User talk:StarryGrandma

MOS:AVOIDBOLD misuse

Bit of a late reply (I just happened to check my reverted edits today), but I wanted to thank you for this revert. I totally misunderstood the MOS here and I appreciate the correction. /home/gracen/ (they/them) 18:30, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

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Submission declined for not meeting scientific criteria

Hello, My article was declined on the basis of not meeting academic criteria. However,

Criterion 2: The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.

The text states: "In 2023, Dragan Bošković was awarded the state Order of Karađorđe's Star for his contributions to applied research in AI and digital assets [17][18]." It also mentions he was nominated for the Leadership Award by the Government Blockchain Association in 2024 [19].

The Order of Karađorđe's Star is a state order of Serbia, indicating a national-level recognition. This appears to meet Criterion 2.

On this basis the submission should be approved. Boskovicdd (talk) 13:44, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Peacock & your BLP guide

I really like your BLP Guide, and have pointed it out to quite a few newbies writing academic BLPs. One request; please add a brief paragraph on avoiding peacock. Quite a few times I have accepted AfC or passed at NPP after having removed peacock such as "pioneering", "innovative", "known for" etc. (I see less weasel, but maybe a minor mention of that also.) Ldm1954 (talk) 14:46, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for recommending this. I will add a bit about proper encyclopedia tone and words to avoid. I myself am a user of "known for" so I will have to think a bit on that and maybe recommend alternatives. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:02, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Growth News #35

A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.

New releases

English Wikipedia gets "Add a Link" Structured Task

We released the "Add a Link" Structured Task to 100% of accounts at English Wikipedia on Tuesday, September 2nd (before then it was available to 20% of accounts).

Growth features for Wikidata

After examining if the Growth features and Mentorship could be adapted to Wikidata, we activated the Growth features on Beta Wikidata to allow for testing and discussion (T400937). Although some features, like Suggested Edits, are Wikipedia-specific, the Growth team designed most features to be more wiki-agnostic.

Work in progress

Revise Tone Structured Task

The Growth team is making progress on the technical architecture, onboarding design, and early user testing. We are targeting an A/B test before the end of this year, with constructive edits by newcomers as the primary success metric.

Add a link to more wikis

The machine learning team has been working on a new model that can suggest links to more languages, including Urdu, Chinese, and Japanese Wikipedias. We are starting to release the “Add a Link” feature to Wikipedias that weren’t supported by the previous model.

Add a link, which can be configured by the community locally, increases the chance that a new contributor will make their first edit and then continue to participate in Wikipedia.

Research

The Growth team is involved in several research initiatives to help guide our future work:

Progression System – We have published initial findings from interviews with 10 English and French Wikipedia newcomers. The research examined motivations, challenges, and feedback on a prototype system intended to help editors build confidence, develop skills, and contribute more constructively over time.

Mobile Web Editing Research – This project combines quantitative and qualitative data, community feedback, and user journey analysis to identify possible ways to enhance the mobile editing experience.

Newcomers Survey – This project surveys successful newcomers on English Wikipedia to understand their early editing experiences, tool use, and community interactions.

Community events

The Growth team participated in several community events to listen, share, and collaborate on improving newcomer experiences across Wikimedia projects.

Wikimania - Organizers as key partners to support newcomers' growth in our movement

This session invited organizers to share how they introduce newcomers to Growth features and the challenges they encounter. The discussion focused on common newcomer questions and opportunities to strengthen collaboration in supporting new editors.

Wikimania - Lightning Talk: Structured Tasks

This talk demonstrated how Structured Tasks help newcomers take their first successful steps on Wikipedia. It shared impact data, community configurations, and a demo of “Add a Link,” illustrating how these tasks make editing more accessible and sustainable, particularly for mobile contributors.

Wikimania - Building a Sustainable Future for Wikimedia Contributors

With active editor numbers declining, the Contributors Strategy aims to create a clearer, more engaging path for participation. This session, led by the WMF Contributors group with involvement from the Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Connection (formerly Campaigns) teams, highlighted efforts to streamline contributor experiences, offer structured and mobile-friendly workflows, and foster meaningful engagement. Participants learned about ongoing initiatives and shared feedback to help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for Wikimedia contributors.

CEE Meeting - Retaining beginners and improving content moderation: an inclusive and sustainable future for Wikipedia contributors

Many communities face a decline in volunteer engagement. Newcomers often leave soon after joining, while experienced editors struggle to manage increasingly complex workflows and overwhelming backlogs. We presented the Contributors Strategy and the different features and workflows that can help communities to address these challenges. We listened to the specific needs of the CEE communities to help guide the Contributors teams' work.

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10:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

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Hello!

Hi @StarryGrandma! I heard you are a retired astrophysicist. That's my dream job. I love anything to do with space. I love to edit space-related articles too. Well, nice to see you! 72011copperfan2 (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi StarryGrandma

ummm..hellooo. I was wondering if you knew of any articles that i could help with? im kinda new so im not really sure what i need to do yet. :( thanks you for your time and reading this! :) ~2026-19693-86 (talk) 11:58, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

HI @~2026-19693-86. Create a Wikipedia account. You will then have the newcomer features described at Wikipedia:Growth Team features to help you. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:17, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

oh ok!! thank you so much! ~2026-19693-86 (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Response to comments on Draft:Michael E. Glinsky

Dear StarryGrandma,

Thank you for reviewing this article on “Michael E. Glinsky”, that I submitted. Let me address your comments.

First, the subject does satisfy the “Notability (academics)”. The subject only needs to satisfy one of the criteria. This subject satisfies criteria 1a (top article cited 4400 times, H-index of 33, well above average for a theoretical physicist, source is Google Scholar), 1b (seminal contribution to Fast Ignitor fusion concept, CERN anti-matter test of The Standard Model, Bayesian geophysical inversion, and Heisenberg Scattering Transformation), 1d and 1e (received six prestigious national or international awards), 1i (expert in physics, geophysics, mathematics, finance, and artificial intelligence), 2 (received six prestigious national or international awards), and 4 (taught several industrial and professional continuing education courses, educating a generation of geophysics and petroleum engineers working for industry). All of this is documented and referenced in the Wikipedia page draft.

Second, the Notability is supported by 7 secondary sources, out of the first 8 references, and another 70 primary references. An average number of secondary sources is 3-4 for physicists (see Thomas Michael O'Neil and John H. Malmberg).

Third, the body of the article is a clear professional statement of research results (with references), with their impact and significance. This also establishes the criteria for Notability.

Whenever terms like “pioneer” and “seminal” and “first” are used, they were corroborated by the references. For instance, Dave DeMartini was labeled as a “pioneer” by a historian in Ref. 13; the subject’s contribution was labeled as “seminal” in Ref. 1, an award citation; and the date of the subject’s cloud-based DaaS (2006 of Ref. 68, and 2003 of Ref. 70) precedes all other known cloud-based DaaSs (circa 2020).

In no way is this article an advertisement for a commercial product. Unlike Wikipedia pages for academics that are nothing more than a simple recitation of what makes them notable (see Thomas Michael O’Neil for an example); this Wikipedia page has a statement of what the subject accomplished technically with references to primary sources for what the subject has accomplished technically, and the impact of the subject’s technical work (see John H. Malmberg for an example). It was Cliff Surko, a collaborator of John who was very familiar with John’s work and its impact, who added this very valuable content. This Wikipedia page is not an advertisement.

I updated the page in response to the review of User:PaulW. He agreed that the page was now acceptable and that we should resubmit it (see User talk:Paul W).

Given these three points I request that you accept this submission, without revision.