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News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2025).

Administrator changes

Rusalkii

NaomiAmethyst(overlooked last month)

• Master Jay
• Orderinchaos
• Roger Davies
• Tinucherian

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Followingan RfC,administrator elections were permanently authorized on a five-month schedule. The next election will be scheduled soon; seeWikipedia talk:Administrator elections for more information. This is an alternate process to theRfA process and does not replace the latter.
• An RfC was closed with consensus to allow editors to opt-out of seeing "sticky decorative elements". Such elements should now be wrapped in{{sticky decoration wrapper}}. Editors who wish to opt out can follow the instructions atWP:STICKYDECO.
• An RfC has resulted ina broad prohibition on the use of AI-generated images in articles. A few common-sense exceptions are recognized.

Miscellaneous

• ANew Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2025 to reduce the backlog of articles in thenew pages feed.Sign up here to participate!

Thanks for blocking that IP block evader, looks like they're back again withDrew72828 (talk ·contribs ·deleted contribs ·nuke contribs ·logs ·filter log ·block user ·block log). Do you mind blocking them and protecting the page? I have filed AIV and RPP reports but that might take a bit and this vandal isn't stopping anytime soon. Cheers,GoldRomean (talk)19:19, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sure.Paul Erik^{(talk)(contribs)}19:27, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2025).

Administrator changes

• DDima
• Gimmetrow
• Huon
• Johan Elisson
• Spangineer
• The Land

Interface administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

CheckUser changes

L235

Oversight changes

L235

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to determine whether the English Wikipedia community should adopt a position on AI development by theWMF and its affiliates.

Technical news

• A new feature calledMultiblocks will be deployed on English Wikipedia on the week of June 2. Seethe relevant announcement on the administrators' noticeboard.
• History merges performed using themergehistory special page are now logged at both the source and destination, rather than just the source as previously, afterthis RFC and the resolution ofT118132.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case namedIndian military history has been opened. Evidence submissions for this case close on 8 June.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for theUniversal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 17 June 2025. Read thevoting page on Meta-Wiki andcast your vote here!
• AnArticles for Creation backlog drive is happening in June 2025, with over 1,600 drafts awaiting review from the past two months. In addition to AfC participants, all administrators and new page patrollers can help review using the Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in theGadgets settings.Sign up here to participate!
• TheUnreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in June 2025 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!

I warned IP editor User:50.104.26.15 to stop vandalizing various Wikipedia articles. After 3 times without change, and since you also warned this editor, I believe a longer block is appropriate in this case.CANthony0125 (talk)14:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, blocked again (three months this time) for block evasion. Thanks.Paul Erik^{(talk)(contribs)}22:11, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Paul! I believe the yearlong block on 97.112.192.0/18 by Daniel Case may have been miscalculated... blocking 16,384 usable IP addresses for an entire year takes out a majority of Brightspeed customers in south Alabama! Thanks for your help! God bless!2600:387:2:805:0:0:0:56 (talk)00:10, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2025).

Administrator changes

NuclearWarfare

Interface administrator changes

L235

Guideline and policy news

• Following atalk page discussion, speedy deletioncriterion G13 has beenamended to remove "Userspace with no content except thearticle wizard placeholder text."
• WP:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts was upgraded to a guideline followinga RfC discussion.

Miscellaneous

• The 2025Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September.Sign up now!
• Administrator elections will take place this month. Administrator elections are an alternative toRFA that is a gentler process for candidates due to secret voting and multiple people running together. The call for candidates is July 9–15, the discussion phase is July 18–22, and the voting phase is July 23–29. Get ready to submit your candidacy, or (with their consent) to nominate a talented candidate!

I don't usually say this to people, but you can be more harsh in your blocks when dealing with LTA vandals on proxies. If you're sure you've found a data center, web hosting service, or open proxy, you can hard block it. We don't want logged-in vandals using them, which is what often happens. Just be careful of doing hard blocks on anything else. They can cause a lot of collateral damage.NinjaRobotPirate (talk)14:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@NinjaRobotPirate:, I appreciate the feedback, absolutely. If you have come across some hard blocks I have done which are causing collateral damage, please undo or shorten them, and no need to consult me about them. I will be more cautious going forward. Thanks again.Paul Erik^{(talk)(contribs)}20:20, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

HiPaul Erik! It's good to run into you as usual! I was patrolling recent logs and edits and saw the exact same thing that you saw with this LTA, and we both managed to block this user at the same time. I know that there were changes made recently around the blocking structure and how they now work, such as the ability to add more than one block to the same user and with different expirations, different types and options, and on different areas (partial vs site), etc. Apparently I was a "photo finish" faster than you, because it logged my block first followed by yours.

Take a look at the block loghere and maybe you'll be surprised to see what I'm seeing (or who knows, maybe not). Up until recently, this would be logged as me adding the block to the account, then your block would've overwritten mine and "updated it". I was surprised, however, to see that your indefinite site-wide block no longer overwrites the older one that I set. Instead, it addedanother site-wide indefinite block, and is now logged as"added a block for" instead of"updated block for". I saw this and then asked myself what would happen if I were to just remove one of them... and I did just that - removed your block as an ad-hoc "test" if anything (and also for procedural purposes, since seeing two blocks like that could cause confusion). The removal of one of the two blocks was logged as me "unblocking" the user account instead of "removed a block for"...

What gives? I totally see how being able to add more than one block to the same user would be necessary in relation to partial blocks and blocks that expire, but not two of the exact same block where it's set indefinitely and as a site-wide block. Have you seen this before? Something tells me that this shouldn't be expected nor how this should function. I would expect a second indefinite site-wide block to overwrite the previous one. Weird...

I will say that I used a script to query the API in order to apply the block to that account. Maybe we're now relying on the newSpecial:Block interface to tell us that this isn't going to work? I haven't tested that... Anyways, what do you think about all this? I guessWP:WHEEL would no longer be possible in this exact situation since you technically added another block and didn't change mine? In that case, HA! We can just add a mess load of the same block over and over and make a huge ridiculous list! :-P~Oshwah~^{(talk)(contribs)}21:48, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good to see you,Oshwah. That is not something I have seen before, and definitely odd. TBH, I can't quite get my head around how technically itshould be operating... in this new era of layering on blocks. Hmm!Paul Erik^{(talk)(contribs)}22:08, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... okay, no worries. I'll do some digging and see what I find. I might start a discussion on theadmin noticeboard and see if others have noticed the same thing and what they think. This, to me, doesn't seem to be the result that should be intended, but who knows - maybe I'm wrong. Thanks for the response; it's good to see you again! :-D~Oshwah~^{(talk)(contribs)}22:16, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).

Administrator changes

• CoconutOctopus
• Curbon7
• Hinnk
• Jlwoodwa
• Kj cheetham
• KylieTastic
• Ser!
• Smasongarrison
• UndercoverClassicist

• Bbb23
• Beeblebrox
• David Gerard
• Oleg Alexandrov
• Satori Son

CheckUser changes

• Alison
• Bradv
• Joe Roe
• RickinBaltimore
• ST47

Oversight changes

• Bradv
• RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

• Followinga request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion,G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by alarge language model (LLM) without human review.
• Followinga request for comment, there isa new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses oftemporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors canrequest access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.

Technical news

• Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The"Add a Link" Structured Taskhelps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in theCommunity Configuration page.

Arbitration

• The arbitration caseIndian military history has been closed.
  • South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated acontentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined asAll pages related to the region ofSouth Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
  • The contentious topic designations forSri Lanka (SL) andIndia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
  • The community-authorized general sanctions regardingSouth Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
• The arbitration caseArticle titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
• The arbitration caseTransgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.

Miscellaneous

• Wikimania 2025 is happening inNairobi,Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years ofWikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You canregister here now.

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).

Administrator changes

Euryalus

• Admrboltz
• FloNight
• Floquenbeam
• Ganeshk
• JesseW
• Night Gyr
• Nixdorf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AmandaNP

SQL

Oversight changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open on whether use ofemojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion underG15.

Technical news

• Administrators can now access theSpecial:BlockedExternalDomains page from theSpecial:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find.T393240

Arbitration

• The arbitration caseArticle titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
• An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Thanks for dealing with that vandal, keep up the good work!Throwaway200976 (talk)03:29, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2025).

Administrator changes

• Billinghurst
• Crisco 1492
• DarkFalls
• Spike Wilbury
• Valereee
• Ergo Sum

CheckUser changes

Vanamonde93

Arbitration

• Aftera motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections atWP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g.[[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.

Sorry for the rollback, which I’ve self-reverted: I agree with your assessment and the series of reverts had me confused which way you were going, I thought you were doing the opposite!Kingsif (talk)12:26, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks.Paul Erik^{(talk)(contribs)}12:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Noindexed pages