There is no Cabal
If I have made a mistake of any kind, please let me know so we can discuss it.

A barnstar for you edit

  The Userpage Barnstar
Hi greetings, this is for your hard work for creating a beautiful and attractive userpage. PATH SLOPU (Talk) 10:51, 1 April 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Path slopu: Thanks! It's not the best, but I try... GABgab 11:19, 1 April 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

Warning Notification edit

Your acts of censorship to doom your species towards extinction by hushing up the truth about this reality has been reported to the Galactic Government and cataloged into the Galactic Government Archives. They will offer zero sympathies for you regardless of your human nature and skepticism. If you truly are skeptical, by the true meaning of that word, get a two-watt laser and try contacting them. I would if I was in your shoes. When intervention takes place, you will be identified. They already know what you look like, what is your name and where you live. You should make your peace while you can before the autonomy granted to humans has transpired, explicitly. ~ Prince of Catalonia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.82.16.4 (talk) 21:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

DemoreaSimpson17 edit

Thank you for the account block and the range block. Much appreciate! :) - NeutralhomerTalk • 12:04 on April 14, 2019 (UTC)

User:Accopulocrat edit

User:6ullga is clearly the sock of User:Accopulocrat who you have blocked the socks of before. They are editing the exact same pages and adding the same kind of content. Compare edits with User:Leavemydaughteralone, User:Underwritten and User:GoBotsters. They constantly move pages, edit genocide articles particularly List of articles, California genocide and those relating to Soviet war crimes. القمر يضيء في الصباح (talk) 23:00, 21 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

(talk page stalker) You may have noticed already, but this user has been blocked as a sock of Stumink, an unfortunately prolific sockmaster. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:43, 22 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

User talk:3311dot edit

You might want to revoke their talk page access. —RainFall 09:09, 29 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

User talk:3311dot‎, if you could revoke TPA? history sez why  :) Cheers, ——SerialNumber54129 09:09, 29 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Already done, it seems :) GABgab 09:10, 29 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Rama Arbitration Case edit

You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rama. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rama/Evidence. Please add your evidence by May 10, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rama/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:41, 2 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:41, 2 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Previous listing as a party edit

My apologies for the above section stating that you are a party. You are not, I made a mistake with the template. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:51, 2 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2019 special circular edit

 
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 03:00, 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

You've got mail! edit

 
Hello, GeneralizationsAreBad. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 13:44, 11 May 2019 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

——SerialNumber54129 13:44, 11 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

NPR Newsletter No.18 edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

  • Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
  • Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News
Discussions of interest

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250


Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Consider blocking IP 131.111.225.6 for Disruptive Editing and Vandalism edit

Over the past three days, there has been disruptive editing multiple attempts to vandalise an article Kwong Weng Yap by persistent tagging, removing facts. etc. If this IP continues to vandalize Wikipedia, as it did at Kwong Weng Yap and in good spirit for Wikipedia, may I propose to apply a temporary block on this IP or to increase protection to the page? Thank you very much for assisting. Superwifi (talk) 07:34, 26 May 2019 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  AndonicConsumed CrustaceanEnigmamanEuryalusEWS23HereToHelpNv8200paPeripitusStringTheory11Vejvančický

  CheckUser changes

  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

Special:Contributions/172.78.186.137 edit

Special:Diff/903026841 Please disable their talk page access. Thanks!--94rain Talk 01:06, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

They're all copyright violations of Get Up (Shinedown song) too. Adam9007 (talk) 01:07, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Revdelled and tpa disabled... thanks! GABgab 01:09, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Here he is again, copyvios and all. Adam9007 (talk) 01:11, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Also dealt with. GABgab 01:15, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

AR.Dmg → MDPMHG edit

Hey GAB, re: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vc4137, I could be nuts, but I see MDPMHG as potentially a sock of AR.Dmg, which you blocked recently. The new account has DMG scattered through the otherwise meaningless letters, and there are some edit summary similiarities like "Change episode" from AR.Dmg vs "Episode no Change with date" from MDPMHG. I currently am having no luck with the Editor Interaction Analyzer producing a successful result between the two (I see zero hits even though they obviously both edited this article--Maybe you'll have better luck.) What do you think? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Cyphoidbomb: Gah... I'm so sorry for not taking care of this sooner. Things have been kind of crazy recently. At least they're blocked now, so you had the right idea   GABgab 21:22, 6 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019 edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.

QUALITY of REVIEWING

Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.

Backlog

The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.

Move to draft

NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.

Notifying users

Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.

PERM

Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.

Other news

School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.

Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.


Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)Reply

Why was I given new user rights as a pending changes reviewer? edit

I have a very limited understanding of what it is. It's not that I'm against it per se, but I'm not sure I'm experienced enough to actually feel comfortable reviewing pages. Clovermoss (talk) 00:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Clovermoss: Hi - I looked through some of your recent edits and thought that you had a good grasp of our policies (i.e. reverting vandalism and nonconstructive edits), and so it might be useful for you. Of course, I'd be happy to remove it for now, if you wish. GABgab 00:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Can I think a bit more about it, first? To be honest, I don't do that much when it comes to reverting, it's more of I 'occasionally check recent changes' kind of thing. I've been looking at the template messages and just being really cautious in general about it all. It's not that I don't want to help, I'm just not sure I'm qualified at the moment. If I did help, I'd want to make sure I actually understand the policies and read all of the pages you linked before I did anything else. Clovermoss (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
(talk page gnome) @Clovermoss: If it can be reassuring, assuming you decide to patrol new page creations (i.e. one way is via Special:NewPages), you can take no action and leave the page for another to process if you're uncertain. You'll also encounter obvious hoaxes, copyright violations and advertizements, etc, that will be easy to mark as patrolled and to tag for speedy deletion, or move to draft space, etc. Even if a new page needs obvious improvements, whenever you see that it's not blatantly wrong and tag it as patrolled, this will help to reduce the queue. New editors also commonly create inappropriate user pages (contravening WP:NOTWEBHOST), those are generally easy to recognize. There also is a related noticeboard that's helpful. —PaleoNeonate – 01:48, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@PaleoNeonate: I've been rereading the pending change review guide and the policies. Just a quick question: isn't new page patrolling something different? I do find the reassurance helpful. I've been talking to @Nick Moyes: about it and I think that I will accept the right. Clovermoss (talk) 01:57, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Actually, yes, I miunderstood the above: pending changes is different to page patrol. It's simpler however and a similar spirit applies: you can leave changes for others to accept/reject if you're unsure. Sorry about the confusion, —PaleoNeonate – 02:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  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
 

A tag has been placed on Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Karthipillaivellalar requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 00:49, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Liz: Deleted, thanks   GABgab 00:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Special:Contributions/Gedgwes edit

The user always adding unsourced genres after final warning. Can you block him/her?2402:1980:8252:7A67:9EEC:70E8:AFBA:3379 (talk) 01:22, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Empty categories edit

Hello, GAB,

I use to forego notifying editors when I tagged empty categories because I thought editors were less invested in them than articles they created. But I angered one editor who took it to ANI and now I am! However, I've contacted a few editors who I noticed create quite a few categories to ask if they wanted me to skip notifications and have received some yeses. Would you like to be on the "Do not call" list? Liz Read! Talk! 02:38, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Liz: Sure, not a big deal. Thanks, GABgab 01:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
No problemo. Liz Read! Talk! 01:22, 11 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

Disruptive editor IP > account edit

Hello. Thank you for blocking this IP. It seems to me that this new account is probably the same person continuing after the IP was warned. However, the account has not edited since a final warning, so I am not sure if it matters – maybe they have just got bored and gone away. Just thought I should mention it and leave it to your Special Magic Admin Powers to determine the right course of action! :) Cheers DBaK (talk) 08:47, 12 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

@DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered: No problem, glad I could help. Looks like they've stopped for now. Best, GABgab 00:45, 13 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Backlog Banzai edit

In the month of September, Wikiproject Military history is running a project-wide edit-a-thon, Backlog Banzai. There are heaps of different areas you can work on, for which you claim points, and at the end of the month all sorts of whiz-bang awards will be handed out. Every player wins a prize! There is even a bit of friendly competition built in for those that like that sort of thing. Sign up now at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/September 2019 Backlog Banzai to take part. For the coordinators, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:18, 22 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are now open. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the coord team. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:38, 1 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  BradvChetsfordIzno
  FloquenbeamLectonar
  DESiegelJake WartenbergRjanagTopbanana

  CheckUser changes

  CallaneccLFaraoneThere'sNoTime

  Oversight changes

  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) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

A Nobody edit

You closed the sockpuppet invesigation on A Nobody due to the IP being blocked at the time, but it was just temporary. He's back to the same nonsense currently, not even denying that he's A Nobody. TTN (talk) 17:10, 10 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

@TTN: And... reblocked. Thanks for letting me know. GABgab 22:43, 10 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019 edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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

Milhist coordinator election voting has commenced edit

G'day everyone, voting for the 2019 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche is now open. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2018. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:37, 15 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Head injury edit

Has there been an SPI opened about the socks on this page? I see you blocked a few in August. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 02:00, 16 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

@HickoryOughtShirt: Hm... not that I know of. The earliest account seems to be Nomunomuumdy (talk · contribs · count). GABgab 20:21, 16 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election half-way mark edit

G'day everyone, the voting for the XIX Coordinator Tranche is at the halfway mark. The candidates have answered various questions, and you can check them out to see why they are running and decide whether you support them. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2018. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:36, 22 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

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) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

New Page Review newsletter November 2019 edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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 818 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) 00:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  EvergreenFirToBeFree
  AkhilleusAthaenaraJohn VandenbergMelchoirMichaelQSchmidtNeilNYoungamerican😂

  CheckUser changes

  Beeblebrox
  Deskana

  Interface administrator changes

  Evad37

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  Arbitration

  Miscellaneous


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

Block request edit

Hi GAB, will you please block user Charlie Smithers. There is a report at AIV but they committing rapid fire vandalism. S0091 (talk) 21:17, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

@S0091: Thanks,   Done. GABgab 21:19, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thank you! S0091 (talk) 21:20, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mirzefilankes edit

 

A tag has been placed on Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mirzefilankes requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:56, 12 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

Cheers edit

  Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well GAB. MarnetteD|Talk 11:52, 18 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

New Page Review newsletter December 2019 edit

 

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

Merry Christmas!! edit

 
Christmas tree worm, (Spirobranchus gigantic)CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 23:23, 20 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
Time To Spread A Little
Happy Holiday Cheer!!
I decorated a special kind of Christmas tree
in the spirit of the season.

What's especially nice about
this digitized version:
*it doesn't need water
*won't catch fire
*and batteries aren't required.
Have a very Merry Christmas - Happy Hanukkah‼️

and a prosperous New Year!!

🍸🎁 🎉

Joyous Season edit


Happy New Year! edit

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.


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

You've got mail edit

 
Hello, GeneralizationsAreBad. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.qedk (t c) 11:50, 16 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

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. [1]

  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

Happy First Edit Day! edit

Hello, please check "Ape-huchi" account. edit

Might be sockpuppet of Satoshi Kondo (talk · contribs) as well. Beshogur (talk) 21:40, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Beshogur: Hi - I'd recommend that you file an WP:SPI report on the suspected sock. We can evaluate it then. Thanks, GABgab 01:38, 19 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
Well I wanted to do one, but did not find any template to fill for it. Beshogur (talk) 08:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Beshogur: Just head to the SPI page and click the drop-down tab on "How to open an investigation." Thanks, GABgab 23:39, 22 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020 edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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)

master block edit

Hi there, would you reconsider changing the master's block to an indef? They appear to only be here to spam the same thing. Praxidicae (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

March Madness 2020 edit

G'day all, March Madness 2020 is about to get underway, and there is bling aplenty for those who want to get stuck into the backlog by way of tagging, assessing, updating, adding or improving resources and creating articles. If you haven't already signed up to participate, why not? The more the merrier! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:19, 29 February 2020 (UTC) for the coord teamReply

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

Assistance with a potential SPI edit

Hello GAB! Throughout my time on Wikipedia, I have never submitted a sock puppet investigation, nor has the need ever arisen for me to do so. However, I do believe that I might have found a lead worthy of an investigation, but am hesitant on whether an investigation is the correct course of action. Because this is my first investigation, I wanted to ask an active clerk whether this case would even be necessary to conduct or not. As for who I suspect the sockpuppets to be, the two users in question are User:Gadgetsgigs and User:Abhishekbiswas82. These two users had been making similar edits on pages of the same topic, and their user pages were created on the same day within an hour, both of which are similarly laid out. However, I am unsure if these "similarities" are worth investigating. Would you be able to provide a brief input regarding whether this case should be furthered beyond this, or if it will more than likely fail? I didn't want to conduct a report that would inevitably spend the time of CUs and clerks, just for it to quickly be declined. You were the clerk who was most recently online to the best of my knowledge. I hope you understand why I'm asking you directly before filing any reports. And, to the two users who I named, if I am accusing you wrongly, I apologize. Utopes (talk / cont) 18:26, 24 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

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

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  GnangarraKaisershatnerMalcolmxl5

  CheckUser changes

  Callanecc

  Oversight changes

  HJ Mitchell

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  Miscellaneous


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

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  CaptainEekCreffettCwmhiraeth
  Anna FrodesiakBuckshot06RonhjonesSQL

  CheckUser changes

  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 GeneralizationsAreBad,

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

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

Happy Adminship Anniversary! edit

  Wishing GeneralizationsAreBad a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! ~SS49~ {talk} 01:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Happy Adminship Anniversary! edit

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  Red Phoenix
  EuryalusSQL
  JujutacularMonty845RettetastMadchester

  Oversight changes

  GB fan
  KeeganOpabinia regalisPremeditated Chaos

  Guideline and policy news


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

Arameans article edit

Hello there, could you please take a look at Arameans article from time to time due to countless edit warrings with a group of national vandalists, such as user Mugsalot, who have successfully established themselves here on English Wikipedia by spreading POV editing. This has been going for the last couple of years. Permanently violating Wikipedia's policy instead of being a neutral encyclopedia, welcoming high-quality academic sources even if it doesn't fit these people's views, which shouldn't matter here. Many thanks in advance. --Optra2021 (talk) 09:02, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

[2] ——Serial 10:15, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are now open. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the coord team. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  Eddie891
  AngelaJcw69Just ChillingPhilg88Viajero

  CheckUser changes

  SQL

  Guideline and policy news

  Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:56, 2 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Milhist coordinator election voting has commenced edit

G'day everyone, voting for the 2020 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche is now open. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2020. Thanks from the outgoing coord team, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:17, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  AjpolinoLuK3
  Jackmcbarn
  Ad OrientemHarejLidLomnMentoz86Oliver PereiraXJaM
  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

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) 02:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  AndrwscAnetodeGoldenRingJzGLinguistAtLargeNehrams2020

  Interface administrator changes

  Izno

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  Arbitration


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

Nominations for the 2020 Military history WikiProject Newcomer and Historian of the Year awards now open edit

G'day all, the nominations for the 2020 Military history WikiProject newcomer and Historian of the Year are open, all editors are encouraged to nominate candidates for the awards before until 23:59 (GMT) on 15 December 2020, after which voting will occur for 14 days. There is not much time left to nominate worthy recipients, so get to it! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

New Page Patrol December Newsletter edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

 

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)

Voting for "Military Historian of the Year" and "Military history newcomer of the year" closing edit

G'day all, voting for the WikiProject Military history "Military Historian of the Year" and "Military history newcomer of the year" is about to close, so if you haven't already, click on the links and have your say before 23:59 (GMT) on 30 December! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:34, 28 December 2020 (UTC) for the coord teamReply

Happy New Year! edit

  Happy New Year!
Hello GeneralizationsAreBad:


Did you know ... that back in 1885, Wikipedia editors wrote Good Articles with axes, hammers and chisels?

Thank you for your contributions to this encyclopedia using 21st century technology. I hope you don't get any unnecessary blisters.

CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 23:25, 31 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Happy New Year elves}} to send this message

Missed edit

Hi GAB, I haven't seen you around SPI or anywhere for quite a few months now. I hope things are going well with you. Sro23 (talk) 16:38, 1 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

Welcome back! Guess all I need to do is say someone's name and they reappear like magic! Sro23 (talk) 02:26, 10 January 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Sro23: Thank you   it's good to be back. Lots must've happened over here in the meantime... GABgab 02:32, 10 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

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

A kitten for you! edit

 

Thank ye for thy contribs!

-- KindCowboy69 03:31 AM January 11, 2021 03:31, 11 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

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

Why did you delete the article edit

How dare you delete an article I've spent so much effort. I demand you immediately fix that issue or there will be bad consequences and your account can be deleted as well as your whole life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timurr online (talkcontribs) 22:26, 9 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Timurr online: I deleted the article under our deletion criteria, which apply to articles about people that do not assert importance or significance. Please do not make threats. If you wish to contest the deletion, you may do so at WP:DRV. GABgab 17:03, 25 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Happy First Edit Day! edit

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  TJMSmith
  Boing! said ZebedeeHiberniantearsLear's FoolOnlyWGFinley

  Interface administrator changes

  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

April 2021 WikiProject Military History Reviewing Drive edit

Hey y'all, the April 2021 WikiProject Military History Reviewing Drive begins at 00:01 UTC on April 1, 2021 and runs through 23:59 UTC on April 31, 2021. Points can be earned through reviewing articles on the AutoCheck report, reviewing articles listed at WP:MILHIST/ASSESS, reviewing MILHIST-tagged articles at WP:GAN or WP:FAC, and reviewing articles submitted at WP:MILHIST/ACR. Service awards and barnstars are given for set points thresholds, and the top three finishers will receive further awards. To participate, sign up at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_History/April 2021 Reviewing Drive#Participants and create a worklist at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/April 2021 Reviewing Drive/Worklists (examples are given). Further details can be found at the drive page. Questions can be asked at the drive talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

New Zxcvbz sockpuppet edit

Actually admits to being Zeshan Khan on his talk page. New report at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Zxcvbz. Best, GPL93 (talk) 14:01, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Dealt with there. GABgab 20:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  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

(Possibly) stale page restrictions edit

Hi, I was recently doing a review of all the page restrictions I've placed or taken ownership of over the years, and I noticed that a majority of the pages were no longer battlegrounds and didn't require restrictions anymore. I was looking backwards a couple of months on the article history and talk page looking for major diputes, and for the most part things were pretty quiet. I've removed the BRD restrictions from about 70% of the articles that I had put them on, and the 1RR restrictions from probably 90% of pages.

I figured while I was at it I might as well try to track down the other pages with active sanctions and see if the admins who placed them might also be interested in doing a similar review. The following list might not be complete, but it's the best I could come up with by tracking usages of the American Politics AE template. (Perhaps you can compare it to whatever system you have for tracking your active sanctions.) For convenience I'll put links to the edit notice page and the talk page.

I'm hoping that removing some of these restrictions can help restore some sense of normalcy to the topic area. In any case I hope this list is helpful. ~Awilley (talk) 23:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Awilley: Thank you - I will take a look and see which may be amenable to de-restriction. Best, GABgab 01:38, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  EnchanterCarlossuarez46

  Interface administrator changes

  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

  AshleyyoursmileLess Unless
  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

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

Remembered your user page with the funny userboxes... edit

...and ended up making my own. Enjoy. :-) Patient Zerotalk 02:19, 6 July 2021 (UTC)Reply

 This user is a Karen.

Happy Adminship Anniversary! 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) 14:18, 1 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I need help with an opened investigation SockPuppet. Im new to here, and by mistake made two accounts from the same IP address. I'm not intending to continue using this account. thanks

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are now open. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:58, 1 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  Jake Wartenberg
  EmperorViridian Bovary
  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

Reply-link officially superseded by DiscussionTools edit

Hi! Reply-link has officially been superseded by mw:DiscussionTools, which you can install using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. DiscussionTools, developed by the WMF's Editing Team, is faster and has more features than reply-link, and it wouldn't make sense for me to keep developing reply-link. I think the Editing Team is doing amazing work, and look forward to what they can do in the future. Thank you for using reply-link over the years! Enterprisey (talk!) 06:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nomination period closing soon edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are still open, but not for long. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! No further nominations will be accepted after that time. Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:43, 10 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

WikiProject Military history coordinator election voting has commenced edit

Hey y'all, voting for the 2021 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche is now open. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2021. Voting will be conducted at the 2021 tranche page itself. Appropriate questions for the candidates can also be asked. Thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:39, 15 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021 edit

 
 
New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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. 04:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The Human Security Institute (THSI) edit

The Human Security Institute, a Think Tank of National and International competence working for the cause of Human Security at all cadres. Its Registered under Societies act 1860 in Capital City Administration.

SPI on LTA edit

Notifying you of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nangparbat as you had been active in moderating reports on this SPI for a long period. Thanks. Orientls (talk) 04:33, 21 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election voting period closing soon edit

Hey y'all, voting for the 2021 Wikiproject Military history coordinator tranche will be closing soon. This is a simple approval vote; only "support" votes should be made. Project members should vote for any candidates they support by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September 2021. Voting will be conducted at the 2021 tranche page itself. Thanks, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:32, 26 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

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

RfA 2021 review update edit

Thanks so much for participating in Phase 1 of the RfA 2021 review. 8 out of the 21 issues discussed were found to have consensus. Thanks to our closers of Phase 1, Primefac and Wugapodes.

The following had consensus support of participating editors:

  1. Corrosive RfA atmosphere
    The atmosphere at RfA is deeply unpleasant. This makes it so fewer candidates wish to run and also means that some members of our community don't comment/vote.
  2. Level of scrutiny
    Many editors believe it would be unpleasant to have so much attention focused on them. This includes being indirectly a part of watchlists and editors going through your edit history with the chance that some event, possibly a relatively trivial event, becomes the focus of editor discussion for up to a week.
  3. Standards needed to pass keep rising
    It used to be far easier to pass RfA however the standards necessary to pass have continued to rise such that only "perfect" candidates will pass now.
  4. Too few candidates
    There are too few candidates. This not only limits the number of new admin we get but also makes it harder to identify other RfA issues because we have such a small sample size.
  5. "No need for the tools" is a poor reason as we can find work for new admins

The following issues had a rough consensus of support from editors:

  1. Lifetime tenure (high stakes atmosphere)
    Because RfA carries with it lifetime tenure, granting any given editor sysop feels incredibly important. This creates a risk adverse and high stakes atmosphere.
  2. Admin permissions and unbundling
    There is a large gap between the permissions an editor can obtain and the admin toolset. This brings increased scrutiny for RFA candidates, as editors evaluate their feasibility in lots of areas.
  3. RfA should not be the only road to adminship
    Right now, RfA is the only way we can get new admins, but it doesn't have to be.

Please consider joining the brainstorming which will last for the next 1-2 weeks. This will be followed by Phase 2, a 30 day discussion to consider solutions to the problems identified in Phase 1.


There are 2 future mailings planned. One when Phase 2 opens and one with the results of Phase 2. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Best, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 10 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

RfA Reform 2021 Phase 2 has begun edit

Following a 2 week brainstorming period and a 1 week proposal period, the 30 day discussion of changes to our Request for Adminship process has begun. Following feedback on Phase 1, in order to ensure that the largest number of people possible can see all proposals, new proposals will only be accepted for the for the first 7 days of Phase 2. The 30 day discussion is scheduled to last until November 30. Please join the discussion or even submit your own proposal.

There is 1 future mailing planned with the results of Phase 2. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

16:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

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) 16:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message edit

 Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. 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 2021 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) 00:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  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. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Survey about History on Wikipedia edit

I am Petros Apostolopoulos, a Ph.D. candidate in Public History at North Carolina State University. My Ph.D. project examines how historical knowledge is produced on Wikipedia. You must be 18 years of age or older, reside in the United States to participate in this study. If you are interested in participating in my research study by offering your own experience of writing about history on Wikipedia, you can click on this link https://ncsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9z4wmR1cIp0qBH8. There are minimal risks involved in this research.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Petros Apostolopoulos, paposto@ncsu.edu Apolo1991 (talk) 17:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

Merry Christmas! edit

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

RFA 2021 Completed edit

The 2021 re-examination of RFA has been completed. 23 (plus 2 variants) ideas were proposed. Over 200 editors participated in this final phase. Three changes gained consensus and two proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration. Thanks to all who helped to close the discussion, and in particular Primefac, Lee Vilenski, and Ymblanter for closing the most difficult conversations and for TonyBallioni for closing the review of one of the closes.

The following proposals gained consensus and have all been implemented:

  1. Revision of standard question 1 to Why are you interested in becoming an administrator? Special thanks to xaosflux for help with implementation.
  2. A new process, Administrative Action Review (XRV) designed to review if an editor's specific use of an advanced permission, including the admin tools, is consistent with policy in a process similar to that of deletion review and move review. Thanks to all the editors who contributed (and are continuing to contribute) to the discussion of how to implement this proposal.
  3. Removal of autopatrol from the administrator's toolkit. Special thanks to Wugapodes and Seddon for their help with implementation.

The following proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration:

  1. An option for people to run for temporary adminship (proposal, discussion, & close)
  2. An optional election process (proposal & discussion and close review & re-close)

Editors who wish to discuss these ideas or other ideas on how to try to address any of the six issues identified during phase 1 for which no proposal gained are encouraged to do so at RFA's talk page or an appropriate village pump.

A final and huge thanks all those who participated in this effort to improve our RFA process over the last 4 months.


This is the final update with no further talk page messages planned.

01:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Merchandise giveaway nomination edit

 
A token of thanks

Hi GeneralizationsAreBad! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk ~~~~~
 

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

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)

18:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

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

Laplace Architecture/Laplace Studio edit

Hi GeneralizationsAreBad. You blocked the account Laplace Studio a few weeks ago, which may or may not be a sock of the account Laplace Architecture. Laplace Architecture has requested an unblock and rename even though there is no active block against their account. Certainly they require a rename per WP:CORPNAME, but no one has yet responded to their unblock request. They've also disclosed as a paid editor for the company in question.

There is additional discussion at User talk:331dot#User:Laplace Architecture. I had hoped for 331dot's input, but unfortunately so far they have not responded, hence why I decided to approach you. Thanks. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 13:28, 18 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Drm310: Thanks for letting me know. I see that Laplace Architecture has since been blocked by Vanjagenije (courtesy ping). I note also the block of Laplace Design. Ignorance of our socking policy may be in play here, although it's probably meatpuppetry at the least and clearly paid editing anyway. GABgab 16:50, 26 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
@GeneralizationsAreBad: Thanks. I've had further discussions with the user on French Wikipedia (fr:Discussion utilisateur:Laplace Architecture), where it's clear they have no clue about either the proper way to disclose paid editing, use of multiple accounts, or English Wikipedia's username policy. Hopefully they will choose one account to use, request an unblock with a new username, and clearly disclose who's been paying for their edits. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

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

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) 18:13, 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)

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) 23:34, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022 edit

 
 
New Page Review queue March 2022

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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 818 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 860 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)

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 GeneralizationsAreBad,

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: 14319 articles, as of 04:00, 19 April 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) 10:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

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

Happy Fifth Adminship Anniversary! edit

Happy Adminship Anniversary! edit

Precious anniversary edit

Precious
 
Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:29, 26 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  Valereee
  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

Hello! edit

Hi, GeneralizationsAreBad,

I use to see your work all of the time but not so much this year. That's okay, I myself was away from 2016-2018 before I decided to return...it was easier to deal with vandalism than follow politics! Any way, I hope you are well and just taking a much deserved break. Take care, Liz Read! Talk! 00:57, 6 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Liz - thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate it. Things have been quite busy lately, but I hope to find more time in the near future for editing. Best, GABgab 22:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022 edit

 
New Page Review queue August 2022

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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) 21:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

NPP message edit

 

Hi GeneralizationsAreBad,

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

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations opening soon edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election are opening in a few hours (00:01 UTC on 1 September). A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting doesn't commence until 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

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) 11:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election voting opening soon! edit

Voting for the upcoming project coordinator election opens in a few hours (00:01 UTC on 15 September) and will last through 23:59 on 28 September. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. Voting is conducted using simple approval voting and questions for the candidates are welcome. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:26, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Correction to previous election announcement edit

Just a quick correction to the prior message about the 2022 MILHIST coordinator election! I (Hog Farm) didn't proofread the message well enough and left out a link to the election page itself in this message. The voting will occur here; sorry about the need for a second message and the inadvertent omission from the prior one. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 15 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

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election voting closing soon edit

Voting for the upcoming project coordinator election closes soon, at 23:59 on 28 September. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. Voting is conducted using simple approval voting and questions for the candidates are welcome. The voting itself is occurring here If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 26 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

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 GeneralizationsAreBad,

 

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.

Hello. Otto von Saxony has bluntly promised to continue an edit war and to keep inserting false information on a page that got protected.Talk:Opinion polling for the 2022 Brazilian presidential election: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia He is already under investigation for suspecting, but I ask that a clerk ban him or expedite the process since he has already proven highly disruptive, and wont cease his behavior when the protection expires. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Otto von Saxony - Wikipedia 2607:FEA8:7227:B323:A494:D4A8:F47E:64FC (talk) 17:41, 18 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

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

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) 01:24, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022 edit

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

 

  CheckUser changes

  TheresNoTime

  Oversight changes

  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) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023 edit

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

 
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

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

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) 13:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Please help with an active dispute edit

I am currently involved in a dispute with three editors who are accusing me of sockpuppeting and are therefore repeatedly reverting all my constructive edits using what I assume to be automated tools. I am disappointed they are doing this despite me trying to communicate with them and explain I am not a banned user. I’d appreciate any help with this matter as I would like to be able to continue to edit without constant reverting of my edits. Feel free to examine my contributions for yourself and investigate using admin privileges to hopefully clear my name of these false allegations. Thank you BlaineCreek (talk) 21:09, 19 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

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) 17:11, 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) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

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

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) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023 edit

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

 
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

New pages patrol needs your help! edit

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

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

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

  Novem Linguae
 

  Bureaucrat changes

  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) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Happy Adminship Anniversary! edit

Precious anniversary edit

Precious
 
Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  Firefangledfeathers
 

  Interface administrator changes

  Novem Linguae

  Technical news

  Arbitration


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

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

Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open edit

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:05, 2 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

New pages patrol newsletter edit

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

 
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

Unjustified revdelete edit

I noticed the content of the edits by User:.dots.doots.dots. and see that you revdeleted it. If I had known you would do that I would have copied it. I didn't see anything there that deserved to be revdeleted, and in fact it was valuable evidence that should be visible. We're dealing with a number of IPs. Some are malign and others are actually providing good and accurate information, some confirmed by people like User:Doug Weller. I definitely don't like socks, block evasion, or abuse, but this was useful info. Please revert that revdeletion. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:04, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

@GeneralizationsAreBad When I saw it originally I thought it was just someone messing around. I didn’t see it as useful on proving anything or identifying anyone, but perhaps I missed something. Doug Weller talk 19:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
IIRC, it provided an argument for why a certain editor/IP could not be a sock for another editor/IP. The one showed obvious ignorance of certain info provided by the other. That's how I remember it. Whatever the case, revdeletion was a step too far. No one was being attacked or outed. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:07, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Doug Weller: @Valjean: Hi - I revdeleted the sock's edits to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Dronebogus because I believed them to be an attempt at outing (especially in light of the sock's other edit - which was intended to harass, referenced off-wiki information, and apparently made an argument re: sockpuppetry, as mentioned above). The edits on the SPI page have also been oversighted after I contacted the oversight team. Please let me know if you have any other questions. GABgab 01:51, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
No, nothing to add, just a feeling of helplessness. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:01, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
@ValjeanIf it was an attempt at outing, it was pathetic and looked like it was written by a schoolchild with no knowledge of the facts. I looked at it again just now and still have the same opinion. It was no help at all. Doug Weller talk 06:49, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

November Articles for creation backlog drive edit

 

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad:

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 2400 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

  0xDeadbeef
  Tamzin
  Dennis Brown

  Interface administrator changes

  Pppery
 

  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

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) 00:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

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) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Voting for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2023 is now open! edit

Voting is now open for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2023! The the top editors will be awarded the coveted Gold Wiki . Cast your votes vote here and here respectively. Voting closes at 23:59 on 30 December 2023. On behalf of the coordinators, wishing you the very best for the festive season and the new year. Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

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

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024 edit

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

 

  CheckUser changes

  Wugapodes

  Interface administrator changes

 

  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) 18:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Happy First Edit Day! edit

Happy First Edit Day! 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

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024 edit

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

 

  Administrator changes

 

  Guideline and policy news

  Technical news

  • The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

  Arbitration

  Miscellaneous

  • Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024 edit

Hello GeneralizationsAreBad,

 
New Page Review queue January to March 2024

Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.

Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.

Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.

It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!

2023 Awards

 

Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.

Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.

Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.

Reminders:

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive edit

New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
 
  • On 1 May 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) 16:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)Reply