User talk:MereTechnicality/Archive 3
 | This is an archive of past discussions with User:MereTechnicality. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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Administrators' newsletter – May 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
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.
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
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
New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
Hello MereTechnicality,
- Your help can make a difference
NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.
- Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
- Discussions and Resources
- A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
- Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
- A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
- Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).
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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
.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
Administrators' newsletter – August 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).
Administrator changes
Oversight changes
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.
Administrators' newsletter – September 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2020).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
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
orshould
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.
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
.
- A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely
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.
Administrators' newsletter – November 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).
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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.
- Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection
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).
- A reminder that
Happy First Edit Day!
Have a very happy first edit anniversary!
From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 08:20, 16 November 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
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.
New Page Patrol December Newsletter
Hello MereTechnicality,
- Year in review
It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.
| Rank | Username | Num reviews | Log |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DannyS712 bot III (talk) | 67,552 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 2 | Rosguill (talk) | 63,821 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 3 | John B123 (talk) | 21,697 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 4 | Onel5969 (talk) | 19,879 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 5 | JTtheOG (talk) | 12,901 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 6 | Mcampany (talk) | 9,103 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 7 | DragonflySixtyseven (talk) | 6,401 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 8 | Mccapra (talk) | 4,918 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 9 | Hughesdarren (talk) | 4,520 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 10 | Utopes (talk) | 3,958 | Patrol Page Curation |
- Reviewer of the Year
John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.
- NPP Technical Achievement Award
As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here
18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).
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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.
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
Happy Birthday!
Have a very happy birthday on your special day!
Best wishes, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 21:49, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).
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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.
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
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!
Administrators' newsletter – March 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
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-redirectuserright, 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
.
- By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.
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-redirectuserright, 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.
Administrators' newsletter – May 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
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
oversightwill be renamed tosuppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.
- The user group
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.
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.
Administrators' newsletter – July 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).
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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.
Administrators' newsletter – July 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).
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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.
Administrators' newsletter – September 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).
Administrator changes
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.
New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021
Hello MereTechnicality,
Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.
Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.
At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.
There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.
Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).
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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.
November 2021 backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive |  |
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Administrators' newsletter – November 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).
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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.
Happy First Edit Day!
Have a very happy first edit anniversary!
From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 17:27, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).
Administrator changes
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.
Administrators' newsletter – January 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).
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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-en
lists.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.
Administrators' newsletter – February 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).
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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
oversightwill be renamedsuppressin 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.
- The user group
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.
Administrators' newsletter – March 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).
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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.
Administrators' newsletter – April 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).
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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
deletelogentryanddeletedhistoryrights. 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.
Administrators' newsletter – May 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).
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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.
New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
Hello MereTechnicality,
At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.
Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.
In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 806 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 848 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.
This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Birthday Commitee Removal due to Inactivity
You have been inactive for more than 6 months and have been removed from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee birthday list. If you become active again please feel free to re-add yourself.
Best wishes, --Isro! chatter 18:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).
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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.
New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022
Hello MereTechnicality,
- Backlog status
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
- Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. 
Barnstars will be awarded.
- TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
- Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 13823 articles, as of 04:00, 3 December 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
- Notes
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:01, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!
| New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive | |
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| You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. | |
(t · c) buidhe 20:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).
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Technical news
user_global_editcountis 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.
Administrators' newsletter – August 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).
Administrator changes
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.
New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022
Hello MereTechnicality,
- Backlog status
After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.
- Coordination
- MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
- Open letter to the WMF
- The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
- TIP - Reviewing by subject
- Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
- New reviewers
- The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP message
Hi MereTechnicality,
- Invitation
For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).
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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.
October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | October 2022 backlog drive | |
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| You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. | |
(t · c) buidhe 21:17, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).
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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.
Administrators' newsletter – November 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
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}}.