Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-09-30/On the bright side

On the bright side

What's making you happy this month?

There are many opportunities to discuss bad news, problems, and concerns in the Wikiverse, and I think that having candid discussions about these issues is often important. Many days I spend more time thinking about problems than about what is going well. However, also I think that acknowledging the good side and taking a moment to be appreciative can be valuable.

I encourage you to add your comments about what's making you happy this month to the talk page of this Signpost piece.

Week of 1 September 2019: Τι σας κάνει ευτυχείς αυτήν την εβδομάδα?

Wikidata and medical data

Visual content

Butterfly takeoff in slow motion, uploaded by Japanese Wikipedia contributor User:Phonon.b
"Columns in Turkish baths, Salamis, Northern Cyprus", by User:Podzemnik, who is a native speaker of Czech and identifies as "Librarian, photographer, nomad, hiker".
"Window in Fira, Santorini, Greece", by German Wikipedia contributor User:XRay

Text content

Martin Luther King, Jr.
William Least Heat-Moon
C. J. Cherryh

Selected anniversaries for English Wikipedia noted that 28 August was the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech by American civil rights activist and religious minister the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
English Wikiquote of the Day for 28 August: "At any particular moment in a man's life, he can say that everything he has done and not done, that has been done and not been done to him, has brought him to that moment. If he's being installed as Chieftain or receiving a Nobel Prize, that's a fulfilling notion. But if he's in a sleeping bag at ten thousand feet in a snowstorm, parked in the middle of a highway and waiting to freeze to death, the idea can make him feel calamitously stupid." —William Least Heat-Moon
English Wikiquote of the day for 1 September: "People ask where writers get ideas. Take my advice. Some cool, clear night, drive to a country place where city lights don’t block your view. Turn off the car lights. Get out and look up. And see our real neighborhood." —C. J. Cherryh

About these individuals, according to English Wikipedia: "Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott… He led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech."

William Least Heat-Moon "is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry". He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri and worked as a professor of English. He wrote an autobiographical travel book, Blue Highways, that was well received. According to the article about Blue Highways, "Stories that arose from Least Heat-Moon's research as well as historical facts are included about each area visited, as well as conversations with characters such as a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist hitchhiker, a teenage runaway, a boat builder, a monk, an Appalachian log cabin restorer, a rural Nevada prostitute, fishermen, a Hopi Native American medical student, owners of Western saloons and remote country stores, a maple syrup farmer, and Chesapeake Bay island dwellers."

"Carolyn Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has written more than 80 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award-winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both set in her Alliance-Union universe. She is known for "world building", depicting fictional realms with great realism supported by vast research in history, language, psychology, and archaeology. Her series of fantasy novels set in the Alliance-Union universe, the Morgaine Stories, have sold in excess of 3 million copies."

Wikidata discussions

Regarding the concept known as federation (more information in this month's In focus report – ed.)

Regarding multilingualism on Wikidata

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2019-September/013407.html

MediaWiki "Timeless" skin

The final report for the grant for the Timeless skin was published by User:Isarra

Off wiki

The chemical structure of morphine
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia

How data analytics has reduced the risk of opioid addiction in the City of Philadelphia

A request for contributions to this publication

I enjoy writing WMYHTW, and I am grateful for the feedback that I occasionally receive. However, there are a few things that are lacking. One is participation from others. I am trying to avoid WMYHTW threads effectively being "What's making Pine happy this week?" instead of "What's making you happy this week?". I cannot know everything good that happens in the Wikiverse, and I would love to see greater diversity of stories in WMYHTW. Also, writing WMYHTW in this level of detail is surprisingly time consuming for one person, which is another reason that I would be appreciative if other people would add small pieces of good news to the content of WMYHTW. Regrettably, I cannot continue to have this publication require so much time from me that writing this is effectively a part time unpaid job, including adapting the content of these emails for The Signpost. Your participation would be very much appreciated.

Week of 8 September 2019: Qu’est-ce qui vous rend heureux cette semaine?

The Teahouse

Featured images

French Wikipedia picture of the day for 1 September: a Menger sponge illuminated with ray tracing
English Wikipedia picture of the day for 2 September: Pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis leucomelanurus) female. The photo was taken at the Chambal River in India.
Commons picture of the day for 3 September: an escalator in Umeda Sky Building, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
English Wikipedia picture of the day for 4 September: "Wells Cathedral's nave, viewed from the entrance, in Somerset, England."
English Wikipedia picture of the day for 5 September: "Mammillaria spinosissima, also known as the spiny pincushion cactus, is a species of flowering plant in the cactus family Cactaceae, endemic to the central Mexican states of Guerrero and Morelos."
English Wikipedia picture of the day for 6 September: social worker, civic activist, and Nobel Prize winner Jane Addams
Hindi Wikipedia picture of the day for 6 September: "Caravan in the Desert, Morocco, Sahara"
French Wikipedia picture of the day for 7 September: "Veraison (the onset of ripening) of Zinfandel grapes in Dry Creek Valley..."
French Wikipedia picture of the day for 8 September: self-portrait of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh

Breaking news coverage of weather incidents

Geostationary imagery of Hurricane Dorian (05L) taken by the GOES 15 satellite
Track map of Hurricane Dorian of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season
NOAA 5-day track and intensity forecast cone for Hurricane Dorian. See the file history.
South Carolina National Guard briefing
Puerto Rico National Guard preparations
An emergency operations center
Florida National Guard preparations
Helicopter preparations
U.S. Coast Guard Cutters Angela McShan and Moray

English Wikipedia seems to have some highly active weather enthusiasts who cover topics such as Hurricane Dorian, along with many people who are willing to write about breaking news stories. Although weather emergencies are bad news, English Wikipedia's timely and detailed coverage of them is good to see.

Operation Enduring Encyclopedia

A community election of stewards
A checkuser examines evidence in a sockpuppet investigations case
An oversighter with a collection of prohibited content
Recent changes patrol and New pages patrol
Edit filter managers
English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee hearing room
An administrator working on arbitration enforcement
Wikimedia Foundation servers
An information systems technician monitors network activity

Password requirements were strengthened for Wikimedia user accounts to deter users from having any of the 100,000 most common passwords. See Phabricator:T151425.
Wikimedia Foundation staff and community members responded with considerable energy to a distributed denial of service attack on 6 September 2019. See Phabricator:T232224 and this email.
Preparations are underway for English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections in December 2019.

English Wikiquote of the day

Grandma Moses
A fireboard that was decorated by Moses in the year 1918
Grandma Moses postage stamp from the year 1969

"I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live."
— American folk artist Grandma Moses

Off wiki

Nyota Uhura
Spock
Leonard McCoy
Spectrogram of humpback whale song
Video of a humpback whale singing

Humility is a virtue. I felt irritated by my errors in the WMHYTW emails that I sent last week to on Wikimedia-l 1 2, but I reminded myself that "to err is human", and even "professionals" make mistakes. This (Youtube link) is a collection of bloopers from the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. If you saw the movie then you'll probably appreciate the bloopers more, but even if you haven't seen the movie, you can probably understand some of the humor. A few explanations about the bloopers may help. Commander Uhura was supposed to say that sensors were receiving whale song; the movie was directed by Leonard Nimoy who also acted in the movie as Mr. Spock; and one of the film's settings is the fictional Cetacean Institute which in the movie held two humpback whales. My favorite segment of the blooper reel involves the discussion of "exact change", although more relevant to last week’s WMYHTW is that, as Dr. McCoy said, nobody's perfect.

Closing comments To reduce the time that I spend adapting WMYHTW for both Wikimedia-l and The Signpost, and to reduce errors in these emails, this week I first drafted this issue of WMYHTW on wiki. Adapting the content from wiki format to email format seems to be somewhat faster than adapting from email format to wiki format. However, after this week, I will likely be spending much less time on WMYHTW for the foreseeable future. I have bills that need to be paid.

Week of 15 September 2019: O que está te fazendo feliz esta semana?

English Wikiquote of the day for 15 September

"To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life. I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."
— Agatha Christie, of England, author of popular and award-winning works of detective fiction

Images

Maps and photos of Brazil
Topographic map, by German Wikipedia contributor User:Captain Blood based on various mapping tools
Map of Köppen climate types, by User:Redtitan
The Palácio do Planalto, the official workplace of Brazil's president, by User:Gastão guedes
Oil platform P-51, by Brazilian public news agency Agência Brasil
Municipal Theater of São Paulo, by User:The Photographer (also known as User:Wilfredor)
Jaguar at the Piquiri River, the Pantanal, Brazil, by User:Charlesjsharp
Iguazú Falls, by User:Enaldo Valadares
Abismo Anhumas (Anhumas Abyss), by User:Caioribeirovilela
Aerial view of the Amazon rain forest, by Neil Palmer of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture

Week of 22 September 2019: Ի՞նչն է Ձեզ երջանկացնում այս շաբաթ:

Pictures from Armenia

Other recent pictures of the day on English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons

Schönbühel Castle (Schloss Schönbühel) in Schönbühel-Aggsbach, Lower Austria, in a photo by User:Uoaei1
The Kiss (Der Kuß), a painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The scan of the painting was made by the Google Art Project, and it was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by User:Crisco 1492.
Elizabeth L. Remba Gardner, a member of the United States Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), in a photo that was probably taken during World War II. The image was uploaded by User:Junkyardsparkle, and edited by User:Hohum and User:Bammesk.
Cinnamon: sticks (ceylon cinnamon from Sri Lanka), powder, and flowers. Created from 31 images stacked with CombineZP. The image was created by User:LivingShadow.
Fog in a valley in National Nature Park Synevir, Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine, seen in a photo by User:Rbrechko.

Plans being considered for code review office hours

WMF is considering reviving office hours for code review or events that would serve a similar purpose. See https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-September/092565.html.

Discovery of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov

This comet is the second interstellar object known to be observed in our solar system. The comet was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Vladimirovich Borisov (Russian: Генна́дий Влади́мирович Бори́сов) in Crimea. The English Wikipedia article regarding the comet was created by User:Kheider shortly after midnight on 11 September 2019, which is on the same day as, and perhaps as soon as a few minutes after, the publication of an article about the comet in the popular astronomy magazine Sky & Telescope. A blurb regarding the comet was published on English Wikipedia's main page in the section "In the news".

Known interstellar objects
Animation of interstellar objects 2I/Borisov and ʻOumuamua. Click through to the file in order to see the gif animation that was created by User:Tony873004.
ʻOumuamua is the small white dot

Wiktionary humor

The Wiktionary Word of the Day for International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2019 was "yo-ho-ho".

Wikiquotes

History is full of stories, full of triumph and tragedy and battles won and lost. It is the people who speak to me, the men and women who once lived and loved and dreamed and grieved, just as we do. Though some may have had crowns on their heads or blood on their hands, in the end they were not so different from you and me, and therein lies their fascination. I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable "heroic" school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible.
— Writer George R. R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels that was the basis for the television series Game of Thrones

Yes; as the music changes,
Like a prismatic glass,
It takes the light and ranges
Through all the moods that pass;
Dissects the common carnival
Of passions and regrets,
And gives the world a glimpse of all
The colours it forgets.
— Writer Alfred Noyes of England in his poem "The Barrel-Organ"

Week of 28 September 2019: Vad glädjer dig den här veckan?

A Wikilibrarian's story

Oregon State University
The Valley Library of Oregon State University
Presentation about Wikipedia and the Wiki Education Foundation at The Valley Library in 2015
College basketball: Oregon State Beavers vs. University of Oregon Ducks

One's advent into the world of Wikimedia projects is almost always a noteworthy account. Here we share one such account of a librarian who was introduced to Wikipedia in an unusual way and began their adventure trying to better understand Wikipedia and now helps others understand it too!
Laurie Bridges is an Instruction and Outreach Librarian at Oregon State University in the US. She was introduced to Wikipedia by her son: at age 9, he was assigned a class project to research and present about a species of frog, and was told to only use Wikipedia for his research. When he related this to her, she thought, "If 9-year-olds are being introduced to research using Wikipedia, I better learn more about Wikipedia". So she got involved because she wanted to better understand the resource her son, and the students at her university, use. She explains:
Students and faculty are familiar with [Wikipedia] because many use it daily, although they do not cite it in their papers. As a librarian I teach about information literacy and help students and faculty with their research. Wikipedia is a familiar website that I can use to teach information literacy and afterwards students and faculty leave equipped with a better understanding of how the information source works. Students are used to teachers and professors saying, "Don't use Wikipedia." However, this dismissive statement doesn't teach the students how, why, or when they can use Wikipedia or other online resources. We are living in a time of misinformation and I want students to understand the information they are using and become critical consumers of that information. Using Wikipedia to teach students about information literacy is fun! In addition, it's fulfilling because I can see students' excitement as they learn more about Wikipedia, a website they use on a daily basis. I've found teaching with Wikipedia to be so rewarding that I want to spread the word.
Finally, if librarians don't teach students about Wikipedia and what it is (or isn't), who is going to teach them? I'd like to see more activity and interest from librarians related to Wikipedia. This is why whenever I get a chance, I will introduce other librarians to … the Wikimedia Movement. Last year I received a scholarship to attend Wikimedia + Education in San Sebastián, Spain. I was only one of two librarians in attendance (in addition to Basque librarians who were volunteering at the event). It was a great learning opportunity and I connected with so many enthusiastic educators. I'd love to see enough interest from librarians to host a Wikimedia + Libraries conference! That would be a great conference!

— Books & Bytes, Issue 35, July–August 2019

The change of seasons

There are a variety of ways to define seasons, including meteorologically and culturally. For those in the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox was on 23 September this year; the autumnal equinox marks the transition from astronomical summer to astronomical autumn. For those in the southern hemisphere, 23 September was the spring equinox, which marked the transition from astronomical winter to astronomical spring.

Awhile back I learned of a Scandinavian practice called kulning, which involves using songs to call herds of cattle over long distances. Here is a video (Youtube link) that shows cattle being summoned out of the field with a kulning call for the last time of the year in September 2017.

Here are a few music selections for the transition from summer to fall:

And for the transition from winter to spring:

(The performances linked below feature John Harrison on the violin, and the Wichita State University Chamber Players. The conductor was Robert Turizziani. The performance rights release was received by Wikimedia Commons via OTRS.)

Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring) — Movement 1: Allegro from The Four Seasons, composed by Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring) — Movement 2: Largo from The Four Seasons, composed by Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring) — Movement 3: Allegro from The Four Seasons, composed by Antonio Vivaldi

Title page from Vivaldi's Cimento dell' Armonia e dell' Inventione, volume 2, 2nd violin part (1725)
Autumn in France
Spring in South Africa

Regarding translations

Skillful translations of the sentence "What's making you happy this week?" would be very much appreciated. If you see any inaccuracies in the translations in this article then please {{ping}} User:Pine in the discussion section of this page, or boldly make the correction to the text of the article. Thank you to everyone who has helped with translations so far.

Your turn

What's making you happy this month? You are welcome to write a comment on the talk page of this Signpost piece.

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In this issue

30 September 2019 (all comments)

On the bright side

In focus

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Hi Pine! Thanks for writing about the Teahouse archives, I appreciate it. What's making me happy this month? Well... I found out that WP:BS is a shortcut to Wikipedia:Barnstars. I'm not sure how interesting that information is to others, but that discovery of mine did result in a smile. Also, I noticed that a project I'm involved in and happen to think is amazing - WP:Typo Team/moss? I can't believe I didn't notice that my username and the project both include 'moss' and it's just one of those amusing coincidences that I hadn't noticed before this week. Also... there's this amazing drive this month to reduce the GA review backlog at Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/September 2019 and I appreciate the hard work of all the reviewers that are contributing. Clovermoss (talk) 01:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for the comment, Clovermoss. ↠Pine (✉) 00:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

from an unexpected place [1], but the quote of the month, for me has to be from Monroe Work, "In the end facts will help eradicate prejudice and misunderstanding, for facts are the truth and the truth shall set us free." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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