User talk:HaphazardBinBag

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Happy editing! Pasados (talk) 09:49, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Hey HaphazardBinBag, the third annual Developing Countries WikiContest is now open for submissions. Welcome to the contest! You can now list your work at your submissions page to earn points. We hope that you enjoy participating in this drive to fight Wikipedia's systemic bias. If you haven't done so already, please review the following:

• New to Wikipedia? Many experienced editors are part of this contest and willing to help; feel free to ask questions on the talk page.
• Got open nominations? List them at the review requests sidebar.
• Looking for a topic to work on? Check out suggested articles and eligible reviews.
• Not sure if your article qualifies? See the scoring rules for more information or contact a coordinator.
• Know someone else who might be interested? Sign-ups remain open throughout the contest, so don't hesitate to invite other editors!

On behalf of the coordinators, we hope you enjoy participating and wish you the best of luck! If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Arconning (talk · contribs), Generalissima (talk · contribs), Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 00:00, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @HaphazardBinBag, I enjoyed reading through your review of Shaban Opolot. If you want to write a GA of your own at some point, give me a ping when you need a review. I'll be happy to help. IAWW (talk) 13:19, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @IAWW thank you for all your help with the review I really appropriate it. I wanted to ask you some questions about handling a review like this/what etiquette is typical? I am choosing to ask here as these are just my opinions, I am not looking to criticise the nominator as I can see they are long standing editor with many other GA nominations and don't think that my questions should prevent the article from passing the GAR once complete.

Throughout the review process it has seemed to me that the nominator has been engaging with the GAR in a limited capacity. This has been particularly noticeable around suggested edits, where they have carried them out verbatim and/or with, what has seemed to be, a lack of care for the article's quality. See examples of changes where incorrect citation was added & where citation with broken link was added. Similarly see this example, where when editing to avoid copyvio, content with a valid citation was removed rather then reworded.

In a potential future situation like how would you advise progressing the review? Is it best to be bold and just make the changes myself? Should a more prescriptive approach be taken to recommending edits? Should it be addressed with the nominator directly in the hopes of encouraging more of an engaged approach from them to reach a consensus on edits? Is there any guidance that already exists?

On the writing me own article front its something I am working on and will defiantly ping you when the time comes :) HaphazardBinBag (talk) 11:20, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Hey @HaphazardBinBag you're not wrong, and it's quite rare for a nominator to be like that. Indeed, I typically only see it in nominations where the nominator has low (like <75%) authorship. If the article wasn't so close to GA already, I would have recommended failing it, as working through anything more than minor changes in that manner is frustrating and unproductive. Typically in this situation I just make the minor edits myself and get through the review as quickly as possible so I can spend my wiki time on more productive tasks, e.g. a review where both the reviewer and nominator are actively improving their editing skills through the means of the review. (courtesy ping @Thepharoah17 as this involves your nomination) IAWW (talk) 11:41, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Hello, HaphazardBinBag, I'm Bearcat. Please note that pages in your personal sandbox, such as User:HaphazardBinBag/sandbox, are not allowed to be categorized alongside finished articles in mainspace, per WP:USERNOCAT. The page must stay out of any categories so long as it is outside mainspace, and this is not an optional rule that you're free to disregard or ignore.

You can provisionally list categories in your draft without affecting content categories by using one of the methods described here.

As the page has had to be pulled out of categories twice in less than 48 hours, do not readd it to categories again, because draft and sandbox pages are not allowed to be in content categories. Note as well that there can be consequences for disruption if it doesn't stop, such as page protection or deletion and/or the temporary or permanent suspension of your editing privileges. Bearcat (talk) 06:48, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Bearcat thank you for letting me know, apologies for having added the category back, it was unintentional as I had started an edit before you removed it and closed the edit afterwards. HaphazardBinBag (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Seems like a task which would be better suited to a bot or WP:JWB? Looking to save time just in case you haven't heard of those mass editing tools IAWW (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging, and no I wasn't aware if these tools and by making the edits I should be eligible for access now. I had been looking at user scripts but given there are some 300K main space pages using the deprecated parameter I think automating it would push into bot territory even if it would be for one off sets of edits. HaphazardBinBag (talk) 23:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I see you're still doing these edits. You're welcome to but a bot or human-bot will come along in short order anyway, so it's a bit of a waste of your time. Seasider53 (talk) 15:17, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

The 2026 Developing Countries WikiContest has been running for a month now, so let's check in with the competition so far!

As of the time of writing, our top contestants are:

1. Vanderwaalforces (submissions) ahead of the pack with 715 points, with two FAs and many GAs on the monarchs of the Kingdom of Benin;
2. Simongraham (submissions) with 291 points, mostly with GAs on jumping spiders, alongside various GAN and FAC reviews;
3. Jaguarnik (submissions) with 240 points, mostly from an FA on the 1945 film Ivan the Terrible;
4. Grnrchst (submissions) with 215 points, mostly from GAs on anarchist history in various countries, alongside many GA reviews, and;
6. Vestrian24Bio (submissions) tied for 4th with 215 points, with an FL and four GAs on Indian cricket!

These competitors are in the lead, but if past experience is any indication, big shake-ups might still await us in the contest. If you're looking for a way to boost your position, we got a table of review requests from fellow participants—you can rack up a lot of points through reviews, and it might just convince others to review your own nominations! You can also look through the eligible reviews page to find other articles to review, with highlights for articles eligible for the 1.5× multiplier. The coordinators would like to thank Jaguarnik (submissions) for his work to keep this page up to date.

Thank you so much for all your work in the contest so far, dear participants, and keep on the good fight against systemic bias on our wiki! Have any questions? Leave a message on the contest talk page or send it to one of our wonderful coordinators: Arconning (talk · contribs), Generalissima (talk · contribs), Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), and TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:25, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks HaphazardBinBag for completing a second GA review with your careful work at Connie Fleming, it is greatly appreciated. At the moment, we're asking new reviewers to share their experience with the process, so we can see how it can be improved and made more welcoming. We'd welcome any thoughts you can share in the survey here. Whonting (talk) 04:09, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Hey - following up from your comment at WP:GAMENTOR, I can leave some feedback here.

• I like how you started with a note on your reviewing style, makes it feel more personal than mechanical.
• Like most reviews at GA, some of your comments go beyond the criteria. For example - WP:GANOT mentions "Requiring the addition of links. (Except in the first sentence where they are required.)" as a mistake to avoid, which is relevant to "Add List of flags of Botswana to also see section". Either flag (!) this explicitly as a suggestion, omit it altogether to keep the review focused tightly on the GA criteria, or mention it on the talk page etc. Other comments that fall under this: overlinking, ENGVAR, ref formatting etc.
• I like the way you focus the review on text-source integrity.
• When you make comments like "made some minor copy edits", I would suggest linking to the edits in question.
• Not sure what to make of the ResearchGate comments. "ResearchGate content is user generated", but this journal article was uploaded by one of the authors of the paper. GANOT is again relevant: "If you are able to figure out what the source is, that's a good enough citation for GA"
• You don't need to check every source, and indeed shouldn't, that is out of scope for GA and quality creep is undesirable.
• It is a good idea to try to knock out the whole review in one go if you can.
• You haven't gotten to assessing broadness, but I'd be interested to see your approach. I did a comprehensive source search for another flag article at Wikipedia:Peer review/Flag of Rwanda/archive1, which goes far beyond what is needed for GA, but may be helpful in assessing directions for your assessment.

Whonting (talk) 02:02, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Whonting Thank you for the feedback its really helpful I particularly appreciated your emphasis on voiding quality creep and not going beyond the GA requirements. I have defiantly gone beyond this, asking for citations to be reformatted and checking each source provided. I will do my best to keep WP:GANOT in mind going forward. The only thing I would push back on was where I was pointing out ENGVAR as the article included the "Use British English" template, should it still be considered out of scope of 1a if one of these templates is in use?

I have completed the review now so please do take a look at my notes under the broadness section and let me know if you have any more thoughts and thank you for taking the time to help me improve. HaphazardBinBag (talk) 19:00, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

You did a good job assessing broadness, I don't have any additional comments there. Just on ENGVAR, unless there are systematic issues I wouldn't worry about raising them, or else would just action them yourself. The GA guidelines are a bit vague on whether ENGVAR should be considered, but in the spirit of GA being less concerned with style than substance ("Minor grammatical or style issues that do not impact clarity are not prohibitive of GA status.") I would put my energy elsewhere. And please let me know if you have any specific questions in the future, I'm happy to help (if a bit slow on responsiveness at the moment). Whonting (talk) 09:07, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi HaphazardBinBag,

There is an ongoing Request for Comment (RfC) at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/August 2026 RfC, which you may be interested in because in the past year, you have nominated or reviewed more than one good article nomination. This message has also been sent to all subscribers to the Good Article Gazette. The RfC contains many proposals (33 at the time of writing), which are split into the following categories: nominators, reviewers, reviews, volunteer roles, reviewing initiatives, and others. However, you are more than welcome to add any proposals of your own that you wish to put to the community.

By the end of September, all the proposals will have been closed by an uninvolved editor, either as a consensus for one of the options or with no consensus. At this point, editors will be invited again to develop these proposals into coherent policy and implement them.

Thank you for your contributions to the good articles project, and I look forward to your input! (in solidarity), JacobTheRox^{(talk|contributions)} 16:02, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

The 2026 Developing Countries WikiContest has now been running for two months! We have seen tremendous improvements in the encyclopedic coverage of several underrepresented areas thanks to contributions from a wide range of editors. The coordinators would like to highlight some of the new participants this year who have been making notable contributions to the contest, including but by no means limited to:

• Kisseran (submissions) – 462 points, with a featured article (Ancient Cappadocian language) and various reviews primarily on Chinese topics
• Dragonhawk12 (submissions) – 280 points, who's well on their way to breaking the DCWC record for good article reviews and peer reviews
• Jishara (submissions) – 268 points, with a couple of good articles and a diverse selection of reviews as well
• Rainsage (submissions) – 113 points, with two good articles, notably the Jenin Horse
• Chickenpox4dinner (submissions) – 107 points, largely from their Did you know writing about Caribbean folklore
• Propitheque (submissions) – 105 points, from two good articles about Malagasy lemurs

With less than a month remaining until the end of the contest, it's time to get your last rounds of submissions over the finish line! Please consider picking up one of the review requests or eligible reviews to help out your fellow participants and earn some additional points in the process.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Arconning (talk · contribs), Generalissima (talk · contribs), Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) —⁠TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 18:16, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

and RIP sparrow, hopefully he is performing for all our ancestors in a better place :) The Grenadian Historian (Aka. Mwen Sé Kéyòl Translator-a) (talk) 15:36, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

On 19 October 2026, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Stenaelurillus darwini, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that unlike most female spiders in their genus, Stenaelurillus darwini have domed "flaps" covering the opening to their reproductive organs? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Stenaelurillus darwini. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (Stenaelurillus darwini), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:03, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Three weeks ago, the 2026 Developing Countries WikiContest came to a close! After three months of competition, we have our winners. OpalYosutebito (submissions) comes in third with 525 points earned from a large series of good articles about pandas. Vestrian24Bio (submissions), with an immense number of submissions relating to cricket, comes in second with 1040 points. And our runner-up from last year makes their way to the top of the podium: Simongraham (submissions) takes gold with 1065 points, coming from another round of good articles about African jumping spiders!

The award for the most countries covered goes, once again, to Simongraham (submissions) who submitted articles under 30 flags! Vestrian24Bio (submissions) tops the chart for the most quality articles (23 good articles). Kisseran (submissions) and OpalYosutebito (submissions) tie for the award for most submissions under a single country; both made 14 submissions related to China. The award for most submissions related to women goes to GreenLipstickLesbian (submissions) with 12 biographies about women. We also have a tie for the most reviews! Both Dragonhawk12 (submissions) and Simongraham (submissions) submitted 23 reviews each for the category!

Multiple DCWC records were also broken! Simongraham (submissions) set the new record for the most total points, with 1100. Vestrian24Bio (submissions) set two inaugural records, earning the contest's first featured and good topics. GreenLipstickLesbian (submissions) submitted 29 In the news entries, 12 more than the previous record.

Among the participants' contributions were six FAs, five FLs, 132 GAs, and a number of DYKs, ITNs, and reviews of every kind—far more than last year! Regardless of your level of participation, every contestant can be proud to have contributed to a major step in countering the systemic bias on Wikipedia. Every year, millions of readers and editors around the globe use Wikipedia to educate themselves and communicate with others about parts of the world that often receive less attention than they deserve. Thank you for participating in the contest and contributing to this effort. The DCWC will return next year, and we look forward to seeing your contributions again! However, before that...

We need your feedback! Join the conversation on the talk page to discuss your reflections on the contest (even if you didn't participate!) and help us make it better.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Arconning (talk · contribs), Generalissima (talk · contribs), Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list.) —⁠TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 04:49, 23 October 2026 (UTC)