations, there will only be one of us engaging on a talk page at a time. The exceptions I can think to that is if someone is off, sick, or otherwise unavailable, or if someone just happens to find a really good source link on a talk page someone else is already engaging on. There will definitely only be one of us ever presenting a viewpoint on a talk page, and since we aim for neutrality, that's not going to be a very strong viewpoint typically. We'd object loudly to a really mean, unfair, and uncited thing someone said about a living person and other such impediments to encyclopedic integrity, but we definitely don't intend to try to fight the community to somehow make our viewpoint win.

We have some more detailed statements up on our blog about our intended practices, but our web host is not being very happy today, and I'm also not sure how people would feel about us linking our actual site here. Does linking blog posts that describe our intended code of ethics bother you, since it could seem like we're trying to just link our site? If not, once it's up, I'll be back with links. If it would, we'll port the same posts to Wikipedia so we can just give people links to Wikipedia user subpages that explain our practices. I would also like to say that all three of us are really hoping that we will be able to function productively like we think we will be able to here, but if that turns out not to be the case, we will not turn into problematic users like Wiki-PR did. We believe this is the only ethical and effective way we can do this, and if it turns out not to work, we will regret it, but none of us are willing to throw away our personal ethics (not to mention the code of ethics of the PR profession) to make a quick buck.

I understand that my initial words won't do much in terms of calming your worries, or reducing scrutiny of our edits. All we would ask is that you see how we behave before judging us one way or another. I am sure we will make errors. If we make an error and you notice it and you feel like you have the time to do so, please point us out to it so that we can fix it. We're not perfectly experienced Wikipedians (although we've spent many hours reading policy pages,) and we would really like to become better Wikipedians the longer we stay here. As one last point, we have not yet written any Wikipedia pages that we have a conflict of interest for. Not all of us are experienced with the use of Mediawiki (I am more than most, because I have had contracts that have used it,) so we felt it would be better if we started with all volunteer work, both so we could practice, and so we could address any community concerns that come up. All of our articles will be clearly marked as COI or non COI on our userpages, and COI articles will also have disclaimers on talk pages and edit summaries. If you have any questions about what we do or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us. Jason (HPR) (talk) 00:34, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

As I see it, two things will ease my mind for the present. First go slow. Too many paid editors working together too fast could lead to unexpected problems. For example, the article you created Nancy M. Dowdy is borderline notable mainly because the web citation here for almost all of it is not reliable even if posted on a UCLA website. Second, if you could remove the pledge that I quoted above and just say you do pro bono editing, it would reduce the promotional appearance of your user pages.I am One of Many (talk) 04:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi I am One of Many - I went ahead and changed the text on our userpages in a way that should make it seem less promotional; we definitely were not intending it to be taken that way, but see the ambiguity. Hopefully the language I put in is more clear and less likely to come off in a promotional way. Looking at the source, it seems to me to meet Wikipedia's standards for reliability, but I could very easily have missed a nuance. One of us will work on the article more within the next several days, and introduce more sources that should further establish her notability. We will also try to avoid writing articles, whether or not we have a conflict of interest regarding the subject, that rely so heavily on a single source in the future.

What led Shelly to believe the source was reliable initially, and why my first inclination was to think it is reliable too, is that the source has editorial oversight from people who are experts in their field, had full time staff at the time the article was put up, and is published explicitly under the auspices of the University of California. If you click around some of other pages of CWP it goes in to more detail about these things; I would quote what they say here, but they would be pretty long quotes and would make this post unwieldy. If you have the time, could you explain why you believe the source is unreliable, so we can improve in the future? Thank you for your feedback, we really do appreciate it. Jason (HPR) (talk) 23:38, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

PantherLeapord|My talk page|My CSD log 21:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello 28bytes, Could you please block the IP address 194.168.178.130 as it belongs to a school and keeps vandalising articles. There have been multiple warnings by other contributors, but no response. Alternativly, a semi-lock on the page Eston Park Academy would stop the article being vandalised by this IP Address. TIGHazard (talk) 10:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The last block was for 3 months, and they immediately started vandalizing again after it. No constructive edits. I've given them 6 months this time. Bishonen | talk 11:02, 10 October 2013 (UTC).

Thanks Bish! 28bytes (talk) 13:44, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Please be advised that I am appealing [1] the topic ban imposed upon me on January 5, 2012. Dolovis (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification; I will comment there. 28bytes (talk) 21:36, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I've re-listed my appeal here as advised. Dolovis (talk) 22:38, 21 October 2013 (UTC)