User talk:Andres

Tere Andres, ma nägin, et sa kirjutas Albaania umbes. I am Albanian living in Tallinn and I have been correcting and writing articles on Estonia in Albanian Wikipedia. Kas sa räägid albaania keelt? Kas sa oled käinud Albaanias? I would like to meet with you and discuss about Albania as there aren't that many people here who know about Albania that much. My email address is: edvinpacara AT gmail DOT com

Nägemist -(Edvin (talk) 11:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC))

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by Edvini (talk • contribs) 23:44, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for tracking down the info on the Edi Rama article. By the way, are an Albanian descendent or are you just working on Albanian articles for the fun of it. Dori 13:27, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I am not Albanian but I want to learn about Albania as much as possible. Andres 17:27, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Hello there Andres, seem as you seem to be editing lots of things to do with Albania. I was wondering If you had seen the Kosovo War article. At the moment it's deeply biased and writen entirely from a Serbian viewpoint. I was wondering If you'd like to try NPOVing it. G-Man 18:10, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I had a look at the article. Unfortunately, right now I lack the abilities and competence needed for doing that. Andres 22:56, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Andres, I see that you took the now-irrelevant comment out of Action (philosophy). I replaced the confusing content. Apart from noting on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention that I'd done so, I left that page's reference to the Action entry there. I am new to the wikipedia; would you either do what is needed there or tell me what the procedure is for editing the needs attention page after attention has been paid? Thanks, vanden 02:30, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Vanden, good job! I think there should be two separate articles: one about action as a concept (how it is defined in philosophy (in different ways) and what are the problems about it and what approaches there are to them) and another on philosophy of action (on what are the issues of the philosophy of action and what has been done in it). There will be some overlap but the contents will not coincide as in the philosophy of action there are many other concepts. And links to those other concepts would appear in both of them.

If you edit those articles I will hold my eye on them.

Most of the articles on analytical philosophy need much work. Andres 06:11, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Andres,

I cannot edit them. I do analytic philosophy, but phil of math and logic. I came close to exhausting what I know well enough to put up already! (I will see if I can convince a fellow grad student to take a bash.)

That would be fine. Thank you! Andres 12:22, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As for the two articles idea, I'm new and action is not my thing, but I cannot see the need for two. I see philosophical work to define and understand action as exactly what the philosophy of action is up to. (Had I seen Philosophy of action I think I would have felt like Action (Philosophy) should be deleted -- I think I've turned it into a duplicate article. But what do I know? Best, vanden 06:40, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK, that was my proposal. There are other people who think like you thoml and there are people who think like I think. I still think that when the articles grow long enough, the need for two articles will appear. In any case, this is the way I would edit. Andres 12:22, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Andres, I've nominated you for adminship. Please reply at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Dori | Talk 03:49, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Andres. I have a question to You. Could we use one Estonain map, what I made myself, to show Estonian Counties? Then I will write each county separately. Here it is. But Probbaly it will be too big?

File:Estmap.jpg -- Egon 15:15, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you, Egon, I like the map. Do you mean to modify it for each copunty? I don't think it's too big but I guess some other people would think so. I think it could be that size if all counties were marked by name and the relevant county were of other colour. Then the map would be more informative. Perhaps the location of Tallinn could be marked also, but then people would think it is not part of Harju County. Ask what User:Mic thinks. And See our discussion about the permission for coats of arms and flags. Andres 15:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I want also mark capitals of each county --Egon 15:53, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have here also one good program about resizeing a *.bmp image but I cannot use this, because it is in korean. I will try and lets see what can be made. Egon 15:57, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

File:Estmap.bmp This one? Or must it be certainly *.jpg? -- Egon 16:42, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

For the politics, see Wikipedia:Image use policy#Format. In any case, you uploaded this image, and it is OK.

AlexLL uploaded another map, and Mic modified it (for discussion, see User talk:Mic and for an example, see Saare County). Mic's version is small and fit for the table. I would like more your version, and I don't like table templates at all. On the other hand, I think that we have to choose among the two, and we have to consult other users, including Mic.

If you can use the letters ä and õ, then I prefer your version for the Estonian Wikipedia. Could you please make the maps in Estonian?

I could not make these maps in estonian, I tried. My program does not allow import characters, only english and korean and chinese.-- Egon 22:22, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The pity of it! Then we can use your map just as a location map without the names of the counties. Andres 22:47, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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File:Estmaparnu.bmp, File:Raplamaa.bmp, File:Harjumaa.bmp, File:Laanemaa.bmp --Egon 01:36, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

OK, if you can create õ as well, it could go simehow... Andres 02:35, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I installed yesterday a new program and there is possible to transport and edit all the characters, that we need to edit.--Egon 13:18, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's wonderful, Egon!

Yes, the Rapla version is good enough. But look what Mic says. Maybe you would create these maps in Estonian instead? Andres 02:47, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

If the other version is used in the English Wikipedia, I think your version still could be used in the article Counties of Estonia. Andres 16:43, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The maps could well be in English, and a description like "Harju County" looks proper. What I was concerned about was resorting to for example "Laane County", when "Lääne County" ought to be used. The most immidiate concern however is the file format, as one bmp file takes more room than maps for twenty counties would in png. -- Mic 09:03, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

I think the new map looks fine and would fit very well in the Counties of Estonia entry. For the entries of each respective county a map of that county, accompanied with a smaller one that pinpoints its location, is the best option. However creating these kind of custom county maps is quite an ardous task. The maps that are used on the country pages on Wikipedia virtually all comes from the same source and has the same color scheme, a tip could be to use the same coloring as these to achieve a sense of uniformity also on other maps.

The preferred file format for maps and illustrations is PNG, like it says under in image use policy, and this can't be stressed enough. BMP is uncompressed and creates much too large files. JPEG is fine for photographs, but shouldn't be used here since it degenerates the image. An application which should be able to save PNG with out any hassles, as well as do antialiased resizing of images is GIMP. It is free to use and a good option if you are able to install software where you are working.

The ä and õ should be used also in the map unless they are not used at all in English. In that case they should be stripped in the text and the articles also. -- Mic 17:54, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

Russia

Hi again, A. I realize now that it was you who wisely reverted a couple garbled words about imperialism and Russia a couple days ago. I just reverted (or rather, excised the material after it was to late to simply revert) similar words in the same place. I have now discussed this extensively at Imperial Ambitions sec'n within our now familiar meeting place. I wasn't sure whether you had a specific interest in the History section, or were just being a responsible Wikipedian, but either way, i wanted to help keep you up to date in case. --Jerzy 09:07, 2003 Dec 17 (UTC)

Just read yr notes on Russia, which sound pretty good tho not thoroughly studied. I set my watch to remind me to take my Niasapn NOW and go to bed, and i'm going to obey. G'nite! --Jerzy 10:45, 2003 Dec 17 (UTC)

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You're now an administrator. -- Tim Starling 08:19, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

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Hi, i'm back, & embarrassed not to have thot to be in touch. I notice you are working on Russia; are you getting all the native-language-editor assistance you want? [smile] --Jerzy 16:38, 2004 Jan 13 (UTC)

Your reply somehow reminded me of your connection to Estonia. I don't know if you have followed the hornets' nest i stirred up by starting what is now List of people known as war heroes -- and you may just want to stay away from it: (if you were a Yank and of my generation, i'd say "it's a tar-baby"; ask me, if curious, about Br'er Rabbit, but) "thankless morass", evoking VietNam war, comes pretty close. At Talk:List of people known as war heroes#Estonia lists a few names (maybe i should have added more) from List of Estonians (which was item 1 or 2 in a Google search of WP for "war hero"). Perhaps you could come up with a small handful of standouts in about 30 seconds. [shrug] --Jerzy 06:19, 2004 Jan 16 (UTC)

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Wikis down

The English Wikipedia seems to be the only one still up. Does anybody know what is going on? Andres 06:45, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Don't worry! just some server problems and maintenance. I know that Brion, Jason and others work hard for keeping the servers running. If you want to be the first (well, second) to learn about the server issues, don't forget to watch the Wikipedia mailing lists and the Wikipedia IRC chat channel. New servers are about to be installed, AFAIK. :) Have Peace Profound, Optim 13:07, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Thank you for the Dr. Pap name in Greek! jengod

Ann Nzinga Mbande Merger

I requested a merger from the author of the Nzingha article, Pandora a few weeks ago but I have not had a response. I went ahead and merged the text with the article a few weeks ago. The problem with Nzinga is that she has so many different names and even more surnames, the most common spelling is Nzinga; but that is also a first name of many other people, sometimes her surname Mbande or royal title Ngola are included in her name.

When I created the article Ann Nzinga Mbande, I tried to be as specific in the title as possible to avoid confusion. I also created several redirects to various spellings. Unfortunately, I had never come across the spelling Nzingha, interestingly it is the second most common speling, before and did not discover the previous article. I would like to propose that Nzingha become a redirect page to Ann Nzinga Mbande, since the text there has already been merged and the title is more specific.

--JCarriker 05:48, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

With the cross referencing of two languages and the knowledge we have of Nzinga we should be able to create more than stubs, possibly three or more good paragraphs. Please post on my talk page, since those pages do not yet exist.

JCarriker 02:51, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC) Talk

Hiiumaa

sorry, I believe I was even intending to write "1708" - it was an undiscovered typing error. :-(
--Ruhrjung 08:55, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Comedy Help

Hi. I'm trying to recruit some people from non UK/US countries to add to our sitcom and television comedy sections. At the moment they're totally about American or British comedy. if you're able to contribute, please do - I am happy to tidy up after you and it may, at least, get others of your fellow countrymen involved. --bodnotbod 22:46, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Estonia province and Estonia

As far as I am concerned, before 1918 the therm Estonia referred to smaller province than present-day Estonia. Could you please add article about province of Estonia? Thanks. Cautious 13:06, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Haemophilia C

I was in the process of renaming Hemophilia C to Haemophilia C, and something seems to have gone wrong. The renaming process froze with a SQL error message appearing. It then refused to undergo the renaming process again, claiming, wrongly, that the Haemophilia C page now existed. Since you are a sysop, could you look into it, please? Arno 08:29, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tänan! Arno 04:07, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Your impersonator reverted Tony Blackplait

It seems you have an impersonator, using the account User:Andres.. S/he reverted your last edit to Tony Blackplait. I've already mentioned this at WP:AIV but thought you would want to know. By the way, thanks for your efforts with the Tõnu Trubetsky article! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:03, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Request

Dear Andres. Thank you for your work. And I have one request. May I suggest that you put edit summaries more often? That is really helpful for people like me who have a given page on the watchlist. Thank you, Oleg Alexandrov 21:55, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Unalienable Rights

Please delete Unalienable rights and redirect to Inalienable rights per the 8-day-old vfd. Please also add a redirect from Inalienable right. Thanks freestylefrappe 01:27, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry, I don't feel competent to do this. Besides, there is no need of deletion, so the necessary changes don't require an admin. Andres 06:09, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Philosophical realism

Is no:Realisme (ontologi) not the same thing ? Sure, the English article is about ontology and epistemology, but I don't think the Norwegian will seperate each part. -- Amtiss, SNAFU ? 17:43, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Estonian pronunciation

I posted some questions I had about Estonian pronunciation in Talk:Estonian language. If they are answered, not only would the article on Estonian language be enriched, it would be really helpful in my attempt to standardise the Korean alphabet transcription of Estonian names on the Korean Wikipedia. I hope you have time to look through the questions; any help with any of the questions would be deeply appreciated. --Iceager 07:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject C++

The WikiProject C++ aims to increase the quality of C++-related articles on Wikipedia, and has discovered that you have participated in the editing of them! So don't hesitate, join us! --Deryck C. 15:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Talk Ex-Yugoslavia

Talk:Kosovo#2 Administrator for Ex-Yugoslavien articels in Wikipedia- The voice of Kosovar

Request for edit summary

When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labeled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

Filling in the edit summary field greatly helps your fellow contributors in understanding what you changed, so please always fill in the edit summary field, especially for big edits or when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you. – Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Estonia flag images

I am not sure if your the right person to see, but if you think the images from here are going to be useful for Wikipedia, you have my permission to upload the images onto Wikipedia under {{PD-user}}. I wish to hear your thoughts, first. TIA. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 11:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Estonia

Hello, Andres.

I've noticed that you're interested in Estonia and a very active member of the Estonian Wikipedia. I wonder if you'd like to help out with the brand new Estonian Wikiproject. :) Please don't feel pressured - I only wanted to let you know that it's been created at long last.

Have a great day!

Srose (talk) 17:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I reverted your talk page

Just leaving you a note to explain why I reverted your talk page: the text I removed was a spurious/vexatious request from User:HotHotSoup, the latest sockpuppet of User:PoolGuy, spamming the talk pages of admins (and a few non-admins), and apparently working alphabetically. Contributions of a banned user may be reverted by anyone, but if you would still like the message to be included here, feel free to revert back. Stifle (talk) 17:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Estonia newsletter

You are receiving this notice because of your involvement in Wikipedia:Wikiproject Estonia.

Effort of the Week Update: I just wanted to let everybody know that the Constitution of Estonia, the group effort of the week, is finally finished! :) Of course, additional information would be lovely, if anyone would like to help out. :)

Need Help? If anyone else has an article they've been working on and may want help with, please list it on our project page under "Effort of the Week".

Have a great week, and if you need anything, feel free as always to contact me. :)

Srose (talk) 13:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Estonian

Oh ok, thanks. --Adriaan90 17:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about links

Hi Andres, I noticed that you removed a number of links to non-English Wikipedia articles from the Distributary article [1]. The edit summary says "rm inadequate wikilinks". Could you help me to understand what is going on with those links. I see editors add them, then I see editors remove them. I'm just hoping for some understanding of the issues. Sincerely, --BostonMA ^talk 15:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Translation proposal

Greetings. Could you, by any chance, look into translating et:1. detsembri ülestõus into "Estonian insurrection of 1924"? I'd very much appreciate it, I would clean up any grammatical errors, and I would add some of my own material. Thank you for your consideration. Biruitorul 01:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I started the article Estonian insurrection of 1924. I will continue it later. Andres 05:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Good! Take your time. Biruitorul 17:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, now I found out that Toomas did the translation but forgot to tell me (I'd asked him a while before). Sorry for perhaps wasting your time, although he did try to keep the text you started when he combined the articles. And thank you once again. Biruitorul 16:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Czech Wikipedian's notice board

You are invited to join Wikipedia:Czech Wikipedian's notice board! The Czech notice board can be used for discussions on Czech-related topics; to plan your Czech-related projects; and ask for, or offer assistance for Czech-related subjects. Editors are encouraged to sign their nickname on the list of active participators. --Thus Spake Anittas 02:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		I thought I'd give you this barnstar for your tireless contributions I have been noticing in numerous articles. Wikidudeman (talk) 05:27, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Award for best contributors of WP-Estonia

Could you please take a look at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Estonia#WP-EE_awards_for_best_contributors... an let me know what you think.--Alexia Death 09:46, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Üks teene

Palun pane sellesse artiklisse semi-protect peale kuna seal toimub väga palju vandalismi. Sa võiksid täielikult panna, mitte ajaliselt. Yoosq 17:58, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Panin seitsmeks päevaks. Reeglid ei luba alatiseks panna. Andres 19:28, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, aga miks GTA IV on alatiseks pandud? Yoosq 9:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Küsi sellelt, kes pani. See on reeglitevastane. Andres 14:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism from Thun

Hi Andres, I saw that you deleted obvious vandalism from Thun but then moved it to the article talk page for comments. IMHO, there was no chance of this unsourced and obscene "fact" being true, so I've deleted it. cheers, Moyabrit 09:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

List of Estonian Americans

Tere Andres, the List of Estonian Americans has been nominated for deletion. I thought perhaps you may wish to weigh in on this matter, as nearly every other American ethnic group is not listed for deletion. Cheers, ExRat 01:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Star (disambiguation)

Could you please explain this edit to Star (disambiguation), in which you removed most of the interlanguage links from the bottom of the article without an edit summary? You don't seem to be a vandal, so what's going on? — Swpb^talk.edits 21:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Star (disambiguation). Andres 02:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Classification of admins

Hi Andres. Please consider adding your admin username to the growing list at Classification of admins. Best! -- Jreferee t/c 22:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Seminarist

Tore et vikiseminar lõpuks teoks saab. Sellega seoses aga paar küsimust: Kas registreerumine seminarile on tingimata kohustuslik ja kas personaalarvuti kaasavõtmine on vajalik.Kask (talk) 09:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Tülitan veel korra, et kas saaks sama kasutajanime all (Kask) tegutseda Eesti vikis. Proovisin luua samanimelist kontot, kuid Eesti viki ei lasknud sama kasutajanime läbi. Samas pole aga sellenimelist kasutajat. Teeks konto seetõttu, et praeguse töökoha IP-aadress ei tekita arvatavasti adminnides usaldusväärtust.Kalev Kask (talk) 07:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Minu meelest ei ole mingit põhjust karta adminnide arvamust, sest me ei otsusta kaastöölise üle mitte millegi muu kui tema kaastöö põhjal.

Kasutaja Kask on olemas küll, nii et sellepärast seda nime läbi ei lastud. Andres (talk) 07:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Maria Tomson

Ehk oskad aidata. Talk:Oldest people Kalev Kask (talk) 14:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sinu muudatus tühistati. Kalev Kask (talk) 06:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Noh, ma panin sinna selgituse, aga ega rohkem vist teha ei saa. Andres (talk) 07:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Aga proovi panna Maria Tomson ja Juhan Kallaste lehele National longevity recordholders. Ma tegin Maria Tomsoni kohta eesti vikisse artikli et:Maria Tomson. Võid selle tõlkida. Et saada lähemaid teateid, võib ühendust võtta Helje Looperega. Andres (talk) 07:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Andre: I've deleted the Maria Tomson claim from the National longevity recordholders as this claim is unverified. Further, her inclusion would directly contradict several other pages, as Maria Tomson would have been, if verified, the oldest person on the planet from Feb 1963 until her death.

However, there are a few gerontology people here who are very interested in this claim, and since most of us here lack proficiency in Estonian, we were wondering if you could research and assess what forms of confirmation for this claim exist?

Rules for inclusion are pretty specific as so many claims are made which turn out to be exaggerated or unprovable. Which is why there are separate pages for claims which are unproven. So please don't take offence that this can't yet reside on the pages in question.

But many claims which were brought to light after the fact have been verified, and when that happens, this is a great moment. And this claim, if verified, would definitely be exiting as Tomson would supplant some long-established record-holders from the mid-60s from their title of "world's oldest person."

I know you put this on the pages in good faith, so I ask for more good faith here with the hope that a little legwork on your part might result in an Estonian world record from the 1960s which has been denied thus far. Canada Jack (talk) 16:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Got your message, Andre. The problem with some of these pages, as you rightly point out, is that it isn't spelled out specifically on some that these are for "verified" claims, and that "verified" means something specific and particular. It is mentioned at the top of the oldest people page. But for the National longevity recordholders page, it is not clear that this criteria actually always applies. However, each and every claimant on that page with a birth date who would also be found on the Oldest people page because of their age is verified. The one exception is the Polish record holder whose date of birth other than the year is unknown, but whose claim was accepted by Guinness. So, while the claims for those of, say, The Philippines at 107 and 106 are not necessarily verified, they wouldn't appear elsewhere and stand. But Maria Tomson's claim would necessitate a rewrite of several pages if true, so until she is verified, she should not appear on the National page as it would contradict those other pages.

But I do not suggest lightly that her claim should be investigated. Interestingly, the first person Tomson would potentially supplant - Ellen Dart, who has been verified to be the world's oldest person from Feb 1963 to her death, at 108, that October - was only verified this past September! As I said, even if you don't feel you personally know enough to be able to do the legwork here, the outcome would potentially bestow to an Estonian a rather prestigious world record of "world's oldest person" from Feb 1963 to her death. SO please let us know what your demographer friend says about this. Cheers, Canada Jack (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Just did some more digging and I found on a gerontology website mention of Tomson as having no documentary backing for her claim, as of April 2007. [2] As you can see from the list, only those "three star" claims make the "verified" list. She is on the "pending" list at the bottom, with at the time of the list, no documentary backing. So, anything which can shed some light here will be of great interest. Cheers Canada Jack (talk) 19:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello!

Hi! How do you say "running fridges rule" in Estonian, and possibly Russian, as well? Thanks in advance. Runningfridgesrule (talk) 20:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Runningfridgesrule (talk) 16:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Vikipeedia artiklid

Kuna vikipeedias saab lähiajal täis 50 000 artiklit, kas soostuksid tegema statistikat, et kui paljud neist käsitlevad erineval moel Saare maakonda. Kalev Kask (talk) 15:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Kas Sa ise ei võiks seda teha? Vaevalt ma seda Sinust paremini teeksin. Mul pole ka selge, millisel juhul tuleks mingi artikkel arvata Saare maakonda käsitlevaks. Andres (talk) 13:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Asi selles, et 50 000 artikli täissaamisest võiksid meediasse teha mingi pressiteate. Ise sooviks sellest teha uudisnuppu oma maakonnas, kuid vajan seost maakonnaga ja toetust kindlale allikale, seetõttu ei hakka neid ise kokku lugema ja pöördun sinu kui autoriteedi poole (kui sa vastu pole ega see sulle tüli tee). Põhimõtteliselt sooviks teada artiklite hinnangulist hulka, sest artikkel "arukask" sobituks samuti vastavasse konteksti. Kui loobud, pole ka midagi ja ära pahanda.Kalev Kask (talk) 11:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Tõnu Trubetsky

As you were involved in an earlier discussion, you might be interested in the current Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tõnu Trubetsky. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 00:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Paavst

Pane arutelusse täpsemalt, mida sa vaidlustasid [Benedictus XVI] artikli juures. Praegu jääb mulje, nagu oleks kogu artikkel vaidlustatud ja ebapädev. Väiksemad korrigeerimised saad ju ise ka ära teha, nimekujud saab täpsustada vastavate artiklite loomisega. Kui stiiliga rahul pole, pead lihtsalt enda jaoks sobivamaks ümber kirjutama.

Asi selles, et kuna artikkel on lihtsalt nii pikk, siis arvan, et kui just mõni adminn ei suvatse, siis vaevalt hakkab keegi teine seda toimetama. Kui sul midagi silma torkas, siis muidu on seda raske üles leida.Kalev Kask 16:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Ma ei vaidlustanud midagi, vaid keeletoimetamist on tarvis. Mõned nimed on valesti kirjutatud. Ma oleksin ise parandanud, aga alajaotusi on seal nii vähe, et ma ei leia redigeerimisboksist õiget kohta üles. Kui tahad, võta see märkus maha. Andres (talk) 20:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Galleri Rom

I've left a comment at Talk:Galleri Rom for you. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 13:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

RFC: socionics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Socionics Tcaudilllg (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's going to happen but, you know I don't want Wikipedia to be embarrassed by a blatant display of region bias, so if the admin in charge of the "consensus" declares a false one and deletes the article, would you consider reversing them? I'm sure you agree that we need more cultural discussion between the East and West. Tcaudilllg (talk) 10:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

"I am 13"

What was this all about? There is currently a thread on my talk page in which I was looking into the viability of the article at the request of Sander Säde. Your restoration of the article just seems oddly timed, and I would appreciate some background on how you came to find it, and then restore it with a dismissive summary, without so much as the slightest attempt to communicate with me.

I have no problem with anyone reversing my admin actions. I simply appreciate a reasonable explanation. In this case, there is a clear reason given for deleting the article. You then reverse that action with an explanation that no reason was given. For further background, there was a recent ArbCom case regarding a mailing list for editors (the creator of this article amongst them) to coordinate off Wiki to game our editorial process, as well as run circles around admins (with the aid of one editor who was a corrupt admin). I'm being up front about this because I was coordinated against in the mailing list, and because your actions in this instance are similar to what I encountered at the time (someone coming in from left field to make an "uninvolved" contribution). To that end, I lack trust in the "good faith" present around any article that User:Digwuren worked on. Apologies in advance for coming on strong about this, and I hope you understand my own trust issues on this one. Thanks! Hiberniantears (talk) 16:55, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

As further background, this is the ArbCom case I am refering to, as mentioned in a thread on Sander Säde's talk page. Hence my concerns. Hiberniantears (talk) 16:59, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Someone contacted the Estonian Wikipedia and asked if the topic was significant. I can confirm that it is significant in the Estonian context, so I restored it and dropped a note on its talk page. Then the same person advised me to delete the deletion note on the article as else it would be deleted anyway. I have been long away from the English Wikipedia and don't know all the new procedures. Anyway, I don't think the topic is that obscure that the article should be deleted without discussion. There is little on it in the web simple because it is that old a thing. Besides, another version of the title is "Ma olen kolmeteistkümneaastane". Andres (talk) 17:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

So it is yourself who asked. I don't understand why you are surprized on my actions.

some background on how you came to find it, and then restore it with a dismissive summary, without so much as the slightest attempt to communicate with me

Here you asked and here I also answered. I don't think my summary is dismissive, I just confirmed that the play was significant: this is what you asked. Andres (talk) 17:17, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, indeed the reasons were given. My summary wasn't correct. This was my mistake. Andres (talk) 17:18, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

When I restored the article I was under the impression that it had been deleted without reason. This is why I wrote so. Then I wrote my comment on the discussion page which doesn't mention that. My apologies! Andres (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I hope you understood my reason now. The play is significant though there is little on it on the web. This is what Sander Säde explained you too. I am not going to collect evidence, but let other people do it. If you want it to be deleted, please use the normal procedure. Andres (talk) 17:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea why Digwuren was blocked but I have no reason to think that the article has not been created in good faith. The same concerns the other article, Mägra Märt. I think that its content should be merged into an article on Evald Jõgis if it is created. Andres (talk) 17:26, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I cannot understand the content of the thread you are citing. Andres (talk) 17:31, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Got it. I understand your actions now, and appreciate the explanation. I'll touch base with Sander Sade as well. In both cases, we need something more than evidence that the topics exist. I'm happy to help, but I need some direction on why the play is important (literally, "I am 13" is an Estonian play that is significant because it's portrayal of Estonian youth led to "Fill in the Blank"... Hiberniantears (talk) 17:32, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Follow up: I moved the article to I am 13 (play) just to have it in an English language title. The Estonian language title remains as a redirect to the English title. Hiberniantears (talk) 00:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea. I'll expand on this on the talk page. OK, I'll provide an explanation of the play's significance. Andres (talk) 08:22, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Deaths in ....

Hi, please note that entries in all Deaths in .... lists are removed unless the deceased already has an article, or unless an article is created within one month of the death. Thanks, WWGB (talk) 10:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

So where is that rule written down? Andres (talk) 11:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

It is written in several places, here for example in the box on top of the page: [3]

It is to avoid the death lists becoming littered with redlinks to missing articles about people for whom notability has not been established. Regards, WWGB (talk) 11:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, it reads there: Redlinked entries for whom no article currently exists are typically kept for one month to allow creation of such an article. The articles were deleted immediately, not waiting for one month. Please restore the entries and allow creation of the articles. Andres (talk) 11:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, please create the articles and allow restoration of the entries. WWGB (talk) 11:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

So if you promise you'll restore the entries I'll create the articles. Andres (talk) 12:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I have no problem with that arrangement. Regards, WWGB (talk) 12:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Dorothy Cheney (disambiguation)

Hello, just to let you know that this dab has been nominated for deletion using Template:db-disambig. If you have any questions about this, please contact me. Best wishes, Boleyn3 (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Offiicium

Tegin mõiste osas järelepärimise Vello Salole. Loodan vastuse saada esmaspäevaks, kuid üldiselt pole eesti keeles katoliku kiriku liturgilist sõnavara välja kujunenud ja seetõttu kasutatakse üldjuhul latiniseeritud variante. Kalev Kask 13:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Minu punkt oli selles, et eesti keeles ei saa see sõna olla kahe f-iga (rääkimata c-st). Andres (talk) 15:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Unblock an Acount

Hi Andres! I want to ask you a Favor. I have a Old Acount called HumbertoGillan. The reason to Block me it's an Error, but the guy who was blocked me, says that are not a error. Please Unblock my Old Acount, Please. Thanks--PsychedelicMan (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

a comment

Someone had left a comment at your user page, I reverted it; here's the diff FIY. Miacek 16:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

need help

Hi, I found you by searching in this Category:User nl. I need an article that I also posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request‎. I want to expand more the Beonex Communicator article and this link at MozillaZine says that this internet suite was reviewed in "The Belgian monthly Computer Magazine [...] CM is available in Belgium both in a Dutch and French version." (this post was from the 22 January 2004) Can you check or request this article in another wikipedia version (I don't speak dutch, so I don't have any "clues" if there is some similar requesting page for such cases). mabdul 09:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Andres (talk) 11:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah I see that you add Beonex at nl:Gewenste artikelen/Computer, but I'm not sure if that is really what I wanted. I mean I'm happy if they created also an article in the nl-wikipedia, but I want "only" this article in this magazine from January (or maybe it is in the February) 2004 issue. I don't have access nor can I get in any way this issue/magazine. This is my only problem. The translate wouldn't be so hard, as I said I'm speaking German, google translate and maybe a friend could help me ^^ mabdul 11:18, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Andreas de Velven in english Andreas von Stierland

Could you help with the translation of this article. translated but I do not know about Estonian. Please help me. A greetings--Puedoeditar (talk) 19:07, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Romania

Hi! From your edits, it looks like you might be interested in contributing to WikiProject Romania. It is a project aimed at organizing and improving the quality and accuracy of articles related to Romania. Thanks and best regards!

--Codrin.B (talk) 06:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Andres,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, were it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Latvian translation question

Does this image page say that the image is by Hafizs Osmans, or in the style of Hafizs Osmans? I'm wondering about the decorative border, and not necessarily the calligraphy. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:22, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It says that the word Allah is written in the calligraphic style initiated by Hafiz Osman. Andres (talk) 03:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Your input is requested

Greetings, Andres! If we have not met, I'm AutomaticStrikeout. I've come here to ask you to take part in the survey at User:AutomaticStrikeout/Are admins interested in a RfB?. I am trying to gauge the general level of interest that administrators have in running for cratship, as well as pinpoint the factors that affect that interest level. Your input will be appreciated. Happy editing, AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 02:05, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Macedonian help needed

Hello Andres, I'm contacting you because we need some Macedonian translators to help with the deployment of the new VisualEditor on mk.wikipedia. There are help pages, user guides, and description pages that need translating, as well as the interface itself. The translating work is going on over on MediaWiki: Translation Central. I also need help with a personal message for the Macedonian Wikipedians. If you are able to help in any way, either reply here, or head over to TranslationCentral. Thanks for your time, PEarley (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Your free Cochrane account is on its way!

Please fill out this very short form to receive your free access to Cochrane Collaboration's library of medical reviews: Link to form.

If you have any questions, just ask me. Cheers, Ocaasi 13:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Andres (talk) 10:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013

by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter

Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 20:24, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Sterotypy and Stereotypic movement disorder

A symptom is not a condition (eg, a tic is not Tourette syndrome). You lodged a merge template on two articles with no reason given. Please explain your reasons at Talk:Stereotypy, and please base your reasons on WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:02, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

It seemed to me obvious that the articles were about the same condition, this is why I didn't comment on my proposal in the discussions (though I mentioned the reason in one of the summaries). Now I can see I was wrong. Andres (talk) 15:20, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The IDC-9 numbers given in the infoboxes coincide but it seems that the number is wrong for the stereotypia because there it reads "stereotypic movement disorder". Andres (talk) 15:24, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

ah, I see ... I hate infobox misinfo, and will try to fix that. By the way, do you ever archive your talk page? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

No, never.

By the way, the article Stereotypic movement disorder doesn't mention stereotypy. Andres (talk) 15:31, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I know ... there's a to-do list at the bottom of my user page, and that is on it :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 15:03, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Butšatš

Why? --Бучач-Львів (talk) 10:18, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

See et:Kasutaja arutelu:Бучач-Львів. Andres (talk) 11:02, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Andres. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Baltic)

Hi. I see you are listed as a member of a WikiProject of a Baltic state. I was wondering if anybody who actively works on Estonian, Lithuanian or Latvian articles, would be interested in launching your own Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Baltic), based on the Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic) and Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea would be to try to bring about 1000 article improvements and creations on this region as an enjoyable challenge and potentially things like National Contests with prizes. If you'd be interested and think it's something you might regularly contribute to, comment and sign up at Talk:Baltic states. If there is interest we can move this to a project somewhere and set something up, thanks. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:26, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Europe 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:05, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:34, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi Andres.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:46, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Andres. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page.

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Andres. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

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13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).

Administrator changes

TheDJ

Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
• The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
• An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
• After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.

Technical news

• After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
• Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2017).

Administrator changes

Karanacs • Berean Hunter • GoldenRing • Dlohcierekim

Gdr • Tyrenius • JYolkowski • Longhair • Master Thief Garrett • Aaron Brenneman • Laser brain • JzG • Dragons flight

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
• Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.

Technical news

• You can now see a list of all autoblocks at Special:AutoblockList.
• There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
• Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards can now set an expiry date when granting user rights. (discuss, permalink)

Miscellaneous

• Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:19, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2017).

Administrator changes

Doug Bell • Dennis Brown • Clpo13 • ONUnicorn

ThaddeusB • Yandman • Bjarki S • OldakQuill • Shyam • Jondel • Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC proposing an off-wiki LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the Community health initiative's successful grant proposal.
• Some clarifications have been made to the community banning and unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at WP:AN or WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully appealed the sanction to the community.
• An RfC regarding the bot policy has closed with changes to the section describing restrictions on cosmetic changes.

Technical news

• Users will soon be able to blacklist specific users from sending them notifications.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2017 elections, the new members of the Board of Trustees include Raystorm, Pundit and Doc James. They will serve three-year terms.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2017).

Administrator changes

Happyme22 • Dragons flight

Zad68

Guideline and policy news

• The RFC discussion regarding WP:OUTING and WMF essay about paid editing and outing (see more at the ArbCom noticeboard archives) is now archived. Milieus #3 and #4 received support; so did concrete proposal #1.

Technical news

• Fuzzy search will soon be added to Special:Undelete, allowing administrators to search for deleted page titles with results similar to the search query. You can test this by adding ?fuzzy=1 to the URL, as with Special:Undelete?fuzzy=1. Currently the search only finds pages that exactly match the search term.
• A new bot will automatically revision delete unused file versions from files in Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old.

Miscellaneous

• A newly revamped database report can help identify users who may be eligible to be autopatrolled.
• A potentially compromised account from 2001–2002 attempted to request resysop. Please practice appropriate account security by using a unique password for Wikipedia, and consider enabling two-factor authentication. Currently around 17% of admins have enabled 2FA, up from 16% in February 2017.
• Did you know: On 29 June 2017, there were 1,261 administrators on the English Wikipedia – the exact number of administrators as there were ten years ago on 29 June 2007. Since that time, the English Wikipedia has grown from 1.85 million articles to over 5.43 million.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2017).

Administrator changes

Anarchyte • GeneralizationsAreBad • Cullen328 ^{(first RfA to reach WP:300)}

Cprompt • Rockpocket • Rambo's Revenge • Animum • TexasAndroid • Chuck SMITH • MikeLynch • Crazytales • Ad Orientem

Guideline and policy news

• Following a series of discussions around new pages patrol, the WMF is helping implement a controlled autoconfirmed article creation trial as a research experiment, similar to the one proposed in 2011. You can learn more about the research plan at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial. The exact start date of the experiment has yet to be determined.
• A new speedy deletion criterion, regarding articles created as a result undisclosed paid editing, is currently being discussed (permalink).
• An RfC (permalink) is currently open that proposes expanding WP:G13 to include all drafts, even if they weren't submitted through Articles for Creation.

Technical news

• LoginNotify should soon be deployed to the English Wikipedia. This will notify users when there are suspicious login attempts on their account.
• The new version of XTools is nearing an official release. This suite of tools includes administrator statistics, an improved edit counter, among other tools that may benefit administrators. You can report issues on Phabricator and provide general feedback at mw:Talk:XTools.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2017).

Administrator changes

Nakon • Scott

Sverdrup • Thespian • Elockid • James086 • Ffirehorse • Celestianpower • Boing! said Zebedee

Guideline and policy news

• ACTRIAL, a research experiment that restricts article creation to autoconfirmed users, will begin on September 7. It will run for six months. You can learn more about the research specifics at meta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial, while Wikipedia talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial is probably the best venue for general discussion.
• Following an RfC, WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is a bot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted through articles for creation.

Technical news

• You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device that has logged into your account before, you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can also set in your preferences to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address, which may be encouraged for admins and accounts with sensitive permissions.
• Syntax highlighting is now available as a beta feature (more info). This may assist administrators and template editors when dealing with intricate syntax of high-risk templates and system messages.
• In your notification preferences, you can now block specific users from pinging you. This functionality will soon be available for Special:EmailUser as well.

Arbitration

• Applications for CheckUser and Oversight are being accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:35, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Admin confidence survey

Hello,

Beginning in September 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tool team will be conducting a survey to gauge how well tools, training, and information exists to assist English Wikipedia administrators in recognizing and mitigating things like sockpuppetry, vandalism, and harassment.

The survey should only take 5 minutes, and your individual response will not be made public. This survey will be integral for our team to determine how to better support administrators.

To take the survey sign up here and we will send you a link to the form.

We really appreciate your input!

Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.

For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2017).

Administrator changes

Boing! said Zebedee • Ansh666 • Ad Orientem

Tonywalton • AmiDaniel • Silence • BanyanTree • Magioladitis • Vanamonde93 • Mr.Z-man • Jdavidb • Jakec • Ram-Man • Yelyos • Kurt Shaped Box

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful proposal to create it, a new user right called "edit filter helper" is now assignable and revocable by administrators. The right allows non-administrators to view the details of private edit filters, but not to edit them.
• Following a discussion about mass-application of ECP and how the need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, a rough guide to extended confirmed protection has been written. This information page describes how the extended-confirmed aspects of the protection policy are currently being applied by administrators.

Technical news

• You can now search for IP ranges at Special:Contributions. Some log pages and Special:DeletedContributions are not yet supported. Wildcards (e.g. 192.168.0.*) are also not supported, but the popular contribsrange gadget will continue to work.

Arbitration

• Community consultation on the 2017 candidates for CheckUser and Oversight has concluded. The Arbitration Committee will appoint successful candidates by October 11.
• A request for comment is open regarding the structure, rules, and procedures of the December 2017 Arbitration Committee election, and how to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2017).

Administrator changes

Longhair • Megalibrarygirl • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93

Allen3 • Eluchil404 • Arthur Rubin • Bencherlite

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is creating an "Interaction Timeline" tool that intends to assist administrators in resolving user conduct disputes. Feedback on the concept may be posted on the talk page.
• A new function is now available to edit filter managers that will make it easier to look for multiple strings containing spoofed text.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to submit candidate statements for the 2017 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 12 until November 21. Voting will begin on November 27 and last until December 10.
• Following a request for comment, Ritchie333, Yunshui and Ymblanter will serve as the Electoral Commission for the 2017 ArbCom Elections.

Obituaries

• The Wikipedia community has recently learned that Allen3 (William Allen Peckham) passed away on December 30, 2016, the same day as JohnCD. Allen began editing in 2005 and became an administrator that same year.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2017).

Administrator changes

Joe Roe

JzG

Ericorbit • Perceval • Thingg • Tristanb • Violetriga

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, a new section has been added to the username policy which disallows usernames containing emoji, emoticons or otherwise "decorative" usernames, and usernames that use any non-language symbols. Administrators should discuss issues related to these types of usernames before blocking.

Technical news

• Wikimedians are now invited to vote on the proposals in the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey on Meta Wiki until 10 December 2017. In particular, there is a section of the survey regarding new tools for administrators and for anti-harassment.
• A new function is available to edit filter managers which can be used to store matches from regular expressions.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is open until Sunday 23:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC). There are 12 candidates running for 8 vacant seats.

Miscellaneous

• Over the last few months, several users have reported backlogs that require administrator attention at WP:ANI, with the most common backlogs showing up on WP:SPI, WP:AIV and WP:RFPP. It is requested that all administrators take some time during this month to help clear backlogs wherever possible. It should be noted that AIV reports are not always valid; however, they still need to be cleared, which may include needing to remind users on what qualifies as vandalism.
• The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative is conducting a survey for English Wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works (i.e. which problems it deals with well and which problems it struggles with). If you would like to take this survey, please sign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be emailed to you via Special:EmailUser.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:57, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Andres. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2017).

Administrator changes

Muboshgu

Anetode • Laser brain • Worm That Turned

None

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the administrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity at WP:RFA and to prohibit the use of administrative tools as part of paid editing activity, with certain exceptions.

Technical news

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey results have been posted. The Community Tech team will investigate and address the top ten results.
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team is inviting comments on new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools for development in early 2018. Feedback can be left on the discussion page or by email.

Arbitration

• Following the results of the 2017 election, the following editors have been (re)appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Alex Shih, BU Rob13, Callanecc, KrakatoaKatie, Opabinia regalis, Premeditated Chaos, RickinBaltimore, Worm That Turned.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Blurpeace • Dana boomer • Deltabeignet • Denelson83 • Grandiose • Salvidrim! • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
• Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.

Technical news

• A tag will now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardized editnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2018).

Administrator changes

Lourdes†

AngelOfSadness • Bhadani • Chris 73 • Coren • Friday • Midom • Mike V

† Lourdes has requested that her admin rights be temporarily removed, pending her return from travel.

Guideline and policy news

• The autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be read on Meta Wiki.
• Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
• A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
• A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.

Technical news

• CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
• The edit filter has a new feature contains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2018 Steward elections, the following users are our new stewards: -revi, Green Giant, Rxy, There'sNoTime, علاء.

Obituaries

• Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).

Administrator changes

331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

• Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
• Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
• The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
• The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

• There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.

Miscellaneous

• A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Chochopk • Coffee • Gryffindor • Jimp • Knowledge Seeker • Lankiveil • Peridon • Rjd0060

Guideline and policy news

• The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is now indefinitely restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.

Technical news

• AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new equals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
• When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
• The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
• There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee is seeking additional clerks to help with the arbitration process.

Obituaries

• Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Al Ameer son • AliveFreeHappy • Cenarium • Lupo • MichaelBillington

Guideline and policy news

• Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
• Following an AN discussion, all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinite general sanctions.

Technical news

• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in June. This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
• It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.

Arbitration

• A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.

Miscellaneous

• In early May, an unusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMF has stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administrators are required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:59, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).

Administrator changes

Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor

Gogo Dodo

Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD

Bureaucrat changes

Andrevan • EVula

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.

Technical news

• Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
• Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon () in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
• IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.

Miscellaneous

• Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:22, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL • Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
• Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.

Technical news

• The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

Administrator changes

None

Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz

Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

• Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
• Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
• Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:22, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

Justlettersandnumbers • L235

Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.

Technical news

• Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
• Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
• The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
• Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
• Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Administrator changes

Sir Sputnik

Kudpung • Liz • Lourdes

Everyking • Jackmcbarn

Interface administrator changes

Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes

AGK • Ivanvector • Stwalkerster • TonyBallioni

Oversight changes

Amorymeltzer • Oshwah • TonyBallioni • Vanamonde93

Keilana

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
• A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.

Technical news

• Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
• A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
• The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
• The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Andres. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 2 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Andres. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time, and that you have not been inactive from administrative tasks for a five year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. Further, following a community discussion in March of 2018, administrators suspended for inactivity who have not had any logged administrative activity for five years will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. — JJMC89 bot 00:11, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz

Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

Deryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
• A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
• A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
• A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

• Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
• To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
• Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
• Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

• Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Notification of imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next several days.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 00:07, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Administrator changes

Galobtter

Orangemike

BorgQueen • Davidruben • Ocee • Revolving Bugbear • Theda • There'sNoTime • Timc • Tijuana Brass • Tristessa de St Ange

Bureaucrat changes

Addshore

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

AGK • Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.

Technical news

• Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:

1. At least 8 characters in length
2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.

• Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
• {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

Miscellaneous

• Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
• Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).

Administrator changes

Enterprisey • JJMC89

BorgQueen

Harro5 • Jenks24 • Graft • R. Baley

Interface administrator changes

Enterprisey

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
• Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
• A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

• A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).

Administrator changes

Evad37

There'sNoTime

Alex Shih • Brian • Mushroom • Nakon • Oscarthecat • PeruvianLlama • Ragib • Reaper Eternal • Rossami • Tom

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ritchie333

CheckUser changes

There'sNoTime

Keegan • Ks0stm

Oversight changes

There'sNoTime

Ks0stm • Sphilbrick

Guideline and policy news

• The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.

Technical news

• A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
  • checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Administrator changes

Reaper Eternal • ThaddeusB

Bogdangiusca • Christopher Parham • Necrothesp • Schneelocke • Siroxo • Sarah

Mentifisto → Lofty abyss

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

Kingturtle

Technical news

• In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

Miscellaneous

• Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
• As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular

Administrators must secure their accounts The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised. Use strong, unique passwords for your Wikipedia account and associated email Change your password now if your Wikipedia account password or email password is reused on another website, exposed, or weak Enable two-factor authentication now for improved security

View additional information

Why have I received this message? All administrators are receiving it. What prompted you to send this message? Recently, several Wikipedia admin accounts were compromised. The admin accounts were desysopped on an emergency basis. In the past, the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. The committee has updated its guidelines. Admins may now be required to undergo a fresh Request for Adminship (RfA) after losing control of their account. What do I need to do? Only to follow the instructions in this message. Check that your password is unique (not reused across sites). Check that your password is strong (not simple or guessable). Enable Two-factor authentication (2FA), if you can, to create a second hurdle for attackers. How can I find out more about two-factor authentication (2FA)? You can find out more about 2FA at m:2FA.

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:16, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)

ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Administrator changes

HickoryOughtShirt?4 • RexxS

Necrothesp

Bratsche • Kyle Barbour • Kzollman • Madman

Interface administrator changes

Pharos

Bureaucrat changes

Primefac

CheckUser changes

Reaper Eternal

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment concluded that creating pages in the portal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Technical news

• XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

• In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
• Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment is currently open to amend the community sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• A proposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
• An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
• An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

• The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
• Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

• The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
• The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:48, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam¹ • Flyguy649 • Fram² • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes • WJBscribe • Wizardman

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ • TheDJ

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox • BU Rob13 • DoRD • GB fan

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.

• In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

• The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
• A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

• In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Administrator changes

Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee

Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos

Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes

RickinBaltimore

Oversight changes

Beeblebrox

RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration

• Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.

Miscellaneous

• Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
• The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

  Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:23, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno

Floquenbeam • Lectonar

DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

• Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

• A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:36, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Administrator changes

Barkeep49

Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma

Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno

JamesBWatson → JBW

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Oversight changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

• As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

• The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
• The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

• The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Administrator changes

GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear

DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD

DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ

CheckUser changes

L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47

Ivanvector

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux

DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

• The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

• A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree

Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox

Deskana

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
• Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news

• Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

• The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Administrator changes

Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill

Deor • Spartaz • Xeno

Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes

Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Oversight changes

Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
• A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
• Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration

• The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
• Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

Miscellaneous

• This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes

Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes

Dennis Brown

Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes

Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
• The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

• Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
• When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [4]

Arbitration

• Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Administrator changes

Money emoji

Athaenara • DeltaQuad

Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

DeltaQuad

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
• A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

• Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Administrator changes

Cabayi • Lee Vilenski

Boing! said Zebedee

Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT

Money emoji → Moneytrees

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes

NativeForeigner

Oversight changes

Someguy1221

Daniel Case

Guideline and policy news

• There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.

Miscellaneous

• The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversight changes

HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

• Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
• Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
• A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
• A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.

Technical news

• The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
• Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous

• A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
• The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.

Arbitration

• A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Administrator changes

Malcolmxl5

John • TheCoffee • Tim!

Creffett → GeneralNotability

DeltaQuad → AmandaNP

CheckUser changes

Bbb23

Interface administrator changes

TonyBallioni

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news

• Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).

Arbitration

• Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
• The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Administrator changes

Red Phoenix

Euryalus • SQL

Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

GB fan

Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news

• There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
• Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
• Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
• There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2020).

Administrator changes

Eddie891

Angela • Jcw69 • Just Chilling • Philg88 • Viajero

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, the minimum length for site ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
• A request for comment is ongoing to determine whether paid editors must or should use the articles for creation process.
• A request for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between the draftification and alternative to deletion processes.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2020 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
• An open request for comment asks whether active Arbitrators may serve on the Trust and Safety Case Review Committee or Ombudsman commission.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:55, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:42, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

Administrator changes

John M Wolfson

Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla

Yunshui

Oversight changes

Anarchyte

Yunshui

Guideline and policy news

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration

• The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 00:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

Administrator changes

Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

Izno

Guideline and policy news

• There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:36, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

Administrator changes

Hog Farm

Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes

Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes

Someguy1221 • Xeno

Arbitration

• The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
• When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
• The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
• The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
• Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

• Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

• After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
• An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

• IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

• The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:26, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

• Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

• Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

• Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
• A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
• A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
• A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

• The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
• Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

• DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

• A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
• Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
• The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

• Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
• The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

• Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

• Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

• GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

• Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
• Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
• The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

Technical news

• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
• When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
• A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
• A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Administrator changes

Colin M

David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
• The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

• user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
• An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

• The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
• Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
• Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
• Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:44, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
• An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
• The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
• Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

• The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

• 
  • Isabelle Belato
  • Whpq
• 
• 
  • Atama
  • Astronautics~enwiki
  • Athaenara
  • Eddie891
  • GraemeL
  • Marianocecowski
  • Natalya
  • Pratyeka
  • SB Johnny

Interface administrator changes

• TheresNoTime
• Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

• 
  • Blablubbs
  • Firefly
• Joe Roe

Oversight changes

• DGG

Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
• An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
• Euryalus
• TheresNoTime

• Alex.muller
• Excirial
• RedWordSmith
• Ron Ritzman
• TheresNoTime
• Stephen

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
• The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
• An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

Technical news

• A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
• The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
• A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
• Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

• Bjelleklang
• Bob the Wikipedian
• Leithp
• WhisperToMe
• 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim
• MusikAnimal

Oversighter changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

• The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
• Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

• Fuhghettaboutit
• Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

• Ale jrb
• Dbachmann
• DGG (deceased)
• Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

• Ddstretch
• Prodego
• Resolute

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:53, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

• Pppery
• Theleekycauldron

• Dwheeler
• G.A.S
• Royalbroil
• Ssd

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:21, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

• Ganesha811
• JPxG

• Ajpolino
• Lourdes
• Mairi
• RockMFR
• Somno
• WilyD

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Oversight changes

• Beeblebrox
• Opabinia regalis

Guideline and policy news

• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
• The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:53, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
• Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
• Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:58, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2024).

Administrator changes

• Ahecht
• DoubleGrazing
• Dr vulpes
• FOARP
• Peaceray
• Queen of Hearts
• Rsjaffe
• SD0001
• SilverLocust
• Sohom Datta
• ThadeusOfNazereth
• Voorts

• Ajpolino
• Fathoms Below
• Pppery
• Tamzin
• Worm That Turned

• Aervanath
• Christopher Sundita
• Dank
• Dennis Brown
• Dragons flight
• Fastily
• Graham87
• JaGa
• Kbh3rd
• Marine 69-71
• Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
• Yamamoto Ichiro

Interface administrator changes

• SD0001
• Sohom Datta

Pppery

CheckUser changes

• Spicy
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RFC, the policy on restoration of adminship has been updated. All former administrators may now only regain the tools following a request at the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard within 5 years of their most recent admin action. Previously this applied only to administrators deysopped for inactivity.
• Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, T5, has been enacted. This applies to template subpages that are no longer used.

Technical news

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10, 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Yasuke (formerly titled Backlash to diversity and inclusion) has been closed.
• An arbitration case titled Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 14 December.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)