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An important message about renaming users

Dear Avraham,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Thanks, Keegan. -- Avi (talk) 20:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Rabbis

Dear Avi,

Please take part in this discussion: [1]. To be honest, no one is as bothered about adding a second rabbi as you, so if you will not suggest any ideas and push it... no one else will bother (look, there is no comments).

We agreed to add another rabbi, but please help with the whole discussion and ideas thing. Mr. Sort It Out (talk) 14:04, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Certainly, and thank you for the note. However, I could not respond most of Saturday, obviously, and much of the next 20 days I am unable to comment, so I understand if you move on without me, although I'd appreciate any patience you care to show. -- Avi (talk) 23:51, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

User:Avraham/AdminRblock

Hello Avraham, I currently use your userbox User:Avraham/AdminRblock, however I don't want to inherit the noindex setting anymore, do you mind having this removed? (Trying to avoid unnecessary forks). Thanks, — xaosflux ^Talk 02:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Me again, I noincluded the noindex on that page, if you want this anyway of course revert, then I will fork this to another page to not include it. Thanks, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:49, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

No problem; thanks for the update. -- Avi (talk) 19:37, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

OTRS issue which could use your help

I am working with moonriddengirl to clean up about 1100 old OTRS tickets with the wrong template. Some are easy, some are challenging. One is in Hebrew. Could I talk you into taking a look?

My status report is here

The specific item is in Case 10 Talk:Gilead_Sher--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:49, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I'll look at it, but may not be able to get to it until Sunday. -- Avi (talk) 17:44, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Just realized the timing was bad. Sorry. It's from 2010 so the usual deadline comment is even more in force.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:45, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

The attached PDF provides CC-BY-SA for both the wording and the image (now in use) for the articles from the subject himself. Should be good to go. -- Avi (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Kosher tax (antisemitic canard) again

Nagle has undone your edit at Kosher tax (antisemitic canard), claiming his edit is "per Avraham". Perhaps he has understood your intent better than me. Could you please clarify for us? Jayjg ^(talk) 17:48, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the friendly notice. -- Avi (talk) 20:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

2014 Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's speech at UN

HI! We met on the saturday sunday article. The Kirchner entry is sort of interesting, with regard to the article per se and its background, basically its Iran state propaganda on the way to the main page (compare Template:Did you know nominations/2014 Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's speech at UN). Some unvoluntary funny aspects with regard to Obama having a shine on Kirchners looks, but not listening to her oratory, less funny with the notions on the Buenos Aires bombings and alleged fringe theories. I went for AFD finally and asked to have Iranian Press TV being blacklisted, your feedback is invited. Serten (talk) 03:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:CHU

If you are fixing 'crats' to 'global renamers', I think WP:CHUS' "bureaucrat note" template, editnotice on CHUS, {{Renameuser2}}'s (Ping user) template should be fixed. — Revi 10:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

You're correct in that there are many more areas that need fixing; I started with the low-hanging fruit. -- Avi (talk) 22:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Question about edit on WP article

Avraham, Shalom. Two days ago, I made an edit on a WP article entitled Cyclamen persicum. I added the section entitled "Plant properties," now changed to "Uses." In it, I had written the sentence: "...The Bedouins of the land of Israel used to collect the root, and after grating it, would mix it with lime and sprinkle it over the surface of lakes or other large bodies of water known to contain fish," but another Wiki editor came along and changed the name "Israel" to "Palestine." I wanted to know if this is deemed proper procedure on Wikipedia, i.e., not to use the name "Israel" when referring to this country and to ignore, as it were, the political reality on the ground, or perhaps it is because the reference to the Bedouins there occurred during the British Mandate? Just curious.-Davidbena (talk) 13:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

If it was banned prior to the formation of the state of Israel, then it would be Mandatory Palestine, probably. Why don't you just change it to "The Bedouins used to…" and sidestep the political morass? -- Avi (talk) 16:33, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Avi. I'll consider doing that.Davidbena (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Go to article "Bayt Nattif" at the Talk-Page there (Last section)

User:Avraham, Shalom. One of our WP co-editors seems to be pursuing a political agenda bent on defaming Israel by its action in the winter of 1948, when I have insisted that she remain neutral, and not to politicize the situation. Specifically, the person prefers to mention Bayt Nattif of October 1948 as a "Palestinian-Arab village," when I propose that it is far better to simply write "Arab village," since in October of 1948 Bayt Nattif was then under the direct governance of the new government of Israel, based on the partition plan relegated to Israeli and Jordanian authorities by the dissolved British Mandate. To suggest that Bayt Nattif was, in October of 1948, a "Palestinian-Arab village" is to suggest a sovereign governmental body by the name of Palestine given charge over the village's affairs when it was actually the new State of Israel that had been given charge over its affairs. To avoid this seemingly contentious issue, I have suggested keeping the introductory lines neutral in accordance with WP policy of WP:NPOV and by simply writing "Arab village." (For a greater summary, go to WP article, Bayt Nattif, the Talk Page, bottom section). My disputant has also filed a formal complaint at Arbitration. Looking for your advice.Davidbena (talk) 00:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Curious request

Hi Avraham. Could you please take a look at User talk:IZAK#History of Organized Jewish Wikipedians. What do you make of it? Thanks. IZAK (talk) 23:26, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Bizzare. -- Avi (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Variance (journal)

The article Variance (journal) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Non-notable journal. Not indexed in any selective databases (not even the relatively "easy" Scopus), no independent sources. Does not meet WP:NJournals or WP:GNG.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Randykitty (talk) 11:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Correct. -- Avi (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Advice

Hello,

I'd like your advice on this article:

Ebla tablets

Some sources have been deleted.

--92slim (talk) 19:22, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

If User:Attar-Aram syria left the details in the sub-articles, then I believe that is OK, as there is a link to the articles and we follow summary style. If you believe that paragraph is important enough for the main article, you should make a case for that on the article's talk page. -- Avi (talk) 01:25, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

"Where"

In this edit, you wrote "Where" with a capital initial "W" rather than a lower-case "w", as if it were the beginning of a new sentence. I've seen zillions of people do that in Wikipedia articles and on math.stackexchange.com and elsewhere on the internet. It's baffling. Can you explain why that is done? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:36, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I think it is due to considering the end of the equation as the end of the paragraph or sentence, and the lack of a period is diw to the awkwardness of having it in the LaTeX or free-floating at the beginning of a line. It probably would be best to put the grammar in the LaTeX block, and then use the proper capitalization. By all means, please feel tree to correct it if you think it is necessary. -- Avi (talk) 15:14, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Actuary

Hi Avi. Please see Talk:Actuary#FAR. Let's discuss. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 17:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll try and get to it this Sunday. -- Avi (talk) 16:23, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Avi ... I took a nasty spill down the stairs and am in bed on ice, so my edits are gibberish! Ping me in a few days and I will catch up there ... wish I could be more help, but I just read one of my posts and I don't know how you can decipher it :) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Oy vey! Feel better, and forget about anything else besides recuperating! -- Avi (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Pouring oil on troubled waters

Hi,
Why did you move Oily water separator? As far as I can tell, the new title fails our naming policy, and there are no sources whatsoever that use the new name. Incidentally, OWS is not unique to marine applications - the same OWS technologies are applied to other use cases on dry land. bobrayner (talk) 23:34, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Request from the article's main contributor who intends to expand on the different types of OWS. -- Avi (talk) 13:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Request for Assistance

User:Avraham, I'm in need of your assistance. Hopefully, you can be impartial and see through all that has been happening here. There is a WP article entitled Az-Zakariyya that I tried to make revisions to, by adding the current Israeli data about the village (now a Jewish Moshav, but formerly an Arab village). The author of that article (an Arab) disagreed that I add any current status about the village (such as current population stats, photographs, etc.) and so I desisted from doing so. See history of page. Since there was a second article written about the same Moshav (namely, Zekharia, this time written by a Jew but much shorter in scope), I decided to work on his article and to bring it up to par by enhancing it and carrying over some of the information found in the other article, but improving it and deleting derogatory statements about Israel. Now, the same (Arab) editor is deleting my edits on Zekharia. I have brought this matter to your attention since you are an administrator. If you wish to know the complete matter and what has so far transpired between me and the other editor, you may wish to see the Talk page on Az-Zakariyya, under the section: "Merge." I would hope that you can help solve our dispute, but more importantly, that the editor in question does not continue to disrupt my editing, just as I would not disrupt another person's editing.Davidbena (talk) 01:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I may take a look, but I have significantly withdrawn from Palestine/Israel conflict related issues due to burnout. Wikipedia sadly mirrors reality in that the politics outweigh the facts, for better or for ill. -- Avi (talk) 15:22, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Avi. Anyway, I see that the editor I had spoken about has ceased vandalizing my edits. We'll just see how the situation develops. Be well.Davidbena (talk) 18:21, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

voltron oversight

Would you please consider oversight revdel and log delete for the following issue. The rev del request is outlined at the bottom of this revdel admin's talk page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:5_albert_squareHoiospolloisius (talk) 05:09, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Unless it is the IP of a named user who accidentally edited whilst logged out, I do not believe it is eligible for suppression or rev deletion. The IP itself resolves to a large-enough area to prevent the identification of any one person. If there more information which you feel cannot be shared on-wiki, please use the OS Team E-mail Link. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 17:55, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Mark Adler for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mark Adler 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/Mark Adler (2nd nomination) 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. Rnickel (talk) 19:05, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. -- Avi (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Workshopping bureaucrat activity requirements

(Message to all bureaucrats)

There is an ongoing discussion about implementing some kind of standards for administrative and bureaucrat activity levels; and activity requirements for bureaucrats have been explored several times in the past. I've prepared a draft addition to Wikipedia:Bureaucrats that would require at least one bureaucratic action every five years to retain the bureaucrat permission.

In the past, I've been hesitant of such proposals but I believe that if the bureaucrat group as a whole is seen to be actively engaged, the community may be more willing to grant additional tasks to the position.

Please let me know your thoughts. I'm not sure if this actually applies to any of us, but if you have not acted as a bureaucrat in over five years, you might consider requesting removal of the permission or otherwise signalling that you intend to return to bureaucrat activity. –xeno^talk 14:22, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. -- Avi (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

FYI: bureaucrat discussion opened

Message to most bureaucrats

A bureaucrat chat has been opened by Maxim at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Rich Farmbrough 2/Bureaucrat discussion.

Wikipedia:Bureaucrat discussion suggests notifying bureaucrats on their talk page as well as BN, hence this courtesy note. –xeno^talk 16:44, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

• Totally unrelated: Avi, I'm not sure if you're aware, but this page has been semi-protected for quite some time. Still necessary? –xeno^talk 16:44, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Removing the semiprotection on my user/talk pages has been tried before (check the logs). The last time it was tried, it was restored rather shortly due to incessant vandalism. If you are willing to keep an eye on it, you can try again, although I am not that hopeful -- Avi (talk) 13:45, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Best to leave it, then. –xeno^talk 15:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Bureaucrat discussion notification

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cyberpower678/Bureaucrat discussion

I would welcome input from other bureaucrats in relation to the outcome of this RfA.
Many thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) for WJBscribe (talk) 11:10, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note; sorry I couldn't attend, but it was Shabbos. -- Avi (talk) 03:57, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library needs you!

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Send on behalf of The Wikipedia Library using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 14:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Can you lock this account?

Hello,

I'm not sure of the best place to ask this so please forgive me if I'm in the wrong place. I blocked this user before for being a sock of User: John Daker. This is long term abuse that has been ongoing for years.

I've blocked the account but there is an LTA for this user which says that any socks must be globally locked. You can find the LTA here. Are you please able to help with this? If not please tell me where I should be raising this. Thanks :)--5 albert square (talk) 04:24, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

I've locked the account. In general, the best place to request these kinds of actions is on m:Steward requests/Global, so that all stewards can see it. -- Avi (talk) 14:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Bureaucrat discussion notification (Liz)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Liz/Bureaucrat discussion

I would welcome input from other bureaucrats in relation to the outcome of this RfA.
Many thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) for WJBscribe (talk) 12:02, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 14:58, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

It's not fair, I didn't get one....

Enjoy that Tahitian holiday! ;-) Risker (talk) 15:14, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Just wanted to say thanks for your discussion on the bureaucrat chat and for handling it admirably. Andrevan@ 02:57, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Andrevan, and the feeling is mutual. Knowing that all of us are working towards the same goal and have the best interests of the project at heart, certainly helps us to be able to disagree about topics whilst maintaining respect, civility, and downright collegiality. I do hope though that the next dozen RfXs are either 200:3 or 3:200 . -- Avi (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Well done

		The Bureaucrat's Barnstar
		Time and time again, the bureaucrats of en-wiki demonstrate their levelheadedness and expertise. Like an anesthesiologist in an operating room, you spend most of your time screwing around reading a magazine, but stand ready to spring into action when needed, only to fade into the background once your important work is done. Or perhaps that's more like Batman? Whatever your preferred metaphor, I am consistently impressed by the bureaucrat corps. Thank you for your service. HiDrNick! 12:46, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, HiDrNick. It is an honour and a privilege to be entrusted by the community with this (hopefully rare but) necessary task, and we strive to repay the community's trust in us withe the gravity and import it deserves. That being said, can y'all groove us a few fast balls for the next few months, PLEASE?!?! -- Avi (talk) 14:27, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Shaykh sudais

First of all who are you to tell me. Abd second the information you have is wrong so you are givig false information and another thing shaykh sudais is not salafi but deobandi because i am a student of his so i know what is truth Abdulkarim900 (talk) 13:56, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello Abdulkarim900, and thank you for reaching out to me on my talk page. The very first thing I believe you need to understand more deeply is that if you wish to edit Wikipedia, you must agree to abide by its rules and that ignoring these rules may result in a revocation of your editing privileges. The policies and guidelines which I would highly recommend you focus on are the five pillars, especially the one about what it means to edit from a neutral point of view. As respects your statement regarding your being a student of his, that may be all well and good, but on Wikipedia there is the concept of verifiability, not truth. Because we have so many people, and because we allow anyone to edit regardless of their background, education, etc. we have instituted the requirement that pretty much everything needs to be backed up in verifiable and reliable sources; regardless of what each and every one of us knows is correct. This is frustrating, I understand and speak from personal experience as well, but the result is a better encyclopaedia than we would have if everyone was posting unsupported truths willy-nilly. All that being said, I will still continue to do my best to protect the integrity of the project by ensuring that edits and editors are in accord with policies and guidelines. Thank you, and I hope that you as you better understand how Wikipedia functions you will be able to contribute beneficially and effectively. -- Avi (talk) 14:21, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Ok sorry about that i didnt know but sometimes people tell lies and even if you go on youtube you can see he visits daruloom deoband and he praises it another thing if we apread false then we will be asked about it on the day of judgment — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abdulkarim900 (talk • contribs) 14:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Request Use of Checkuser

Hi, BMK has accused me of sockpuppeteering the account CitySide189 on the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Page under the section "help." I would like to clear up the accusation as many are being thrown at me right now so I request that you use the Checkuser feature to see if the IPs match. I give you permission but I dont know about Cityside. If you agree to do this, please post your findings on the "Help" thread on that section of the Admins noticeboard. Thank You The Editor of All Things Wikipedia ^《Talk》 04:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia checkuser policy is to not perform self-request checks on project members; sorry. -- Avi (talk) 06:38, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

My RfA Crat Chat

Hello, Avi,

I just wanted to thank you and all of the bureaucrats who participated in the bureaucrat chat after my RfA was closed. There were a lot of votes and comments to go through along with the enormous amount of content on the crat chat talk page. I appreciate the time and care the bureaucrats took to consider all of the arguments and come to a consensus.

I never imagined that my RfA would be at all contentious or have such a big turnout. Although I hope you don't have many close call RfAs in the future, I know if you do, that Wikipedia's bureaucrats will find their way to a decision. Thank you again for your work in bringing this RfA to a close. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:40, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the kind words, Liz. -- Avi (talk) 20:04, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

As a 'crat that appreciates mathematics :)

For whatever meta discussion 'crats are having on consensus. Two charts of recent closures (I added the second Y-axis for approval percent to display on same graph):

Liz RfA Successful

Cyberpower678 No Consensus

I see you have Anscombe's quartet on your user page :). Not sure the above are useful for the 'crat discussion on RfA consensus determination. It struck my how strong the R² correlation was in Liz's RfA using a linear trend but I'm not sure we can call a week's worth of !votes normal or any kind of distribution that can be tested. !votes aren't randomly distributed in time. I wonder if randomly extending the window would change it as there are tails in both RfA's above that makes the closing time more significant than it probably should be. I guess my only recommendation is to eliminate hard closes to prevent the tails and last minute votes. They have undue influence it seems (even without the graph, people can see the percentage moving). It would be nice if a 98% goodness of fit could be trusted (if so, Liz would have fallen below discretionary in less than two days or the trend would have changed and goodness of fit with it). I expect all close RfA's will have a negative trend but strong goodness of fit coupled with a large negative trend should at least play out until either the goodness of fit or the trend stops. I dunno as it's a dynamic process but one was successful, the other was not and I wasn't comfortable with saying one had "more" consensus than the other. --DHeyward (talk) 06:25, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I supported Liz's RfA and so the contrast in outcomes you mention did give me pause at first as I would not want her to be promoted unfairly over another user aspiring to adminship, but there are some key differences. The biggest difference is that Cyberpower withdrew during the crat discussion and so the decision was essentially taken out of their hands. Seems to me that concerns about Cyberpower were also more legitimate as they focused on the editor's familiarity with policy and the noticeboards with the content concerns being even more serious. One more important point is that she received 200 votes in support in an RFA that saw a level of participation not seen in years. All of those are factors to consider and they all favor Liz over Cyberpower.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 03:53, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Cyberpower's RfA was failing in the discussion. His withdrawal made the closure easier but it didn't change the outcome as it was after discussion which is why it ended as "No Consensus" instead of withdrawn. There are closes that are "Withdrawn" and this wasn't one of them. My only takeaway was the hard close date invited tails. A 72 hour window after 7 days would likely end the tails and hand-wringing in both cases. It's very hard to make the case for consensus with such a strong correlation in a linear trend as in Liz's RfA. In fact it's the opposite of consensus. It means that it hasn't found it's random mean. At some some point, the trend will change or the correlation will change or both. Strong trend and strong correlation, however, can't really be interpreted as anything but heading towards a consensus, not at a consensus. RfA in general has ranges that are generally non-discretionary and an additional day or two would have shown whether trend was continuing. Divining consensus from such a strong and correlated trend line is possible but not through truncation by ending the RfA. That trend line was like a filling a leaky tank with petrol, watch the gauge decline at a constant rate from full to 3/4 tank, and in ostrich fashion declare the leak to be false/faulty, the tank full, and the trip is a go - all fixed by simply not watching the gauge. Cyberpower was much more arguably a case for discretion, at least mathematically with a weak correlation to trend. Liz's RfA should have remained open until that trend disappeared or the correlation went down. My recommendation would be to remove hard closes and randomly close within 72 hours. It's easy to draw lines after !votes have been cast but when it's closed with such strong trend and correlation, there is no way to properly discern community consensus using that sample. --DHeyward (talk) 21:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Help de-escalating at Talk:The Pirate Bay?

Hi Avi,

Would you mind taking a look at the RfC at Talk:The Pirate Bay? The situation has been getting more and more heated and I think a more experienced editor, particularly a crat, would be able to help defuse the situation better than me. I don't have much experience in deescalating situations, and the more involved I am the harder it seems to be to calm things down. Whether you choose to wear your crat hat or not, I'm sure any added participation would be helpful.

Thanks, Wugapodes (talk) 00:57, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Implementation of Wikipedia:Bureaucrats#Bureaucrat activity requirements

Following a community discussion ending August 2015, consensus was reached to remove the bureaucrat permissions of users who have not participated in bureaucrat activity for three years.

“ Bureaucrats are expected to exercise the duties granted by their role while remaining cognizant of relevant community standards concerning their tasks. In addition to the "Inactive bureaucrat accounts" requirements, if a bureaucrat does not participate in bureaucrat activity for over three years, their bureaucrat permissions may be removed. The user must be notified on their talk page and by email one month before the removal, and again and a few days prior to the removal. If the user does not return to bureaucrat activity, another bureaucrat may request the removal of permissions at meta:Steward requests/Permissions. Permissions removed for not meeting bureaucrat activity requirements may be re-obtained through a new request for bureaucratship. ”

To assist with the implementation of this requirement, please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrat activity. Modeled after Wikipedia:Inactive administrators and similar to that process, the log page will be created on 1 September 2015. Bureaucrats who have not met the activity requirements as of that date will be notified by email (where possible) and on their talk page to advise of the pending removal.

If the notified user does not return to bureaucrat activity and the permissions are removed, they will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFB. Removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon the affected user in any way.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. –xeno^talk

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Noted. -- Avi (talk) 03:54, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Well....

...I left for dinner, and the discussion has inevitably moved on, but I felt like your comment was worth responding to. I was more referring to the edit summaries in which Malik called Brad a liar; that certainly doesn't rise to the level of revdel. I didn't realize that the other thing was in an edit summary. I certainly wouldn't have a problem with revdeling that edit summary, though if it were in the body of the comment and there were many intervening edits, I would think twice before mangling the page history to revdel it myself. Different strokes for different folks, I guess; I generally tend to be of the opinion that we should use our tools as sparingly as possible, and it's not gonna cause much harm to leave it buried in the edit history once it's been removed off the live page. Of course, there's never been much guidance about the revdel criteria, has there? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:46, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Understood, which is part of the reason I prefaced as I did. I'm glad we basically agree :). As for guidance, agreed on its dearth, but being human beings and not bots, I think we are allowed to exhibit some individuality within the project's norms. Thanks! -- Avi (talk) 03:55, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Good grief!

implying on the Second Intifada page that spaghetti lacks a logical flow ('Causes are complex, multi-faceted, evolve over time, and can sometimes exhibit the logical flow of a bowl of spaghetti') suggests to me that I must send your wife detailed cooking instructions on how to make the stuff (perhaps with a batch of my garden's tomatoes for the sugo) on how to flavor a bowl of the stuff with a Wittgensteinian cogency! Best Nishidani (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

-- Avi (talk) 20:33, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Different, but related, point to the above

Hi, Avi:

First, just to clarify, and per what I wrote over at the desysop page, I'm fully on Malik's side on this. Don't think otherwise for a second.

That said, these days I just about entirely avoid Israel-Palestine topics because they're so toxic. The couple of times I have tried to offer my services as a neutral negotiator, I got my head handed to me. It's a problem in general. But I think even reasonable pro-Israel editors have a very hard time just keeping balance on those articles these days, and that's a tremendous problem, too.

Separately, on purely Jewish-religious topics, I worked very hard a couple of years back to get Shemini Atzeret into GA shape. Then a couple of very experienced editors who know nothing about Jewish law decided that the article didn't fit their idea of what an article on a holiday ought to look like. So they rewrote a bunch, and then busted it all the way down to C-level. I didn't go back to it for nearly two years, I felt so abused. And I will never, ever try again to promote either it or Jewish holidays, which I also worked very hard on, to GA status. Both articles work very well as they are, and both are informative. And I don't really want to subject them to editing by people who have no idea what they're talking about.

So is it any wonder that so much more of my attention goes to other projects now, like simplewiki and ladwiki? The fact that it is so difficult to do serious, legitimate, balanced editing on Jewish and Israel topics is a real problem, and I for one have no idea what to do about it. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:40, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello, StevenJ81. I feel similarly, which is why for the past 5 years or so I have focused much more on maintenance work than on content. I too spent my years in the Israel/Palestine battlefield (for example, I'm still the number one editor on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a long shot despite not having touched the article in years). I believe I developed decent working relationships with editors who have different points of view (User:Zero0000, User:Nishidani, User:Huldra, etc.) but there came a point where it was causing me more angst than satisfaction, and I have pulled back (with the exception of a few articles). It is a sad state of affairs that editors on either side of the aisle have to view these topics as battlefields, but Wikipedia is nothing if not a mirror of the people who comprise it, and comprise the world at large as well. As I tell everyone, Wikipedia is not really to be trusted for politics; use it for the links. The idea of Wikipedia is utopian; in practice, it's as human as everything else. כתיבה וחתימה טובה-- Avi (talk) 14:49, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

You are invited to join a discussion as to how to improve the Israel/Palestine topic area (and by extension, other inherently toxic topic areas). Please feel free to join us here. Thank you. ... כתיבה וחטימה טובה to you, too! StevenJ81 (talk) 22:12, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Misunderstanding

Shalom Avi,

I don't understand what you wrote in the lead of anti-Judaism and I am not sure of what could be the correction :

"Anti-Judaism has been called (...). It [Pluto: so "it" = "Anti-Judaism"] is sometimes called theological antisemitism, and distinguished from anti-Judaism [Pluto: ???], which is usually described as a critical rejection of Jewish principles and beliefs."

Anti-J is (...) distinguished from anti-Judaism ? But I am not sure of what you wanted to write. Pluto2012 (talk) 15:48, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Sheesh, I mangled that badly. Thanks for the heads-up! -- Avi (talk) 15:54, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

A sad information

Dear User, since you are a bureaucrat of EnWiki, just for your info - Russian wiki has been banned in Russian Federation. I wish members of Wikipedia Foundation been informed about it. How can we contact with them? Can you help me? M.Karelin (talk) 23:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Thankfully, the ban was short. Regardless, this is something better handled by the WMF; English Wikipedia has no jurisdiction for Russia. -- Avi (talk) 21:22, 1 September 2015 (UTC)