This user may have left Wikipedia. Jiang has not edited Wikipediasince 12 August 2022. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.

Hello,

Please note thatTOTP 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 yourpreferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see thedeveloping 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 thethread on the administrators' noticeboard.MediaWiki message delivery (talk)20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jiang.

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 atPERM. 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 However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less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 availablehere but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us atWT:NPR.(Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk)13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Jiang. Voting in the2016 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.

TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia 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 imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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

Hello, Jiang. Voting in the2016 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.

TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia 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 imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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

A file that you uploaded or altered,File:Glorioso Islands.gif, has been listed atWikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see thediscussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you.IazygesConsermonorOpus meum01:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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 pleasesubscribe. Yourfeedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

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

Briangotts •JeremyA •BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• Adiscussion to workshop proposals to amend theadministrator inactivity policy atWikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementingPending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Followingan 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, anRfC 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 hasannounced a newcommunity health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee releaseda response to the Wikimedia Foundation'sstatement 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.

13:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectDemocratic Elections- Some Prerequisites for Fairness. Since you had some involvement with theDemocratic Elections- Some Prerequisites for Fairness redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -CHAMPION^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)}22:56, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectRonnie Reagan. Since you had some involvement with theRonnie Reagan redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -CHAMPION^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)}00:50, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectThe World's biggest (by volume) and largest (by area) buildings. Since you had some involvement with theThe World's biggest (by volume) and largest (by area) buildings redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so.Steel1943 (talk)04:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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 thatuser 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 includedclarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of theharassment policy.

Technical news

• You can now see a list of all autoblocks atSpecial:AutoblockList.
• There is a newtool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrictother user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
• Administrators,bureaucrats andstewards can nowset an expiry date when grantinguser rights.(discuss,permalink)

Miscellaneous

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

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectPROC. Since you had some involvement with thePROC redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so.JohnBlackburne^words_deeds19:15, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploadingFile:Sun Yun-suan.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under aclaim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (seeour policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in anyarticles will be deleted after seven days, as described insection F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk)17:44, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploadingFile:NT1000.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under aclaim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (seeour policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in anyarticles will be deleted after seven days, as described insection F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk)17:59, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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

• AnRfC proposing an off-wikiLTA 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 theCommunity health initiative's successfulgrant proposal.
• Someclarifications have been made to thecommunity banning andunblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user atWP:AN orWP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfullyappealed the sanction to the community.
• AnRfC regarding thebot policy has closed with changes to the section describingrestrictions on cosmetic changes.

Technical news

• Users willsoon be able toblacklist specific users from sending them notifications.

Miscellaneous

• Following the2017 elections, the new members of theBoard of Trustees includeRaystorm,Pundit andDoc James. They will servethree-year terms.

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

Administrator changes

Happyme22 •Dragons flight

Zad68

Guideline and policy news

• The RFC discussion regardingWP:OUTING andWMF essay about paid editing and outing (see more atthe ArbCom noticeboard archives) isnow archived.Milieus #3 and#4 received support; so didconcrete proposal #1.

Technical news

• Fuzzy search will soon be added toSpecial: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 withSpecial:Undelete?fuzzy=1. Currently the search only finds pages that exactly match the search term.
• A newbot will automaticallyrevision delete unused file versions from files inCategory:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old.

Miscellaneous

• A newly revampeddatabase report can help identify users who may be eligible to be autopatrolled.
• A potentially compromised account from 2001–2002 attempted torequest resysop. Please practice appropriateaccount security by using a unique password for Wikipedia, and consider enablingtwo-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 agoon 29 June 2007. Since that time, the English Wikipedia has grown from 1.85 million articles to over 5.43 million.

Hi! I am currently revamping the project. Created lots of pages and added a lot of content, but there is so much to do. I saw that in the past you have contributed, so I wanted to invite you to collaborate once more. Thanks!Eccekevin (talk)21:06, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,Jiang! We are looking for editors to joinWikiProject University of California, San Francisco, an outreach effort which aims to support development ofUCSF related articles in Wikipedia. We thought you might be interested, and hope that you will join us. If you are interested in joining, please visit theproject page, and add your name to the list ofparticipants, check out ourTo Do list, andjoin the discussion on our talk page. Thanks!!!

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

Administrator changes

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

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

Guideline and policy news

• Following a series of discussions aroundnew pages patrol, the WMF is helping implement a controlledautoconfirmed article creation trial as a research experiment, similar to the oneproposed in 2011. You can learn more about the research plan atmeta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial. The exact start date of the experiment has yet to be determined.
• Anew speedy deletion criterion, regarding articles created as a result undisclosed paid editing, is currently being discussed (permalink).
• AnRfC (permalink) is currently open that proposes expandingWP:G13 to include all drafts, even if they weren't submitted throughArticles for Creation.

Technical news

• LoginNotify shouldsoon be deployed to the English Wikipedia. This will notify users when there are suspicious login attempts on their account.
• The new version ofXTools is nearing an official release. This suite of tools includesadministrator statistics, an improvededit counter, among other tools that may benefit administrators. You can report issues onPhabricator and provide general feedback atmw:Talk:XTools.

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 atmeta:Research:Autoconfirmed article creation trial, whileWikipedia talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial is probably the best venue for general discussion.
• Following anRfC,WP:G13 speedy deletion criterion now applies to any page in the draftspace that has not been edited in six months. There is abot-generated report, updated daily, to help identify potentially qualifying drafts that have not been submitted througharticles for creation.

Technical news

• You will nowget 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 alsoset 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 yournotification preferences, you can now block specific users from pinging you. This functionality willsoon be available forSpecial:EmailUser as well.

Arbitration

• Applications forCheckUser andOversight arebeing accepted by the Arbitration Committee until September 12. Community discussion of the candidates will begin on September 18.

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectElizabeth I of Great Britain. Since you had some involvement with theElizabeth I of Great Britain redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so. --Nevé–selbert08:00, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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 asuccessful 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 privateedit filters, but not to edit them.
• Followinga discussion about mass-application of ECP and howthe need for logging and other details of an evolving consensus may have been missed by some administrators, arough 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 nowsearch for IP ranges atSpecial:Contributions. Some log pages andSpecial:DeletedContributions are not yet supported. Wildcards (e.g.192.168.0.*) are also not supported, but thepopular contribsrange gadget will continue to work.

Arbitration

• Community consultation on the2017 candidates for CheckUser and Oversight has concluded. The Arbitration Committee will appoint successful candidates by October 11.
• Arequest 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.

Template:Politics of the Republic of China has beennominated for merging withTemplate:Politics of Taiwan. You are invited to comment on the discussion atthe template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.Wrestlingring (talk)20:49, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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'sAnti-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 thetalk page.
• A new function isnow 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 the2017 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 12 until November 21. Voting will begin on November 27 and last until December 10.
• Following arequest for comment,Ritchie333,Yunshui andYmblanter will serve as the Electoral Commission for the 2017 ArbCom Elections.

Obituaries

• The Wikipedia community has recently learned thatAllen3 (William Allen Peckham)passed away on December 30, 2016, the same day asJohnCD. Allen began editing in 2005 and became an administrator that same year.

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 arequest for comment, anew 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 the2017 Community Wishlist Survey on Meta Wiki until 10 December 2017. In particular, there is a section of the survey regarding new tools foradministrators and foranti-harassment.
• Anew function is available to edit filter managers which can be used to store matches from regular expressions.

Arbitration

• Voting in the2017 Arbitration Committee elections is open until Sunday 23:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC). There are12 candidates running for 8 vacant seats.

Miscellaneous

• Over the last few months, several users have reportedbacklogs that require administrator attention atWP:ANI, with the most common backlogs showing up onWP:SPI,WP:AIV andWP: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.
• TheWikimedia Foundation Community health initiative is conducting a survey for English Wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level withAdministrator’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, pleasesign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be emailed to you via Special:EmailUser.

Hello, Jiang. Voting in the2017 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.

TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia 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 imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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

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

• Arequest for comment is in progress to determine whether theadministrator policy should be amended to require disclosure of paid editing activity atWP: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 resultshave been posted. TheCommunity Tech team will investigate and address the top ten results.
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team is inviting comments onnew blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools for development in early 2018. Feedback can be left onthe discussion page orby email.

Arbitration

• Following theresults 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.

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 RfChas closed with a consensus that candidates atWP: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 aWikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
• Editorsresponding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by usingSpecial: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

• Atagwill 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 byautomatic edit summaries.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committeehas enacted a change to thediscretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add astandardizededitnotice 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.

I'm removing you from theWikipedia:Missing_Wikipedians page, as it appears that you are editing again. Welcome back!ChunyangD (talk)05:43, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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

Administrator changes

Lourdes†

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

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

Guideline and policy news

• Theautoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) is scheduled to end on 14 March 2018. The results of the research collected can be readon Meta Wiki.
• Community ban discussionsmust now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
• A change to the administrator inactivity policyhas 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 policyhas been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be consideredde facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.

Technical news

• CheckUsersare now able to view private data such as IP addresses from theedit 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 hasa new featurecontains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.

Miscellaneous

• Following the2018 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.

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 inactivityare 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, arenow automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
• Thenotability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure ofthis 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-monthautoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report hasbeen published. Arequest for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

• Adiscussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required toenable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
• The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released theInteraction 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.

Hello, I noticed that you recently created a new page,Republican China. First, thank you for your contribution; Wikipedia relies solely on the efforts of volunteers such as you. Unfortunately, the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page –Republic of China (disambiguation). Because of the duplication, your article has been tagged forspeedy deletion. Please note that this is not a comment on you personally and we hope you will continue helping to improve Wikipedia. If the topic of the article you created is one that interests you, then perhaps you would like to help out atRepublic of China (disambiguation). If you have new information to add, you might want to discuss it atthe article's talk page.

If you think the article you created should remain separate, you maycontest the nomination byvisiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line withWikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact thedeleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a requesthere. Additionally if you would like to have someone review articles you create before they go live so they are not nominated for deletion shortly after you post them, allow me to suggest thearticle creation process and using our search feature to find related information we already have in the encyclopedia. Try not to be discouraged. Wikipedia looks forward to your future contributions.LampGenie01 (talk)01:12, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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 indefinitelyrestricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Aproposal 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 anOOUI overhaul,syntax highlighting, ability tosearch 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 newequals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability tosee which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access toLogstash.
• When blocking anonymous users, acookie 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 onlyoccurs when hard-blocking accounts.
• The block notice shown on mobile will soonbe more informative and point users to ahelp page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does ondesktop.
• There will soon be acalendar widget atSpecial:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committeeis 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.

Hello can you please guide me on how to become an administrator thank you very much have a great day!!!— Precedingunsigned comment added byJg184258 (talk •contribs)12:29, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploadingFile:Peng zhen.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under aclaim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (seeour policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in anyarticles will be deleted after seven days, as described insection F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk)17:29, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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 asuccessful 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 anAN discussion, all pages with content related toblockchain andcryptocurrencies, broadly construed, are now under indefinitegeneral sanctions.

Technical news

• IP-basedcookie blocks should bedeployed 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 buildgranular 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 atthe talk page.
• There isnow a checkbox onSpecial:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
• It isnow easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.

Arbitration

• Arecent 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, anunusually high level of failed login attempts was observed. The WMFhas stated that this was an "external effort to gain unauthorized access to random accounts". Under Wikipedia policy, administratorsare required to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enablingtwo-factor authentication. Acommitted 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.

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

• AnRfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording ofWP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted atMfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of thereasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
• Arequest for comment closed with a consensus that the{{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent aWP: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 anupcoming change that willrestrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a newtechnical 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 theFAQ.
• 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 thehamburger menu in the2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates.
• IP-basedcookie blocks should bedeployed 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 enabledtwo-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please considerdoing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriateaccount security by ensuring your password issecure and unique to Wikimedia.

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

Administrator changes

Sro23

KaisaL •Ymblanter

Guideline and policy news

• Aftera 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 likeMediaWiki:Common.js andMediaWiki: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 bybureaucrats.Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
• Following arequest for comment, theWP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links toWikinews should only be made as per theexternal 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 WMFAnti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on thesecond set of wireframes for theSpecial:Block redesign that will introducepartial 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.

You’re the guy who blockedJimbo a while back, didn’t you?Torrent01 (talk)00:47, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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

• Followinga "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been madeinterface administrators whilediscussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewideCSS andJavaScript 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 ofa 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.
• Someabuse filter variableshave 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 variableson mediawiki.org. They have a note which saysDeprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_text which is nowpage_title.
• Abuse filterscan now use how old a page is. The variable ispage_age.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round ofCheckuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with theFunctionaries 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.

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 arequest for comment, theprocess for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently onlyexisting admins can request these rights, while anew RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
• There is an openrequest 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 theTest Wikipedia and theBeta-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 tomeasure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
• Because ofa 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 theprocedure on functionary inactivity.
• The community consultation for2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
• Following arequest 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 arebeing 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.

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

• Arequest for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to requestinterface admin access.
• Arequest for comment is in progress to determine whether theMediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
• Avillage pump discussion has been ongoing about whether theproposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
• Arequest for comment is in progress to determine whetherpending changes protection should be applied automatically totoday'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 theTest Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on thelocal talk page or onMeta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
• Auser script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
• The2019 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 foradmins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the2018 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 addresshas changed toarbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.

Hello, Jiang. Voting in the2018 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.

TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia 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 imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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

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 arequest for comment, theMediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
• Arequest for comment is in progress to determine whether members of theBot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
• Arequest 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".
• Aproposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page tointerface 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. Thischange has been implemented globally. See alsothis ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
• To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators willsoon 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 ofPartial blocks onTest Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of themare now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment andreport new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on theProject's talk page. You canrequest administrator access on the Test Wiki here.

Arbitration

• Voting in the2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please reviewthe candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices onthe 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 ona website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
• Wikipedia policyrequires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enablingtwo-factor authentication. Acommitted 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 asRaymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently editedLaw of Taiwan, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation pageCivil law (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links areusually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles.(Read theFAQ • Join us at theDPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow theseopt-out instructions. Thanks,DPL bot (talk)09:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox Korean name has beennominated for merging withTemplate:Infobox Chinese. You are invited to comment on the discussion atthe template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.DanielleTH^{(Say hi!)}22:22, 23 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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 changedspeedy deletion criteria, each previously part ofWP: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 inCategory:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and nofile links) that have the same name as a file or redirect atCommons 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 Foundationnow requires allinterface administrators to enabletwo-factor authentication.
• Members of theBot Approvals Group (BAG) arenow 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 newpassword policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors,et al.) must have a passwordat 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 thePassword Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

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

• Blocked administratorsmay 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. Arequest 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 theRevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

• Following the2018 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 onany other website, you should change it immediately.
• Around 22% of admins have enabledtwo-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please considerdoing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriateaccount security by ensuring your password issecure and unique to Wikimedia.

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectDirect election of Senators. Since you had some involvement with theDirect election of Senators redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you have not already done so.Steel1943 (talk)04:12, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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

• Arequest for comment is currently open to reevaluate theactivity requirements for administrators.
• Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recentrequest for comment has amended theblocking 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.
• Arequest for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecatingThe Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.

Technical news

• Adiscussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance ofWikipedia: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 atWP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). Theconfirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automaticallycheck your eligibility to vote.
• A newIRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle beidentified.

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 onadministrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
• Following discussions atthe Bureaucrats' noticeboard andWikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to therestoration of adminship policy wasreverted. 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

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

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee announcedtwo 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 orWP:SPI).
  • paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusivepaid 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 the2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards:Base,Einsbor,Jon Kolbert,Schniggendiller, andWim b.

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

• InSpecial:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", thereis now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on arollback 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 seemeta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committeeclarified that theGeneral 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 onany other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enabletwo-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriateaccount security by ensuring your password issecure and unique to Wikimedia.
• As a reminder, according toWP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were aproposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

Administratorsmust 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

This message was sent to all administrators following arecent motion. Thank you for your attention. For theArbitration Committee,Cameron1159802:53, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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 arerequired to "have strong passwords andfollow appropriate personal security practices." We haveupdated 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 anoptional 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, -Cameron1159821:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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

• Arequest for comment concluded that creating pages in theportal namespace should be restricted to autoconfirmed users.
• Following arequest for comment, thesubject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) wasremoved; in its place, editors should consultWP:ENT andWP: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 andPatroller Stats.

Arbitration

• In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committeepassed a motion amending theprocedures 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 sowill not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
• Following aformal ratification process, thearbitration 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

• Arequest for comment is currently open to amend thecommunity sanctions procedure to exclude non XfD or CSD deletions.
• Aproposal to remove pre-2009 indefinite IP blocks is currently open for discussion.

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

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

Technical news

• The CSD feature ofTwinkle 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 yourTwinkle preferences: look forNotify 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

• Thepreviously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 wasapproved and has taken place.
• The2019 talk pages consultation produced areport for Phase 1 and has enteredPhase 2.

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 wasremoved, thenrestored, thenremoved again.

²Fram's access wasremoved, thenrestored, thenremoved again.

Guideline and policy news

• Arequest for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on therequest an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting theaccount 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 themitigation activity completed.

• The scope ofCSD criterion G8 hasbeen tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope ofCSD criterion G14 hasbeen 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).
• Arequest for comment seeks to determine whetherWikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation'sCommunity health initiative plans to design and build anew 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 desysopFram. This action has resulted insignificant community discussion, arequest 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 anopen letter to the WMF Board.

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 arequest for comment, the pageWikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
• Arequest for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding theadministrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

• Following aresearch project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project toimprove 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 thetalk page.
• Thenew page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out atSpecial:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribinghere to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or puttingthe 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 rightsremoval for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

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 newadvanced 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

• Arequest for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

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

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

• Followinga discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added:C2F: One eponymous article, whichapplies if the category containsonly 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

• Aspreviously noted, tighterpassword 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

• The2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
• Thearbitration case regardingFram wasclosed. While there will be a local RfCfocus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a globalcommunity consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to theincident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

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

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirectMedical Herbalism - European. Since you had some involvement with theMedical Herbalism - European redirect, you might want to participate inthe redirect discussion if you wish to do so.BDD (talk)15:53, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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

• AnRfC was closed with the consensus that theresysop criteria should be made stricter.

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

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

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may nownominate themselves as candidates for the2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

Hello! Voting in the2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. Alleligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia 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 imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please reviewthe candidates and submit your choices on thevoting 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)[reply]

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

• AnRfC 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 newrequest 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.
• Followinga proposal, theedit 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 viaMediaWiki: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 the2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please reviewthe candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices onthe voting page.

Miscellaneous

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

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

• Arequest for comment asks whetherpartial 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.
• Aproposal 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 asuccessful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whoseredirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from thenew pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users toWikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines atWikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration

• Thefourth case on Palestine-Israel articles wasclosed. 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 beingthe entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather thanreasonably construed.
• Following the2019 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 theAdmin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

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 arequest 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 atWikipedia:Partial blocks.
• Therequest for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed withwide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

• Twinkle now supportspartial 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.[1]

Arbitration

• Following arecent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administratorsthat 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 the2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). Theconfirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automaticallycheck your eligibility to vote.
• The English Wikipedia has reachedsix million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

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 anRfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysopsmust not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather thanshould not.
• Arequest for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

• Following adiscussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there isno CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if thereis a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using yourTwinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous

• Following the2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards:BRPever,Krd,Martin Urbanec,MusikAnimal,Sakretsu,Sotiale, andTks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
• The 2020 appointees for theOmbudsman commission areAjraddatz andUzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.

A discussion is taking place as to whether the redirectBill Blythe IV should be deleted, kept, or retargeted. It will be discussed atWikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 March 23#Bill Blythe IV until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.Hog Farm (talk)02:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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 anongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

• There is a plan fornew requirements for user signatures. You cangive feedback.

Arbitration

• Following thebanning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committeeresolved to hold aArbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. A draft RfC has been posted atWikipedia: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 apilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. Thereport is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.

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 beenauthorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged atWP:GS/COVID19.
• Following arecent discussion on Meta-Wiki, theedit filter maintainer global group has been created.
• Arequest for comment has been proposed to create a newmain page editor usergroup.
• Arequest for comment has been proposed to make thebureaucrat activity requirements more strict.

Technical news

• TheEditing team has been working onthe talk pages project. You canreview 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, seeUser:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.

Miscellaneous

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

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

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

Arbitration

• Amotion was passed to enact a500/30 restriction onarticles 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.

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

• Arequest for comment is in progress to remove theT2 (template that misrepresents established policy)speedy deletion criterion.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

• Following thebanning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committeeresolved to hold anRfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted atWikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
• TheMedicine case wasclosed, with aremedy authorizingstandard discretionary sanctions forall discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.

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 openrequest for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
• Speedy deletion criterionT2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following arequest for comment.
• Speedy deletion criterionX2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following adiscussion.
• There is a proposal torestrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.

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 arequest for comment, the minimum length forsite ban discussions was increased to 72 hours, up from 24.
• Arequest for comment is ongoing to determine whetherpaid editorsmust orshould use thearticles for creation process.
• Arequest for comment is open to resolve inconsistencies between thedraftification andalternative to deletion processes.

Arbitration

• Arequest for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the2020 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
• An openrequest for comment asks whether active Arbitrators may serve on theTrust and Safety Case Review Committee orOmbudsman commission.

Thanks for uploadingFile:Teresa Teng.gif. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under aclaim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (seeour policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in anyarticles will be deleted after seven days, as described insection F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk)18:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

• Arequest for comment found consensus thatincubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended whendraftification is appropriate, namely1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

• The2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following arequest for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either theOmbuds Commission or theWMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committeepassed a motion implementing those resultsinto their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• TheUniversal Code of Conduct draft is open forcommunity review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to theInterim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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 nowauthorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotectionany article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by asockpuppet account orlogged-out sockpuppet, to be logged atWP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops willonce again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted tointerface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying adiscretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to useSpecial:CreateLocalAccount tocreate 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

• The2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able tonominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• TheAnti-harassment RfC has concluded with asummary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder thatstandard discretionary sanctions areauthorized 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).

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 arequest for comment in progress to either removeT3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as aspeedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the2021 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 regardingadministrators andanti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please reviewthe candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on thevoting page.

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 criterionT3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following arequest for comment.

Technical news

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

Arbitration

• Bymotion,standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarilyauthorizedfor all pages relating to theHorn 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 the2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee:Barkeep49,BDD,Bradv,CaptainEek,L235,Maxim,Primefac.

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

• Thestandard discretionary sanctions authorized forAmerican Politics wereamended by motion to coverpost-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). Theconfirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automaticallycheck your eligibility to vote.
• Wikipedia has now been around for20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

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

• Arequest for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• Arequest for comment is in progress to removeF7 (invalid fair-use claim)subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Arequest for comment seeks to grantpage movers thedelete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is atWikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• Arequest for comment asks if sysops mayplace the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is adiscussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article withPending Changesprotection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address withTwinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option tojust 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 atWP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have beena number ofreported issues withPending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• Bymotion, thediscretionary sanctions originally authorized under theGamerGate case arenow authorized under a newGender and sexuality case, with sanctionsauthorized 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.
• TheKurds and Kurdistan case wasclosed,authorizingstandard discretionary sanctions forthe topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards:AmandaNP,Operator873,Stanglavine,Teles, andWiki13.

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

Administrator changes

Alexandria •Happyme22 •RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following arequest 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 arequest for comment,page movers were granted thedelete-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 ajob queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very oldweb browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• Acommunity consultation on the Arbitration Committeediscretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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

Administrator changes

Enchanter •Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Followingan 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 groupoversight will be renamed tosuppress. This is fortechnical reasons. You can comment atT112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• Thecommunity consultation on the Arbitration Committeediscretionary 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.