Two newly-electedArbitrators were grantedCheckUser rights this week; in addition, the Arbitration Committee is also considering giving the rights to a non-member.Morven andSam Korn join seven other current and former Arbitrators and developers with the access, which allows the user to check another user's IP address and match usernames used by thatIP. The total number of people withCheckUser access is now nine.
Meanwhile, the Arbitration Committee issoliciting community opinion on giving CheckUser access toCurps, an administrator, contingent on him setting an e-mail address in his profile.
The second annual Wikimedia Conference, or Wikimania, announced itscall for participation last Friday. Submissions for papers and other presentations are being accepted over the next few months. The deadline for proposed workshops and tutorials is 30 March; abstracts for panels, papers, posters, and presentations should be received by 15 April. Wikimania is scheduled to be held August 4-6 atHarvard Law School inCambridge, Massachusetts.
A newdeletion method began this week. Proposed deletion, as it was dubbed, involves letting editorsflag an article for deletion. If no one objects and removes the tag within five days,administrators may then delete the article. Otherwise, if someone disputes the proposed deletion, the article may either be improved or be taken toarticles for deletion. As of press time, the process had gone live, with over 100 articles alreadytagged. Community reaction was generally positive, although several people objected to both the proposal and the beginning of usage of the system.
A newcriterion for speedy deletion was created this week. Originally added bySannse, it stated that templates which were "divisive and inflammatory" could be speedily deleted. The criterion received implicit approval fromJimbo Wales; he reverted the removal of the criterion. The criterion is most likely intended for controversial userboxes (seerelated story), which are currently created in the template namespace.
Aproposal to reformrequests for adminship (RfA) was started this week. Created bybureaucratsIlyanep andLinuxbeak, the proposal includes implementation of a discussion period, suffrage requirements and candidate requirements, and emphasis on providingdiffs and discussion. Although the two bureaucrats initially suspendedRfA to test the new proposal, it soon resumed after several users objected.Discussion on the issue continues.
Kelly Martin resigned from her position as chair of theClerk's Office this week. The former Arbitrator said in her resignation that "It is obvious that the community, for its own inscrutiable reasons, is unwilling to accept the services I am willing and able to provide. I have no doubt that I have the trust of Jimbo and the Arbitration Committee itself. However, it's evident that the community has no intention of allowing me to provide any service of an administrative nature to Wikipedia without having to deal with endless sniping." The position vacated by Martin is now vacant, although only former Arbitrators may fill the position.
Raul654, currentfeatured article director, announced that the number of people subscribed to thedaily-article-l list, which sends out the featured article viaemail, had reached 9000 people. In addition, all the informational featured pages, such asfeatured articles,featured lists,featured pictures, andfeatured portals, were redesigned for a "sleek new look". Finally, allfeatured articles were tagged with{{featured article}} this week, which produces a small star in the upper right hand corner of the article that links to the list offeatured articles. Allfeatured lists were similarly tagged with{{featured list}}, which adds a star that links to the list offeatured lists .
When did this change from the9 quoted here?Who is the extra person?HTH HAND —Phil |Talk10:07, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
