User talk:Babajobu

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User:Babajobu/Archive — Preceding unsigned comment added by Serigala Sumatera (talkcontribs) 09:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

November Esperanza Newsletter[edit]

Program Feature: Admin Coaching (needs coaches!)
Admin Coaching needs coaches!!! If you are an administrator, or even a generally experienced user, do consider signing up to be a coach.

Admin Coaching, now being coordinated by HighwayCello, is a program for people who want help learning some of the more subtle aspects of Wikipedia policy and culture. People are matched with experienced users who are willing to offer coaching. The program is designed for people who have figured out the basics of editing articles; they're not newcomers any more, but they might want some help in learning new roles. In this way, Esperanza would help keep hope alive for Wikipedia because we would always be grooming the next generation of admins.

What's New?
The Tutorial Drive is a new Esperanza program! In an effort to make complicated processes on Wikipedia easier for everyone, Esperanza working to create and compile a list of tutorials about processes here on Wikipedia. Consider writing one!
A discussion on how Esperanza relates to the encyclopedia has been started; please add your thoughts.
Many thanks to MiszaBot, courtesy of Misza13, for delivering the newsletter.
  • The list of proposed programs has been updated, with some proposals being archived.
  • There is now a new program: the Tutorial Drive! Consider writing a tutorial on something you are good at doing on Wikipedia.
  • The suggestion of adding a cohesive look to all the Esperanza pages is being considered; join the discussion if you are interested!
  • In order to make a useful interlanguage welcome template, those involved in translation projects will be asked what English Wikipedia policies are most important and confusing to editors coming from other language Wikipedias.
  • A discussion of Esperanza's role in Wikipedia is being held, with all thoughts of all Esperanzians wanted!
  • Shreshth91 informed everyone that he will be leaving the Esperanza council as life is rather busy; his spot will be filled by the runner up from the last election, HighwayCello.
Signed...
Although having the newsletter appear on everyone's userpage is desired, this may not be ideal for everyone. If, in the future, you wish to receive a link to the newsletter, rather than the newsletter itself, you may add yourself to Wikipedia:Esperanza/Newsletter/Opt Out List.

John Zammit - why not deleted?[edit]

Hi there. I note this page remains on WP despite the unanimous verdict that it should be deleted in this AFD way back in February of this year [1]. I note you were the admin who closed the debate so I thought it might be helpful to come to you and point this out. Presumably it was an oversight. Thanks for your time. --SandyDancer 18:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I note the same user who created the John Zammit page (i.e. John Zammit himself!) also created this page for his friend, which has also survived. Speedy delete candidate? --SandyDancer 18:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tell the fucking Wikitruth[edit]

I'm convinced that the addage A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. applies to Wikipedia. You should join the exiled and quit trying to spray Febreeze on horse shit. Kade 23:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiWars - why I decided not to include it[edit]

I liked the article, it was a space thing. I have been trying to come to a "standard" on what to include and leave out - as not too long ago there weren't that many references in the news. I basically have been trying to include anything that is in major newspapers - even if it is not that interesting, and then based on room, adding other articles - I use alexa to help evaluate the "notablity" for lack of a better word of a source. When I checked Alexa for jewcy.com, on most days it didn't register. I know it was a close call for some of the citizendium links I included but since I don't have to write text to explain them - I just included them - also some editors have expressed an interest in knowing what is being said about Sanger's project.

Please continue to provide leads - as I find them most ueful - after Ral315 moves them today - you can add them direclty to User talk:Trödel/In the news into the table if you want --Trödel 22:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Slumpbuster[edit]

Hi there,

I stumbled across the article Slumpbuster today and found it unacceptable for Wikipedia and began to nominate for deletion, only to find it not deleted after a decision to delete it a month ago. Since you were the closing admin on the AfD, could you go ahead and delete it already?--Thomas.macmillan 21:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for help sorting this out[edit]

I think JDoorjam locked and redirected my user page to my user talk because he got pissed off I had a link to http://www.wikitruth.info there. Would you mind fixing that for me, assuming you're as honest as I used to know you, and assuming that I haven't been banned for telling Essjay that he's a lying sack of shit? Kade 05:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please join[edit]

Hello Babajobu! Due to the personal attacks and the "edit wars" during my attempts at wikifying the article, by multiple "exclusive" users, I had taken a break from editing the article. I thank you for your efforts, which were also reverted, and would like to receive more feedback on the talk page with possible suggestions to its remaining issues (I had already transferred it from a quote collection into an article). Hamid Dabashi is a respected scholar and it is somewhat surprising and even troubling that there is so much vanity around him, which could hurt his reputation. Thank you and best regards, gidonb 15:30, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow[edit]

Just read your toilet article! Great! Phgao 04:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gidonb at Rabin murder conspiracy is at it again[edit]

There was a new article called David Rutstein which is basically about the guy who pushed forward the rabin thing the past few years. I am sure that you have realized that gidonb is dead set against this. Please vote to keep David Rutstein article because it is worthyConspiracy Nutjob 21:57, 5 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Louis Epstein[edit]

You asked on your user page to be notified if Louis Epstein came back. He has done so in the last day or so, in connection with an article about himself. By the way, the link to his contributions on your user page no longer works; I'm guessing that's because the formatting for contributions links has changed since the last time Louis left. Special:Contributions/12.144.5.2 will work, however. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:44, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seasons Greetings[edit]

Wishing you the very best for the season - Guettarda 04:15, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

-- Addbot (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maen. K. A. (talk) 22:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Request for Participation in Wikipedia Research[edit]

Babajobu,

Your Request for Adminship (RfA) process was reviewed and studied by our research team at Carnegie Mellon University early in our project to gain insights into the process. We reviewed what voters discussed about your case, and what qualifications you brought to the table as a candidate. In total 50 cases were personally read and reviewed, and we based our further research questions in part on your case. Congraluations on being granted the Admin mop, and we are confident the group made the right decision in your case!

In continuing our research, I would like to personally invite you to participate in a survey we are conducting to get perspective from people who have participate in the RfA process. The survey will only take a few minutes of your time, and will aid furthering our understanding of online communities, and may assist in the development of tools to assist voters in making RfA evaluations. We are NOT attempting to spam anyone with this survey and are doing our best to be considerate and not instrusive in the Wikipedia community. The results of this survey are for academic research and are not used for any profit nor sold to any companies. We will also post our results back to the Wikipedia community.

This survey is part of an ongoing research project by students and faculty at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and headed by Professor Robert Kraut.


Take the survey


Thank you!

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free comment on my talk page.


CMUResearcher (talk) 15:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for File:Prada-adv-campaign.JPG[edit]

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Prada-adv-campaign.JPG. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use. Suggestions on how to do so can be found here.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Melesse (talk) 06:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We're recruiting art lovers![edit]

Archives of American Art Wikimedia Partnership - We need you!
Hi! I'm the Wikipedian In Residence at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and I'm recruiting Wikipedians who are passionate about art to participate in furthering art coverage on Wikipedia. I am planning contests and projects that will allow you access, no matter where you live, to the world's largest collection of archives related to American art. Please sign up to participate here, and I look forward to working with you! SarahStierch (talk) 00:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oversized Koran folio.jpg[edit]

Do you remember the matter of the picture deleted by an admin a while back? I've just stumbled over that, and learned that the guy wants to be steward. Everwhere else, unthinkable; on Wikipedia, common admin behaviour (pce).

Anyway, congrats for your comment on the RFC back then! --79.223.29.3 (talk) 21:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Joan Miró and Qrpedia[edit]

Hello! I've seen that are you are a member of the Wikiproject: Visual Arts and I would like to ask you for some help. The Wikipedia in Catalan have reached an agreement with the Joan Miró Foundation: They will include QRpedia codes next to the highlights of his upcoming exhibition about Joan Miró. It's the most important exhibit in the last 20 years, and has passed summer at Tate in London, this autumn will be in Barcelona, and then will go to NGA in Washington. The articles have been made in Catalan and are being translated into English, and I would like you to help us whether monitoring the translation, translating articles or expanding or translating them to other languages. The more languages ​​we have, the better the experience for the user. You can find more information about the Wikiproject here. Thank you in advance!.--Kippelboy (talk) 11:39, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please take note[edit]

Please take note of a discussion ("Wikipedia and its relationship to the outside world") about medical ELs and related issues. You may want to follow the links provided to learn more if you are so inclined. Thank you in advance. I'm not looking for more comments, as there have been many already, but you're welcome to add yours if you want to. Presto54 (talk) 06:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Information is not really dubious, the problem is much of it is sourced from radio materials rather than print and thus harder to reference. I'll work on building references, but take it in good faith for now that the information is on good authority. You also removed several sources added in recent entries to no real effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.2.240.145 (talk) 01:01, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]


MSU Interview[edit]

Dear Babajobu,

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


So a few things about the interviews:

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


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

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

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

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 04:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free rationale for File:Tiger-copy detail.JPG[edit]

Thanks for uploading or contributing to File:Tiger-copy detail.JPG. I notice the file page specifies that the file is being used under non-free content criteria, but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia is acceptable. Please go to the file description page, and edit it to include a non-free rationale.

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified the non-free rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New medical organization[edit]

Hi

I'm contacting you because, as a participant at Wikiproject Medicine, you may be interested in a new multinational non-profit organization we're forming at m:Wikimedia Medicine. Even if you don't want to be actively involved, any ideas you may have about our structure and aims would be very welcome on the project's talk page.

Our purpose is to help improve the range and quality of free online medical content, and we'll be working with like-minded organizations, such as the World Health Organization, professional and scholarly societies, medical schools, governments and NGOs - including Translators Without Borders.

Hope to see you there! --Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:15, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments would be appreciated at Talk:Adolf_Hitler's_vegetarianism#Requested_move. Nirvana2013 (talk) 16:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please help[edit]

Dear Babajobu, could you please check the talk page of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_Robinson_(bodybuilder) and help to achieve fairness in materials put on article about Robby Robinson? I would like to hear your opinion if you also support that within a couple of days an article about a famous bodybuilding legend turned out into an article about a ... I do not even have words. All the previous contributions were deleted, not only those from me, and new ones are presented so misleading that people who know Mr Robinson and his life and achievements will never believe this is an article about him. Thak you. RRWM (talk) 00:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia Library now offering accounts from Cochrane Collaboration (sign up!)[edit]

The Wikipedia Library gets Wikipedia editors free access to reliable sources that are behind paywalls. Because you are signed on as a medical editor, I thought you'd want to know about our most recent donation from Cochrane Collaboration.

  • Cochrane Collaboration is an independent medical nonprofit organization that conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions, which it then publishes in the Cochrane Library.
  • Cochrane has generously agreed to give free, full-access accounts to 100 medical editors. Individual access would otherwise cost between $300 and $800 per account.
  • If you are still active as a medical editor, come and sign up :)

Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 20:12, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've added your name there because you haven't edited in three months. —rybec 19:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right on -- Babajobu (talk) 19:00, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment[edit]

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity[edit]

Information icon Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in over one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. MadmanBot (talk) 00:30, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Help![edit]

Can you tell me some suggestions on how to be admin? Also, can you go over my edits to see if I am fit to be a admin? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doorknob747 (talkcontribs) 00:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of Adi Barkan for deletion[edit]

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Adi Barkan is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adi Barkan until a consensus is reached, and anyone 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.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Arthistorian1977 (talk) 07:34, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Words or Numerals for Centuries[edit]

Hello. Several years ago, you were involved in a discussion at the Village Pump about this issue, and I think you had the right position. I've made some revisions to the MOS in accordance with that view, and, assuming you still hold the same opinion, I'd appreciate your comments on the talk page. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 21:29, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed protection[edit]

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

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

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

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

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins[edit]

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A new user right for New Page Patrollers[edit]

Hi Babajobu.

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

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

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

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open![edit]

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

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

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

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017[edit]

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

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirateSchwede66K6kaEaldgythFerretCyberpower678Mz7PrimefacDodger67
BriangottsJeremyABU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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.

13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message[edit]

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

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

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

ArbCom 2018 election voter message[edit]

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

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018[edit]

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

Administrator changes

readded Al Ameer sonRandykittySpartaz
removed BosonDaniel J. LeivickEfeEsanchez7587Fred BauderGarzoMartijn HoekstraOrangemike

Interface administrator changes

removedDeryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

Obituaries


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

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

  • Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
  1. At least 8 characters in length
  2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
  3. Different from their username
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
  • Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
  • {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – February 2019[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added EnterpriseyJJMC89
readded BorgQueen
removed Harro5Jenks24GraftR. Baley

Interface administrator changes

removedEnterprisey

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – March 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
    • paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
    • checkuser-en-wp@wikipedia.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


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

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019[edit]

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

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2019 special circular[edit]

Icon of a white exclamation mark within a black triangle
Administrators must secure their accounts

The Arbitration Committee may require a new RfA if your account is compromised.

View additional information

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:25, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)[edit]

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

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

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous


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

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed AndonicConsumed CrustaceanEnigmamanEuryalusEWS23HereToHelpNv8200paPeripitusStringTheory11Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

removed Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous


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

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed 28bytesAd OrientemAnsh666BeeblebroxBoing! said ZebedeeBU Rob13Dennis BrownDeorDoRDFloquenbeam1Flyguy649Fram2GadfiumGB fanJonathunderKusmaLectonarMoinkMSGJNickOd MishehuRamaSpartazSyrthissTheDJWJBscribe
1Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
2Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous


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

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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


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

The Signpost: 30 August 2019[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added BradvChetsfordIzno
readded FloquenbeamLectonar
removed DESiegelJake WartenbergRjanagTopbanana

CheckUser changes

removed CallaneccLFaraoneThere'sNoTime

Oversight changes

removed CallaneccFoxHJ MitchellLFaraoneThere'sNoTime

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

Backlog

Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Coordinator

A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.

This month's refresher course

Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.

Deletion tags

Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.

Paid editing

Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
  • Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
  • Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
  • A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools

Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.

Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.

Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.

DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2019[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure![edit]

Hi Babajobu! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 14:04, Sunday, October 6, 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2019[edit]

New Page Review newsletter November 2019[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 819 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools
  • It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
  • It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes
  • Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
  • Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.


To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Arbitration


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

ArbCom 2019 election voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:04, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2019[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added EvergreenFirToBeFree
removed AkhilleusAthaenaraJohn VandenbergMelchoirMichaelQSchmidtNeilNYoungamerican😂

CheckUser changes

readded Beeblebrox
removed Deskana

Interface administrator changes

readded Evad37

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

New Page Review newsletter December 2019[edit]

A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days
Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 Rosguill (talk) 47,395 Patrol Page Curation
2 Onel5969 (talk) 41,883 Patrol Page Curation
3 JTtheOG (talk) 11,493 Patrol Page Curation
4 Arthistorian1977 (talk) 5,562 Patrol Page Curation
5 DannyS712 (talk) 4,866 Patrol Page Curation
6 CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) 3,995 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 3,812 Patrol Page Curation
8 Boleyn (talk) 3,655 Patrol Page Curation
9 Ymblanter (talk) 3,553 Patrol Page Curation
10 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 3,522 Patrol Page Curation

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 December 2019[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 27 January 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [2]

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous



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

Request to import Template:MongolUnicode to Fanon Wiki[edit]

I'm SkyGuy, a member of the wikia community. I spend a lot of time on Fanon Wiki, including making fictional places. One of those fictional places is based off ancient Mongolia and uses Mongolian language, but traditional Mongolian script. I would like to have the MongolUnicode template on Fanon wiki to make the script vertical like it's supposed to be, but the user I asked wasn't able to do it and I lack the programmatical know-how to do it myself. Do you think you, or someone you know, could import the template to Fanon wiki? I would be very grateful if it could be done. --SkyGuy94 (talk) 00:02, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources
Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 March 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous



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

The Signpost: 29 March 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 26 April 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed GnangarraKaisershatnerMalcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

readded Callanecc

Oversight changes

readded HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 31 May 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added CaptainEekCreffettCwmhiraeth
removed Anna FrodesiakBuckshot06RonhjonesSQL

CheckUser changes

removed SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

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

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

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources
  • A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
  • Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
  • A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
  • Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 June 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


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

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added Red Phoenix
readded EuryalusSQL
removed JujutacularMonty845RettetastMadchester

Oversight changes

readded GB fan
removed KeeganOpabinia regalisPremeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news


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

The Signpost: 2 August 2020[edit]

Wikidata?[edit]

What are your thoughts about using Wikidata items in Wikipedia, especially in articles on law?

Wikidata seems to me to be quite useful in that I can create a Wikidata item for a source I want, e.g., Judge Julie A. Robinson (18 June 2018), Findings of fact and conclusions of law in Fish v. Kobach (PDF), Wikidata Q97940156. Then each time I want to cite that source, it's as easy as finding it in Wikidata and using Template:Cite Q, as, e.g., {{cite Q|Q97940156}}<!-- Findings of fact and conclusions of law in Fish v. Kobach (Q97940156) -->.

Creating a Wikidata item is more work than creating a single citation. However, if I cite that source in more than one article, I think I get better, more complete and more easily maintained references by using Wikidata. This is particularly true with link rot: If one web link is no longer valid, only the Wikidata entry needs to be changed to correct all the references that use that Wikidata entry. Without that, the link would have to be fixed separately in every article that cites that source.

I'm currently working to improve the Wikipedia article on Fish v. Kobach. This case had two appeals (that I know of) plus a third just filed a couple of days ago. It occurs to me that it might be good to have one Wikidata entry for the case in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas and one more for each appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit plus separate Wikidata entries for each document that someone wants to cite separately.

I've asked about this on Wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat#legal case with multiple appeals. Sadly, I have not gotten a reply there, and I felt a need to also ask here.

Comments? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 August 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added Eddie891
removed AngelaJcw69Just ChillingPhilg88Viajero

CheckUser changes

readded SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration


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

The Signpost: 27 September 2020[edit]

The Signpost: 27 September 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added AjpolinoLuK3
readded Jackmcbarn
removed Ad OrientemHarejLidLomnMentoz86Oliver PereiraXJaM
renamed There'sNoTimeTheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

Administrators' newsletter – November 2020[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 1 November 2020[edit]

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:18, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed AndrwscAnetodeGoldenRingJzGLinguistAtLargeNehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

added Izno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol December Newsletter[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

A chart of the 2020 New Page Patrol Queue

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 DannyS712 bot III (talk) 67,552 Patrol Page Curation
2 Rosguill (talk) 63,821 Patrol Page Curation
3 John B123 (talk) 21,697 Patrol Page Curation
4 Onel5969 (talk) 19,879 Patrol Page Curation
5 JTtheOG (talk) 12,901 Patrol Page Curation
6 Mcampany (talk) 9,103 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 6,401 Patrol Page Curation
8 Mccapra (talk) 4,918 Patrol Page Curation
9 Hughesdarren (talk) 4,520 Patrol Page Curation
10 Utopes (talk) 3,958 Patrol Page Curation
Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2020[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


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

The Signpost: 31 January 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021[edit]

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 February 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added TJMSmith
removed Boing! said ZebedeeHiberniantearsLear's FoolOnlyWGFinley

Interface administrator changes

added AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 28 March 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed AlexandriaHappyme22RexxS

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021[edit]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed EnchanterCarlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

removed Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration


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

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added AshleyyoursmileLess Unless
removed HusondMattWadeMJCdetroitCariocaVague RantKingboykThunderboltzGwen GaleAniMateSlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration


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

The Signpost: 27 June 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration


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

The Signpost: 25 July 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 29 August 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

readded Jake Wartenberg
removed EmperorViridian Bovary
renamed AshleyyoursmileViridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021[edit]

New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello Babajobu,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.


To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

November 2021 backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive
  • On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 01:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 29 November 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed A TrainBerean HunterEpbr123GermanJoeSanchomMysid

Technical news

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

Arbitration



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

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled[edit]

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:05, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 December 2021[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

How we will see unregistered users[edit]

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 January 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 27 February 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

Hi :).

As you wanted some feedback on the pending-changes protection you used on said article, here is my take: When you applied the protection in 2019, the last disruptive edit was, afaics, in 2015. Yes, all IP and new account edits had been more or less attacks, but the frequency was so so low. Just going by the explanation for when to apply pending changes, this wouldn't really have qualified imho. Pending changes is used to suppress vandalism and certain other recurrent nuisances, and I don't see the recurrence of vandalism edits as frequent enough to have warranted protection. As the article isn't heavily edited overall, there is of course no harm in protecting it, but I still cling to an encyclopedia that everyone can edit, and also to being old-fashioned. I have been around a quite a long time too, and for me cases like these still are: just watchlist and revert. Cheers and happy editing. Lectonar (talk) 10:45, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Much thanks for this very helpful input. I'll follow your very sensible take. Babajobu (talk) 12:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 March 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

New administrator activity requirement[edit]

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

  1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
  2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 April 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


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

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue March 2022

Hello Babajobu,

At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.

Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.

In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 819 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 864 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.

This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.

If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 May 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration


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

New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue June 2022

Hello Babajobu,

Backlog status

At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.

Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]

In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).

While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).

Backlog drive

A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.

TIP – New school articles

Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.

Misc

There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:

Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 14076 articles, as of 10:00, 29 March 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot

There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.

Reminders
  • Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
  • If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
  • To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Notes
  1. ^ not including another ~6,000 redirects
  2. ^ The number of weekly reviews reported in the NPP feed includes redirects, which are not included in the backlog we primarily track.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:01, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 June 2022[edit]

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on![edit]

New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 July, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 20:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022[edit]

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 1 August 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022[edit]

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

Administrator changes

readded Valereee
removed Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • CapitalistroadsterSamsara

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022[edit]

New Page Review queue August 2022

Hello Babajobu,

Backlog status

After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.

Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.

Coordination
MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
Open letter to the WMF
The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
TIP - Reviewing by subject
Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
New reviewers
The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
Reminders
  • Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
  • If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
  • To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:23, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NPP message[edit]

Hi Babajobu,

Invitation

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 August 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | October 2022 backlog drive
  • On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 21:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 September 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

  • There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
  • Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
  • Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
  • This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.

Backlog:

Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 31 October 2022[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 28 November 2022[edit]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:26, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Black Irish" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Black Irish and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 November 29#Black Irish until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. MB 01:41, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022[edit]

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

CheckUser changes

removed TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

removed TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 1 January 2023[edit]

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders
  • Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
  • There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
  • Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
  • If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
  • To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 16 January 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

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

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

The Signpost: 4 February 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 20 February 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 9 March 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 20 March 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 03 April 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration


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

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
  • There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 8 May 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 22 May 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 5 June 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous


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

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

The Signpost: 19 June 2023[edit]

New pages patrol needs your help![edit]

New pages awaiting review as of June 30th, 2023.

Hello Babajobu,

The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:

Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added Novem Linguae
removed

Bureaucrat changes

removed MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

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

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

The Signpost: 3 July 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 17 July 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 1 August 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added Firefangledfeathers
removed

Interface administrator changes

added Novem Linguae

Technical news

Arbitration


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

The Signpost: 15 August 2023[edit]

The Signpost: 31 August 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | October 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Articles will earn 3x as many points compared to redirects.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 16 September 2023[edit]

New pages patrol newsletter[edit]

Hello Babajobu,

New Page Review article queue, March to September 2023

Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!

October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.

PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.

Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.

Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.

Reminders:

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 3 October 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

  • Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 23 October 2023[edit]

November Articles for creation backlog drive[edit]

Hello Babajobu:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 2000 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 6 November 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023[edit]

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

Administrator changes

added 0xDeadbeef
readded Tamzin
removed Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

added Pppery
removed

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 20 November 2023[edit]

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message[edit]

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

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

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 December 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

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

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

New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive[edit]

New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
  • On 1 January 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Each review will earn 1 point.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:09, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 December 2023[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024[edit]

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 10 January 2024[edit]

The Signpost: 31 January 2024[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024[edit]

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

CheckUser changes

removed Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

removed

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 13 February 2024[edit]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Miscellaneous


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

The Signpost: 2 March 2024[edit]